MIDI Player Program for certain Mac Games? - Macintosh Garden

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2014, April 20 - 4:46pm

#1

Keirnoth's picture

Keirnoth

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Joined: 2014 Apr 20

MIDI Player Program for certain Mac Games?

Hi all, first time posting on Mac Garden, but I've been swinging by the site every once in awhile to check out what's new.

There was a program that I used to use to play music from various Macintosh games that used it. A quick Google search says that a lot of Mac games, such as Lode Runner, SimCity 2000, Prince of Persia, Spectre VR, etc used this synthesizer - apparently this synthesizer was named SoundMusicSys.

There was a program that I used to use from ages ago that allowed me to play these tracks using that particular game's built in instruments. I simply pointed the program at the application file (since both the MIDI files and the instruments themselves were stored in the application) and it could play back all the tracks found in the game like as though I'm playing them from the game.

I remember this program having a generic sounding application name - MIDIPlayer or something. I believe it was freely available to download since it simply played back music. Its interface was from the pre Copland Mac OS days, when there were utilities that allowed you to skin your Mac to look like what conceptually would've been Mac OS 8/9.

Anyone remember what this program was called or do they still have it?

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2014, April 20 - 8:17pm

#2

sfp1954's picture

sfp1954

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Joined: 2013 Dec 29

You should just be able to use QuickTime player if the version your OS includes QuickTime Musical Instruments. QT Musical Instruments was derived from Roland's Sound Canvas series of General Midi sound modules. You can even play karaoke files with Quick Time Player.

I'm not sure those games had there own instrument files. I believe they accessed the GM Instruments in the QT Musical Instruments extension.

I also have:
Arnolds Midi Player aka ArnMP 2.9
Midigraphy 1.4
Midi JukeBox 2.3
and
QMidi 1.6.1

Again these all use QT Musical Instruments as their sound source.

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/classic-midi-players

2014, April 21 - 7:11am

(Reply to #2) #3

Keirnoth's picture

Keirnoth

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Joined: 2014 Apr 20

Thanks for the response.

These games don't use QT Musical Instruments for their Instrument files, the searching I did verify that the instruments are stored within the application file - they can be extracted and used as their own sound font. Like I said though, it seems like an awfully lot of effort just to do something as simple as play back some MIDI music.

None of these MIDI players are the one I remember. I even remember the icon - grey gradient diamond with a few colorful music notes on top of it. It came packaged with some other program but I can't for the life of me remember what.