No mention of tracker formats like SoundTracker / NoiseTracker / Protracker or anything like that? MIDI SUCKED in comparison with those formats, because at least they carried the instruments as intended by the creators. I personally think that MOD / IT / S3M / XM are the best formats for music ever made, before CD and MP3, perhaps. Fuck MIDI.
And what's so fucking good about Creative? I used their app called WaveStudio many years ago and I was shocked at how crap it was. Every time I zoomed in or out, the selected area would wander, and caused many unwanted audio artefacts! Actually, if I remember correctly, everyone said that whilst Creative hardware was fine, their software SUCKED.
Keith Gaughan I can still play mid files on both my windows and linux machines. Even better on the latter with 10Gb sample bank. Also there's no problem connecting actual synthesizer or midi keyboard to PC either. The reason why last games that used actual midi standard were released in late 2000s, mostly for the arcades and just a few for actual PCs is simple. Huge game sizes made 70-500Mb of digital audio with music recorded using professional hardware which will play the same on every PC is more preferable. For small games programming a dedicated software synth is also preferable to the actual chip. You can't make dedicated high quality wavetable + FM synth cheap. And quality of 90s hardware can't be accepted by most people.
As of this day, the 5-pin DIN 31.25 Kb/s serial connection remains standard on the vast majority of devices supporting MIDI. Look at just about any modern instrument or controller, and it'll be right there sitting on the back (very occasionally in the form of a space saving 3.5 mm TRS connector, and even more rarely, only via class compliant USB interface).
@@shadowflash705 How do you get around Microsoft's boneheaded decision to remove the midi mapper from windows? Just curious. I haven't been able to get any midi hardware working with Windows 10... Kinda wish I could get my MU-128 working with a PC again, but I haven't had much luck...
@Jacob Turnbaugh The fact that you think that Midi affects the sound of the music - it doesn't - when it's just a communications protocol, is what shows that you don't know what you're talking about.
Exactly what I was thinking, I use MIDI all the time. It's just that the songs that come out of it don't all sound like primitive Microsoft GS Synth Wavetable tunes ( _a la_ RuneScape) anymore.
@@danpreston564 Yeah, new protocols and such always take a long time to be widely adopted. USB type-C came out in 2014, but is only just starting to actually be adopted.
One thing you didn't address was the fact that major record labels started suing websites with libraries of midi cover songs. So then we couldn't find midi versions of our favorite songs. That partly killed midi. Just when instruments started sounding more realistic.
@@AlexandreLopsz If there's one thing that's as sure as the Sun rising in the East each morning it's that the RIAA and MPAA will sue for literally any new emerging tech until they get the point across that they will sue anything that moves that has to do with either music or cinema/tv and unauthorized reproduction.
@@raven4k998 Using MIDI on modern PC hardware is as easy as installing one of the many DAW packages and a GM Soundfont. Maybe a bit of overkill if you just want to play .mid files (which are still out there and easily found with a google search) but very powerful and many, such as LMMS are totally free and open source. LMMS was originally developed for Linux but Windows versions are available and work on the latest versions of Windows without issues. Of course if you have even the slightest interest in actually making your own music, then chances are that you already have a similar setup :)
As a composer, MIDI is still extremely valuable for quickly workshopping ideas. But yes, I do miss the sound of it as well, it's sad that there's such a stigma around the format nowadays.
Stigma around the format is just bullshit, any complaints about it can be addressed to my hole. The whole thing with electronic music is the sound design above all else really, and with the quality of samples you can get these days, most orchestral stuff on TV these days are cues recorded with sampled instruments. MIDI is just super versatile, one of the only things in music tech that isn't massively complex
The windows built in GS softsynth is horrible due to sound quality and lacking samples now due to that a lot of people believe that midi "sounds" like that despite the fact the midi doesn't have a sound and that its just playback data
as a music producer, MIDI is incredibly important. it’s basically the backbone of everything i do. not just interfacing between pianos and my digital audio workstation. it’s how i write each note in music and how all of my virtual instruments know what, when, how loud, and how to play. for almost every electronic music producers, MIDI is never going away.
MIDI was how I was introduced to video game music back in the 90s. Being able to find MIDI versions of all my favorite Final Fantasy tunes was kind of mindblowing as high schooler.
I remember having some pretty darn accurate midi recreations of the FF4 soundtrack. Technically I still have them buried somewhere on my harddrive, but last I checked modern PC midi support makes them sound like rubbish.
As an electronic musician, MIDI has been the entire backbone of my life. But, there was no thrill greater than when I hooked up my Atari ST to an MT-32 and played Space Quest III. My two worlds collided. Nice to see MIDI getting some love.
I've kept a large library of midis on my phones SD card for years and using them as ring tones and alarms. My wake up alarm has been the System Shock intro cinematic song. It works really well for a wake up alarm.
MIDI is like magic, not everyone likes it but it has some sort of special thing to it. I still love listening to my MIDIs everyday and also play a bit on my Roland VA-7 synth, listening to how Doom MIDIs sound, making my own music, it's just fantastic. Gotta love the 90's and the innovation it brought to us.
Almost every song you hear from Spotify uses MIDI in it's production. MIDI just went back to be used for what it was intended to be. MIDI 2.0 is a great news for music producers, doesn't really matter for end users.
"Remember the days when you had to define a separate music card and sound card for DOS games?" Yes i remember and as a kid i hated it. i never realy knew what to pick as many older games didn't have support for my card so i had to guess or try alternate selections. And i didn't have the internet so i had to do everything by experimentation.
Don't forget IRQ conflicts and modifying batch files. If you were really lucky, you'd bring home an upgrade for your PC, and actually get to use it within a week (after your Dad called up his PC expert friend).
or the sound card wasn't supported at all and you had to play the game silently, or hope that your parents would get a supported one for christmas or birthday
most common was sound blaster 220 irq5 or 7, dma 1. I miss those days. I never had problems with that, ISA sound blaster cards were the most compatible, they worked with everything both in DOS and windows.
When I was a teenager in the 90's and we got our first computer which was the IBM Aptiva, one of the first programs that truly fascinated me was a Windows MIDI Composition program that came pre-installed with the computer's software suite. Not only could I create my own songs by clicking in the notes to a digital score sheet with 16 tracks, but I could load up other compositions either from certain video games or from other composers sharing their MIDI songs on places like AOL or Geocities where I could listen and visually analyze the tricks and techniques they used to pull off particular sounds. MIDI was the initial building block that kick started my journey into music production and full blown audio engineering that I still do up to this day. I also appreciate websites like vgmusic.com for still hosting and maintaining it's massive archive of MIDI video game cover songs including many that are still there that I submitted as a kid. This episode was nostalgic indeed so thank you for this! 😇
I remember playing with that MIDI scoring program too, I believe it was part of the early SoundBlaster software suite (along with the classic "Dr. Sbaitso" speech synthesis program) but it wasn't included with every card.
@@sixstringedthing Dude now I remember completely from your comment and thanks so much for taking the time lol! Back in the day I used a Windows 3.11 program called Midisoft Recording Session and that IBM Aptiva had a generic SoundBlaster suite but yeah it lacked the voice synthesis program. Either way I enjoyed the hell out of that setup when I was younger 😃
@@thedrunkmonkshow You're welcome mate, the nostalgia trip is nice. :) The time period we're talking about is 30-odd years ago for me (and about the same for you, from your original comment) and I'd pretty much forgotten about these early experiments with digital production. The father of a school friend of mine was the very definition of "early adopter", he had all the coolest toys and appreciated my passion for music (which his son lacked). I remember being absolutely blown away at what we could do with his Yamaha SY87 synth, Roland MT32 and Cakewalk software. This has been a cool little trip down Memory Lane, cheers!
Sort of bridging the gap between MID and MP3 files there were also four-track MOD files, and other variants like .XM which included more than 4 tracks. Similar to MID files in that they included a set of instructions on how to play instruments, these also included their own instrument samples. This allowed the song to sound the same on any machine they played on, while still not chewing up anywhere near as much storage as MP3. Even with just four tracks though (two left, two right), you could get some pretty detailed songs because while you could only have four sounds playing at any one time, you could swap out which sample was selected. So if you have a hi-hat, snare, and bass drum sounds but only one is ever being played at one given time, just dedicate one channel to percussion and switch back and forth between them, leaving you with 3 channels for other instruments.
Mixing samples is actually pretty demanding. One of the selling points for the Gravis Ultrasound was that you could offload that work to the card, and it would not only mix the samples, but would also do interpolation as well. Just tried an experiment in DOSBox. Loaded up a 28-channel XM file in Cubic Player v1.7. Here's the results for cycles settings needed to play it without breaking up: GUS: Never breaks up, but plays slow below about 1500-2000 cycles Software mixer: Needs about 10000 cycles for no interpolation, about 18000 with interpolation High-quality software mixer: Needs about 35000 cycles without interpolation, 45000 with interpolation The slow playback on the GUS is clearly due to the playback program not being able to feed the card quickly enough when the emulated CPU is set so slow. If we call 2000 cycles the benchmark for just feeding the card commands quickly enough, then software mixing needs at least 5 times the processing power, and the GUS could be considered to be analogous to having a second CPU that's around 10-20 times faster and dedicated to just mixing audio.
