Totally agree that there are real workflow benefits to standardization, which would still be applicable to modern devices. Also think the ability to use one device and be able to make a complete song is so conducive to staying focused- not having to deal with selecting and managing many plugins or samples, but just jumping in and knowing what is available to you. Calling XG devices General MIDI might be a bit oversimplified- though it is accurate, being an eXtension of it ☺, since pure GM devices often did not have the advanced voice parameters, effects or wide range of voices that make XG and GS devices viable today. It would be awesome if there were an evolution of this now, with full-blown synthesizers of different types, patch- mapped to each of the standard voices.. Or does that already exist? I haven't used it, but maybe Korg Gadget can do this? The Pocket Miku is a recent XG-compatible device, other than channel 1 being locked to the eVocaloid part, not sure if it is still manufactured though.. It would have been cool if Yamaha had produced more devices with their NSX-1 chip architecture.
Thanks for pointing that out - it indeed took a few shortcuts in this video which may lead to misunderstandings (I didn't write a script this time). If only UA-cam released that "corrections" function already ;-) I'll pin your comment. Rule of thumb is: - The newer your GM/XG device, the better your chances of extended CC support - Roland and Yamaha always took the extra effort, so if you have one of their synths, chances are good they'll provide those controllers.
I remember some techno pioneer saying years ago that you can't have super rich characterful sounds for every part because it will swamp the mix. You need bread-and-butter sounds that fit together to create actual songs rather than interesting noises in isolation which sound terrible when put together.
And I'd entirely agree to that. (Though it really comes down to your arrangement and musical intuition). But GM is a great tool for doing exactly this.
I think General MIDI could be used as a great writing/composing tool. Like you said, you can always take the MIDI data and swap out the sounds with proper sounds later.
Yes! Given all pop music consists of drums, bass, chords and melody, GM is a tool to quickly get a rough draft of a song, and then some more (as seen in my other video).
Hi Floyd. Great video essay about good old General MIDI Spec. I might add a few little great things about GM. First, channel 10, the GM standard drum channel, is still widely accepted as the standard channel for drums to this day, and the drum mapping of individual drum sounds is still widely used and respected, especially in the sampling community. This makes it very easy to write for audition various drumkits between disparate synthesisers and drum machines. Lastly, MacOS as well as Windows have always included a built-in General MIDI soft-synth bank for playing back General MIDI .MID files. What's great about this is that these banks in Mac and Windows are both sourced from sounds on the Roland SoundCanvas, which is the hardware synth series within which General MIDI originated. What this means is that we can compose in our computers using included system sounds, and later on, the same choices of sounds will play back properly on any General MIDI hardware synth or softsynth. This is not a small thing. I use a few general MIDI sounds to start sketching out every song I write. Often the bass and drums remain from the GM system sounds. The kick is great and the strings and basses are great too. Happy music-making! Best regards, Glenn in Rochester, NY, USA
Thank you for pointing this out! You're right, this is an important achievement of GM. In a drum kit, I absolutely expect the bass and snare to be "two octaves down" and on channel 10!
I'm a huge fan of midi files since I was a child and thus GM (just as XG and slowly GS too) has a place in my heart. I got several devices and software that support it and also did songs of my own for the format. My latest GM/GM2/XGlite compatible device is the Korg Kross 2 from 2018. However, the sound set has a few flaws. Clavinet, accordion and baritone sax are in the wrong octave, and the sounds aren't always leveled equally. Synth Bass 1 is always faaaar too loud. And I don't know of a way to fix that.
General MIDI is a great way to exchange sequences that sound somewhat similar across receiving devices, and there’s an art to making GM sequences that sound decent. I’ve never used it much, but I do like to see MIDI sequences that people might post on the web, e.g. classical music, to be in that format. Apple QuickTime used to have an OK GM sound set for previewing sequences. This video made me realize I hadn’t used that in 15 years …
I just got a Roland #SC88VL to use with a Roland #PMA5 sequencer; I use a Korg MicroKontrol as a controller, it provides 8 knobs and 8 faders for CC parameters and 16 pads for drumming.
I think it's really useful. I have a QY300 which does General MIDI. I've been looking for a General MIDI plugin I can use in Reaper for quick ideas like the ID8 that comes with Reason and loads everything automatically when I load a sequence from Band in a Box. The Roland and Yamaha tabletop General MIDI boxes are going up in price as vintage gamers buy them for their PC game builds.
Thanks for watching! There's also an (abandoned) plugin named S-YXG50 by Yamaha. You can find it on the 'net (but be careful not to visit shady sites, there are some blogs which have it). It's a QY70 in plugin form.
GM devices only sound as bad as the samples they use. I have a 20 year old Yamaha GM keyboard, and it still sounds great! These days, I do a lot of my work with a GM soundfont. You mentioned how the file size was an advantage in the 90s due to the limited storage space. I'd like to add network speed to that, too. Back in the early days of the WWW, the speed of a dial-up connection meant that having enough recorded audio could make your web page too slow to use. It was a lot easier to load your pages up with MID files, instead. I think this was probably a huge factor in the "MIDI sucks" mentality of the time, because so many people were listening to GM on their aunt's Geocities page, but nobody really understood that the sounds were actually coming from their cheap soundcard.
Right! Early sound cards were horrible, often using some kind of cheap FM synth. This changed with the first Sound Blaster Live card. That thing was awesome. ;-) Another factor was that in the 90s, "realism" was a quality milestone for synths. And a lot of reviewers focussed on that. So people new to synthesisers really had no incentive to learn about the synth basics. "That piano sounds good, this is a good synth!" I discovered my GMega module could do amazing synth stuff 15 years after I bought it. ;-)
Imho it also was because the idea of midi files was out of touch with the aesthetics of contemporary music which was heavily concerned about the sound, sound design and mixing art... midi looked like a clumsy relic form of music from the 1980s
Perfect timing, thanks Floyd 😀 Am having a re-look at my Yamaha PSR-350 home keyboard, it's sat dormant for years. Have also got a Worlde Easycontrol 9, which looks very similar to your Korg NanoKontrol 2. I'm wondering if the Worlde can control it in similar ways as you've shown in your last 2 videos... the PSR is General MIDI.
@@mr_floydst Not only the taste, but the sound quality is indeed getting worse year by year. oh I just did a small mod to SC8850, have a listen :) ua-cam.com/video/ko-VcqRrzXw/v-deo.html
I am curious now, I wrote a song for sound canvas on the m8. it sends all the program changes etc so the sounds are setup correctly. I'll have to plug it into the qy100 and see what happens
@@mr_floydst Happy to report I only had one instrument not right as I think my qy was in a different bank and my midi was only sending program changes not bank, so after changing a 0 to 1 in the m8 the track plays perfectly, I think I prefer the Sound canvas version but it is very interesting, I could send midi to both and mute different channels on each and make a hybrid, Anyway thanks for the inspiration, I'll make a video and give you a shout.
