Who was the person who chose general midi sounds

[Guenon]

Nice thread

Back then, synthesizers wanted to mimik real instruments. The idea was to make it cheaper than a real orchestra. Synth sounds as we understand in electronica are new and per definition hard to categorize...

This is probably an ad lib on the joke as well ... Welll it's a good one.

Yeahh we're talking about 1991 here. Even in the 60s and 70s there was quite a bit of those distinctly and unashamedly electronic sounds, but 1991. It's the point where synth stuff has been happening for so long that there's an actual generational gap already in the electronic genres, and records like Aphex Twin's "Analogue Bubblebath" and FSOL's "Accelerator" are released. There are electronic tracks that literally sample electronic sounds from earlier decades, The Prodigy is already becoming a thing, the party/rave culture is exploding, and the previous gen's pioneering stuff like... Patrick Cowley's "Megatron Man" happened already a decade before. Tangerine Dream, Eno, Moroder, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, ...

[Guenon]

... Those beginning years of the 90s had those "synth sounds as we understand in electronica" already go so popular in the youth culture of the time that skilled hobbyist groups created stuff like this on their home computers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wq5EoXy-0



Made on an Amiga 500, in 1992.

[Topcheese]

Nice thread

This thread and your reply are some of the reasons why I love this site! Such awesome people on it, and thanks for all the valuable replies from everyone!

If I don't learn something new, I can always find something for a good laugh.

[Orbit-50]

it was me ...
i don't like to talk about it ...

i needed the money ...

[thecontrolcentre]

[dark water]

^^ looks like Ross Kemp's goblin brother.

[noiseboyuk]

I've no idea what the point would be of a new super-GM, Oopi. GM is a concept that has come and gone. Trying to get everyone to agree on some new 2,000 patch super-standard... why?! We've moved way past such nonsense. We don't expect every synth to be able to produce every conceivable sound, and this is a good thing.

[Captain]

Just to point out something that I think wasn't described very clearly: The GM standard does not define any actual sounds (as in specific samples/synthesis methods or parameters/etc), just pretty vague descriptions of sounds. The idea is that, for example, program change 0 corresponds to an "acoustic grand piano". But the standard does not say anything more than that. The piano sound itself can be a single crappy 8-bit sample, or a 100 GB multi-sampled grand piano, or a physically modelled piano, or whatever. It's up to the GM-compliant playback device to produce the sound in any way it seems fit, as long as the sound could be classified as an acoustic grand piano.

So while the term "general midi" is often used to refer to crappy / cheap sounds, nothing says they should be that way. But since I think the standard does not have a lot of use nowadays, in most situations GM playback uses some pretty old playback devices, and definitely sounds that way...

Or this is how I always understood it. Let me know if I'm wrong.

[evilantal]

... Those beginning years of the 90s had those "synth sounds as we understand in electronica" already go so popular in the youth culture of the time that skilled hobbyist groups created stuff like this on their home computers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89wq5EoXy-0



Made on an Amiga 500, in 1992.

Now, THAT one takes me back!

[Watchful]

So while the term "general midi" is often used to refer to crappy / cheap sounds, nothing says they should be that way...Or this is how I always understood it. Let me know if I'm wrong.

You are correct. Listen to your Captain.

It's just that while GM assumes manufacturers would produce high-quality emulations, it turned out to be cheaper to license Roland's 8-bit MT-32 derivatives, and so we still hear them everywhere today.

Lots of sources exist for decent GM sounds, often free, as Sound Fonts if you don't want a dedicated piece of multi-sampled hardware. But I am firmly in the camp that has no interest in GM, as I pick my own patches for exact needs. GM was a decent solution in search of a problem that really didn't exist.

[Teksonik]

I think the one place GM has now is in the Drum Mapping. It still makes sense to this day and allows drum track midi files to be used by everyone who adheres to the standard. That way you know your Kick is always on the same Key or Pad on your controller regardless of whether it's an Acoustic Rock Kick or an 808.....

[GearNostalgia]

I think the one place GM has now is in the Drum Mapping. It still makes sense to this day and allows drum track midi files to be used by everyone who adheres to the standard. That way you know your Kick is always on the same Key or Pad on your controller regardless of whether it's an Acoustic Rock Kick or an 808.....

You beat me to it. I was selling keyboards at the time GM was invented and it seemed like a great idea at the time. When you made something in midi and sent it over to somebody else to play it back you would have to tell them how to map every sound in order for it to sound anything like what you intended. With the first GM modules you could just load it and know where to start. For drums that was most useful and that is why we have a drum map today. Before that we used to set each drum sound on its own channel and with very few channels of polyphony available that was a big waste. So drum mapping is the only useful part of it now.

Today it would be better to add some kind of genre mapping to a new midi-standard so you can select stuff depening of styles like you do in most soft synths today. Then it would be easier to swap out out soft synths to test different sounds.

[sleepcircle]

Where is supersaw, well there is none. And wub-wub sounds these unmusical dubsteb -like sounds are nowhere to be found. It just not forward thinking enough.

roland standardized the general midi soundset in 1991; the supersaw didn't exist until 1997 and the hard wub-wub didn't exist until 2011

[vurt]

Where is supersaw, well there is none. And wub-wub sounds these unmusical dubsteb -like sounds are nowhere to be found. It just not forward thinking enough.

roland standardized the general midi soundset in 1991; the supersaw didn't exist until 1997 and the hard wub-wub didn't exist until 2011

so you're saying roland had no foresight, how can we trust a company that doesn't own a chrono-visor?

[Acid Mitch]

They must have seen them coming when designing the future.