@@Roxor128 Soundtracker software ran on 8Mhz 68000 CPUs on Atari ST and Comodore Amigas with 8 bit samples using as little as 512K. I had an 8 bit stereo master sample cartridge that could record samples up to 50kHz and used it with a 4 track sound tracker called audio sculpture and because I had the 1040 STE, that could handle 8 channels on another tracker called octalyser too. The essay wasn't necessary or remotely relevant to the system requirements of running trackers. Even ones for the Mac or Atari falcon that could use CD quality 16 bit samples and more than just 8 tracks that came later.
@@barkmonster Recording and playback is not mixing. You can just dump samples to any sound card and play something. The early 4-channel trackers for the Amiga did just that. The Amiga's sound chip could play 4 simultaneous sets of samples at 4 different sample-rates. All the early trackers had to do was throw sample-data at the chip. No mixing required. In the PC space, sound cards were and are mostly dumb. You play one stream at a time. If you want anything more, you have to mix, and if what you're mixing isn't at the rate you're outputting, you have to convert it as well, and that's the demanding part: the sample-rate conversion. More channels to mix and convert, more CPU usage. Which is why most DOS games have an option in their setup program to let you pick how many channels to mix and what rate to do it at, so you don't eat up too much of your CPU with just the sound.
I was surprised when I pasted "vgmusic" into my URL bar and apparently I have already been to the site at some point. Apparently I was looking there on March 27th? Maybe it was related to the video game sprite site I was browsing.
@@psychowsky and bunch of amateur musicians as well from MIDI keyboards just to play on your shiny iPad synth or to control instrument processors, from guitars to vocals and everything in between.
Composer here of 20 years. My process is to use a GM MIDI keyboard to make MIDI files, then I work with my orchestrator/arranger friend to "mp3/wav/ogg" the MIDI file using samples. I know the inner workings of my sample libraries enough to edit all the CC data blind, including dragging the notes forward the right amount per sample library. I don't think people realize to this day how incredibly AMAZING gm midi actually is. I can make full compositions in record time, and these days running them through samples (if you know what you're doing) you can make the final result sound very believable. MIDI files are insanely convenient because you can make different arrangements out of a single MIDI file and often times they average out around 20KB in size. I would check out the sample libraries like RealGuitar, Cinematic Studio Strings, Emberton Joshua Bell Violin, and especially SWAM instruments. You'll be blown away and often ask your see elf why you'd ever go through the trouble of hiring a musician.
13:27 The *iMuse Engine* soundtrack for 'Tie Fighter' might still be my favorite of all time. It really DID what it was intended to do which was to make the entire experience more IMMERSIVE.
That was always the point of iMUSE, as a design it was what brought Lucasarts games to life since Monkey Island 2 (precisely because the composer was unhappy with the limitations of basic playback he'd contended with in the first) allowing for transitions that were seamless. Quite an audacious bit of software design for the time, and just not readily possible with prerecorded tracks unlike MIDI which could be controlled as the design team required. Love or hate Lucas' studio releases across media they had some of the best audio experiences consistently.
MODs had less parameters for notes than MIDI and were less compact, so they died out as an inferior format. Also, they weren’t entirely standardized and weren’t supported by large corporations unlike MIDI.
modarchive.org/ You can always listen to your favourite MODs (and other tracker formats) there. For a short time travel to the past, this is my go to site.
Never though I'd be able to post this, but I made a lil script to download all of vgmusic's midis, and the collection is now a sacred possession of my hard drive.
Oddly enough for some reason, my mind played what I remember of Orbital's 'Satan' after reading that comment. (I mean the original comment, not the replies).
Hearing the first few bars of 'At Doom's Gate' gave me nostalgia chills. It sounds exactly as I remembered it did back when I first played it in 95 on our familie's first home computer. Thank you for this and all of the videos you do that keep computer history alive. Have a great week!
This remains an outstanding video. It fills in the gaps in understanding 7-11 year old me had wondering why there were so many soundcard options in setup.exe. Delightful!
@@BrucesWorldofStuff You literally had motion sickness before it was cool. Just like my brother how couldn't play Ultima Underworld for the same reason.
@@CakePrincessCelestia Yep I had issues with that too along with Microsoft flight simulator. Did not have any problems with Duke Nukem or Doom! Lol LLAP
i still have loads of .kar files (midi with lyrics) from the 90s i listen to. still run xp and have soundblaster live value card :) great sound and fun singing along :) thankyou for reminding folk about it
@@aceathor And FamiTracker? oh wait, that's The Best Nes/FC Music Maker To Date, And That Get's So Much Better With OCC-FamiTracker And J-OCC-FamiTracker. #MIDI #FAMITRACKER
yea wtf. imagine modern pop music without midi triggering samples. this video is really bad, i thought nostalgia nerd was credible, but this feels like shіtpost
@@100thschool The video's fine, but "What Happened to MIDI(in PC gaming*)? *This clarification added to satisfy pedants who don't get the point" wouldn't fit in the title. FFS, he even says in the video multiple times that musicians still use it.
A middle ground between midi and cd auto are mod files. FastTracker, ImpulseTracker and the like. Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament and Death Rally used those files for game music. Deus Ex also used sequencing to play a specific part of the mod file depending on what happened in-game.
Pretty sure there are more modern formats even post XML ones that work similarly to the likes of SVG and Collada but for audio instead of 2D and 3D graphics can't think what they are off the top of my head though but they do exist in specialist applications.
I used to enjoy finding game music in these formats waaaay back. Particularly, Final Fantasy music from SNES and PS1 sounding almost identical to the console or OST, crystal clear at a small file size. It sure beat waiting up to an hour to download crappy 128kbps MP3 albums. (That takes a second for me now. Crazy how far we've come.)
@@OutlawMantis True enough though as much as it feels almost a given these days does sometimes still hit me usually when installing a game on steam and the ETA is up in the new long ass download territory of minutes. Then it hits you how utterly crazy it sounds that minutes feels long for a download but it is easily 10's of GB dose of first world problem cold water there lol.
@@OutlawMantis PC port of FF7 had sound fonts for AWE32 cards that made its MIDI music sound exactly as on the Playstation, if not better. With voices and all.
MIDI is one of those things where if you were a kid and all you had was a MIDI sound card, you had that honeymoon period where it was cool, but then you hated not having a proper Sound Blaster, sometimes even the PC speaker sounded better. I have a better appreciation for it nowadays, and do recall my brother using it to connect his music keyboard to his PC.
@@tuz100 Can you believe this: in Hungary, Win3.11 Hun version was flawed and didn't worked normally. It wasn't obvious what is the problem, so after installed it at a company with at least 15 computers, we had phone calls the next day, that some users have this and that problem. Going to the company, to correct the problems, after 2 hours we were perplexed about the situation. There wasn't one obvious problem, but overall the whole system was just unreliable (15 computers). It was so embarrassing after 2 days of troubleshooting, and thinking every 2 hours we solved it, something come up again and again. On the 3rd day, running out of ideas, my colleague told me to try to install the English version of the software. And magically, all our problems solved. The only problem was: the company bought Win 3.11 Hun from Microsoft (paying for software in 1994 in Hungary wasn't obvious). And they had to use Win 3.11 Eng, which were basically pirated versions. And also we had 4 extra workdays for 2 people (2 for trying to troubleshoot, and 2 for reinstalling the Win 3.11 Eng version).
I like the demo midi of "Take 5" that came with the General User 1.47 Soundfont Set that I use with LMMS. So it's not like that format has gone away just yet.
This is a very misleading title... MIDI never went anywhere - average consumers just stopped having direct contact with it. It's a pet peeve of mine that people associate MIDI with low grade consumer sound cards and cheap synthetic sounds when midi actually has no sound. If you're using notation software, there's probably midi standards being utilised. If you're working with soft synths, there's midi being utilised. I use midi to control my guitar effects and I've used it as well to manipulate video in real time. The video is interesting but it perpetuates this false association people have with the word MIDI.
@@lucidattf Yeah, you're right. He did address the points mentioned in the video. Like I said the video is interesting - I think it's informative and well done. What annoys me is the association most people have between "midi" i.e. .mid files and how they sound when played back by a cheap sound card. I guess because the focus is on consumers it's easy to read this interpretation out of the title of the video.
I actually use it in both ways. For notation/daw use and to listen to it. The first sounds I made were in some crappy MIDI piano roll tool. By now I'm pretty close to reading those piano rolls like people read notation sheets. It really helps being able to "see" sound.
@@ianstahl8579 Yeah - I think most people don't realize that MIDI is the electronic equivalent of a piece of classically notated sheet music, and likewise is still in use by musicians. It has all the instructions for HOW the music should be played, but no control over WHAT the instrument it's played on sounds like. So just as a Mozart Piano Concerto could be played on a Steinway grand piano, or a cheap Casio keyboard, so a MIDI track could control ANY instrument from a professional hardware synth to a cheap, nasty soundchip on a 90s soundcard.
@@HappyBeezerStudios A lot of DAWS will show classical notation too, but to me it's hard to read, while the piano roll - yes, I can understand it easily too, and find it easy to compose in.
To be fair, midi is still being used by musicians due to its simplicity, it's just that they import these to the DAWs they're working with (usually FL Studio or Reason) and replace standard midi instruments with something of much better quality or some sounds that isn't even in the General MIDI to begin with. Also there are programs designed to make MIDI music specifically, such as Anvil Studio.