Great video! Everything is absolutely correct! Many devices of this type, in fact, are not even half implemented in 2022! And given the fact that the interaction of old synthesizers and new devices is possible, this moment exceeds the possibilities by dozens of times! In my video, I also tried to show the capabilities of the Yamaha qy 70 multitimbrality
ua-cam.com/video/huH7GoGYY2o/v-deo.html sequencer and the NOVATION launchKEY MK3 midi keyboard Lots of examples of how to use the arpeggiator, pads and more
The most commonly sold electronic musical instrument are bread and butter digital pianos and they overwhelmingly support GM. People in the synth world tend to forget synths are not the whole market. In fact, they are a smaller part of the market. The majority of electronic keyboards support GM.
Hi Floyd. Thanks for this. I didn't know that general midi devices had editable synth parameters! I can't believe that I got to 57 without knowing that. Makes me excited to so some experimenting! Cheers!
Well, I took some shortcuts in this video because I just talked without a script ;-) GM has only a few parameters, while it's revision, XG, added the ones I show in this video. BUT. If you own a Roland, Yamaha or Korg device, chances are they implemented these controls anyway. Some manufacturers added these controls, but on other CC numbers. It's worth taking a look at the manual.
@@mr_floydst well i could look it up in the manuals... but it's so much more fun just diving in with just a MIDI controller (and maybe it's configuration software) and seeing what flies! Thanks for the clarification by the way Floyd 👍👊
Might just dig out the old mt32 and have a play. I will generally start building a song with the GM sounds, they usually give a really good basis to start with, and then swap them out as and if I need to.
Yes, that's how I approach it as well. Often, it's enough to exchange only the "effectful" patches while leaving the "bread and butter" patches in GM is totally fine most of the time.
Thanks for the topic. a.) Gave me a flash back into the old good times -- in the '90/'00 years I was tweaking midi files in cakewalk from my step-father so he can perform along b.)I just realised that my Yamaha MODX, has GM fully implemented ... with sound switching and CC automations etc ... wow need to dig all those old files out next time I am at my mothers place again ... thanks ... also totally agree that modern synth should use the at least the standard CCs for the few c.) I agree it really sucks that some synth manufactures do not consider the GM Midi in there CC Map. My MODX has those also for sent out ... works great with the MC707... but my Modal Cobalt as his midi map all over the place ... ;(.
Thanks for watching! I agree, it would be nice if more manufacturers implemented their control in a standardized way. Currently, there's a "lowest common denominator" in XG, but as you said, in reality, it's all over the place. On some devices, using the standard CC doesn't make sense (of course the Reface DX doesn't have a filter ;-) ) but if your synth has built-in effects for example, using the XG/GM CCs shouldn't be _that_ much extra work.
Floyd! My studio is ready to film, unfortunately my stomach is not! So the last and the next few days I’ll will bring vintage stuff and doing my best with newer tech and updating long abandoned gear. I’m working on the QY -300 so far I was able to get a USB emulater with 32 pin connections, I got a so advertised floppy factory sealed floppy) I did laugh outlowd because it’s BS and funny at the same time. So afresh that I’m cleaning inside out with, That’s Right general cleaner and I’ve islis tried it sells for the circuit boards. It worked fine the first time, but I want it brand new! I really love the wood and plastic epoxy putty for any nicks, the the closest SEM color, the thing about SEM is it does best under 100 degrees iron on lay people mainly usit for vinyle and leather in cars,(and it not worth a dam on either) and I’ll cut a new plexiglas window, then replace light diodes new power brick, but back to the window, I’m going to ad led making nice and bright in any circumstance. A long experimental project, I plan to do it filmed.😮
MIDI is disappearing as well not just GM / GS / XG etc. Luckily I am not swayed by music fashions that come and go. So the sounds in the GM set cover everything I wish to do, and a bit of editing can shape them in a lot of ways.
MIDI is still the dominant communication standard for sending note and control data to most every synthesizer. Are you just talking about the 5-pin DIN connector?
@@now_its_dark Yeah I was going to mention that the MIDI data is still used. Yes the ports have disappeared from audio interfaces and moved to the USB cable, which means interfacing external MIDI gear is not possible without additional convertor devices or MIDI interfaces. A lot of those MIDI interfaces are inferior compared with say the Edirol UM880. Naturally anyone starting out now, will have no recollection of using MIDI in the traditional way, so it will be of no importance to them; everything will be plugin based.
@@EgoShredder I often hear people say this, but seems like MIDI DIN is still very common- many entry-level audio interfaces retain these ports, such as the presonus studio, fousrite scarlett etc. And the lowest cost synths have them like the Korg Volcas. I think MIDI controllers are the category where you see this switch to USB most frequently, since they are now typically intended to work with a DAW, rather than hardware instruments.
@@EgoShredder MIDI isn’t going anywhere. It is common denominator of music definition in DAWs and hardware instruments. DIN MIDI ports are still common in hardware above certain price points and for certain expected user bases. For consumer level equipment, DIN ports are becoming the exception and not the rule. Alot of consumers just plug devices into a DAW and USB MIDI is all they need.
I don't know I'd agree with that. MIDI is still pretty ubiquitous, even if the delivery method is altered in terms of connectors. The only thing other than MIDI that is performing the same function is CV, which is much more limited and can only send one thing per cable. It does have some utility in terms of giving an intuitive way of automating parameters without a sequencer or DAW and it's viable to install it as an expansion option for pedals, or to build a modular system, without needing to license the technology or add a big port. I remember them demonstrating MIDI2 a while ago, but from what I could tell it would have made it so that developers and manufacturers would have needed to put in far more effort to take advantage of the features, which were mostly just iterative improvements of instructions that MIDI was already pretty decent for and the extra granularity in velocity would have been nearly imperceptible to most listeners, as well as being more demanding in terms of the devices encoding and interpreting the data.
