lvader wrote:

I have read interviews in which Rob Hubbard talks about composing music on a Casio and writing the score on musical score paper before coding it on a C64.

I don't know if you have ears, but clearly his music is not just a transcription of some Casio keyboard music to C64. He's doing all sorts of things that you could never ever do on any Casio keyboard or most synths at the time.
He may have used a Casio to fiddle about to get some melody ideas and such (as he describes in the interview), but he most certainly did not compose an entire piece first, and then just transcribe it to the C64 (let alone use a MIDI sequencer). Most of the work was in the 'improvising' he describes. Both to flesh out the melodies themselves, and to fine-tune the SID sounds and special effects that his music is so famous for.

lvader wrote:

By the time MT32 became popular composing music using midi keyboards, synths and sequencer sortware was common place.

Not for games. Nearly all Amiga music was done with Sound/Noise/ProTracker or derivatives.
I think it's also pretty safe to assume that virtually no C64 music was ever done with MIDI. Same would go for many other platforms at the time, such as NES, Sega etc.
PC may be the exception here, because the MT-32 was actually a device that was a MIDI device... it neither had the polyphony limits that most other sound chips had, nor did it have any special filters or other effects that were not MIDI-compatible.
But that still leaves the case of AdLib and its suckage in 99% of all games (which actually do sound like cheap transcriptions of generic MIDI songs using generic MIDI instruments, rather than fine-tuning things to make the most of the sound chip, like game devs did on other platforms).

Scali wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

And I believe George Sanger composed on keyboards or other real instruments mostly.

But he never did anything on 3-4 channel devices, did he? I only know him from AdLib and newer PC hardware.

I didn't realize you were limiting the scope of your stance to pre-Adlib. This topic is, after all, related to MT-32 and newer, which covers the same Adlib era. And lvader's original comment which sparked your arguments was regarding adventure games and their common use of the MT-32.

BTW, thanks for burying the whole point of this topic. If anyone wants to hear the differences between the two songs I discuss in the OP, it's on the first page, here: Origin System's transition from MT-32 to General MIDI

clueless1 wrote:

I didn't realize you were limiting the scope of your stance to pre-Adlib.

I'm not, it's just that you can 'get away' with treating an AdLib as merely a polyphonic MIDI device, where you simply wouldn't stand a chance doing that on less capable devices.
What makes all the difference is the few people who don't treat the AdLib as a MIDI device, but approach it similarly to these earlier chips, and use custom-made tools to extract the most out of the chip.

clueless1 wrote:

This topic is, after all, related to MT-32 and newer, which covers the same Adlib era.

It's a *discussion* forum though, discussions don't always limit themselves to the constraints of the original topic.
Who knows, perhaps some people are actually interested in how game developers made this game music for MT-32, GM and other devices.
Heck, if you look at how I entered the discussion, it was mostly about Roland audio. It only moved to AdLib and other composer/methods of composition because of the responses I got, which seemed to require side-stepping to these related topics in order to provide a complete enough answer (if lvader never made the argument that you basically HAVE to compose in MIDI first, regardless of platform, I would never had to explain otherwise. I simply assumed that people knew about tracker technology and what went before it, rather than thinking that MIDI is the One True Way(tm). Apparently not, so I gave the required background info).

I certainly do not want to get caught up in Scali's discussions, so I'll just provide my opinion on the original topic about the transitioning from MT-32 to General MIDI.

I think that one of the main reasons why you see this transition from MT-32 to General MIDI is that, prior to 1991, there was no General MIDI standard (I'm not going into the whole history of this, there is plenty of reading material on the internet).

As pointed out, the MT-32 was still quite expensive for your average gamer, despite Sierra marketing and selling these themselves in the early days.
One of the reasons was probably to make money, but Sierra also invested quite a bit of time and money in their in-game music (after all, they did hire professional composers) and wanted people to "experience" that.

When the General MIDI standard was introduced, and the Sound Blaster 16 was released with its Wave Blaster header, you suddenly had a whole market of companies who could produce and sell General MIDI compatible devices, whether it be on-board MIDI synthesis, a General MIDI daughterboard or an external MIDI unit (like Yamaha, Korg, etc.).