Jagielski Gaming Well, most musicians don’t use MIDI that way. We generally sequence external gear or software instruments using MIDI instructions we generate from scratch within our DAWs, rather than importing MIDI files. Those MIDI tracks are then saved as part of a session along with any audio tracks, and are rarely separately exported as MIDI files. By the way, FL Studio is maybe the most common DAW, but Reason is way down the list, behind Ableton Live, Cubase, Pro Tools and even Garage Band. Cool program though.
Small correction. "Container" has a very specific meaning in digital A/V. A container is a file type that can support multiple different audio and/or video formats along with varying metadata. MP3 stands for "MPEG layer 3" and is an audio codec designed for use with MPEG tools and containers. Files with the extension ".mp3" are raw MPEG layer 3 audio data. ID3 tags are technically non-compliant junk data since the file is supposed to be the raw audio stream only but have become widely supported. Since .mp3 shouldn't have them some people consider .mp3 files with ID3 tags to be "ID3 containers."
Yup, he should have mentioned MODs as a point of comparison when he was discussing wavetable vs FM, as MODs store sample data while MIDI normally doesn't
Mod files were mostly an Amiga thing. By the time PC soundcards widely supported the playback of multiple PCM channels (required for MODs) in the mid 90s, CD-audio had pretty much taken over, followed by MP3 when CPUs got powerful enough. However there are some examples of Mod music on the PC, like Unreal and Unreal Tournament which used the Mod format to pack a large number of music tracks into a small amount of space. With only CD-audio, those soundtracks wouldn't have been as varied and dynamic.
@@JimmiG84 4 PCM channels was quite enough for mod music in games and the first ever sound blaster supported 8. MODs were not used because it was new technology not used by established composers at that time. Today, software sequencers are used everywhere. In effect MOD didn't go away at all, because those methods have grown up and are used by everybody today, even if they are not fully aware of it. Software like Cubase, FL-Studio, Renoise and many others used by composers have a sample sequencer as their beating heart. One of the best examples in mod music in games was star control 2 and its soundtrack still kicks ass.
Midi was fun to play with, but mod tracking was even more fun. Finding and creating your own samples, and then creating music with the samples. A weird cross between midi and mod files were the Ad Lib trackers, where you could edit the FM synth sounds on the sound card and then use those to create music. Mod trackers made the leap to Win32 versions, like Mod Plug Tracker, but Ad Lib trackers were only DOS versions.
@@jmcc000 I looked it up. The Aminet mod archive definitely looks old school cool. But I think that The Mod Archive has more mod files available than Aminet.
my original doom experience was with internal PC speaker. oh i love those blips and bloops! but then my music college days were steeped in midi. SO much midi..
Oh god, I can still hear them! I had an old B&W ThinkPad that had no music capability, but I was able to use the PC speaker to enjoy that game in particular.
well, you can still release in .mid in fact it's very convenient to do so as you dont need to worry about the mix or all nasty things audio brings like samplerates and bit depths
MIDI still gets used today, me and my friend share notes/harmony/melody ideas with each other using midi files, I'm a Reason user and he's a Fruityloops user and we're both too old and too stubborn to learn new programs! :D
I don't use those DAWs any more but honestly there's nothing 'wrong' with them. Easy to spend a ton of time (and money) reinventing the wheel and not progressing.
I wonder if there's a program capable of capturing notes you're playing in a real acoustic guitar through a laptop or phone microphone and translate (transcribe) the frequency of notes directly into Midi notes
Talk about nostalgia! I still have my AWE 64 from back in the day. I used to spend most of my free time just writing music with a MIDI program. I believe it was Cake Walk. Always loved the music for TIE Fighter too! It's my personal favorite of all the Star Wars games. Weirdly, for the older first person shooters like Doom, Heretic, Quake etc, I would turn the music off. Something about playing those without music just made them more effective to me. Anyway... Good video as always!
As a non-hardcore-music-aficionado, I had literally no idea about what MIDI really was and how it worked. Thanks to you, I now have a newfound appreciation for it. Excellent video! Cheers.
After watching this I just had to scan through my archived music collection to see if I'd still got any midi files, and yes I still had 63 of them a massive 1.8 MB in size, it's been almost 20 years since I'd played any of them, and they still work on a modern computer with a standard Realtek hd sound card. I'd forgotten how pleasant they were to listen too, I'm going to have to listen to them more often now I've found them again. Now too see if I can find any more.
I have them as well, but found it easier to just download them again. I takes some searching (and darn those cheapstakes that only let you download 5 mids a day, as if they could incur in heavy bandwidth usage over 1k file downloads or something) but look long enough and you will find them. I have even found newer music i never thought would be made in gm. Ie: Gagnam Style!?!?
Aw, remember that weird point before smartphones where mobile phones could play polyphonic then midi but not MP3..... And I had an Amiga so I just used soundtracker. Not exactly comparable but it was useful for popping tunes into rsi.
Ah, that's when all the carriers had a ringtone store. There was an article I read a while back interviewing ring tone composers from back then. It also discussed how licensing the music worked and how profitable it was. Good read. I still have my 99 Red Balloons ringtone, lol.
MIDI is still quite big on Linux. MuseScore for notation, QJackCtl to manage devices and even the possibility to use a kernel optimized for audio production.
@@tfksworldoflinux LOL, I still use M Audio 2496! It was hard to find a mb with pci support last year, when I bought a new Ryzen computer. But I did. And Mageia 7 comes with Envy mixer too! Greetings from Serbia!
@@toniokroger1051 I'm familiar with M-Audio. My dad is into this. He has several devices. A sound device, mixer device and a small keyboard. I had to set everything up for him with QJackCtl as a base, he uses Linux too, that's why I remember. Cheers!
man this brings back memories, I remember wanting a roland or a turtle beach or awe 32, dreaming to hear my extensive library with better sound...good times. Thanks for bringing back fond memories :)
I love the fact that you can isolate and turn off specific instruments in a .mid file. want to know how to play nothing else matters on the guitar? just mute the other instruments and play along. there are also unique midi players like midijam that shows you the hand position etc. mamplayer that shows intervals, and gsxcc which turns midi files into 8 bit chiptunes
Yeah a very good point there. MIDI files are a great learning tool and great for music practice as well as composition. And yes, MIDI files are still available all over the internet - in fact if anything they're way easier to find online now than they ever were
I'm more partial to 2a03 and FM Synth myself. Maybe I just didn't grow up with a computer in the 90's, much less one with a Sound Blaster of any known sort installed.
@@Nostalgianerd wow. Such a honor :D!! I remembered once again how I once got to make DooM music as if it was made of real instruments... But the game fps went almost to 1. So I had to decide, play DooM or hear DooM music. It happened around 1996 or 1997 so no idea about hardware or software at that time. But it still makes me wonder how some random config can cause such results.
Or to be precise, the beginning of toccata in Bach's Toccata and fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Fun fact: this wasn't even the only "Toccata and fugue in D minor" Bach wrote - there were two - albeit this is overwhelmingly the more popular one. In addition, he wrote two toccata and fugue works in other keys.
It's remarkable to think that MIDI is almost 40 years old. If you go by when it was dreamed up, it'll reach that age sometime next year; if by when it was standardized, then in about another 3 years.
These days the only way I can enjoy midis on a modern PC is VirtualMidiSynth and various downloaded soundfonts. I like a soundfont called Arachno. I use it when I play games in dosbox. It makes the music sound great IMO.
This video has really brought back memories. Back then I was an amateur musician and had convinced my dad to get me a couple of pretty good, for the time, keyboards (the musical type). Both supported MIDI and were hooked up to my computer where I made my music, I was also studying computer engineering and had programmed my own sequencer, so I understood MIDI pretty darn well. That eventually landed me a job in Voyetra (but that's another story) I was stoked when Sierra started supporting MIDI in their games. I would route the game music to my keyboards to get better than MT-32 sound. My best one was actually a pro-keyboard, used by bands I listened to at the time. Thing is, my keyboards did not support the general MIDI spec, so I had to create MIDI maps for them. I would actually create custom maps for specific games, to get the absolute best sound I could. My crowning achievement was my map for Kings Quest 7. I actually experienced the game, for the first time with my own map, I would tweak it as I played ensuring each section of the game sounded its absolute best. I was playing the game and being the musical arranger for it. To this day, in my memory, that's how KQ7 sounds. Awesome times.
That's actually really cool! It must have sounded amazing. Now map it to some wobble bass and electro instruments and have Kings Quest - the Dubstep Edition!
I miss the 90s. You laugh at your friend still using a PC speaker, when you have a Sound Blaster. Then you hate your other friend with his Roland MT32.... Also, all the MMA members agreed on the MIDI 2 standard... Can you imagine if all those mixed martial artists disagreed?
Hah, got a player for DOS that can output actual PCM audio through the PC speaker. Sucks if you're stuck with one of the buzzers they use nowadays, but with a decent actual "speaker" ...... well it still sounds bad, but you can actually make out what is happening instead of emulated static.
Thanks for another nostalgic video. I have fond memories of my original 8-bit ISA AdLib, CMS SoundBlaster and Roland LAPC-1 (MT-32 on an 8-bit card). Sierra OnLine kept them singing and that kept me playing, I’ve been enjoying your channel forever and just realized I had never subscribed.Keep up the great work!
I played some midi songs on my 3D printer. It was amazing. Now that I've upgraded it, the motors are most likely going to be way to quiet to hear it :(
It's only recently I'm learning how awesome and clever midi actually was. I also only ever had SB16s and clones. And only recently learning how different things sounded on higher end cards. Thanks for the excellent video Peter.
