The Early Days of MIDI & Sampling

[Jerry Gerber]

This video is from the Gumby TV animation series I scored back in the late 1980s. MIDI was still in its early years, and sampling was at its very beginning. In those days, my "violin" consisted of about 4 samples on a floppy disc. How music technology has evolved is quite incredible.

I don't know what happened to the original mix over the years, probably limiters or compression; the horn, drums and reverb are not exactly as I mixed them. After decades of transfers and satellite uploads and downloads, there shouldn't be a difference in sound but there is. This particular episode was a real job to sequence, I had to match the guitar playing by sight and program the Roland TR-909 drum machine to Pokey's drum hits.

Gumby Music Video

Jerry

[William]

Did you do the music for the video release of Gumby that replaced the original orchestral scores?  Don't tell me YOU did that!!!    🤢

Fans of Gumby were outraged by the extremely crude synthesizer tracks replacing the original very good orchestral scores.  For years there were calls to re-release the series with the original scores intact.   Finally that has been done on the latest official releases of the 50s and 60s series.   

[Jerry Gerber]

@William said:

Did you do the music for the video release of Gumby that replaced the original orchestral scores?  Don't tell me YOU did that!!!    🤢

Fans of Gumby were outraged by the extremely crude synthesizer tracks replacing the original very good orchestral scores.  For years there were calls to re-release the series with the original scores intact.   Finally that has been done on the latest official releases of the 50s and 60s series.   

 

OK, I won't tell you, but I did. 

[William]

I did crude MIDI also.  So horrible sounding I would never want anyone to hear it.  

I just don't know how to react to this - it is disturbing.   Sorry - I will sign off.  

[Francesco Pirrone]

Hi Jerry,

thanks for sharing this episode of Gumby. I was born in 1985 and I didn't know this series at all, as far as I remember.

I enjoyed both the episode and your soundtrack, I really enjoyed the composition. I can only imagine how difficult it was to produce orchestral music with the available technology back then. I watched an episode from the previous series also, because I wanted to hear the original orchestral scores. I can understand that the audience preferred the real orchestra, I also prefer real orchestral soundtracks even compared to latest MIDI mock-ups (mine included).

William, you and Jerry are excellent composers, people like you pioneered MIDI orchestration and I sincerely admire that. Today we have really great plug-ins, that's because of decades of research, and composers demanding for better samples all the time played a huge role in such research. I enjoy listening to first MIDI attempts and I wouldn't mind listening to yours......whenever you should wish to share them. 😊

Jerry, would you mind sharing some details about the process, please? For example you said you had to match the guitar playing by sight........how did it work? Nowadays we import videos in our DAWs, did you have the footage playing on a separate screen while you were recording guitars on a tape multitrack? Or was it a digital multitrack recorder?

Francesco

[jasensmith]

I was in high school at the time this video was relased and, oddly enough, high school was when I was first introduced to MIDI.  I could tell you where I was and what I was doing the day MIDI first opened my mind. It's one of those things where people could tell you where they were and what they were doing on 9/11 or the assassination of JFK.

So Jerry, was this done with the old ROM samples on a keyboard workstation?  Or the ROMplers as I remember calling them.

[Jerry Gerber]

@William said:

I did crude MIDI also.  So horrible sounding I would never want anyone to hear it.  

I just don't know how to react to this - it is disturbing.   Sorry - I will sign off.  

William,

One way to react would to be honest with yourself:  Why did this push your emotional buttons with such intensity?  It has nothing to do with me, Gumby or my music, but with you.

These recordings were made in the days before sample libraries, before 24 bit, 44.1hz samples and before digital converters had become refined.   The music cues are not crude, not in the least, my cues are well-composed little pieces,  I am not embarrased by my early MIDI work, it was all about learning, learning and more learning, just as it is today for me. 

If you had been the composer who got that job, would you have turned down the creative challenge, the novelty of doing an entire TV animation series with MIDI and over $250,000 in income because music technology wasn't nearly as good as it is today? 

