I've only recently discovered that old PC games often have support for General MIDI music and am having a lot of fun just booting up old games and hearing what the soundtrack sounds like coming out of my Yamaha QY100 sequencer. I don't remember if my Korg R3 synth has GM support, but I'm going to try that next. It's wild that I was super-into DOS games since I was in high school, was vaguely aware of the Roland MT-32 as a MIDI-device that PC games support, but I had no idea I could be using a General MIDI device as a pretty good substitute - it beats Adlib/Soundblaster music for DOS games at least!
Does anyone here have experience with using MIDI devices with old games? Do you have a favorite keyboard/tone generator for games? Does anyone know if there are worthwhile games that support Yamaha's XG standard? I've read that the original version of Final Fantasy VII for PC supports it; no idea what else might.
MIDI music in old PC games
Re: MIDI music in old PC games
I don't have any first hand experience with this, I've always just used whatever sound cards. But LGR (Lazy Game Reviews) on YouTube gets into this in some of his videos. If you aren't aware of his channel, most of his videos are of DOS era gaming and hardware. He has built "midi mountain" which he demonstrates in a few videos. Often with comparisons of how the music sounds through different gear. I think it might be worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Lazygamerevie ... query=midi
I would love to get a Roland MT-32 or something, I just don't know enough about the setup to know exactly what I need. They don't seem to be crazy expensive, but they're also not cheap.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Lazygamerevie ... query=midi
I would love to get a Roland MT-32 or something, I just don't know enough about the setup to know exactly what I need. They don't seem to be crazy expensive, but they're also not cheap.
Re: MIDI music in old PC games
You can emulate most of the old expensive midi hardware through Windows. I'd love to have some of those original midi boxes, but the emulation is free and takes up a lot less space...
Falcosoft Soundfont MIDI Player can receive MIDI streams from DOSBox, or through a USB interface to a DOS (or other) computer.
Here's a video from Phil's Computer Lab showing it all in action:
https://youtu.be/vSk9S1bkRS8 - I use my GPD Win 2 for this.
When I play games on my old DOS tower, I have the MIDI data piped out the DB15 Joystick port of the Sound Blaster through a USB interface into my laptop, and the audio output from the laptop emulating the MIDI hardware run back into the DOS computer's Sound Blaster Line IN to mix back with the PCM playback. It even succesfully receives all SYSEX commands to reconfigure the various hardware emulations (MT-32 and OPL3 timbre reconfiguration on-the-fly).
The Soundfont MIDI player comes with these VSTi plugins built-in:
OPL3 (Sound Blaster/Yamaha Adlib in stereo) - Can load the old standard FatMan GM sound set to make Windows midis sound like I remember.
MUNT (Roland MT-32, CM-32) - These need easy-to-find ROM files - One of the links down below has them.
In addition, I have installed VSTs for Yamaha SY-XG50, Roland Sound Canvas VA, and a few other mostly non-gm VSTi instruments I sometimes try for fun - recreations of old synth keyboards etc. I just coppied the DLL files into the same subdirectory that the OPL3 and MUNT plugins are.
I also have tons of Soundfonts that are fully GM compatible - recreations of some old midi sample-rom based hardware, and fan-made GM sets made by arranging instruments ripped from various video games like Mega Man X, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario Paint, Final Fantasy, etc.
These all play in real-time so it's pretty cool to be able to instantly switch between all of these sets, and hear what the entire soundscape of the games can be changed to.
Another neat trick that seems on topic here is some old console emulators for NES, Sega 8 bit & Gameboy had an option to output sound through midi (using the GM Square, triangle, drum, white-noise instruments) and these also work realtime through all of these instrument banks.
I don't really have a favorite for all games in general, I guess maybe the GXSCC soundfont is pretty neat and takes up no memory. I sometimes use Rich Nagel's WeedsGM4 soundfont too (unlisted update from 3-4 in a link below).
For general midi playback, I layer these soundfonts in this order (the lower overwrite the presets of the upper ones):
Airfont 340
FluidR3 GM
FluidR3 GS
Airfont 380 Final
I know some things about yamaha's XG and GS standards, but aside from that Final Fantasy VII thing, I don't know of any other games that used it - Maybe a few of those Falcom games for Windows 9X had MIDIs that used them, tho I can't remember for sure. Back in the 90s I remember finding a lot of MIDIs that were made to use the XG standard - I always played them through the Yamaha S-YXG midi synth first before loading them into Wingroove - my favorite rompler at the time. AFAIK, XG is just alternate banks of sounds - like more sound effects and different versions of instruments. It's like another layer of tones, but still arranged in roughly GM order, so if your player doesn't have access to the different banks, it will fall back on the base GM instrument and still sound okay, if a little less like it was intended to sound.
The Yamaha XG Midi Player for Windows 9X that comes with the S-YXG100 engine has some songs built in that show off the XG instruments. IIRC it has some preset buttons that enhance midis by using XG sounds instead of the base GM tones for example a button that switches to a jazz instrument set and percussion.
Relevant links:
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#munt_vsti
https://openmidiproject.osdn.jp/MIDISelector_en.html
https://veg.by/en/projects/syxg50/
https://www.roland.com/ca/products/rc_sound_canvas_va/
http://www.tmeeco.eu/9X4EVER/GOODIES/Yamaha/SoftSynth/
Some loose files I have collected for this kinda thing:
https://anapan.ca/Anapan/FM/
Embarrassingly outdated and irrelevant now, but I made this many years ago - that link above has the files for all the bad/down links listed here:
https://anapan.525lines.moe/oldscardemu.htm
extra stuff
http://robbi-985.homeip.net/hosted_programs/update/bmm/
https://musical-artifacts.com/
https://woolyss.com/chipmusic.php
Falcosoft Soundfont MIDI Player can receive MIDI streams from DOSBox, or through a USB interface to a DOS (or other) computer.