I remember the first time I was able to successfully get my MOTU firewire soundcard working with my Yamaha MOTIF keyboard. I had so much fun downloading MIDI files and playing them back using all sorts of different patches. Mind=Blown.
Yes, I remember an interview where Eno said he got a bunch of direction for subjective feel, mood, and experience the music should have... and then they said, "Oh by the way, the song has to be 5 seconds long."
To be fair, Doom doesn't 'support' the MT-32. In fact, a good deal of DOS games I own have a custom PLAY.BAT file that I made for each of them so that the MT-32 would be GM patched before launching the game with GM as the music card (Dosbox configs handle the rest of making sure my old MT-32 is used).
I have been around only 30some years and I remember the MIDI format with fondness... some of the first MIDI files I downloaded were of remixed pokemon & zelda themes. This video is Nostalgia incarnate.
Man that Packard Bell brings back so many good memories. I was in the Military from 87-95 and Packard Bell had a deal with AAFES and sold their computers in the PX. All the computer nerds in the barracks had Packard Bells and we would drag our computers down to the day room on the weekends and set up a local area network and play multiplayer doom.
Among my acquaintances, yes. Thats why I wrote it. Maybe this is also a region related stuff, our PC-s were not fast enough to decode mp3, so if we wanted to listen music on PC, mod/s3m was the way. And there were really good ones, sounds like the real song itself.
I still use MIDI in my studio on the daily! In fact, it has witnessed multiple evolutions of software, computer and consumer hardware fading in and out of existence. A real testament to Dave Smith, Chet Wood and company’s genius is the fact that MIDI is still running today on version 1.0, the original specification, some 37/39 years after its original inception(1983)/conception(1981). On the unlikely chance that he stumbles across this post... Happy 70th Dave! Your work has impacted us all, musicians, gamers and music lovers alike.
I miss my OPL3 and SB16 / SBLiveGold cards... Running Cakewalk Pro Audio and my Voyetra MIDI keyboard, those were some of the best times of my life. Thanks for this video, and all your videos
Listening to that Doom song over and over again made me realize how often old school metal songs use that kind of riff, AND how much it sounds like Master of Puppets
Lots of the Doom soundtrack is "inspired" by 80's and 90's metal, and you'll find more riffs if you go through the other songs. There is Metallica, Judas Priest, Slayer, Pantera, King Crimson, Alice in Chains, AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Overkill, D.R.I., and more.
MIDI didn't disappear at all. It is no longer used in games, but it's a well established standard for connecting electronic musical instruments to computers, and as such it is still used by professional musicians.
Thats more a product of the time not the format. Websites are still fully capable of playing audio files and music at any volume, they just choose not to do so because they dont want to drive users away (most of the time)
As a young teen musician/composer in the early 2000s, I used midi constantly. Still do. Talked my parents into getting my an Audigy 2 with the front 5” bay with all the connectors that I absolutely loved. It’s still at their house somewhere...
I think this should be labeled what happened to MIDI files in gaming, and MIDI file players. MIDI is alive and well in my life, I used it with all my DAW's, synthesizers etc..
I amassed quite the collection of MID files back in the day also. I agree, they were great for a bit of 'easy listening' while working on some other project, and I still have backups of my collection, albeit on aging CDs that are now suffering from read errors. Things are not built to last!
If you enjoyed this, you might also appreciate this www.wothke.ch/blaster/
That's pretty cool. Shame there's only about a dozen selections there.
Aaaaah so you ALSO own a Sapphire R9 Fury. It seems like that specific variant is everywhere these days. I picked mine up off ebay for just $101 USD.
Awesome legacy PCs for music production!
MIDI 🎹configs for previous windows versions🎖
No mention of tracker formats like SoundTracker / NoiseTracker / Protracker or anything like that? MIDI SUCKED in comparison with those formats, because at least they carried the instruments as intended by the creators. I personally think that MOD / IT / S3M / XM are the best formats for music ever made, before CD and MP3, perhaps. Fuck MIDI.
And what's so fucking good about Creative? I used their app called WaveStudio many years ago and I was shocked at how crap it was. Every time I zoomed in or out, the selected area would wander, and caused many unwanted audio artefacts! Actually, if I remember correctly, everyone said that whilst Creative hardware was fine, their software SUCKED.
MIDI never went away: it just went back to where it started, which is professional sound synthesis devices.
Keith Gaughan I can still play mid files on both my windows and linux machines. Even better on the latter with 10Gb sample bank. Also there's no problem connecting actual synthesizer or midi keyboard to PC either. The reason why last games that used actual midi standard were released in late 2000s, mostly for the arcades and just a few for actual PCs is simple. Huge game sizes made 70-500Mb of digital audio with music recorded using professional hardware which will play the same on every PC is more preferable. For small games programming a dedicated software synth is also preferable to the actual chip. You can't make dedicated high quality wavetable + FM synth cheap. And quality of 90s hardware can't be accepted by most people.
As of this day, the 5-pin DIN 31.25 Kb/s serial connection remains standard on the vast majority of devices supporting MIDI. Look at just about any modern instrument or controller, and it'll be right there sitting on the back (very occasionally in the form of a space saving 3.5 mm TRS connector, and even more rarely, only via class compliant USB interface).
@@shadowflash705 How do you get around Microsoft's boneheaded decision to remove the midi mapper from windows?
Just curious. I haven't been able to get any midi hardware working with Windows 10...
Kinda wish I could get my MU-128 working with a PC again, but I haven't had much luck...
@Jacob Turnbaugh But... All professional DAWs use MIDI. Everything is based on MIDI, you just don't realise.
@Jacob Turnbaugh The fact that you think that Midi affects the sound of the music - it doesn't - when it's just a communications protocol, is what shows that you don't know what you're talking about.
Non musician: What happened to midi?
Musician: Nothing.
See my comments. In fact, we've been using it more and more.
@@hamishfox You got anything better to do than hang out online and be a Chad, Hamish?
I was looking for this comment.
Exactly what I was thinking, I use MIDI all the time. It's just that the songs that come out of it don't all sound like primitive Microsoft GS Synth Wavetable tunes ( _a la_ RuneScape) anymore.
Not a lot for a while. But now polyphonic expression (MPE) is gaining traction.
You know how good Midi is as a protocol? They’ve just announced 2.0 after being on 1.0 since the early 80s.
Wasn't that a couple of years ago? Still haven't seen it in the wild. Who needs it. 127steps is all I need :D
@@JellyFlavoredGerman even with midi 1.0 you’ve got NRPNs with 16384 steps. I’ve not seen any 2.0 devices in the wild either. May take a while.
@@danpreston564
Yeah, new protocols and such always take a long time to be widely adopted. USB type-C came out in 2014, but is only just starting to actually be adopted.
Im waiting for Midi 3.0
@@doramilitiakatiemelody1875 see you in 2060!
One thing you didn't address was the fact that major record labels started suing websites with libraries of midi cover songs. So then we couldn't find midi versions of our favorite songs. That partly killed midi. Just when instruments started sounding more realistic.
Wow.. that is same thing that someone start suing sheet music books. There was no technicly any bit their music.
@@jannejohansson3383 but they do sue non authorized sheet music songbooks
@@AlexandreLopsz If there's one thing that's as sure as the Sun rising in the East each morning it's that the RIAA and MPAA will sue for literally any new emerging tech until they get the point across that they will sue anything that moves that has to do with either music or cinema/tv and unauthorized reproduction.
@@AlexandreLopsz yeah. Back in the day a lot of guitar tab websites went down as well, for the same reason.
@@phuturephunk Yeah like that ever worked out for them...
MIDI is still heavily used in music production, and I love it.
just not pc's anymore😭
@@raven4k998 nah it still be used man, mostly to edit your own music track like remix it or sort like that
@@raven4k998 Using MIDI on modern PC hardware is as easy as installing one of the many DAW packages and a GM Soundfont. Maybe a bit of overkill if you just want to play .mid files (which are still out there and easily found with a google search) but very powerful and many, such as LMMS are totally free and open source. LMMS was originally developed for Linux but Windows versions are available and work on the latest versions of Windows without issues.
Of course if you have even the slightest interest in actually making your own music, then chances are that you already have a similar setup :)
As a composer, MIDI is still extremely valuable for quickly workshopping ideas. But yes, I do miss the sound of it as well, it's sad that there's such a stigma around the format nowadays.
Stigma around the format is just bullshit, any complaints about it can be addressed to my hole. The whole thing with electronic music is the sound design above all else really, and with the quality of samples you can get these days, most orchestral stuff on TV these days are cues recorded with sampled instruments. MIDI is just super versatile, one of the only things in music tech that isn't massively complex
Absolutely. This video is very firmly from a general user perspective.
The windows built in GS softsynth is horrible due to sound quality and lacking samples now due to that a lot of people believe that midi "sounds" like that despite the fact the midi doesn't have a sound and that its just playback data
There's stigma around MIDI? One of the cornerstones of digital music production??
I picked up an Akai S1100 the other week, for me midi is still very much alive :) .
As a musician this feels like saying "What happened to USB?"
yeah
I know right?
lol
as a music producer, MIDI is incredibly important. it’s basically the backbone of everything i do. not just interfacing between pianos and my digital audio workstation. it’s how i write each note in music and how all of my virtual instruments know what, when, how loud, and how to play. for almost every electronic music producers, MIDI is never going away.
MIDI was how I was introduced to video game music back in the 90s. Being able to find MIDI versions of all my favorite Final Fantasy tunes was kind of mindblowing as high schooler.