Trying to please old Gumby fans with new music and a new theme song was a very tough sell, people get attached to their traditions, analogous to when Bob Dylan came out on stage with an electric guitar in the late 60s many of the folk musicians were really upset and angry because they felt he betrayed folk music. 

Jerry

[Jerry Gerber]

@Francesco Pirrone said:

Hi Jerry,

thanks for sharing this episode of Gumby. I was born in 1985 and I didn't know this series at all, as far as I remember.

I enjoyed both the episode and your soundtrack, I really enjoyed the composition. I can only imagine how difficult it was to produce orchestral music with the available technology back then. I watched an episode from the previous series also, because I wanted to hear the original orchestral scores. I can understand that the audience preferred the real orchestra, I also prefer real orchestral soundtracks even compared to latest MIDI mock-ups (mine included).

William, you and Jerry are excellent composers, people like you pioneered MIDI orchestration and I sincerely admire that. Today we have really great plug-ins, that's because of decades of research, and composers demanding for better samples all the time played a huge role in such research. I enjoy listening to first MIDI attempts and I wouldn't mind listening to yours......whenever you should wish to share them. 😊

Jerry, would you mind sharing some details about the process, please? For example you said you had to match the guitar playing by sight........how did it work? Nowadays we import videos in our DAWs, did you have the footage playing on a separate screen while you were recording guitars on a tape multitrack? Or was it a digital multitrack recorder?

Francesco

 

Hi Francesco,

I don't think it was possible to create virtual orchestra music in the late 80s, at least not with the samplers I had access to at the time.   I remember the violin patch I used could fit on a 1.44MB floppy, that tells you how few and small the samples were!   Out of the 99 Gumby segments I scored, a few, like the one I posted had no dialogue and had to be synced to the Gumby band.   I would watch the video and write the music in pencil onto score paper and my assistant would then sequence the music.  By carefully watching the hand and arm movements of the characters, I'd eventually get it right.  It was tedious, time-consuming and there were no shortcuts.  Luckily there were only a few shows like that or I would have gone crazy.  My assistant sequenced the cues using a Yamaha QX-3 sequencer.   Once the music was recorded onto tape, SMPTE time code was used to sync to video. 

[Jerry Gerber]

@jasensmith said:

I was in high school at the time this video was relased and, oddly enough, high school was when I was first introduced to MIDI.  I could tell you where I was and what I was doing the day MIDI first opened my mind. It's one of those things where people could tell you where they were and what they were doing on 9/11 or the assassination of JFK.

So Jerry, was this done with the old ROM samples on a keyboard workstation?  Or the ROMplers as I remember calling them.

 

Hi Jasen,

The Yamaha QX-1 and QX-3 sequencers were used for that show.   I was limited to 16 tracks.  I had a few samplers (Roland S-50 I think) and 8 DX-7s in a rack.  

Jerry

[jasensmith]

@Francesco Pirrone said:

I can only imagine how difficult it was to produce orchestral music with the available technology back then. 

 

Actually Francesco, producing orchestral music was pretty easy with the available technology back then because you only had about two articulations to choose from.  Wind instruments only had one.  You didn't have to worry about velocity crossfading, Time offset, Humanize, etc.  You just wrote your score, sequenced it, added some reverb and there you it was.  A symphony.

Of course with easiness comes cheesiness🍕

BAck then, state of the art was a synthesizer workstation or studio in a box.

[Francesco Pirrone]

@Another User said:

Hi Francesco,

I don't think it was possible to create virtual orchestra music in the late 80s, at least not with the samplers I had access to at the time.   I remember the violin patch I used could fit on a 1.44MB floppy, that tells you how few and small the samples were!   Out of the 99 Gumby segments I scored, a few, like the one I posted had no dialogue and had to be synced to the Gumby band.   I would watch the video and write the music in pencil onto score paper and my assistant would then sequence the music.  By carefully watching the hand and arm movements of the characters, I'd eventually get it right.  It was tedious, time-consuming and there were no shortcuts.  Luckily there were only a few shows like that or I would have gone crazy.  My assistant sequenced the cues using a Yamaha QX-3 sequencer.   Once the music was recorded onto tape, SMPTE time code was used to sync to video. 