So, while you were previously "forced" to buy a Roland MT-32 or one of its compatible modules (since no one else could reliably emulate these), you could now "choose" from a vast array of General MIDI devices (granted, some of these had extremely poor samples and the implementation thereof, but that's a topic of a different discussion).
Due to the General MIDI standard, it now suddenly made General MIDI a much more affordable option to many gamers who previously were only "stuck" with OPL2/OPL3 FM synthesis.
Naturally, game developers would also start to transition from the MT-32 "standard" to General MIDI, which was quickly beginning to penetrate the market (one company selling an MT-32 and quite a number of companies selling General MIDI devices).

Since there were some people who did originally "invest" in a Roland MT-32 (or compatible module) it made sense for game developers to slowly transition from the one "standard" to the next.
Another possible explanation is that some games took some time to develop. The company might have started out writing and composing music by using an MT-32, and by the time the game was ready, might have just re-mapped their instruments to support the General MIDI standard (which is why some games probably sound better on an MT-32 than a Roland Sound Canvas and vice versa for later games).

MT-32 was better for composers for two reasons: First, it' s a device, not a standard. If you supported MT-32, everyone who had one was guaranteed the same output (disregarding the subtle differences between MT-32/CM-32L revisions). If you support General MIDI, all you know is that program number 57 is a trombone; you don't know how exactly that trombone sounds, how velocities are interpreted, etc. The Roland Sound Canvas devices became a de-facto standard. For this reason, George Sanger's "Fat Labs" actually had a certification program that certified other wavetable devices for having Sound-Canvas-like instrument volumes.

Second, the MT-32 is a programmable synthesizer, while General MIDI devices are just simple sample playback devices. MT-32 allows you to be far more expressive by creating new sounds instead of having to rely on a ROM-based wavetable of always the same sounds. Strike Commander may well be the peak of custom MT-32 sounds, at least in the IBM PC world.

As for Privateer and Ultima VIII sending MT-32 system exclusive messages: Miles AIL sound system version 2 actually has no General MIDI driver, so Origin just used the MT-32 driver and fed it with General-MIDI-targeted XMIDI files. Realms of Arkania: Star Trail does come with a General MIDI driver that in fact sends no MT-32 sysex messages whatsoever --- given that the AIL drivers came with source code, the game developer may have just compiled this driver himself.

Scali wrote:

On Tandy/PCjr, again, not many people seemed to actually push the device.

Distinctive Software pushed the Tandy 1000 by using the PC speaker as a fourth channel, and the TL DAC for PCM drums. They were also the only ones to use the Sound Blaster DAC for drums together with OPL music.

NewRisingSun wrote:

MT-32 was better for composers for two reasons: First, it' s a device, not a standard.

I knew I was going to get nailed for referring to the MT-32 as a "standard" (hence, why I used quotation marks 🤣 ), but I totally agree with your statement.

Not Ultima VIII 😉

I think the above only tells part of the story though.
Namely, you didn't HAVE to buy an MT-32. For MIDI interface, there were basically only two options on the market:
- Roland MPU-401
- IBM Music Feature Card

The MPU-401 was earlier on the market, and it was also the cheaper option, since it did not include a built-in synthesizer like the IMFC. That's probably why the MPU-401 became the standard MIDI interface for the PC.

But you do not necessarily need to connect an MT-32 to an MPU-401. I think this is mostly an 'artificial standard', made by Roland and Sierra's deal. The MT-32 wasn't specifically designed for games, but it did fit the bill nicely, as it was one of the cheaper options, and is pretty close to a general MIDI device already: it contains a full range of instruments and drum kits. More complete than eg the Yamaha FB-01 that the IMFC was based on.
Roland only created the integrated LAPC-I later, when several games had already 'created' the de-facto MPU-401 + MT-32 standard.
In theory it could have been any other synthesizer module, and in fact, Sierra did also support certain other devices connected to an MPU-401, including, ironically enough, the Yamaha FB-01.