I remember having some pretty darn accurate midi recreations of the FF4 soundtrack. Technically I still have them buried somewhere on my harddrive, but last I checked modern PC midi support makes them sound like rubbish.
Same! Now I'm a musician after starting out by writing songs in MIDI.
Same.
VGMusic and Fl Studio was the reason I started with music production.
As well as Animusic.
NN: "My Atari ST..."
That's a pretty humble way to describe an actual fucking Atari Falcon 030. I would never stop bragging about having one of those.
*every music producer* "What do you mean... I use it every day...."
YEP. That was my immediate reaction. "It... Went away?!"
yip, midi files are alive and being used in 2020
I came here to write this
2:20
@Lava Croft I know, it was just my knee jerk reaction
As an electronic musician, MIDI has been the entire backbone of my life. But, there was no thrill greater than when I hooked up my Atari ST to an MT-32 and played Space Quest III. My two worlds collided. Nice to see MIDI getting some love.
Messing with the MIDI stuff for games and downloading MIDI songs is what lead me down the path to electronic music. That and Skinny Puppy.
I've kept a large library of midis on my phones SD card for years and using them as ring tones and alarms. My wake up alarm has been the System Shock intro cinematic song. It works really well for a wake up alarm.
That first MIDI version of "Beat It" was FIRE!!! 🔥
MIDI is like magic, not everyone likes it but it has some sort of special thing to it. I still love listening to my MIDIs everyday and also play a bit on my Roland VA-7 synth, listening to how Doom MIDIs sound, making my own music, it's just fantastic.
Gotta love the 90's and the innovation it brought to us.
Almost every song you hear from Spotify uses MIDI in it's production.
MIDI just went back to be used for what it was intended to be. MIDI 2.0 is a great news for music producers, doesn't really matter for end users.
Nah, almost every song I listen to on Spotify (or elsewhere for that matter) was produced in the 60s or 70s, so...
Does MIDI 2.0 fix the "not enough note velocities" problem?
@@melkiorwiseman5234 yes
@@MLennholm cool, nobody cares. you're not special.
huleyn135 Ooh, so edgy! Sounds like I hit a nerve there :)
"Remember the days when you had to define a separate music card and sound card for DOS games?"
Yes i remember and as a kid i hated it. i never realy knew what to pick as many older games didn't have support for my card so i had to guess or try alternate selections.
And i didn't have the internet so i had to do everything by experimentation.
Don't forget IRQ conflicts and modifying batch files. If you were really lucky, you'd bring home an upgrade for your PC, and actually get to use it within a week (after your Dad called up his PC expert friend).
or the sound card wasn't supported at all and you had to play the game silently, or hope that your parents would get a supported one for christmas or birthday
I had a pro audio spectrum 16 and went through that. Limited native support. Had built in SB 8-bit support though.
When in doubt, Sound Blaster.
most common was sound blaster 220 irq5 or 7, dma 1.
I miss those days. I never had problems with that, ISA sound blaster cards were the most compatible, they worked with everything both in DOS and windows.
When I was a teenager in the 90's and we got our first computer which was the IBM Aptiva, one of the first programs that truly fascinated me was a Windows MIDI Composition program that came pre-installed with the computer's software suite. Not only could I create my own songs by clicking in the notes to a digital score sheet with 16 tracks, but I could load up other compositions either from certain video games or from other composers sharing their MIDI songs on places like AOL or Geocities where I could listen and visually analyze the tricks and techniques they used to pull off particular sounds.
MIDI was the initial building block that kick started my journey into music production and full blown audio engineering that I still do up to this day. I also appreciate websites like vgmusic.com for still hosting and maintaining it's massive archive of MIDI video game cover songs including many that are still there that I submitted as a kid.
This episode was nostalgic indeed so thank you for this! 😇
I remember playing with that MIDI scoring program too, I believe it was part of the early SoundBlaster software suite (along with the classic "Dr. Sbaitso" speech synthesis program) but it wasn't included with every card.
@@sixstringedthing Dude now I remember completely from your comment and thanks so much for taking the time lol! Back in the day I used a Windows 3.11 program called Midisoft Recording Session and that IBM Aptiva had a generic SoundBlaster suite but yeah it lacked the voice synthesis program. Either way I enjoyed the hell out of that setup when I was younger 😃
@@thedrunkmonkshow You're welcome mate, the nostalgia trip is nice. :)
The time period we're talking about is 30-odd years ago for me (and about the same for you, from your original comment) and I'd pretty much forgotten about these early experiments with digital production. The father of a school friend of mine was the very definition of "early adopter", he had all the coolest toys and appreciated my passion for music (which his son lacked). I remember being absolutely blown away at what we could do with his Yamaha SY87 synth, Roland MT32 and Cakewalk software. This has been a cool little trip down Memory Lane, cheers!
sixstringedthing
Oooohh!
Cavewalk 4!!!
I miss it!
@@mixmashandtinker3266 Real talk! :)
Sort of bridging the gap between MID and MP3 files there were also four-track MOD files, and other variants like .XM which included more than 4 tracks. Similar to MID files in that they included a set of instructions on how to play instruments, these also included their own instrument samples. This allowed the song to sound the same on any machine they played on, while still not chewing up anywhere near as much storage as MP3. Even with just four tracks though (two left, two right), you could get some pretty detailed songs because while you could only have four sounds playing at any one time, you could swap out which sample was selected. So if you have a hi-hat, snare, and bass drum sounds but only one is ever being played at one given time, just dedicate one channel to percussion and switch back and forth between them, leaving you with 3 channels for other instruments.
Mixing samples is actually pretty demanding. One of the selling points for the Gravis Ultrasound was that you could offload that work to the card, and it would not only mix the samples, but would also do interpolation as well. Just tried an experiment in DOSBox. Loaded up a 28-channel XM file in Cubic Player v1.7. Here's the results for cycles settings needed to play it without breaking up:
GUS: Never breaks up, but plays slow below about 1500-2000 cycles
Software mixer: Needs about 10000 cycles for no interpolation, about 18000 with interpolation
High-quality software mixer: Needs about 35000 cycles without interpolation, 45000 with interpolation
The slow playback on the GUS is clearly due to the playback program not being able to feed the card quickly enough when the emulated CPU is set so slow. If we call 2000 cycles the benchmark for just feeding the card commands quickly enough, then software mixing needs at least 5 times the processing power, and the GUS could be considered to be analogous to having a second CPU that's around 10-20 times faster and dedicated to just mixing audio.
@@Roxor128 Soundtracker software ran on 8Mhz 68000 CPUs on Atari ST and Comodore Amigas with 8 bit samples using as little as 512K. I had an 8 bit stereo master sample cartridge that could record samples up to 50kHz and used it with a 4 track sound tracker called audio sculpture and because I had the 1040 STE, that could handle 8 channels on another tracker called octalyser too. The essay wasn't necessary or remotely relevant to the system requirements of running trackers. Even ones for the Mac or Atari falcon that could use CD quality 16 bit samples and more than just 8 tracks that came later.
@@barkmonster Recording and playback is not mixing. You can just dump samples to any sound card and play something. The early 4-channel trackers for the Amiga did just that. The Amiga's sound chip could play 4 simultaneous sets of samples at 4 different sample-rates. All the early trackers had to do was throw sample-data at the chip. No mixing required.
In the PC space, sound cards were and are mostly dumb. You play one stream at a time. If you want anything more, you have to mix, and if what you're mixing isn't at the rate you're outputting, you have to convert it as well, and that's the demanding part: the sample-rate conversion.
More channels to mix and convert, more CPU usage. Which is why most DOS games have an option in their setup program to let you pick how many channels to mix and what rate to do it at, so you don't eat up too much of your CPU with just the sound.
@@Roxor128 An 80286 was good enough to mix samples at 22khz or so. That's like 1 MIPS. So not that demanding in modern terms
Those few seconds of testing the Descent music just brought back a wave of memories....
The fact vgmusic is still up and running and looks exactly like it did 20+ years ago was great.
Except for the fact the fact that they switched to HTTPS, so now I can't brows with the old windows 95 machine. :p
Brings back memories of connecting through AOL and downloading midis on 56k lol
I was surprised when I pasted "vgmusic" into my URL bar and apparently I have already been to the site at some point. Apparently I was looking there on March 27th? Maybe it was related to the video game sprite site I was browsing.
A moment of appreciation for this glorious site.
I was just gonna say. Midi is very much alive and kickin'.
Indeed... At least professionals still use it...
Phunker1 It’s still the form of choice for remixes.
I'm using it every day!
TheRealWinsletFan same!
@@psychowsky and bunch of amateur musicians as well from MIDI keyboards just to play on your shiny iPad synth or to control instrument processors, from guitars to vocals and everything in between.
One of the best things about 90s computing was MIDI music.
Composer here of 20 years. My process is to use a GM MIDI keyboard to make MIDI files, then I work with my orchestrator/arranger friend to "mp3/wav/ogg" the MIDI file using samples.
I know the inner workings of my sample libraries enough to edit all the CC data blind, including dragging the notes forward the right amount per sample library.
I don't think people realize to this day how incredibly AMAZING gm midi actually is. I can make full compositions in record time, and these days running them through samples (if you know what you're doing) you can make the final result sound very believable.
MIDI files are insanely convenient because you can make different arrangements out of a single MIDI file and often times they average out around 20KB in size.