Hey Floyd, love your work. I use a QY100 and use a Novation impulse (sometimes Arturia keylab) to midi CC parameters, but can’t seem to control decay time? I use: Cut:74 res:71 att:73 release:72 What do you use for decay time? Also once these patches have changed is there a way to return them to their preset original state? Thanks Floyd. 🤘
Hi Floyd! Maybe this will be interesting for you - it's possible to make something with QY100: ua-cam.com/video/BQPIShXKqcQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=nakeyer or this: ua-cam.com/video/VtZHWEmNDWw/v-deo.html&ab_channel=nakeyer
That's a general i would gladly serve! Though it is to be considered what MIDI is to begin with. It's a wire protocol based on late 70s technology, using low-cost off-the-shelf parts to provide reliable and simple transmission of music commands at a throughput of like 3 kilobytes a second. I would struggle to call it slow for the time, it was pretty much state-of-the-art considering it had to be able to bridge some distance, be resistant to electromagnetically hostile environments, and not cause analogue signal faults and equipment misbehaviour such as the classic ground loop. The next step from there, how do you use it to describe not just device control, but an actual piece of music with meaningful instrumentation? You aren't going to be uploading samples at 3KB/s, that much is clear! No matter whether your devices can actually handle a decent amount of sample data, you just aren't going to get it transferred over MIDI. You need something more abstract than samples to describe the instruments, and GM is an easy solution. There are however a few "what might have been" sorts of things. GM is perhaps a regression compared to MT32, where you have patch editing and can compose partial samples into patches. What if that could be codified into a standard? On the other hand, GM is compatible all the way down to something like OPL2, specifically because it doesn't attempt to prescribe how the sounds are supposed to be produced. On the other hand pro devices did generally all extend GM, either with GS or XG. GM was supposed to be the lowest common denominator, not the ultimate solution.
Thanks for this (once again) well-laid-out info! MIDI was an astounding achievement, a thing that only seems obvious in hindsight, but in reality was a genius, forward-thinking idea by some of the world's smartest minds. I was a bit saddened to see the most expensive modern synths don't give a toss about General MIDI.
@@mr_floydst Yeah people forget about the wire-protocol part of MIDI and how it necessarily must shape the standards built on top of it. Nowadays both USB-MIDI and VSTi MIDI no longer suffer the fundamental throughput limitation that it was designed against, at least not to the same extent. You even get simultaneous MIDI events nowadays, something that initially couldn't possibly work, since there's like millisecond order of magnitude event message length, and the event is valid the moment it arrives, it doesn't have a timestamp that could point into the near future. Events are timestamped in MIDI files, but not over MIDI wire!
The QY70 for example (you can see some videos on my channel) - it's around 170 at the moment, used to be well below 100 some months ago. Korg X5DR is fantastic, too. Yamaha MU series. SoundCanvas tends to be more expensive because it's the one people have most nostalgia with.
Roland RA-50. It is both General MIDI and a MT-32, the latter sounding quite interesting as it has bascially D-50 like virtual analog filters and sounds fantastic. 50€ should buy you one.
General MIDI rocks, or at least the idea does. There should have been a certification sticker probably so then at least manufacturers and consumers would have something to aspire to and look for. At the very least a badge of honour. I just bought an 11 year old Roland VR-09 stage keyboard. It proudly displays General MIDI 2 on the front, and it's a beautiful thing. One of the reasons I bought it is I am building AI band members to help me with my live performances, and being able to tell the AI that the target devices support a standard like GM2 helps provide a lot of context to the AI which translates into better results. And talking of AI, at some point I'm sure we will be able to have some kind of Universal AI adapter that mitigates the lack of standards by doing its best to map things in the best way possible based on semantic information regarding the score as well as knowledge of the instruments. Having said that I guess that is a way off still but fingers crossed. Anyway, great video and thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think GM got a bad rep because it represented a certain type of sound that people found undesirable / "cheap" without ever trying to understand the positives of standardisations. Most people got tired of the standard 128 general midi sounds without ever diving into the synth stuff XG/GS provided.
@@mr_floydst Yes quite right, those early sound cards and the Yamaha chipset at the time have a lot to answer for, not to mention the Windows GM set. Quite funny though and nice we lived through it. I just looked it up. People are wanting a thousand bucks for a Gravis Ultrasound, haha. Well, it was a nice card!! Have a great weekend 👋
Right! Today, we can pimp those sounds beyond recognition using whatever plugin or effects pedal is at hand. But you can also try to get something good by using their synth engine (a thing not many people did in the 90s).
General MIDI is a concept, and a great one. It can sound as good or as bad as the instrument designers make it. That said, everyone needs a Sound Canvas.
I knew GMIDI starting from the sonic & knuckles collection this year, playing the MIDI version I actually quite liked it, now i have a thing for general MIDI music, it has quite the potential (except for ice cap zone to be honest, the MIDI version actually composed that horribly)
by the way, here's something i stumbled upon not too long ago, someone's apparently used general MIDI to compose some kind of video game boss-like music, sounds really nice with the GM charm, its made by pibolib. ua-cam.com/video/4nLbZxAnMOI/v-deo.html
GM was a great idea in the days where memory was small and expensive! Also, I never though it sounded particularly bad, but it tended to sit in synths which weren't tweak-friendly so you tended to wear out your ears on those 128 presets pretty quickly. Although, it would be fun if someone made a 100Gb BBC Orchestra style GM set. I'd love to play 'Canyon' through that! 😁
It was born out of necessity for sure. But the last generation of XG devices took the concept to another level. And the MC 101 is a pretty capable synth. I think I saw some "super sound fonts" the other day. Will post them here if I find them again.
Good GM sets top out at a couple hundred megabytes with little improvement thereafter, like there is improvement often at the cost of cohesion. The largest ones i can think of: Musyng Kite, 1GB. Upgrade of Musica Theoria soundfont. I thought composing with it was pretty fun, trying to play existing MIDI generally not. Crisis GM soundfont, 1.6 GB. KOR soundfont - 2GB, 1GB orchestral addon/override. Starlight Dream - uhh found it on my hard disk, hadn't tried it yet. 5GB? On the more sane side, i actually like Timbres of Heaven. Warning: lethal deafness hazard, you have to reduce the gain. 400MB. And yet i always come back to basics like the 12MB Chaos and the YXG50 (S-YXG50) at 4MB, or the PSR530 which sounds basically the same. I don't know, somehow Yamaha is so hard to beat. Oh wait rumour has it there's this thing, Colossus which i think is 4GB and related Goliath which is 40GB. VSTs, Gigasampler based initially, then ported to Kontakt, now a custom engine? From vague memory. Rumour has it there exists an SF2 conversion of Colossus. I have no clue how usable they are. Not cheap. Oh there's also Halion Sonic.
General MIDI isn’t harming anyone. It’s a great way of exchanging musical data with a base instrument set defined. Once you get it into your DAW or hardware device, you can reassign the sound along with editing the data itself. Once it’s a stem or audio file, a lot of your flexibility is lost. GM is a great basic “rules of the road” tool. While the instrument pool may be lackluster, it’s just a starting point and a common vocabulary. If you don’t need it, great but it presence doesn’t deprive anyone of creation possibilities. Most of the devices you show aren’t GM compatible so no need to test them. Alot of digital pianos are GM capable. From workstations to entry level learning models. I get why synths and samplers don’t tend to support GM…but they should where possible.