But yes, once General MIDI standardized the instrument map, it was much easier to support MIDI devices. So it made sense to move from MT-32 to GM (especially since you could patch the MT-32 to be nearly GM-compatible anyway, and in fact, I believe some software had an MT-32 mode, which was little more than first uploading SysEx commands to make the MT-32 behave more GM-like, and then basically playing the GM music).
At the same time, you no longer needed a real MPU-401. Where Sound Blasters initially introduced their own third incompatible MIDI interface to the PC, clones and later also Creative itself would implement a dumb UART MPU-401 interface for MIDI, which the Wave Blaster interface is also based on.

Mind you, in practice I don't recall an awful lot of people using Wave Blasters or other MIDI cards for gaming. Probably because we were moving to the CD-ROM era at that time, and games would just include sampled soundtracks, which sounded the same on any soundcard, and more importantly: sounded exactly like the composer intended.

NewRisingSun wrote:

MT-32 was better for composers for two reasons: First, it' s a device, not a standard. If you supported MT-32, everyone who had one was guaranteed the same output (disregarding the subtle differences between MT-32/CM-32L revisions). If you support General MIDI, all you know is that program number 57 is a trombone; you don't know how exactly that trombone sounds, how velocities are interpreted, etc. The Roland Sound Canvas devices became a de-facto standard. For this reason, George Sanger's "Fat Labs" actually had a certification program that certified other wavetable devices for having Sound-Canvas-like instrument volumes.

Yup, I said pretty much the same thing in my blog. GM doesn't really work for standardizing game audio, because it's not specific enough about how instruments should sound.

NewRisingSun wrote:

Second, the MT-32 is a programmable synthesizer, while General MIDI devices are just simple sample playback devices. MT-32 allows you to be far more expressive by creating new sounds instead of having to rely on a ROM-based wavetable of always the same sounds.

Well, GM devices might not be simple sample playback devices, the standard doesn't say.
Problem is, any extra effects or things aren't covered by GM either, so you'd need to use device-specific SysEx commands like on the MT-32 to make use of them.
In practice, most GM devices, especially the cheap ones aimed at consumers, are indeed 'romplers' only.

NewRisingSun wrote:

Distinctive Software pushed the Tandy 1000 by using the PC speaker as a fourth channel, and the TL DAC for PCM drums. They were also the only ones to use the Sound Blaster DAC for drums together with OPL music.

So they were using the DAC as a ... DAC? 😀
The Rob Hubbard games I mentioned don't even use a DAC, they use a trick to make a square wave channel play 4-bit samples.
Likewise, his music that uses samples on the C64 uses a special trick to play samples, as the C64 doesn't have a DAC either.
You'd almost say PC devs should be ashamed of themselves for not using a DAC when there's a perfectly good one in the system 😀
Having said that, there were a few PC devs who even managed to play samples on an AdLib.
As for Distinctive Software being the only one to do FM + PCM, I'm pretty sure they're not.
Zone 66 does the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_66
(Actually the Renaissance demogroup behind that, they used this in their PC demos as well, they even made their CDFM tracker available recently: http://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=544)
The EdLib tracker by the Vibrants can also do this, although I'm not sure if any games made with EdLib include the feature.

As for Distinctive Software being the only one to do FM + PCM, I'm pretty sure they're not.

I meant real programmers, not demo groups. 😎

Listening to Privateer and Ultima VIII, both soundtracks make heavy use of high slow strings, which are a natural weakness of the MT-32. Maybe that was part of the reason why Origin didn't even bother to do MT-32 conversions (even as Ultima VIII's credits have a job title for "MT-32 conversion")

NewRisingSun wrote:

I meant real programmers, not demo groups. 😎

What are 'real' programmers in this context?
Especially on C64 and Amiga, the line between game programmers and demo groups is extremely blurry.