I would check out the sample libraries like RealGuitar, Cinematic Studio Strings, Emberton Joshua Bell Violin, and especially SWAM instruments. You'll be blown away and often ask your see elf why you'd ever go through the trouble of hiring a musician.
13:27 The *iMuse Engine* soundtrack for 'Tie Fighter' might still be my favorite of all time. It really DID what it was intended to do which was to make the entire experience more IMMERSIVE.
That was always the point of iMUSE, as a design it was what brought Lucasarts games to life since Monkey Island 2 (precisely because the composer was unhappy with the limitations of basic playback he'd contended with in the first) allowing for transitions that were seamless. Quite an audacious bit of software design for the time, and just not readily possible with prerecorded tracks unlike MIDI which could be controlled as the design team required. Love or hate Lucas' studio releases across media they had some of the best audio experiences consistently.
"It sounds pretty decent!" I see what you did there.
Also, I'd like to know what happened to MOD files.
Generally It's being used in cracks
MODs had less parameters for notes than MIDI and were less compact, so they died out as an inferior format. Also, they weren’t entirely standardized and weren’t supported by large corporations unlike MIDI.
@Luke schismtracker is today's Impulse Tracker.
modarchive.org/ You can always listen to your favourite MODs (and other tracker formats) there. For a short time travel to the past, this is my go to site.
mp3 (and other formats) happened. mod in any form is redundant when you got that.
I still love midi music. I always make a visit to vgmusic every now and then and listen to game midi. Been going to that site since 1997.
Epico
Never though I'd be able to post this, but I made a lil script to download all of vgmusic's midis, and the collection is now a sacred possession of my hard drive.
@@adrianozambranamarchetti2187 Interesting! However, the only problem with that site is that they ONLY do MIDIs of the famous games.
Jeremy M that and since the midi files on the site are often transcriptions by fans, they’re not always accurate
Dad: ''Son, what's a midi file?''
Son: ''I'll show you.''
**Sad Cena noises**
SHUT UP CAT I'M TRYING TO LISTEN TO JOHN CENA!
"felix, have you been fucking with my piano?"
Oddly enough for some reason, my mind played what I remember of Orbital's 'Satan' after reading that comment. (I mean the original comment, not the replies).
Joel you little piss child
Millennial Chicken I hate that I read this and heard his voice (who am I kidding I love it)
Hearing the first few bars of 'At Doom's Gate' gave me nostalgia chills. It sounds exactly as I remembered it did back when I first played it in 95 on our familie's first home computer.
Thank you for this and all of the videos you do that keep computer history alive. Have a great week!
This remains an outstanding video. It fills in the gaps in understanding 7-11 year old me had wondering why there were so many soundcard options in setup.exe. Delightful!
LOL, "Sounds pretty decent. (plays Descent)"
“Sounds pretty decent”. Cue “Descent” game. I see what you did there.
Loved that game but it made me sick after a while because of the vertigo effect it gave me... :)
Nice catch I did not catch it!
LLAP
Every piece of music Descent ever inspired is incredible, both the MIDI and Redbook CD audio.
@@BrucesWorldofStuff You literally had motion sickness before it was cool. Just like my brother how couldn't play Ultima Underworld for the same reason.
@@CakePrincessCelestia Yep I had issues with that too along with Microsoft flight simulator. Did not have any problems with Duke Nukem or Doom!
Lol
LLAP
Canyon.mid and passport is the best ever
It simply scream "90s"
Also OneStop.mid
@@DynamixWarePro oh yes that sounds epic
Search for the Jazz Castle midi conversion from Jazz Jackrabbit 2, that one is midi gold!
The jump from the crappy SoundBLaster 16 clones to an AWE64 was incredible. It legitimately felt like you were playing a new game.
i still have loads of .kar files (midi with lyrics) from the 90s i listen to. still run xp and have soundblaster live value card :) great sound and fun singing along :) thankyou for reminding folk about it
Me in the 90s: "MIDI sucks! Fast and Impulsive Scream Trackers all the way!"
Older me switching to DAWs: "Oh..."
Gotta say though, the workflow and UI efficiency of some trackers was unbeatable, especially if you were just programming drum patterns.
I still listen to MODs and derivatives.
@@WardenWolf Yeah Ultimate Soundtracker, FastTracker, and MilkyTracker. ect...
@@aceathor And FamiTracker? oh wait, that's The Best Nes/FC Music Maker To Date, And That Get's So Much Better With OCC-FamiTracker And J-OCC-FamiTracker.
#MIDI #FAMITRACKER
@@aceathor Mmmm... the endless hours of trying to get EVER SO CLOSE to replicating AXEL F on my PC was... painful, but brought back memories.
The title should read General midi.. I use midi pretty much every day
yea wtf. imagine modern pop music without midi triggering samples. this video is really bad, i thought nostalgia nerd was credible, but this feels like shіtpost
@@100thschool that's why the channel called nostalgia nerd, not modern every day life nerd...
@@100thschool The video's fine, but "What Happened to MIDI(in PC gaming*)? *This clarification added to satisfy pedants who don't get the point" wouldn't fit in the title.
FFS, he even says in the video multiple times that musicians still use it.
@@Acorn_Anomaly thank you
A middle ground between midi and cd auto are mod files. FastTracker, ImpulseTracker and the like. Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament and Death Rally used those files for game music. Deus Ex also used sequencing to play a specific part of the mod file depending on what happened in-game.
I remember getting Winamp plugins to play .MOD and other such middle ground formats before everybody just used MP3 or CD audio in their games.
Pretty sure there are more modern formats even post XML ones that work similarly to the likes of SVG and Collada but for audio instead of 2D and 3D graphics can't think what they are off the top of my head though but they do exist in specialist applications.
I used to enjoy finding game music in these formats waaaay back. Particularly, Final Fantasy music from SNES and PS1 sounding almost identical to the console or OST, crystal clear at a small file size. It sure beat waiting up to an hour to download crappy 128kbps MP3 albums. (That takes a second for me now. Crazy how far we've come.)
@@OutlawMantis True enough though as much as it feels almost a given these days does sometimes still hit me usually when installing a game on steam and the ETA is up in the new long ass download territory of minutes. Then it hits you how utterly crazy it sounds that minutes feels long for a download but it is easily 10's of GB dose of first world problem cold water there lol.
@@OutlawMantis PC port of FF7 had sound fonts for AWE32 cards that made its MIDI music sound exactly as on the Playstation, if not better. With voices and all.
MIDI is one of those things where if you were a kid and all you had was a MIDI sound card, you had that honeymoon period where it was cool, but then you hated not having a proper Sound Blaster, sometimes even the PC speaker sounded better. I have a better appreciation for it nowadays, and do recall my brother using it to connect his music keyboard to his PC.
6:00 what a flash-back that music test screen for Descent gave me. It felt so cool and modern...
Anyone else notice that he's not running Windows 3.1?
He's running Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
Better networking functionality at the time.
@@tuz100 Can you believe this: in Hungary, Win3.11 Hun version was flawed and didn't worked normally. It wasn't obvious what is the problem, so after installed it at a company with at least 15 computers, we had phone calls the next day, that some users have this and that problem. Going to the company, to correct the problems, after 2 hours we were perplexed about the situation. There wasn't one obvious problem, but overall the whole system was just unreliable (15 computers). It was so embarrassing after 2 days of troubleshooting, and thinking every 2 hours we solved it, something come up again and again. On the 3rd day, running out of ideas, my colleague told me to try to install the English version of the software. And magically, all our problems solved.
The only problem was: the company bought Win 3.11 Hun from Microsoft (paying for software in 1994 in Hungary wasn't obvious). And they had to use Win 3.11 Eng, which were basically pirated versions. And also we had 4 extra workdays for 2 people (2 for trying to troubleshoot, and 2 for reinstalling the Win 3.11 Eng version).
Piccolo: NEERRRRRRRRRRRRD!
how we supposed to tell between Windows 3.10 and 3.11?!
@@grasstails9737 0:16 WfW splash screen
"I miss MIDI." Me: Goes and installs OGG remasters of MIDI soundtracks for DOS and Windows 3.1 games.
You dont install .ogg files you download them.
@@cones914 I don't remember making this comment.
14:30 - and that my friends is the Windows 95 Weezer file. Let the nostalgia commence!
For me it's filter's Nice Shot man
Yeah. Good times when I found it on the CD installing Windows 95 on my work PCs.
@@WR3ND good times and bad times.
@@TV4Fun2 yeah loved that too...hell got to look that up again now and weezer have always been a great band
Props for featuring the Blake Stone intro music. That takes me waaaay back.
2:50
"Usually with these 5-pin dim connectors"
MIDI over USB: ooh okay.
I have a keyboard (music kind) and I use MIDI over USB
Hello me
I thought it was DIN as in 70's connection standard..
5 pin is better.
We have MIDI over 1/8" jackplugs now. Especially in guitareffectpedals.
You should really check out the Mod Archive and Nectarine: Demo Scene Radio.
"What happened to midi?" *looks at all my DAWs*
Same i have over 13,000 high end midi files from artist like Testo Armin Van Burren BT ect
@@NathanChisholm041 "high end midi files" wut it's literally data
@@100thschool premium 0's and 1's
@@pwabd2784 reminds me of those memes from edmcirclejerk on reddit about midi chord packs that people actually buy
I like the demo midi of "Take 5" that came with the General User 1.47 Soundfont Set that I use with LMMS. So it's not like that format has gone away just yet.