Thanks for watching! Totally agree, to your last sentence in particular. Should really be no problem to add those CC controls to a hardware synth (or stick to the standard).
It is not bad considering the advanced capabilities of modern DAW's. If you use it alongside other plugins, it can still be easily integrated today. Back then, you sometimes only had a GM-synth, which of course sometimes sounded a bit uninteresting. But today we have more possibilities to polish the sound.
That's a good point. I guess we grew weary of them because they hid their "synth stuff" behind a horrible UI, so most people used only the standard sounds. And yes, today we just throw a big phat reverb at it for insta-greatness . :)
@@mr_floydst We had little idea what we were doing. We were given 128 sounds that could always be found in the same place. Modifying sounds with controllers was rather unknown. But you knew that the piano was on preset 1 and the synth bass was on 40. GM is like painting by numbers.
Hello there. General MIDI has the high ground. I still love some of the standard midi sounds, especially if you tweak em a bit with modern plugs etc. The brass sounds for instance can sound great- they don't sound much like brass, of course.
On the Yamaha QY300 i enjoy the Voice = #098 FX2 (soundtrack) with internal Delay2, and strings, and #052 En Syn. Str2 with reverb Hall2. I don't have any other General Midi device so I'm not sure how much the actual sounds are varying between devices. And what the dual layer in the sound engine means. Also #096, they have some chorus going on. There is some secret sauce in the qy300. Or many all of the Yamaha General Midi. But now i would like to try a XG device. Which one is the best xy70/100 and which one is the best price? XY700(?)
Funny you made this video Floyd, I was just playing with the GM stuff today on my Yamaha PSR S770 just for kicks, and it’s just as lame as it always was but your certainly right about the standards it put in place with midi files and channels! The sounds just suck. Lol
It's all a matter of taste and of course of the device used, I guess. I think some of the sounds are great / stood the test of time. There's a lot of shovelware and downright grating stuff on these boards as well.
Unfortunately, I never learned how to read and write music at school. In 1993 I bought my first PC and discovered that it can do this for me! So I bought Logic Audio and a Yamaha DB50-XG, a couple of sheet music too... First exercise was: painstakingly and eagerly copied note by note Sergei Prokofjew's "Peter and the Wolf" in Logic Audio and programmed the DB50-XG to conjure something nice out of it.. ua-cam.com/video/NZ0SHFu7gJE/v-deo.html In this way I was able to play an entire orchestra without even knowing a single note or even having heard of music theory! ;-) With pure GM sounds I certainly wouldn't have worked on it for long! With the DB50-XG, the sounds of the "QS300 (Raver's Babe)" could be programmed and played 100%! However, GM and XG are worlds apart! GS is a bit nicer than GM, but XG with the DB50-XG was a bang in midi heaven! The Yamaha XG synthesizers DB50XG, SW60XG and MU10 have an AMAZING FEATURE: They have User RAM for patch data into which Voices from Yamaha's legendary QS300 can be loaded. Sounds programmed in this way have no effect on other Yamaha XG tone generators! And my favorite version of Mussorgsky's - Pictures at an Exhibition still is my own made for the DB50-XG!
I remember hearing a rendition of "Night on bald mountain" (by Mussorgsky) on one of the mid-90s synths, and being totally blown away by it. Nowadays, our understanding of what a synth is and how it fits into the overall scheme has changed a bit (at least for the "Synth Tuber" scene), but man, that was some impressive stuff. So yeah I can totally get behind your story. If I'm able to find that particular demo I'll link it here.
😊I know my comments are almost letters but I would really like to know what you think of the idea, I know I told you I’m full government approved disabled. Whatnot gent a month is totally unexeptable., I can’t get a job! But I’ve make enough to live on! I’m 60 who in they’re right mind would hire knowing I can’t lift I can’t push, I’ve got afib, more scary to them is dilated aorta,at some it will have get some attention! So Anyway since the QY-300 uses floppy’s I’m not exempt from making it with the times, I have all tools, and more ( I’ll explain that in second),so I make enough a month to cover my UA-cam expenses, barely, interesting gear, interesting builds and rebuild.,the more, I have building and repairing, wood, leather, plastic forever, but I went to school for coding (windows 95 era) a 12 TB harddrive still a wet dream! Okay, I’m really sorryif I’m boring most of you! The deal is I want a brand new modern QY-300! Now I believe the gear is only propietyn for 14 years. I want rewrite all the code into a touchscreen! I’ll to have make a lot of notes but I think I can do it! I’ve already replaced the floppy with a usb, next will add two USb A and two USB c since all the busses are a strait line on the back of the board I would turn everything midi as well. What would you opinion of that be? Making use of old gear, make the reinvent a kit, accuse of stealing, wasting my time? Ty all!
Hi! I'm not bored ;-) I think "taking inspiration" on old "abandonware" isn't stealing. If that was the case, one could sue every company that ever built something. In todays "tech environment", it shouldn't be too hard to create at least a QY300 like sequencer with some off-the-mill components, so the cost is not in the hardware, but more in the time you need to invest to r&d. Take care!
Totally agree that there are real workflow benefits to standardization, which would still be applicable to modern devices. Also think the ability to use one device and be able to make a complete song is so conducive to staying focused- not having to deal with selecting and managing many plugins or samples, but just jumping in and knowing what is available to you.
Calling XG devices General MIDI might be a bit oversimplified- though it is accurate, being an eXtension of it ☺, since pure GM devices often did not have the advanced voice parameters, effects or wide range of voices that make XG and GS devices viable today.
It would be awesome if there were an evolution of this now, with full-blown synthesizers of different types, patch- mapped to each of the standard voices.. Or does that already exist? I haven't used it, but maybe Korg Gadget can do this?
The Pocket Miku is a recent XG-compatible device, other than channel 1 being locked to the eVocaloid part, not sure if it is still manufactured though.. It would have been cool if Yamaha had produced more devices with their NSX-1 chip architecture.
Must have been Robert Hood
Thanks for pointing that out - it indeed took a few shortcuts in this video which may lead to misunderstandings (I didn't write a script this time). If only UA-cam released that "corrections" function already ;-)
I'll pin your comment.
Rule of thumb is:
- The newer your GM/XG device, the better your chances of extended CC support
- Roland and Yamaha always took the extra effort, so if you have one of their synths, chances are good they'll provide those controllers.
@@mr_floydst My Edirol sd-90 supports General Midi 2, GS and XGlite. I'm never sure which one to use so I keep it in general midi 2 mode.
I remember some techno pioneer saying years ago that you can't have super rich characterful sounds for every part because it will swamp the mix. You need bread-and-butter sounds that fit together to create actual songs rather than interesting noises in isolation which sound terrible when put together.
