it’s a fun word, but this meme of redoing songs in this specific soundfont has people misunderstanding the definition of the word. Soundfonts are specific to MIDI tracks/files. MIDI are a specific type of file that tells a synthesizer which notes to play, but does not specify much about how each instrument should sound. So if you have the MIDI file for “Corridors of Time” from the Chrono Trigger OST, and if you have appropriate music-making software, you can assign whatever instruments you wantto each of the MIDI tracks. The advantage of this is that the files themselves are quite small, which makes it easy to fit the track data on a cartridge. The downside is that a track will sound different depending on which computer you play the MIDI track on, which may compromise the composer’s original vision. Back in the day, the game console would just use the onboard synthesizer to read the MIDI files and synthesize it in real-time as you are playing the game, so composers could get some consistency from this because if a game only came out on one console, it would always use the same synth and make the same sounds.
In the modern day, soundfonts are a cool way to capture the original sound of older synths. The soundfont is sort of like a snapshot of the specific synth instruments and their specific audio settings, which you can pair with a MIDI file to regenerate the song with identical-sounding instruments on basically any computer. Some seem to think that all games, even into the present, still use MIDI and soundfonts, but this is not the case. Ever since games moved to CDs (and especially DVDs) instead of cartridges, most game composers simply save songs as complete audio files (like you would for an album release), which are more like “snapshots” of the final product, and which contain no data about how the song was created. With DVDs and digital games, there is no longer any real need to keep filesizes down, and so composers can just create tracks with whatever real samples and recordings they want, and the song will sound the same no matter which system you play the game on. Video game music is mostly better off for it.
I say all this to educate folks that “soundfonts” aren’t really a thing anymore, but modern hobbyist producers still have fun making new tracks out of old soundfonts. The “joke” of using the SM64 soundfont for everything is that the composer had to create the MIDI track from scratch, so it’s like a cover but intentionally silly.
Thanks for taking the time to educate! I thought it interesting :). It also emphasizes that it took some real effort to make this, instead of just automagically converting the album to only use Mario 64 sounds
That’s fascinating. It was already the playstation era by the time I encountered any video games, so it never occurred to me that game music would have to be made in any special way.
it’s a fun word, but this meme of redoing songs in this specific soundfont has people misunderstanding the definition of the word. Soundfonts are specific to MIDI tracks/files. MIDI are a specific type of file that tells a synthesizer which notes to play, but does not specify much about how each instrument should sound. So if you have the MIDI file for “Corridors of Time” from the Chrono Trigger OST, and if you have appropriate music-making software, you can assign whatever instruments you want to each of the MIDI tracks. The advantage of this is that the files themselves are quite small, which makes it easy to fit the track data on a cartridge. The downside is that a track will sound different depending on which computer you play the MIDI track on, which may compromise the composer’s original vision. Back in the day, the game console would just use the onboard synthesizer to read the MIDI files and synthesize it in real-time as you are playing the game, so composers could get some consistency from this because if a game only came out on one console, it would always use the same synth and make the same sounds.
In the modern day, soundfonts are a cool way to capture the original sound of older synths. The soundfont is sort of like a snapshot of the specific synth instruments and their specific audio settings, which you can pair with a MIDI file to regenerate the song with identical-sounding instruments on basically any computer. Some seem to think that all games, even into the present, still use MIDI and soundfonts, but this is not the case. Ever since games moved to CDs (and especially DVDs) instead of cartridges, most game composers simply save songs as complete audio files (like you would for an album release), which are more like “snapshots” of the final product, and which contain no data about how the song was created. With DVDs and digital games, there is no longer any real need to keep filesizes down, and so composers can just create tracks with whatever real samples and recordings they want, and the song will sound the same no matter which system you play the game on. Video game music is mostly better off for it.
I say all this to educate folks that “soundfonts” aren’t really a thing anymore, but modern hobbyist producers still have fun making new tracks out of old soundfonts. The “joke” of using the SM64 soundfont for everything is that the composer had to create the MIDI track from scratch, so it’s like a cover but intentionally silly.
Thanks for taking the time to educate! I thought it interesting :). It also emphasizes that it took some real effort to make this, instead of just automagically converting the album to only use Mario 64 sounds
thanks for coming to my TED talk! this is one of the few niche topics that I am weirdly knowledgable about. lol
That’s fascinating. It was already the playstation era by the time I encountered any video games, so it never occurred to me that game music would have to be made in any special way.