I still have a small MID collection. I really like playing them on different older phones so I can hear how their MIDI implementation sounds 😉.
I went to study music again, and Hit Trax actually makes high-quality MIDI files that convert well to sheet music. They also sound fantastic
This is a very misleading title... MIDI never went anywhere - average consumers just stopped having direct contact with it. It's a pet peeve of mine that people associate MIDI with low grade consumer sound cards and cheap synthetic sounds when midi actually has no sound. If you're using notation software, there's probably midi standards being utilised. If you're working with soft synths, there's midi being utilised. I use midi to control my guitar effects and I've used it as well to manipulate video in real time. The video is interesting but it perpetuates this false association people have with the word MIDI.
@@lucidattf Yeah, you're right. He did address the points mentioned in the video. Like I said the video is interesting - I think it's informative and well done. What annoys me is the association most people have between "midi" i.e. .mid files and how they sound when played back by a cheap sound card. I guess because the focus is on consumers it's easy to read this interpretation out of the title of the video.
I actually use it in both ways. For notation/daw use and to listen to it. The first sounds I made were in some crappy MIDI piano roll tool. By now I'm pretty close to reading those piano rolls like people read notation sheets. It really helps being able to "see" sound.
MIDI went somewhere: it went out of mainstream.
@@ianstahl8579 Yeah - I think most people don't realize that MIDI is the electronic equivalent of a piece of classically notated sheet music, and likewise is still in use by musicians. It has all the instructions for HOW the music should be played, but no control over WHAT the instrument it's played on sounds like. So just as a Mozart Piano Concerto could be played on a Steinway grand piano, or a cheap Casio keyboard, so a MIDI track could control ANY instrument from a professional hardware synth to a cheap, nasty soundchip on a 90s soundcard.
@@HappyBeezerStudios A lot of DAWS will show classical notation too, but to me it's hard to read, while the piano roll - yes, I can understand it easily too, and find it easy to compose in.
To be fair, midi is still being used by musicians due to its simplicity, it's just that they import these to the DAWs they're working with (usually FL Studio or Reason) and replace standard midi instruments with something of much better quality or some sounds that isn't even in the General MIDI to begin with.
Also there are programs designed to make MIDI music specifically, such as Anvil Studio.
Anvil is still my favorite tool.
This man knows what he’s talking about. It’s all about DAWs and soundfonts.
Jagielski Gaming Well, most musicians don’t use MIDI that way. We generally sequence external gear or software instruments using MIDI instructions we generate from scratch within our DAWs, rather than importing MIDI files. Those MIDI tracks are then saved as part of a session along with any audio tracks, and are rarely separately exported as MIDI files.
By the way, FL Studio is maybe the most common DAW, but Reason is way down the list, behind Ableton Live, Cubase, Pro Tools and even Garage Band. Cool program though.
Small correction. "Container" has a very specific meaning in digital A/V. A container is a file type that can support multiple different audio and/or video formats along with varying metadata. MP3 stands for "MPEG layer 3" and is an audio codec designed for use with MPEG tools and containers. Files with the extension ".mp3" are raw MPEG layer 3 audio data. ID3 tags are technically non-compliant junk data since the file is supposed to be the raw audio stream only but have become widely supported. Since .mp3 shouldn't have them some people consider .mp3 files with ID3 tags to be "ID3 containers."
Who here felt like MOD files were left out?
Yup, he should have mentioned MODs as a point of comparison when he was discussing wavetable vs FM, as MODs store sample data while MIDI normally doesn't
I expected it when he mentioned the Amiga after the Atari ST.
Mod files were mostly an Amiga thing. By the time PC soundcards widely supported the playback of multiple PCM channels (required for MODs) in the mid 90s, CD-audio had pretty much taken over, followed by MP3 when CPUs got powerful enough. However there are some examples of Mod music on the PC, like Unreal and Unreal Tournament which used the Mod format to pack a large number of music tracks into a small amount of space. With only CD-audio, those soundtracks wouldn't have been as varied and dynamic.
MODs were very Amiga, or used by actual composers. This is much more focused on the IBM-PC Compatible.
@@JimmiG84 4 PCM channels was quite enough for mod music in games and the first ever sound blaster supported 8. MODs were not used because it was new technology not used by established composers at that time. Today, software sequencers are used everywhere. In effect MOD didn't go away at all, because those methods have grown up and are used by everybody today, even if they are not fully aware of it. Software like Cubase, FL-Studio, Renoise and many others used by composers have a sample sequencer as their beating heart.
One of the best examples in mod music in games was star control 2 and its soundtrack still kicks ass.
Midi music is not gone, just evolved to impossible: Black Midis
true, kinda
Also the music of master boot record
Especially bad piggies, that black midi version is trully beautiful
Midi was fun to play with, but mod tracking was even more fun. Finding and creating your own samples, and then creating music with the samples. A weird cross between midi and mod files were the Ad Lib trackers, where you could edit the FM synth sounds on the sound card and then use those to create music. Mod trackers made the leap to Win32 versions, like Mod Plug Tracker, but Ad Lib trackers were only DOS versions.
Aminet mod archive for the win
@@jmcc000 I looked it up. The Aminet mod archive definitely looks old school cool. But I think that The Mod Archive has more mod files available than Aminet.
my original doom experience was with internal PC speaker. oh i love those blips and bloops! but then my music college days were steeped in midi. SO much midi..
Mine too... and in many respects it's still my favourite way to play it.
Oh god, I can still hear them! I had an old B&W ThinkPad that had no music capability, but I was able to use the PC speaker to enjoy that game in particular.
Still use Midi in Cubase all the time, alive and kicking as ever. Perhaps midi-tracks or midi-music is what you are missing? Awesome topic tho!
well, you can still release in .mid in fact it's very convenient to do so as you dont need to worry about the mix or all nasty things audio brings like samplerates and bit depths
MIDI still gets used today, me and my friend share notes/harmony/melody ideas with each other using midi files, I'm a Reason user and he's a Fruityloops user and we're both too old and too stubborn to learn new programs! :D
Midi is amazing as a universal save file. 90% of music composer software can import it easily and use midi editor.
I don't use those DAWs any more but honestly there's nothing 'wrong' with them. Easy to spend a ton of time (and money) reinventing the wheel and not progressing.
@Luke I read somewere that Midi is the oldest digital i/o standard still in use today. Plus it doesn't feel one bit dated.
@Luke Just wait for MIDI2. They are planning on expanding MIDI for computer musicians. Finer velocity values among other things.
I wonder if there's a program capable of capturing notes you're playing in a real acoustic guitar through a laptop or phone microphone and translate (transcribe) the frequency of notes directly into Midi notes
Talk about nostalgia! I still have my AWE 64 from back in the day. I used to spend most of my free time just writing music with a MIDI program. I believe it was Cake Walk.
Always loved the music for TIE Fighter too! It's my personal favorite of all the Star Wars games.
Weirdly, for the older first person shooters like Doom, Heretic, Quake etc, I would turn the music off. Something about playing those without music just made them more effective to me.
Anyway... Good video as always!
Nat Grant Oh I remember Cake Walk. I could never have come up with it, but that’s it.
As a non-hardcore-music-aficionado, I had literally no idea about what MIDI really was and how it worked. Thanks to you, I now have a newfound appreciation for it.
Excellent video! Cheers.
After watching this I just had to scan through my archived music collection to see if I'd still got any midi files, and yes I still had 63 of them a massive 1.8 MB in size, it's been almost 20 years since I'd played any of them, and they still work on a modern computer with a standard Realtek hd sound card.
I'd forgotten how pleasant they were to listen too, I'm going to have to listen to them more often now I've found them again.
Now too see if I can find any more.
I have them as well, but found it easier to just download them again. I takes some searching (and darn those cheapstakes that only let you download 5 mids a day, as if they could incur in heavy bandwidth usage over 1k file downloads or something) but look long enough and you will find them. I have even found newer music i never thought would be made in gm. Ie: Gagnam Style!?!?
Aw, remember that weird point before smartphones where mobile phones could play polyphonic then midi but not MP3.....
And I had an Amiga so I just used soundtracker. Not exactly comparable but it was useful for popping tunes into rsi.
Ah, that's when all the carriers had a ringtone store. There was an article I read a while back interviewing ring tone composers from back then. It also discussed how licensing the music worked and how profitable it was. Good read. I still have my 99 Red Balloons ringtone, lol.
MIDI is still quite big on Linux. MuseScore for notation, QJackCtl to manage devices and even the possibility to use a kernel optimized for audio production.
Wish I had something as good as Fluidsynth sf bank when I was using SB Live and Audigy in Win 98 and XP. :-D
@@toniokroger1051 Oh wow! That takes me back! I still have a SB Live lying around. Kinda want to build up a PC as in the video now...
@@tfksworldoflinux LOL, I still use M Audio 2496! It was hard to find a mb with pci support last year, when I bought a new Ryzen computer. But I did. And Mageia 7 comes with Envy mixer too! Greetings from Serbia!
@@toniokroger1051 I'm familiar with M-Audio. My dad is into this. He has several devices. A sound device, mixer device and a small keyboard. I had to set everything up for him with QJackCtl as a base, he uses Linux too, that's why I remember. Cheers!
@Marti van Lin Great suggestions! Yes, the development is still very strong in this field. This is one area where Linux really shines.
