Mau1wurf1977 wrote:Well how would you feel if I played your Yamaha tunes on a simple FM midi chip 🤣 And then say "man your music sucks"
Actually, the Yamaha is in it's own class, a totally different animal; MIDI files that are authored using the XG guidelines have their own Yamaha specific stuff... which really can't be compared to what most MIDI hardware is, General MIDI compatable.
Heh, in any case though, my Yamaha tunes sound fairly respectable through my SBLive and custom SoundFont though (and would also sound respectable on, say, an SC-88/Pro)... but that's another topic/story altogether 😀
What I'm refering to is General MIDI guidelines (which is what most, if not all, game musicians followed when composing game music... short of non-GM hardware such as an MT-32). IMHO, any GM MIDI musician simply wants one to have decent MIDI hardware to play back his music. The more realistic sounding the instruments, the better 😀
That's all I'm saying: The Roland SC-55 is not necessarily the "defacto" standard for playing old game MIDIs, it simply was what most game musicians used in their studio. Now, if one wishes to hear any given game MIDI *exactly* as if they were sitting next to the game musician, then that's the way to go.
My point is simply that any MIDI module/hardware that includes quality (or rather, I should say, extremely "realistic") sounding instruments, is just fine... which is what most game musicians were wanting in the first place (on the users PC). Unfortunately, back in the day the norm was FM synth though.
Mau1wurf1977 wrote:I believe that the original musicians wanted a lot more but had to work within the limitations of the technology at the time.
This is part of my point: they *all* composed using GM guidelines... in general, any GM MIDI will sound *exactly* the same reguardless of playback hardware. Except (and that's a BIG "except" <grin>), the quality/realism/overall sound of the instruments will sound *completely* different.
Basically, in a nutshell, they were all authored as; 15 melodic MIDI channels, 1 percussion MIDI channel, 32-note polyphony, 128 melodic presets, and between 1 and 4 drum kits. Any given melodic preset number will be (supossedly) the same reguardless of MIDI hardware (e.g. GM melodic preset 57 is a Trombone). Hence, the musician simply wishes one to have MIDI hardware with the most realistic sounding intruments (which of course, is open to interpretation).
(edit) I guess what I'm trying to say is (re: interpretation), I myself (as well as most GM musicians) simply want the absolute most realistic sounding instruments when playing back MIDI files. I want to be able to compose and playback, say, a big orchestral piece, and the director the New York Philharmonic says "Hey! Where did you hire the orchestra?!" <grin> 😀 Actually, years ago one in Miami did just that, so's I was happy/content 🤣!