Here's a video from Phil's Computer Lab showing it all in action:
https://youtu.be/vSk9S1bkRS8 - I use my GPD Win 2 for this.
When I play games on my old DOS tower, I have the MIDI data piped out the DB15 Joystick port of the Sound Blaster through a USB interface into my laptop, and the audio output from the laptop emulating the MIDI hardware run back into the DOS computer's Sound Blaster Line IN to mix back with the PCM playback. It even succesfully receives all SYSEX commands to reconfigure the various hardware emulations (MT-32 and OPL3 timbre reconfiguration on-the-fly).
The Soundfont MIDI player comes with these VSTi plugins built-in:
OPL3 (Sound Blaster/Yamaha Adlib in stereo) - Can load the old standard FatMan GM sound set to make Windows midis sound like I remember.
MUNT (Roland MT-32, CM-32) - These need easy-to-find ROM files - One of the links down below has them.
In addition, I have installed VSTs for Yamaha SY-XG50, Roland Sound Canvas VA, and a few other mostly non-gm VSTi instruments I sometimes try for fun - recreations of old synth keyboards etc. I just coppied the DLL files into the same subdirectory that the OPL3 and MUNT plugins are.
I also have tons of Soundfonts that are fully GM compatible - recreations of some old midi sample-rom based hardware, and fan-made GM sets made by arranging instruments ripped from various video games like Mega Man X, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario Paint, Final Fantasy, etc.
These all play in real-time so it's pretty cool to be able to instantly switch between all of these sets, and hear what the entire soundscape of the games can be changed to.
Another neat trick that seems on topic here is some old console emulators for NES, Sega 8 bit & Gameboy had an option to output sound through midi (using the GM Square, triangle, drum, white-noise instruments) and these also work realtime through all of these instrument banks.
I don't really have a favorite for all games in general, I guess maybe the GXSCC soundfont is pretty neat and takes up no memory. I sometimes use Rich Nagel's WeedsGM4 soundfont too (unlisted update from 3-4 in a link below).
For general midi playback, I layer these soundfonts in this order (the lower overwrite the presets of the upper ones):
Airfont 340
FluidR3 GM
FluidR3 GS
Airfont 380 Final
I know some things about yamaha's XG and GS standards, but aside from that Final Fantasy VII thing, I don't know of any other games that used it - Maybe a few of those Falcom games for Windows 9X had MIDIs that used them, tho I can't remember for sure. Back in the 90s I remember finding a lot of MIDIs that were made to use the XG standard - I always played them through the Yamaha S-YXG midi synth first before loading them into Wingroove - my favorite rompler at the time. AFAIK, XG is just alternate banks of sounds - like more sound effects and different versions of instruments. It's like another layer of tones, but still arranged in roughly GM order, so if your player doesn't have access to the different banks, it will fall back on the base GM instrument and still sound okay, if a little less like it was intended to sound.
The Yamaha XG Midi Player for Windows 9X that comes with the S-YXG100 engine has some songs built in that show off the XG instruments. IIRC it has some preset buttons that enhance midis by using XG sounds instead of the base GM tones for example a button that switches to a jazz instrument set and percussion.
Relevant links:
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#munt_vsti
https://openmidiproject.osdn.jp/MIDISelector_en.html
https://veg.by/en/projects/syxg50/
https://www.roland.com/ca/products/rc_sound_canvas_va/
http://www.tmeeco.eu/9X4EVER/GOODIES/Yamaha/SoftSynth/
Some loose files I have collected for this kinda thing:
https://anapan.ca/Anapan/FM/
Embarrassingly outdated and irrelevant now, but I made this many years ago - that link above has the files for all the bad/down links listed here:
https://anapan.525lines.moe/oldscardemu.htm
extra stuff
http://robbi-985.homeip.net/hosted_programs/update/bmm/
https://musical-artifacts.com/
https://woolyss.com/chipmusic.php
Last edited by Anapan on Sun Feb 06, 2022 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: MIDI music in old PC games
I've seen LGR reference his MIDI mountain but always assumed it required some obscure, expensive peripheral card in order to function.
It never occurred to me to get a cable to connect a Soundblaster to MIDI and then the device into line-in. I want to try that with my old DOS PC!
Emulating MIDI devices is definitely the sensible choice, but I hunger for the noise coming from some extraneous piece of hardware. It feels magical in the same way Sega CD did when I was playing something that seemed like a normal Genesis game but had redbook audio and voice acted cutscenes. But your laptop setup sounds like a good idea! I may have to fool around a bit with emulation just to hear what kinds of sounds I might be missing.
It never occurred to me to get a cable to connect a Soundblaster to MIDI and then the device into line-in. I want to try that with my old DOS PC!
Emulating MIDI devices is definitely the sensible choice, but I hunger for the noise coming from some extraneous piece of hardware. It feels magical in the same way Sega CD did when I was playing something that seemed like a normal Genesis game but had redbook audio and voice acted cutscenes. But your laptop setup sounds like a good idea! I may have to fool around a bit with emulation just to hear what kinds of sounds I might be missing.
Re: MIDI music in old PC games
With a $20 ebay MIDI to DB15 cable (which even lets you use a joystick or two while it's doing midi stuff) and a $10 MIDI to USB A cable, you're all set.
If you get a USB Midi Host, you can interface a Gakken NSX-39 Pocket Miku I forgot I even had this until just now. It's actually a full XG compatible hardware midi device aside from bank 0 instrument 1 being Hatsune Miku.
If you get a USB Midi Host, you can interface a Gakken NSX-39 Pocket Miku I forgot I even had this until just now. It's actually a full XG compatible hardware midi device aside from bank 0 instrument 1 being Hatsune Miku.