And I'd entirely agree to that. (Though it really comes down to your arrangement and musical intuition). But GM is a great tool for doing exactly this.
This describes the trajectory of my experience with production.
I think General MIDI could be used as a great writing/composing tool. Like you said, you can always take the MIDI data and swap out the sounds with proper sounds later.
Yes! Given all pop music consists of drums, bass, chords and melody, GM is a tool to quickly get a rough draft of a song, and then some more (as seen in my other video).
Hi Floyd. Great video essay about good old General MIDI Spec. I might add a few little great things about GM. First, channel 10, the GM standard drum channel, is still widely accepted as the standard channel for drums to this day, and the drum mapping of individual drum sounds is still widely used and respected, especially in the sampling community. This makes it very easy to write for audition various drumkits between disparate synthesisers and drum machines. Lastly, MacOS as well as Windows have always included a built-in General MIDI soft-synth bank for playing back General MIDI .MID files. What's great about this is that these banks in Mac and Windows are both sourced from sounds on the Roland SoundCanvas, which is the hardware synth series within which General MIDI originated. What this means is that we can compose in our computers using included system sounds, and later on, the same choices of sounds will play back properly on any General MIDI hardware synth or softsynth. This is not a small thing. I use a few general MIDI sounds to start sketching out every song I write. Often the bass and drums remain from the GM system sounds. The kick is great and the strings and basses are great too. Happy music-making! Best regards, Glenn in Rochester, NY, USA
Thank you for pointing this out! You're right, this is an important achievement of GM. In a drum kit, I absolutely expect the bass and snare to be "two octaves down" and on channel 10!
I'm a huge fan of midi files since I was a child and thus GM (just as XG and slowly GS too) has a place in my heart. I got several devices and software that support it and also did songs of my own for the format.
My latest GM/GM2/XGlite compatible device is the Korg Kross 2 from 2018. However, the sound set has a few flaws. Clavinet, accordion and baritone sax are in the wrong octave, and the sounds aren't always leveled equally. Synth Bass 1 is always faaaar too loud. And I don't know of a way to fix that.
Thanks for your feedback! Interesting, I never noticed that (or even thought about it) - but now you mention it, it's obvious. Uh-oh. :-)
General MIDI is a great way to exchange sequences that sound somewhat similar across receiving devices, and there’s an art to making GM sequences that sound decent. I’ve never used it much, but I do like to see MIDI sequences that people might post on the web, e.g. classical music, to be in that format. Apple QuickTime used to have an OK GM sound set for previewing sequences. This video made me realize I hadn’t used that in 15 years …
Thanks for watching ! I entirely agree. Some of the sounds can be tweaked beyond recognition, though, especially the synth bass and lead sounds.
General midi sounds + modern effects = SO MANY POSSIBILITIES
You're right!
I just got a Roland #SC88VL to use with a Roland #PMA5 sequencer; I use a Korg MicroKontrol as a controller, it provides 8 knobs and 8 faders for CC parameters and 16 pads for drumming.
Thanks for sharing - that's a great combo. So many useful sounds.
I think it's really useful. I have a QY300 which does General MIDI. I've been looking for a General MIDI plugin I can use in Reaper for quick ideas like the ID8 that comes with Reason and loads everything automatically when I load a sequence from Band in a Box. The Roland and Yamaha tabletop General MIDI boxes are going up in price as vintage gamers buy them for their PC game builds.
Thanks for watching! There's also an (abandoned) plugin named S-YXG50 by Yamaha. You can find it on the 'net (but be careful not to visit shady sites, there are some blogs which have it). It's a QY70 in plugin form.
i Got a SC-88PRO a year ago for not a lot of money. love the thing.
GM devices only sound as bad as the samples they use. I have a 20 year old Yamaha GM keyboard, and it still sounds great! These days, I do a lot of my work with a GM soundfont.
You mentioned how the file size was an advantage in the 90s due to the limited storage space. I'd like to add network speed to that, too. Back in the early days of the WWW, the speed of a dial-up connection meant that having enough recorded audio could make your web page too slow to use. It was a lot easier to load your pages up with MID files, instead. I think this was probably a huge factor in the "MIDI sucks" mentality of the time, because so many people were listening to GM on their aunt's Geocities page, but nobody really understood that the sounds were actually coming from their cheap soundcard.
Right! Early sound cards were horrible, often using some kind of cheap FM synth. This changed with the first Sound Blaster Live card. That thing was awesome. ;-)
Another factor was that in the 90s, "realism" was a quality milestone for synths. And a lot of reviewers focussed on that. So people new to synthesisers really had no incentive to learn about the synth basics. "That piano sounds good, this is a good synth!"
I discovered my GMega module could do amazing synth stuff 15 years after I bought it. ;-)
Imho it also was because the idea of midi files was out of touch with the aesthetics of contemporary music which was heavily concerned about the sound, sound design and mixing art... midi looked like a clumsy relic form of music from the 1980s
Perfect timing, thanks Floyd 😀
Am having a re-look at my Yamaha PSR-350 home keyboard, it's sat dormant for years. Have also got a Worlde Easycontrol 9, which looks very similar to your Korg NanoKontrol 2. I'm wondering if the Worlde can control it in similar ways as you've shown in your last 2 videos... the PSR is General MIDI.
Hi! If it"s fully GM compliant, you should be able to use those CC commands for tweaking sounds.
I still use Roland SC8850/88pro & Yamaha TG300 to listen to GS/GM midi, the sound designers and music in the 90s were better than now
I think that's a matter of taste, but the GM soundset contains timeless classics for sure.
@@mr_floydst Not only the taste, but the sound quality is indeed getting worse year by year.
oh I just did a small mod to SC8850, have a listen :)
ua-cam.com/video/ko-VcqRrzXw/v-deo.html
I am curious now, I wrote a song for sound canvas on the m8. it sends all the program changes etc so the sounds are setup correctly. I'll have to plug it into the qy100 and see what happens
Can't wait to hear the results!
@@mr_floydst Happy to report I only had one instrument not right as I think my qy was in a different bank and my midi was only sending program changes not bank, so after changing a 0 to 1 in the m8 the track plays perfectly, I think I prefer the Sound canvas version but it is very interesting, I could send midi to both and mute different channels on each and make a hybrid, Anyway thanks for the inspiration, I'll make a video and give you a shout.
