Silly MIDI history question - why is there a helicopter in General MIDI?

[DSmolken]

Somebody making a General MIDI bank in SFZ reminded me that there's some oddities in the sound effects section of the General MIDI specification:

120 Reverse Cymbal
121 Guitar Fret Noise
122 Breath Noise
123 Seashore
124 Bird Tweet
125 Telephone Ring
126 Helicopter
127 Applause
128 Gunshot

So I got to wondering - why a helicopter, which is a very rare sound in real life, and not a car engine or thunder or rain or something like that? And why a seashore and not a mountain brook? How did they defeat the alternatives which were proposed?

Was there a committee designing this standard with a big, nearly-bloody argument between the helicopter advocates and others on the final day?

[Tj Shredder]

They thought you could play the helicopter quartet with this sound, but they never read the score unfortunately...

More seriously: A seashore or a helicopter is easy to synthesize, a mountain brook would sound terrible with the short sampling times back then and hard to impossible to synthesize... Thunder sounds terrible as a sample espicially if you create the same thunder on each key press. Anything loopable makes sense...
A car engine as sample is the same problem its not as flexible as you would need it. Cars do not drive with a constant speed...
Back then most of these foley sounds where distributed on compact discs with a dozen variants. Samplers had maybe 2 MB of Ram and GM needed to be good for cheap synthesizers...

[vurt]

basic synth patch.
put anyone in front of a synth, as soon as they find the filter lfo. even a chimp, unless it eats your face instead.

[vurt]

or maybe, back then, they expected by now wed all have personal mini helicopters so it would become a more commonplace sound.

damn you future not being as futuristic as they thought in the past
wheres my jetpack philbin?

[justin3am]

128 shoulda been fart. I'd use that way more than gunshot.

[Watchful]

Good question. Most of the 1991 GM sounds were based on the way the Roland MT-32 organized its sounds into logical groups, and these were originally based on Roland D-series LA synthesis. While that sounds like a simple answer, here's the goofy thing: the helicopter sound was never part of the original MT-32. Patch 126 was "One note jam."

So my suspicion was that the GM consortium felt that patch was way too unique to Roland's LA synthesis model and replaced it..but why they picked a helicopter sound is beyond me. I think Vurt is probably right: any synth maker using any synthesis method could cough up a helicopter, so they picked that in probably 15 seconds of thought.

[DSmolken]

Thanks, that actually sounds pretty likely.

[excuse me please]

Because everybody thinks helicopters are cool!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BZdgF9HLprc

[pljones]

It's essential for playing the Airwolf theme..?

[imrae]

Dark Side Of The Moon?

[BertKoor]

It's essential for playing the Airwolf theme..?

Dark Side Of The Moon?

All that, plus Billy Joel - Good Night, Saigon.

So there definitely was a demand.

[vurt]

so you can listen to the doors and pretend youre in apocalypse now.

[rrivers]

Because they're WAY cool (although I'll have to admit I'm a bit biased in that regard, since I'm a retired Army helicopter instructor pilot )

AND
Pink Floyd, The Wall

[JeffLearman]

A car engine as sample is the same problem its not as flexible as you would need it. Cars do not drive with a constant speed...

I thought that's what the pitch wheel was for!

[vurt]

Because they're WAY cool (although I'll have to admit I'm a bit biased in that regard, since I'm a retired Army helicopter instructor pilot )

AND
Pink Floyd, The Wall

you just became one of the coolest kvr members

do we have any astronauts/cosmonauts to beat this guy?

ill even take fighter jet pilot although, thats just equal when it comes to military helicopters.

other than that actual samurai or ninjas, or anyone who has swam with great whites, outside a cage