Origins of the GM soundset?

[aMUSEd]

Just curious about how the GM set came into existance? I mean who decided which sounds would go into it and where did they come from originally? Also what instruments were the synth sounds like Goblin and Ice Rain sampled from?

[C00kie]

Visit http://www.midi.org and you'll learn a bit.

In 1991 the Midi Manufacturers Association decided in all its wissdom which sounds made it in the set of 128 GM sounds. So it wasn't Roland, Korg or Yamaha, but a kinda democratic process I guess.

General MIDI does not actually define the way the sound will be reproduced, only the name of that sound. So: no samples for Goblin or Ice Rain, just a name for patch creators to live out their fantasy/

[aMUSEd]

Visit http://www.midi.org and you'll learn a bit.

In 1991 the Midi Manufacturers Association decided in all its wissdom which sounds made it in the set of 128 GM sounds. So it wasn't Roland, Korg or Yamaha, but a kinda democratic process I guess.

Thanks

General MIDI does not actually define the way the sound will be reproduced, only the name of that sound. So: no samples for Goblin or Ice Rain, just a name for patch creators to live out their fantasy/

Yes but Ice Rain, Crystal, Goblin etc do sound roughly the same from GM soundset to GM soundset (thinking of soundfonts and Omnisynth for example) so what inspired those sounds? - they must have come from one or more synths at some point to get incuded in a sample based soundset.

[C00kie]

It must have been the first GM synths that set the standards. I'm too lazy to research which one that could be

[Mr Arkadin]

If i remember correctly it was actually more of a Roland thing. If you look at their pre-GM drum machines they pretty much defined the GM drum map (MIDI Channel 10, Kick on C1 etc.) and i think they also defined the standard arrangement of instruments (they called it GS) including the ever useful telephone, chirping birds, etc (look at their pre-GM synths, they already had a lot of that stuff in place). i then think all the manufacturers got together to make it standard, with Yamaha having XG as their 'extended' version of GM. Or something.

Mr A

[No name]

My old Concertmate 990 that I had gotten from Radioshack when I first got into music gives me nightmares still! I have a prejudice against all GM soundsets now. Especially the stupid effects. Gunshots, telephone ringing, I don't understand what ever possessed them to make those standard.

[aMUSEd]

I bet Squids would know.

[greendoor]

The original Roland Sound Canvas was the first GM synth. Yamaha always had a problem sticking to the midi formats - probably because they hated following Roland. For example, they made DX7's midi respond to 100 as the highest, instead of the midi convention of 127. That's why original DX7 patches sound crap if you exceed 100 velocity - but I digress. Anyway, Roland pretty much wrote the GM book. I guess those Goblin sounds and stuff were just the Roland guys making some new sounds with the same limited number of samples just to fill in 128 patches. I really wish the didn't bother with so much rubbish when there were so many necessary sounds they ignored.

[tony tony chopper]

including the ever useful telephone, chirping birds

my fav was the helicopter


IMHO I think that what GM should have been is a good set of world's mostly used instruments. Which it is partly, but there are very weird instruments in it.
Anyway, what's the GM mapping for *today*? It'd be wise to let it die.

[kpr]

The GM instrument categories and instruments list is a kind of subcategorized version of the traditional instrument catalog organization:

- Aerophone
- Idiophone
- Membranophone
- Chordophone

Those general categories are always divided into smaller groups like Piano, Organ, Clavi etc.

To start the GM list with Piano group might be an admission to the keyboarder world as dominating group using electronics in the late 80ies, early nineties. And the general selection is considering the instruments usually used for typical pop songs in playback or play-along mode. The partner of the Canvas was a similar looking SMF player. This purposes explains the existence of the Canvas SFX samples. BTW the Canvas predecessor MT32 is still different to the later GM list and the Canvas provides an additional MT32 Mode.

Ice Rain and other synth candidates are victims of the small WaveROM size. They´re only variations of acoustic instrument samples used for other categories, simply modified and layered using 2 Partials and the internal modifiers, envelopes, etc. Some other manufacturers obviously took the Canvas as "The Original" and tried to simulate their Ice Rain and Chiffer Lead style Presets, sometimes with a bit weird results.