Great video! Everything is absolutely correct! Many devices of this type, in fact, are not even half implemented in 2022! And given the fact that the interaction of old synthesizers and new devices is possible, this moment exceeds the possibilities by dozens of times! In my video, I also tried to show the capabilities of the Yamaha qy 70 multitimbrality
Thank you very much! Don't hesitate to share your video here. :-)
@@mr_floydst Thanks! ua-cam.com/video/tcvfFq6rvvM/v-deo.html about multitembral
ua-cam.com/video/huH7GoGYY2o/v-deo.html sequencer and the NOVATION launchKEY MK3 midi keyboard
Lots of examples of how to use the arpeggiator, pads and more
The most commonly sold electronic musical instrument are bread and butter digital pianos and they overwhelmingly support GM. People in the synth world tend to forget synths are not the whole market. In fact, they are a smaller part of the market. The majority of electronic keyboards support GM.
Hi Floyd. Thanks for this. I didn't know that general midi devices had editable synth parameters! I can't believe that I got to 57 without knowing that. Makes me excited to so some experimenting! Cheers!
Well, I took some shortcuts in this video because I just talked without a script ;-)
GM has only a few parameters, while it's revision, XG, added the ones I show in this video.
BUT.
If you own a Roland, Yamaha or Korg device, chances are they implemented these controls anyway.
Some manufacturers added these controls, but on other CC numbers. It's worth taking a look at the manual.
@@mr_floydst well i could look it up in the manuals... but it's so much more fun just diving in with just a MIDI controller (and maybe it's configuration software) and seeing what flies! Thanks for the clarification by the way Floyd 👍👊
i am using a MAX4LIVE device as interface between nanoKontrol and my EX800, it takes a lot of decisions and midi mapping, because its custom firmware.
Thanks! I'll look into that.
Might just dig out the old mt32 and have a play.
I will generally start building a song with the GM sounds, they usually give a really good basis to start with, and then swap them out as and if I need to.
Yes, that's how I approach it as well. Often, it's enough to exchange only the "effectful" patches while leaving the "bread and butter" patches in GM is totally fine most of the time.
Thanks for the topic.
a.) Gave me a flash back into the old good times -- in the '90/'00 years I was tweaking midi files in cakewalk from my step-father so he can perform along
b.)I just realised that my Yamaha MODX, has GM fully implemented ... with sound switching and CC automations etc ... wow need to dig all those old files out next time I am at my mothers place again ... thanks ... also totally agree that modern synth should use the at least the standard CCs for the few
c.) I agree it really sucks that some synth manufactures do not consider the GM Midi in there CC Map. My MODX has those also for sent out ... works great with the MC707... but my Modal Cobalt as his midi map all over the place ... ;(.
Thanks for watching! I agree, it would be nice if more manufacturers implemented their control in a standardized way.
Currently, there's a "lowest common denominator" in XG, but as you said, in reality, it's all over the place.
On some devices, using the standard CC doesn't make sense (of course the Reface DX doesn't have a filter ;-) ) but if your synth has built-in effects for example, using the XG/GM CCs shouldn't be _that_ much extra work.
Floyd! My studio is ready to film, unfortunately my stomach is not! So the last and the next few days I’ll will bring vintage stuff and doing my best with newer tech and updating long abandoned gear. I’m working on the QY -300 so far I was able to get a USB emulater with 32 pin connections, I got a so advertised floppy factory sealed floppy) I did laugh outlowd because it’s BS and funny at the same time. So afresh that I’m cleaning inside out with, That’s Right general cleaner and I’ve islis tried it sells for the circuit boards. It worked fine the first time, but I want it brand new! I really love the wood and plastic epoxy putty for any nicks, the the closest SEM color, the thing about SEM is it does best under 100 degrees iron on lay people mainly usit for vinyle and leather in cars,(and it not worth a dam on either) and I’ll cut a new plexiglas window, then replace light diodes new power brick, but back to the window, I’m going to ad led making nice and bright in any circumstance. A long experimental project, I plan to do it filmed.😮
MIDI is disappearing as well not just GM / GS / XG etc. Luckily I am not swayed by music fashions that come and go. So the sounds in the GM set cover everything I wish to do, and a bit of editing can shape them in a lot of ways.
MIDI is still the dominant communication standard for sending note and control data to most every synthesizer. Are you just talking about the 5-pin DIN connector?
@@now_its_dark Yeah I was going to mention that the MIDI data is still used. Yes the ports have disappeared from audio interfaces and moved to the USB cable, which means interfacing external MIDI gear is not possible without additional convertor devices or MIDI interfaces. A lot of those MIDI interfaces are inferior compared with say the Edirol UM880.
Naturally anyone starting out now, will have no recollection of using MIDI in the traditional way, so it will be of no importance to them; everything will be plugin based.
@@EgoShredder I often hear people say this, but seems like MIDI DIN is still very common- many entry-level audio interfaces retain these ports, such as the presonus studio, fousrite scarlett etc. And the lowest cost synths have them like the Korg Volcas. I think MIDI controllers are the category where you see this switch to USB most frequently, since they are now typically intended to work with a DAW, rather than hardware instruments.
@@EgoShredder
MIDI isn’t going anywhere. It is common denominator of music definition in DAWs and hardware instruments.
DIN MIDI ports are still common in hardware above certain price points and for certain expected user bases. For consumer level equipment, DIN ports are becoming the exception and not the rule. Alot of consumers just plug devices into a DAW and USB MIDI is all they need.
I don't know I'd agree with that.
MIDI is still pretty ubiquitous, even if the delivery method is altered in terms of connectors.
The only thing other than MIDI that is performing the same function is CV, which is much more limited and can only send one thing per cable. It does have some utility in terms of giving an intuitive way of automating parameters without a sequencer or DAW and it's viable to install it as an expansion option for pedals, or to build a modular system, without needing to license the technology or add a big port.
I remember them demonstrating MIDI2 a while ago, but from what I could tell it would have made it so that developers and manufacturers would have needed to put in far more effort to take advantage of the features, which were mostly just iterative improvements of instructions that MIDI was already pretty decent for and the extra granularity in velocity would have been nearly imperceptible to most listeners, as well as being more demanding in terms of the devices encoding and interpreting the data.
Hey Floyd, love your work. I use a QY100 and use a Novation impulse (sometimes Arturia keylab) to midi CC parameters, but can’t seem to control decay time?
I use:
Cut:74 res:71 att:73 release:72
What do you use for decay time?
Also once these patches have changed is there a way to return them to their preset original state?
Thanks Floyd. 🤘
Hi Floyd! Maybe this will be interesting for you - it's possible to make something with QY100: ua-cam.com/video/BQPIShXKqcQ/v-deo.html&ab_channel=nakeyer or this: ua-cam.com/video/VtZHWEmNDWw/v-deo.html&ab_channel=nakeyer
Haha, so cool! How is this possible? :)
I think there's no cc for decay time. I'll check and get back to you later.
That's a general i would gladly serve!
