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The Beige Years

Roland MT-32Why Its Music Sounds Wrong on a Sound Canvas

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Roland MT-32: Sierra's games wrote their own instruments into a box that forgot them when it was switched off.

How a box built for home pianos became the sound of Sierra's games, and why Roland's own Sound Canvas could not play the instruments those games wrote into it.

Subject
The Roland MT-32, 1987
Chapters
9
Sources
8
Credits
29
Corrections
0

Sources

8
  • Article7
  • Interview1

Numbered in the order the description lists them. Read dates are when the page was consulted; the live page may have changed since.

  1. [1]
  2. [2]
  3. [3]
  4. [4]
  5. [5]
  6. [6]
  7. [7]
    Article Roland Corporation, MT-32 Service Notes, First Edition, August 1987 (specifications, parts list, MIDI implementation

    Version 1.00 Jul. 9 1987

    wiki.console5.com/tw/images/b/b9/Roland_MT-32_Service_Notes_First_Edition.pdf ↗
  8. [8]
    Article Sierra On-Line

    the MT-32 data in the MS-DOS games' own files, read from the owner's eXoScummVM copies with scripts/mt32_port.py's reader (October 2026): King's Quest IV's MT32.DRV (SCI interpreter 0.000.274, QA file K4092488, 1, 747 bytes) and patch.001 of Police Quest II (0.000.490), Space Quest III (0.000.453), The Colonel's Bequest (0.000.631), Hero's Quest (0.000.566) and Conquests of Camelot

    No online copy on file

Image & music credits

29
  • License unknown19
  • CC BY-SA 4.05
  • CC BY 2.02
  • CC BY-SA 3.01
  • CC BY-SA 2.01
  • GNU FDL 1.21

29 photos, from the hosts linked below. Each file name links to the file's page, which carries the full license terms.

#UseFileAuthorLicense
1 Photo https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Roland MT-32.jpg Leo-setä, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) License unknown
2 Photo https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/MT 32.jpg Wikimedia Commons (public domain) License unknown
3 Photo VHS videocassette - front.jpg LoMit CC BY-SA 4.0
4 Photo IBM PC, 1981, Computer History Museum.jpg The wub CC BY-SA 4.0
5 Photo Roland MT-32 Oldtype Revision 1 PCB View.jpg SirSilentBob CC BY-SA 3.0
6 Photo Sierra Newsletter Winter 1988.tif Sierra On-Line CC BY-SA 4.0
7 Photo Roland MT-32.jpg Leo-setä CC BY 2.0
8 Photo Kay C-1 double bass (1965).jpg Mike Maehr from Urbana, IL, United States CC BY-SA 2.0
9 Photo https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Lapc-1.jpg Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5) License unknown
10 Photo SierraOnLine-Box-KingsQuest4.jpg Sierra On-Line CC BY-SA 4.0
11 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra News Magazine Volume 3 Number 1 Spring 1990/page/n26 archive.org License unknown
12 Photo KL Creative Labs Soundblaster 2.0 CT1350B.jpg Konstantin Lanzet GNU FDL 1.2
13 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra Newsletter Volume 1 Number 4 Winter 1988/page/n3 archive.org License unknown
14 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra Newsletter Volume 1 Number 4 Winter 1988/page/n3 archive.org License unknown
15 Photo https://archive.org/details/vgmuseum sierra sierra-musicdemoad/page/n0 archive.org License unknown
16 Photo https://archive.org/details/Computer Gaming World Issue 49/page/n7 archive.org License unknown
17 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra Newsletter Volume 1 Number 4 Winter 1988/page/n5 archive.org License unknown
18 Photo https://archive.org/details/Computer Gaming World Issue 54/page/n19 archive.org License unknown
19 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra Newsletter Volume 2 Number 1 Spring 1989 Small/page/n13 archive.org License unknown
20 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra News Magazine Volume 3 Number 1 Spring 1990/page/n2 archive.org License unknown
21 Photo https://archive.org/details/InterAction Magazine Vol. V Number 3 Fall 1992 1992 Sierra On-Line US/page/n75 archive.org License unknown
22 Photo https://archive.org/details/manuallib-id-2723967/page/n3 archive.org License unknown
23 Photo ScummVM 0.9.0 Windows Screenshot.png unknown author License unknown
24 Photo ScummVM Windows Screenshot.png en:User:Sevua License unknown
25 Photo Psychlist1972's Home Office 3.jpg Pete Brown CC BY 2.0
26 Photo https://archive.org/details/Sierra News Magazine Volume 2 Number 2 Autumn 1989/page/n48 archive.org License unknown
27 Photo https://archive.org/details/sound-canvas-sc-55-om/page/n31 archive.org License unknown
28 Photo KTS CR1220 Lithium coin cell battery-9622.jpg Raimond Spekking CC BY-SA 4.0
29 Photo https://archive.org/details/Computer Gaming World Issue 54/page/n20 archive.org License unknown

Corrections

No corrections logged since publication.

Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] with the timestamp and the source that contradicts it. Corrections are logged here with the date.