GM Rock

First published at 07:21 UTC on July 7th, 2019.

***Note:*** I had previously shared a version of this song on December 12th, 2017. That one used VST instruments in the bank of instruments that came with Cakewalk's Sonar music studio.It was also called Glam Rock and can be found here:
https://…

Short for General MIDI Rock. It was first composed on my old IBM in 1997.

The SGM soundfont is close to how it would have sounded on the IBM after its upgrade from Window 3.11 to Windows 95, with the addition of the Soundblaster AWE 32 - the first sound card I had that was soundfont capable. The Ken Ardency drum kit is an upgrade on the AWE 32 drums. If you really wanted the old style Sound Blaster AWE drum presets, the Merlin Audigy soundfont is pretty close. Though that one is somewhat of an upgrade of the original AWE soundfonts for the Sound Blaster cards of the early 2000's. But, unless you have an ear for it, you really can't tell that much difference between the AWE series and the Audigy MIDI.

There were probably some technological differences from maybe 16 bit sound to 24 bit, though I'm not sure that there was any change from mono to stereo. I'm not even sure what would be the point, as each individual instrument is going to have sequencer adjustments in panning to give the stereo effect. But the surround and other effects in Audigy sound cards was impressive. Drums, I'm not sure if they were recorded in stereo, or if they did some sort of sequencing in the drum set's programming that creates the effect. As I remember it, the AWE series had a way for MIDI soundfont enthusiasts to play with the soundfont editor to create their own instruments and MIDI bank presets. It seemed at that time that it was possible to pan individual keys associated with a particular wave that is being used to represent the font. I didn't get far enough into it to know whether you could program what changes in velocity can take effect. I think that was something possible, but, again, I never got that technical in the editor. Yet I did use panning with the selected instruments, as well as adjusted them to what I find to be more adequate for recording for today.

Artist name: John A. Crawford
Song name: GM Rock
Music composer: John A. Crawford
Music label: none
Email: [email protected]

Software Used:

For Music:

Audacity 2.2.1
copyright © 1999-2018 Audacity Team.
Audacity is a registered trademark of Dominic Mazzoni
http://www.audacityteam.org/

Cakewalk Home Studio (3.1.4.0, then Twelve Tones circa 1997-2002, as well as 2003 Edition, by Roland)

For Picture:

Paint.NET (Current Version: 4.1.5.
Copyright © 2018 dotPDN LLC, Rick Brewster, and contributors -
Official website: http://www.getpaint.net/)

For Movie Compilation:

OpenShot Video Editor 2.4.1 .
(Copyright 2008 - 2018 by OpenShot Studios, LLC
https://www.openshot.org/)