Though it is to be considered what MIDI is to begin with. It's a wire protocol based on late 70s technology, using low-cost off-the-shelf parts to provide reliable and simple transmission of music commands at a throughput of like 3 kilobytes a second. I would struggle to call it slow for the time, it was pretty much state-of-the-art considering it had to be able to bridge some distance, be resistant to electromagnetically hostile environments, and not cause analogue signal faults and equipment misbehaviour such as the classic ground loop.
The next step from there, how do you use it to describe not just device control, but an actual piece of music with meaningful instrumentation? You aren't going to be uploading samples at 3KB/s, that much is clear! No matter whether your devices can actually handle a decent amount of sample data, you just aren't going to get it transferred over MIDI. You need something more abstract than samples to describe the instruments, and GM is an easy solution.
There are however a few "what might have been" sorts of things. GM is perhaps a regression compared to MT32, where you have patch editing and can compose partial samples into patches. What if that could be codified into a standard? On the other hand, GM is compatible all the way down to something like OPL2, specifically because it doesn't attempt to prescribe how the sounds are supposed to be produced.
On the other hand pro devices did generally all extend GM, either with GS or XG. GM was supposed to be the lowest common denominator, not the ultimate solution.
Thanks for this (once again) well-laid-out info! MIDI was an astounding achievement, a thing that only seems obvious in hindsight, but in reality was a genius, forward-thinking idea by some of the world's smartest minds.
I was a bit saddened to see the most expensive modern synths don't give a toss about General MIDI.
@@mr_floydst Yeah people forget about the wire-protocol part of MIDI and how it necessarily must shape the standards built on top of it. Nowadays both USB-MIDI and VSTi MIDI no longer suffer the fundamental throughput limitation that it was designed against, at least not to the same extent. You even get simultaneous MIDI events nowadays, something that initially couldn't possibly work, since there's like millisecond order of magnitude event message length, and the event is valid the moment it arrives, it doesn't have a timestamp that could point into the near future. Events are timestamped in MIDI files, but not over MIDI wire!
Any suggestions in the
The QY70 for example (you can see some videos on my channel) - it's around 170 at the moment, used to be well below 100 some months ago. Korg X5DR is fantastic, too. Yamaha MU series. SoundCanvas tends to be more expensive because it's the one people have most nostalgia with.
Roland RA-50. It is both General MIDI and a MT-32, the latter sounding quite interesting as it has bascially D-50 like virtual analog filters and sounds fantastic. 50€ should buy you one.
General MIDI rocks, or at least the idea does. There should have been a certification sticker probably so then at least manufacturers and consumers would have something to aspire to and look for. At the very least a badge of honour. I just bought an 11 year old Roland VR-09 stage keyboard. It proudly displays General MIDI 2 on the front, and it's a beautiful thing. One of the reasons I bought it is I am building AI band members to help me with my live performances, and being able to tell the AI that the target devices support a standard like GM2 helps provide a lot of context to the AI which translates into better results. And talking of AI, at some point I'm sure we will be able to have some kind of Universal AI adapter that mitigates the lack of standards by doing its best to map things in the best way possible based on semantic information regarding the score as well as knowledge of the instruments. Having said that I guess that is a way off still but fingers crossed. Anyway, great video and thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I think GM got a bad rep because it represented a certain type of sound that people found undesirable / "cheap" without ever trying to understand the positives of standardisations. Most people got tired of the standard 128 general midi sounds without ever diving into the synth stuff XG/GS provided.
@@mr_floydst Yes quite right, those early sound cards and the Yamaha chipset at the time have a lot to answer for, not to mention the Windows GM set. Quite funny though and nice we lived through it. I just looked it up. People are wanting a thousand bucks for a Gravis Ultrasound, haha. Well, it was a nice card!! Have a great weekend 👋
I miss General MIDI. There is nothing in the standard that says you can't add specialized modulators to your General MIDI synth.
I sort of use the Volca FM as a kind of General MIDI device since it has a wider variety of patches than then other Volcas, for example.
Right! Today, we can pimp those sounds beyond recognition using whatever plugin or effects pedal is at hand.
But you can also try to get something good by using their synth engine (a thing not many people did in the 90s).
General MIDI is a concept, and a great one. It can sound as good or as bad as the instrument designers make it. That said, everyone needs a Sound Canvas.
That's true. And that's true, too. :-)
I knew GMIDI starting from the sonic & knuckles collection this year, playing the MIDI version I actually quite liked it, now i have a thing for general MIDI music, it has quite the potential (except for ice cap zone to be honest, the MIDI version actually composed that horribly)
Thanks for watching! Those were great soundtracks indeed. GM can be quite convincing in the right hands.
@@mr_floydst Exactly!
by the way, here's something i stumbled upon not too long ago, someone's apparently used general MIDI to compose some kind of video game boss-like music, sounds really nice with the GM charm, its made by pibolib.
ua-cam.com/video/4nLbZxAnMOI/v-deo.html
GM was a great idea in the days where memory was small and expensive! Also, I never though it sounded particularly bad, but it tended to sit in synths which weren't tweak-friendly so you tended to wear out your ears on those 128 presets pretty quickly. Although, it would be fun if someone made a 100Gb BBC Orchestra style GM set. I'd love to play 'Canyon' through that! 😁
It was born out of necessity for sure. But the last generation of XG devices took the concept to another level. And the MC 101 is a pretty capable synth.
I think I saw some "super sound fonts" the other day. Will post them here if I find them again.
@@mr_floydst i have a TON of the GM soundfonts. If you are looking for any in particular, please just ask.
Good GM sets top out at a couple hundred megabytes with little improvement thereafter, like there is improvement often at the cost of cohesion. The largest ones i can think of:
Musyng Kite, 1GB. Upgrade of Musica Theoria soundfont. I thought composing with it was pretty fun, trying to play existing MIDI generally not.
Crisis GM soundfont, 1.6 GB.
KOR soundfont - 2GB, 1GB orchestral addon/override.
Starlight Dream - uhh found it on my hard disk, hadn't tried it yet. 5GB?
On the more sane side, i actually like Timbres of Heaven. Warning: lethal deafness hazard, you have to reduce the gain. 400MB.
And yet i always come back to basics like the 12MB Chaos and the YXG50 (S-YXG50) at 4MB, or the PSR530 which sounds basically the same. I don't know, somehow Yamaha is so hard to beat.
Oh wait rumour has it there's this thing, Colossus which i think is 4GB and related Goliath which is 40GB. VSTs, Gigasampler based initially, then ported to Kontakt, now a custom engine? From vague memory. Rumour has it there exists an SF2 conversion of Colossus. I have no clue how usable they are. Not cheap. Oh there's also Halion Sonic.