Yay PSR-530! Got it for my 14th birthday. Loved that keyboard and used every single feature of it.
man this brings back memories, I remember wanting a roland or a turtle beach or awe 32, dreaming to hear my extensive library with better sound...good times. Thanks for bringing back fond memories :)
I love the fact that you can isolate and turn off specific instruments in a .mid file. want to know how to play nothing else matters on the guitar? just mute the other instruments and play along. there are also unique midi players like midijam that shows you the hand position etc. mamplayer that shows intervals, and gsxcc which turns midi files into 8 bit chiptunes
Yeah a very good point there. MIDI files are a great learning tool and great for music practice as well as composition. And yes, MIDI files are still available all over the internet - in fact if anything they're way easier to find online now than they ever were
something about sound blaster is just so nostalgic, even people with no idea what drivers are know it's name from browsing their control panel
I'm more partial to 2a03 and FM Synth myself. Maybe I just didn't grow up with a computer in the 90's, much less one with a Sound Blaster of any known sort installed.
3:10 that "phantom of the Opera" attempt glitched my brain...
6:10 Descent, ist that you?
Uh, you mean Toccata and Fugue?
@@MyNameIsBucket exactly. What it again with captions activated.
@@nowaywithyoueveragai you're welcome.
@@Nostalgianerd wow. Such a honor :D!! I remembered once again how I once got to make DooM music as if it was made of real instruments... But the game fps went almost to 1. So I had to decide, play DooM or hear DooM music. It happened around 1996 or 1997 so no idea about hardware or software at that time. But it still makes me wonder how some random config can cause such results.
Or to be precise, the beginning of toccata in Bach's Toccata and fugue in D minor, BWV 565. Fun fact: this wasn't even the only "Toccata and fugue in D minor" Bach wrote - there were two - albeit this is overwhelmingly the more popular one. In addition, he wrote two toccata and fugue works in other keys.
It's remarkable to think that MIDI is almost 40 years old. If you go by when it was dreamed up, it'll reach that age sometime next year; if by when it was standardized, then in about another 3 years.
These days the only way I can enjoy midis on a modern PC is VirtualMidiSynth and various downloaded soundfonts. I like a soundfont called Arachno. I use it when I play games in dosbox. It makes the music sound great IMO.
This video has really brought back memories.
Back then I was an amateur musician and had convinced my dad to get me a couple of pretty good, for the time, keyboards (the musical type). Both supported MIDI and were hooked up to my computer where I made my music, I was also studying computer engineering and had programmed my own sequencer, so I understood MIDI pretty darn well. That eventually landed me a job in Voyetra (but that's another story)
I was stoked when Sierra started supporting MIDI in their games. I would route the game music to my keyboards to get better than MT-32 sound. My best one was actually a pro-keyboard, used by bands I listened to at the time.
Thing is, my keyboards did not support the general MIDI spec, so I had to create MIDI maps for them. I would actually create custom maps for specific games, to get the absolute best sound I could. My crowning achievement was my map for Kings Quest 7. I actually experienced the game, for the first time with my own map, I would tweak it as I played ensuring each section of the game sounded its absolute best. I was playing the game and being the musical arranger for it. To this day, in my memory, that's how KQ7 sounds. Awesome times.
That's actually really cool! It must have sounded amazing.
Now map it to some wobble bass and electro instruments and have Kings Quest - the Dubstep Edition!
MARRY ME!
I forgot about the hours I used spend saving my favorite midi tracks 😭😭😭
I miss the 90s. You laugh at your friend still using a PC speaker, when you have a Sound Blaster. Then you hate your other friend with his Roland MT32.... Also, all the MMA members agreed on the MIDI 2 standard... Can you imagine if all those mixed martial artists disagreed?
Hah, got a player for DOS that can output actual PCM audio through the PC speaker. Sucks if you're stuck with one of the buzzers they use nowadays, but with a decent actual "speaker" ...... well it still sounds bad, but you can actually make out what is happening instead of emulated static.
I see what you did there
These videos are wonderful for the slow days we've been getting at work.
Makes time go much faster and I learn a little all the way through.
Thanks for another nostalgic video. I have fond memories of my original 8-bit ISA AdLib, CMS SoundBlaster and Roland LAPC-1 (MT-32 on an 8-bit card). Sierra OnLine kept them singing and that kept me playing, I’ve been enjoying your channel forever and just realized I had never subscribed.Keep up the great work!
I played some midi songs on my 3D printer. It was amazing. Now that I've upgraded it, the motors are most likely going to be way to quiet to hear it :(
I never heard it called A W E, it was always awe, as in shock and awe, when I heard it.
Ooo, r we close 2 a documentary on the Amiga MOD format and the demoscene? :D
I hope not.
Mayperhapsbe.
@@Nostalgianerd LOL!
@@Nostalgianerd Come on Mr Nerd, do it. Imagine the hits from a juicy clickbait title like "Jesus on E's".
It's only recently I'm learning how awesome and clever midi actually was. I also only ever had SB16s and clones. And only recently learning how different things sounded on higher end cards. Thanks for the excellent video Peter.
I remember the first time I was able to successfully get my MOTU firewire soundcard working with my Yamaha MOTIF keyboard. I had so much fun downloading MIDI files and playing them back using all sorts of different patches. Mind=Blown.
Damn. I want to hear your modular synth setup playing game music. That would be amazing.
i never knew Brian Eno did the Windows 95 start up sound, lets just say after looking up canyon midi live performance i went down a rabbit holw.
Yes, I remember an interview where Eno said he got a bunch of direction for subjective feel, mood, and experience the music should have... and then they said, "Oh by the way, the song has to be 5 seconds long."
11:50
but that's not how the mt-32 sounds in doom...
To be fair, Doom doesn't 'support' the MT-32. In fact, a good deal of DOS games I own have a custom PLAY.BAT file that I made for each of them so that the MT-32 would be GM patched before launching the game with GM as the music card (Dosbox configs handle the rest of making sure my old MT-32 is used).
I have been around only 30some years and I remember the MIDI format with fondness... some of the first MIDI files I downloaded were of remixed pokemon & zelda themes. This video is Nostalgia incarnate.
Man that Packard Bell brings back so many good memories. I was in the Military from 87-95 and Packard Bell had a deal with AAFES and sold their computers in the PX. All the computer nerds in the barracks had Packard Bells and we would drag our computers down to the day room on the weekends and set up a local area network and play multiplayer doom.
Midi to MP3?! And what about: .MOD, .S3M, .XM?
Yes, lived only a few years after midi - before mp3, but it was there. Good old FastTracker II :)))
an enemy from the impulse tracker camp slowly approaches from the back
But were they prevalent among PC users?
Among my acquaintances, yes. Thats why I wrote it. Maybe this is also a region related stuff, our PC-s were not fast enough to decode mp3, so if we wanted to listen music on PC, mod/s3m was the way. And there were really good ones, sounds like the real song itself.
What is xm? Is it like .mod?
*Laughs in Famitracker (And OCC-Famitracker And J-OCC-FamiTracker.)*
You are playing the Descent it was one of my favorite space shooters.
This brings back memories, nostalgia nerd you’ve done it again 😪
I still use MIDI in my studio on the daily! In fact, it has witnessed multiple evolutions of software, computer and consumer hardware fading in and out of existence. A real testament to Dave Smith, Chet Wood and company’s genius is the fact that MIDI is still running today on version 1.0, the original specification, some 37/39 years after its original inception(1983)/conception(1981). On the unlikely chance that he stumbles across this post... Happy 70th Dave! Your work has impacted us all, musicians, gamers and music lovers alike.
I miss my OPL3 and SB16 / SBLiveGold cards... Running Cakewalk Pro Audio and my Voyetra MIDI keyboard, those were some of the best times of my life. Thanks for this video, and all your videos
Listening to that Doom song over and over again made me realize how often old school metal songs use that kind of riff, AND how much it sounds like Master of Puppets
Lots of the Doom soundtrack is "inspired" by 80's and 90's metal, and you'll find more riffs if you go through the other songs.
There is Metallica, Judas Priest, Slayer, Pantera, King Crimson, Alice in Chains, AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Overkill, D.R.I., and more.
MIDI didn't disappear at all. It is no longer used in games, but it's a well established standard for connecting electronic musical instruments to computers, and as such it is still used by professional musicians.
You will never go to an obscure Geocities website and have a poorly made MIDI blow out your ear drums ever again.
Yep, they just will pour video ad at you. And your ears.
Poorly made MIDI, or crappy ass soundcard?
Thats more a product of the time not the format. Websites are still fully capable of playing audio files and music at any volume, they just choose not to do so because they dont want to drive users away (most of the time)
Remember "Justin's High Q Midis"
Neocities.
As a young teen musician/composer in the early 2000s, I used midi constantly. Still do. Talked my parents into getting my an Audigy 2 with the front 5” bay with all the connectors that I absolutely loved. It’s still at their house somewhere...
I think this should be labeled what happened to MIDI files in gaming, and MIDI file players. MIDI is alive and well in my life, I used it with all my DAW's, synthesizers etc..
7:42 Now there's a nostalgia hit.
From what I've heard, the term "wavetable" to describe sample-based synthesis was chosen by some marketing team, most likely because it sounded cool.
I remember the music wars of the 1980’s, I served under General MIDI.
Unfortunately nobody is keeping SCORE! LOL.
I amassed quite the collection of MID files back in the day also. I agree, they were great for a bit of 'easy listening' while working on some other project, and I still have backups of my collection, albeit on aging CDs that are now suffering from read errors.
Things are not built to last!