Japanese Midi Pack
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- Author(s): RPGMinerva
- Categories: Development, Music
- Downloads: 5419
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Back in the late 90's while the West was still in the thrall of Sound Blaster-powered FM farts, or perhaps AWE32 sample-based playback for the richer PC users out there, Japan was undergoing a MIDI revolution. With the release of the Sound Canvas line of products by Roland, high-quality General MIDI playback was available at a relatively affordable price, providing composers with their very own band-in-a-box, or perhaps a personal orchestra to conduct, far surpassing the typical PCI and ISA sound cards of the time.
The Japanese didn't stop there, however. With the Sound Canvas came an expanded General MIDI specification known as "GS", with Yamaha following suit with their own "XG" spec. These expanded specs allowed for even more instruments, as well as the possibility of applying reverb and chorus effects. During this era, Roland sold GS MIDI files on floppy disks and later on, CDs containing renditions usually of pop songs which could sometimes be played back on karaoke machines. Later on, an online community of composers making original tracks emerged, with users able to download compositions directly to their PC to play back on capable devices, some of which ended up in the freeware Dink release while Seth was hurriedly learning Japanese.
Whether as a consequence of some aspect of Japanese culture that is difficult for the rest of the world to understand, or simply due to the changing MIDI landscape resulting in composers not wanting their tunes played out of the horrid-sounding GS Wavetable Synthesizer included with every variant of Windows, most of the files from this era are today extremely difficult to find, if not unobtainable. The low existing scores suggest the latter, as most people won't have an SC-88 lying around to listen to them as intended.
Although most of the other MIDI packs on this site are geared around suitability for D-modding, to judge this pack by that same metric would be to completely ignore its historical value, as many of the included compositions would otherwise be completely lost to the sands of time were it not for the efforts of the somewhat mysterious uploader. Thank you RPGMinerva, whoever you are.
The Japanese didn't stop there, however. With the Sound Canvas came an expanded General MIDI specification known as "GS", with Yamaha following suit with their own "XG" spec. These expanded specs allowed for even more instruments, as well as the possibility of applying reverb and chorus effects. During this era, Roland sold GS MIDI files on floppy disks and later on, CDs containing renditions usually of pop songs which could sometimes be played back on karaoke machines. Later on, an online community of composers making original tracks emerged, with users able to download compositions directly to their PC to play back on capable devices, some of which ended up in the freeware Dink release while Seth was hurriedly learning Japanese.
Whether as a consequence of some aspect of Japanese culture that is difficult for the rest of the world to understand, or simply due to the changing MIDI landscape resulting in composers not wanting their tunes played out of the horrid-sounding GS Wavetable Synthesizer included with every variant of Windows, most of the files from this era are today extremely difficult to find, if not unobtainable. The low existing scores suggest the latter, as most people won't have an SC-88 lying around to listen to them as intended.
Although most of the other MIDI packs on this site are geared around suitability for D-modding, to judge this pack by that same metric would be to completely ignore its historical value, as many of the included compositions would otherwise be completely lost to the sands of time were it not for the efforts of the somewhat mysterious uploader. Thank you RPGMinerva, whoever you are.