Ex5 : that has a beautiful brass sound. I agree with the usability opinion
Thanks! EX5 is a great synth and that brass sound is part of my sound set.
Probably* title typo
Thanks for pointing that out!
@@mr_floydstthank you actually, for making this video
General MIDI isn’t harming anyone. It’s a great way of exchanging musical data with a base instrument set defined. Once you get it into your DAW or hardware device, you can reassign the sound along with editing the data itself. Once it’s a stem or audio file, a lot of your flexibility is lost. GM is a great basic “rules of the road” tool. While the instrument pool may be lackluster, it’s just a starting point and a common vocabulary. If you don’t need it, great but it presence doesn’t deprive anyone of creation possibilities.
Most of the devices you show aren’t GM compatible so no need to test them. Alot of digital pianos are GM capable. From workstations to entry level learning models. I get why synths and samplers don’t tend to support GM…but they should where possible.
Thanks for watching! Totally agree, to your last sentence in particular. Should really be no problem to add those CC controls to a hardware synth (or stick to the standard).
It is not bad considering the advanced capabilities of modern DAW's. If you use it alongside other plugins, it can still be easily integrated today. Back then, you sometimes only had a GM-synth, which of course sometimes sounded a bit uninteresting. But today we have more possibilities to polish the sound.
That's a good point. I guess we grew weary of them because they hid their "synth stuff" behind a horrible UI, so most people used only the standard sounds.
And yes, today we just throw a big phat reverb at it for insta-greatness . :)
@@mr_floydst We had little idea what we were doing. We were given 128 sounds that could always be found in the same place. Modifying sounds with controllers was rather unknown. But you knew that the piano was on preset 1 and the synth bass was on 40. GM is like painting by numbers.
I believe my Yamaha P-515 while not actually a Synth, does XG/GM, GS, and GM2.
If that was the case, you could download my XG web app and use it's synth parameters. ;-)
github.com/mrfloydst/webxgmidi
@@mr_floydst I'll have to play with that. We'll see how complete the XG implementation is, if the parameters can be edited.
Hello there. General MIDI has the high ground. I still love some of the standard midi sounds, especially if you tweak em a bit with modern plugs etc. The brass sounds for instance can sound great- they don't sound much like brass, of course.
The Korg Kross comes with GM btw.
Absolutely! "Warm Pad", "Goblins", "ResoBass" are great, timeless sounds.
On the Yamaha QY300 i enjoy the Voice = #098 FX2 (soundtrack) with internal Delay2, and strings, and #052 En Syn. Str2 with reverb Hall2. I don't have any other General Midi device so I'm not sure how much the actual sounds are varying between devices. And what the dual layer in the sound engine means. Also #096, they have some chorus going on. There is some secret sauce in the qy300. Or many all of the Yamaha General Midi. But now i would like to try a XG device. Which one is the best xy70/100 and which one is the best price? XY700(?)
Funny you made this video Floyd, I was just playing with the GM stuff today on my Yamaha PSR S770 just for kicks, and it’s just as lame as it always was but your certainly right about the standards it put in place with midi files and channels! The sounds just suck. Lol
It's all a matter of taste and of course of the device used, I guess. I think some of the sounds are great / stood the test of time. There's a lot of shovelware and downright grating stuff on these boards as well.
are you the guy who made the cool dithering algorithm?
"I see you're a man of culture as well" ;-)
Vive le General MIDI ! :)
Unfortunately, I never learned how to read and write music at school.
In 1993 I bought my first PC and discovered
that it can do this for me!
So I bought Logic Audio and a Yamaha DB50-XG,
a couple of sheet music too...
First exercise was:
painstakingly and eagerly copied note by note Sergei Prokofjew's "Peter and the Wolf" in Logic Audio
and programmed the DB50-XG to conjure something nice out of it..
ua-cam.com/video/NZ0SHFu7gJE/v-deo.html
In this way I was able to play an entire orchestra without even knowing a single note or even having heard of music theory! ;-)
With pure GM sounds I certainly wouldn't have worked on it for long!
With the DB50-XG, the sounds of the "QS300 (Raver's Babe)" could be programmed and played 100%!
However, GM and XG are worlds apart!
GS is a bit nicer than GM,
but XG with the DB50-XG was a bang in midi heaven!
The Yamaha XG synthesizers DB50XG, SW60XG and MU10 have an AMAZING FEATURE:
They have User RAM for patch data into which Voices from Yamaha's legendary QS300 can be loaded.
Sounds programmed in this way have no effect on other Yamaha XG tone generators!
And my favorite version of Mussorgsky's - Pictures at an Exhibition still is my own made for the DB50-XG!
I remember hearing a rendition of "Night on bald mountain" (by Mussorgsky) on one of the mid-90s synths, and being totally blown away by it. Nowadays, our understanding of what a synth is and how it fits into the overall scheme has changed a bit (at least for the "Synth Tuber" scene), but man, that was some impressive stuff. So yeah I can totally get behind your story.
If I'm able to find that particular demo I'll link it here.
i love midii!!
We all do. :)
cmon look at the doom music community, they always use midi and i think they sound bomb
Thanks for watching, and oh, absolutely! I should have mentioned that.
😊I know my comments are almost letters but I would really like to know what you think of the idea, I know I told you I’m full government approved disabled. Whatnot gent a month is totally unexeptable., I can’t get a job! But I’ve make enough to live on! I’m 60 who in they’re right mind would hire knowing I can’t lift I can’t push, I’ve got afib, more scary to them is dilated aorta,at some it will have get some attention! So Anyway since the QY-300 uses floppy’s I’m not exempt from making it with the times, I have all tools, and more ( I’ll explain that in second),so I make enough a month to cover my UA-cam expenses, barely, interesting gear, interesting builds and rebuild.,the more, I have building and repairing, wood, leather, plastic forever, but I went to school for coding (windows 95 era) a 12 TB harddrive still a wet dream! Okay, I’m really sorryif I’m boring most of you! The deal is I want a brand new modern QY-300! Now I believe the gear is only propietyn for 14 years. I want rewrite all the code into a touchscreen! I’ll to have make a lot of notes but I think I can do it! I’ve already replaced the floppy with a usb, next will add two USb A and two USB c since all the busses are a strait line on the back of the board I would turn everything midi as well. What would you opinion of that be? Making use of old gear, make the reinvent a kit, accuse of stealing, wasting my time? Ty all!
Hi! I'm not bored ;-)
I think "taking inspiration" on old "abandonware" isn't stealing. If that was the case, one could sue every company that ever built something.
In todays "tech environment", it shouldn't be too hard to create at least a QY300 like sequencer with some off-the-mill components, so the cost is not in the hardware, but more in the time you need to invest to r&d.
Take care!