 

Hi Jerry,

1.44MB violin..... very good. 😊 

Indeed the matching/sequencing process that you have described sounds very time-consuming to me. It was a lot of work......writing the cues then QX-3 then tape then sync-ing......great effort!

[Dietz]

Talkin' about "size": 

Back in the early 90ies, my first commercial sample library - called "ASL"! - fit on as little as five 3,5" floppy disks. On the spur of the moment, I just googled its name a few minutes ago, and to my biggest surprise it is still on sale! 8-0

-> http://www.chickensys.com/products2/sounds/floppy/austrian.html

... I think I have to ask the distributing company for an intermediate settlement covering the last 20 years or so. ;-D

[Jerry Gerber]

@Francesco Pirrone said:

Hi Jerry,

thanks for sharing this episode of Gumby. I was born in 1985 and I didn't know this series at all, as far as I remember.

I enjoyed both the episode and your soundtrack, I really enjoyed the composition. I can only imagine how difficult it was to produce orchestral music with the available technology back then. I watched an episode from the previous series also, because I wanted to hear the original orchestral scores. I can understand that the audience preferred the real orchestra, I also prefer real orchestral soundtracks even compared to latest MIDI mock-ups (mine included).

William, you and Jerry are excellent composers, people like you pioneered MIDI orchestration and I sincerely admire that. Today we have really great plug-ins, that's because of decades of research, and composers demanding for better samples all the time played a huge role in such research. I enjoy listening to first MIDI attempts and I wouldn't mind listening to yours......whenever you should wish to share them. 😊

Jerry, would you mind sharing some details about the process, please? For example you said you had to match the guitar playing by sight........how did it work? Nowadays we import videos in our DAWs, did you have the footage playing on a separate screen while you were recording guitars on a tape multitrack? Or was it a digital multitrack recorder?

Francesco

I watched video from TV, there were no DAWS back then.   I would use a metronome to choose a tempo, and use a little software program I had written for me to convert SMPTE time into measures, beats and clocks, and calculate hit points from that information.  Much easier to do today with DAWs, no doubt.  I recorded the sequence to a 1/4" 2 track, SMPTE locked (to video machine) Fostex tape recorder.  Back then, tape noise was always a problem, so I had Dolby S, the best noise reduction at the time to deal with that.

[William]

By the way Jerry I think your compositions were very good on this, I was just taken aback by the removal of the original soundtrack.  However I learned it was a copyright issue at the time.  Also, there was no single composer originally, they were all Capitol Records library tracks by many composers.

I  think I flashed back (wrongly) to my rage at Phillip Glass whom I will never forgive for his outrageous removal of the magnificent, beautiful score by George Auric - one of the greatest film composers of all time - to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast,  and the replacement of that masterpiece with Glass's caophonous banality, which was akin to a chimp shitting all over Micheangelo's David in my opinion. 

You certainly did nothing like that.  Concerning the main topic though, I originally was using a similar library to what Dietz mentioned, a 14 floppy disc sample library for a Roland S-50 which was state of the art at the time, along with a Proteus module, a DX7 and a Tascam 1/2 inch tape recorder. 

[Jerry Gerber]

@William said:

By the way Jerry I think your compositions were very good on this, I was just taken aback by the removal of the original soundtrack.  However I learned it was a copyright issue at the time.  Also, there was no single composer originally, they were all Capitol Records library tracks by many composers.

I  think I flashed back (wrongly) to my rage at Phillip Glass whom I will never forgive for his outrageous removal of the magnificent, beautiful score by George Auric - one of the greatest film composers of all time - to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast,  and the replacement of that masterpiece with Glass's caophonous banality, which was akin to a chimp shitting all over Micheangelo's David in my opinion. 