Nothing. Just a joke based on my intense seething hatred for the warez scene and the demoscene that grew out of it. 😉

Scali wrote:

Mind you, in practice I don't recall an awful lot of people using Wave Blasters or other MIDI cards for gaming. Probably because we were moving to the CD-ROM era at that time, and games would just include sampled soundtracks, which sounded the same on any soundcard, and more importantly: sounded exactly like the composer intended.

Specific to this point, General MIDI was much less prevalent a standard for PC gaming than a lot of people realize. Using MobyGames as a reference, in combination with known information and reasonable assumptions otherwise, an interpreted count of titles by year, separated by their "target" MIDI playback device/standard, looks something like this:

Cloudschatze wrote:

http://www.symphoniae.com/misc/vogons/gmmt.PNG […]
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That's interesting...
That is, from 1995 onward, you see a dropoff of GM support, which is probably the effect of the CD-ROM.
Presumably, other soundcards would have suffered the same dropoff.
I suppose if you were to add an extra SB column to that, you'd probably see a similar trend?

NewRisingSun wrote:

Nothing. Just a joke based on my intense seething hatred for the warez scene and the demoscene that grew out of it. 😉

Why? The demoscene has been separate from cracking/warez since the late 80s. Most demosceners don't want much to do with warez at all, I suppose (many of them are professional software developers these days, especially ironic in the cases where these game companies were founded by scene groups, such as DICE... things have come full circle).
On PC, it has been basically completely indepedendent from cracking/warez from the start, since the PC scene only started around 1990.
PC warez rarely even had any kind of cracktros at all, before the advent of warezing via CD-ROMs and the internet, and keygens etc occured (so yay, people now know chipmods as 'keygen music').

From around 1997 surround sound and 3D audio starts to take off, but GM support was already in decline. Companies like LucasArts continued to create its sound tracks using professional midi equipment but delivered the content using digital sound stored on CD,

lvader wrote:

From around 1997 surround sound and 3D audio starts to take off, but GM support was already in decline. Companies like LucasArts continued to create its sound tracks using professional midi equipment but delivered the content using digital sound stored on CD,

I hated the beginning of this era. I was using General MIDI and wanted to keep using it not only because of the sound quality, but the more dynamic nature, where music could instantly change when the mood or tone of the game changed. I remember when I bought Crusader: No Remorse, that was the first game with digitized music that I had experience with, and it was comparatively terrible. It sounded like AM radio.

clueless1 wrote:

I hated the beginning of this era. I was using General MIDI and wanted to keep using it not only because of the sound quality, but the more dynamic nature, where music could instantly change when the mood or tone of the game changed. I remember when I bought Crusader: No Remorse, that was the first game with digitized music that I had experience with, and it was comparatively terrible. It sounded like AM radio.

Yea, the lack of 'interactive' music with CD-ROM was one thing.
Another thing is that it removed any 'character' from the music. Previously, every soundchip had its own 'character', so you could generally tell a C64 from an Amiga, and an AdLib from an MT-32.
But with CD-ROM, everything started to sound the same. You couldn't tell the difference between PlayStation and PC anymore either.
Having said that, one of my all-time favourite games in terms of music is the original Need for Speed, and that's a CD-ROM game ironically enough 😀

Dominus wrote:

You could try asking on Twitter 😀

Okay, so I managed to get in touch with the guy who did the music for Pacific Strike. 😀

Here's his response:

I honestly have no idea why the two tunes are different. They shouldn't have been. I can think of two possible explanations. Fir […]
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I honestly have no idea why the two tunes are different. They shouldn't
have been. I can think of two possible explanations. First, programmer
error. I created the files and uploaded them to the project server where
the programmers would install them into the game. It's entirely possible
the programmer just missed one in the process. The last portion of the
pre-ship period was mandatory crunch hours so there were a lot of very
tired and overworked people trying to push PS out the door in order to
make the financial Quarter numbers. Second, the game was originally
written for MT-32. General Midi was a brand new development during the
creation of PS and I had to go back through all my MT-32 files and
create GM versions. It's possible I omitted the file and the programmers
installed the only file they had. Those are the only reasonable
explanations I can think of. As we used to say at Origin, "It's not a
bug, it's a feature!"

Awesome 😀