You certainly did nothing like that.  Concerning the main topic though, I originally was using a similar library to what Dietz mentioned, a 14 floppy disc sample library for a Roland S-50 which was state of the art at the time, along with a Proteus module, a DX7 and a Tascam 1/2 inch tape recorder. 

That is correct, there was a copyright issue with the original library music and Art Clokey wanted original music for the old series as well, so the editors took cues I wrote for the new series (about 750 of them) and used them in the old series.  I had nothing to do with that decision, but of course I didn't object as it doubled my royalties.  But that was in the late 80s; nowadays all the media corporations will have the composer sign over his (her) half of the royalties to them.   If I got that job today it would pay maybe a 1/4 of what I was paid, if that.  And today everything is far more expensive.   The music business is like the rest of Capitalist America, more, more and more for the corporations and little to nothing for everyone else. 

Yep, that was my first sampler, the Roland S-50.  Then I added the Roland S-550 which helped a little.  Proteus 2 didn't have bad sounds for those days, probably state-of-the-art.  The eight DX-7s in a TX-816 rack handled the bulk of the cues. 

[Jerry Gerber]

@Dietz said:

Talkin' about "size": 

Back in the early 90ies, my first commercial sample library - called "ASL"! - fit on as little as five 3,5" floppy disks. On the spur of the moment, I just googled its name a few minutes ago, and to my biggest surprise it is still on sale! 8-0

-> http://www.chickensys.com/products2/sounds/floppy/austrian.html

... I think I have to ask the distributing company for an intermediate settlement covering the last 20 years or so. ;-D

  

My first sample library was the Peter Siedlaczek strings for Gigastudio.  It is wonderful to witness the advances in sampling and sample libraries.   I couldn't be happier about it.

For the past 14 years I've been mixing on the DM2000,  an amazing digital board by Yamaha.  I love this board, but this week I am donating it to a non-profit because it really is overkill for my studio, I am moving to software-based mixing (actually, I've been doing software mixing for many years, but now even the final mix will be done in software.)  For what I do, physical faders are not necessary.  If I were recording bands, or ensembles or doing live concert recording, I would feel differently.  But for studio work, I don't need physical faders, virtual ones work just as well.   I will be able to enjoy the same digital processing power as the DM2000, while reducing my environmental footprint, lowering my electric bill and lowering my insurance costs.  So goes the evolution of technology...

[William]

That is funny I had the Siedlaczek also, as well as Proteus 1 and 2.  I later got the Emu systems Emulator IV and  used Miroslav Vitous with it- the ultimate library back then and rather expensive!  Now individual instruments have more samples than that entire orchestra...    

[pianoguy]

@jsg said:

The Yamaha QX-1 and QX-3 sequencers were used for that show.   I was limited to 16 tracks.  I had a few samplers (Roland S-50 I think) and 8 DX-7s in a rack.  

Jerry

I thought I recognized the DX-7. There were far worse sounding instruments in those days - Very cute and ingenious music!

Mark Arnest

[mh-7635]

I too had Vitous and Siedlaczek. Most of the money I earnt in those days ended up being spent on Roland S760's of which I ended up having 5 and still have one for old times sake in my rack although It's never used. Roland had a decent enough orchestral library on cd rom at the time. I also remember the DX7 and some Prophet synths and a Heath and Allen desk.....oh and of course the Akai s500. (I think that's what it was called!).

[Jos Wylin]

Hi Jerry,

It's a kind of funny. I've read the whole discussion about the original score and your music... I'm completely unaware of what's what. In Belgium, we've never seen the Gumby Adventures. That makes me unprejudiced. But what I hear is what I like. I've written a pretty big amount of musc for synthesizers and sound machines myself, always with amiration for the new technology (at that time, the Sound Canvas, JV 1010, digital pianos...) My music was designed as accompaniment of religious songs for confirmation masses (12-year-olds). They loved them anyway.

As I love that version you've presented here,

Max