Sounds of the Playstation: 90s Sample CDs
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- Опубликовано: 5 авг 2024
- The original playstation had some killer soundtracks and I'm looking at some of the influences that went into them. Sample CDs like Distorted Reality and Zero-G have their mark all over games like Parasite Eve, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and pretty much anything of that era that had music in it.
All of this info was made a lot easier to find by the NEWER VGM Sound Sources Spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
Music was made in REAPER and the sample CDs I used were Distorted Reality, Xstatic Goldmine, Zero-G Ambient, Soundscan Ethereal Atmospheres, and I also used LABS Soft Piano.
0:00 Sounds of the Playstation
4:17 Making Music
12:23 The Finished Track
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While not the subject of the video, I do think it's a bit important to highlight the core creator behind these samples that were used not in only video games, but Film, Television and countless records from hundreds of thousands of artist. And that person is none other than Eric Persing. Eric created the sounds within the Distorted Reality CD Sampler with his company Spectrasonics and also, he was chief sound designer at Roland for many years. The core factory presets on synths like the MKS-20, D-50, JD-800, the entire XV, XP, JV line of PCM based Synths, Eric developed these presets. Being a Roland buff not ONE day goes by that I DON'T hear one of Eric's patches in a commercial, TV show or film. I have been recently reading where the likes of Ariana Grande and many more Top 10 artists vocally mention the use his latest flagship Virtual Instrument - Omnisphere, on their albums. Omnisphere also contains all of Spectrasonics' old CD Samplers, including Distorted Reality.
What John Williams is to Film Scores, Eric Persing is to the modern day PCM patch.
thanks, that's awesome information.
I don't think that's an accurate comparison. Someone had to have the job of creating the patches, and no one can say whether someone else would've done a better/worse or different job. It's all mathetical in the end. Film scores on the other hand are complex moving pieces that are not fixed
@@AmandaRaeGA I'm not sure you're point here. Sure, someone else could have created those patches, but that someone was Eric Persing. And every video game, movie, TV commercial or show, and albums and or songs that use Roland PCM Synths circa 1986 and up use Eric Persing's patches. There are plenty of videos with interviews of him explaining how he created the individual PCM samples down to the actual patch.
My comparison I feel is valid because John Williams' music came from his incredible creative mind. And I for one can tell that if a gun was held to my head, I could have never came up with say the Roland D-50's "DigitalNativeDance" patch or even "Soundtrack." Both of which are staple Eric Persing patches, with the latter - SoundTrack, being a standardized patch within the General MIDI bank. Meaning that EVERY synthesizer since that patch's creation has a form of that patch within the keyboard's General MIDI bank.
So I think it's fair to make such a comparison since John Williams has set standards for Film Music, and Eric Persing has also set literal standard for not only sounds, but Synth Technology in regards to MIDI and such as well.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Persing
@@AmandaRaeGA And also by that logic, then John Williams could have easily been replaced with Hans Zimmer, or Alan Silvestri. So since they also do Film Scores, and it’s all mathematical to you, then why not? So Williams and Persing’s work could have been done by anyone else with the same result since it’s mathematical. Nothing special about any of it 🙄
@@DarylWiseJr are waves not just math? strings are replicated with certain algorithms that have been learned from previous string patches.
the difference in what you mentioned is that you just brought up MORE famous film composers. That's why this is a bad comparison. There is no "other" patch person that worked at Roland that had that job. I think a better comparison would be more like.. Miyamoto from Nintendo. I really am being autistic about this, and not malicious
It sounds like a 90s era trip-hop tune. And as a fan of that particular "era" of music it is intended as a big copliment.
I, once, had the pleasure, of opening, for The Sneaker Pimps.
Confirmed. This is TRip-Hop-Esque.
Yeah sounds like something I'd have on a minidisc in college.
Just needs some bass and it would be in massive attack territory
i love 90s and 00s vgm. It's a combination of jungle, drum and bass, jazz, house, hip-hop, ambient, and every other genre you can think of that became famous through these decades
Wipeout got me into FSOL/Prodigy/Chemical Brothers. Gran Turismo got me into chill jazzy stuff like Zero 7/Air/Morcheeba. Drugs got me into Aphex Twin/Autechre.
bbc documentary background music got me into boards of canada
@@bitmapkid@RaquelFoster 👌
based
drugs got me into aphex too: typing in "acid" on Napster & later, Limewire, because my child-brain had learned thru osmosis that acid made weird music.
I think it's really neat to know that having Omnisphere is like holding an important piece of video game music history. No wonder why certain sounds would remind me of Spyro! Lovely track, btw. Definitely nailed those 90's downtempo vibes.
thanks, and yeah, you could probably go through the spreadsheet i linked and match up sounds in omnisphere with the games they were used in. there's a lot.
omnisphere for life
Now just Beth Gibbons to yell a couple times and I think you got yourself a hit!
Theres unmined gold on those old sample cd's. You can always stumble across sounds you have heard used in releases amongst them, but there is some really cool samples that just werent used (too experimental for back then i guess, the equivelant to the 10% if usable 90% crap on modern sample kits 😅). Pick through them and as stated "unmined gold" 🤘🤘
yeah, some of it feels way ahead of its time.
do you know where I can get these cd's? is there an archive site or torrent site?
@@DJCJ999many are still being sold.
@@DJCJ999Lots are on Internet Archive
Games that really took that concept to the limit was Jester's "Music" and "Music 2000" which not only used the sound memory of the PS1 to load samples from the CD and letting you arrange it to a song, it also used the Digital Sound Processor (or DSP) of the PS1 to give it reverb and delay and other sound processing effects, allowing for a very creative use of the sound hardware of the PS1. I made my first musical steps on THAT console back in 1999 / 2000. The game "Fluid" is also an absolute must have if you are into Sound games that turns your Console into a Akai MPC so to speak. When it comes to the sound department Sony has thankfully never been lackluster but always delivered. Like the amazing DACs in their MiniDisc portables and stationary decks, the Playstations and even the PSP. In fact the amazing DAC and the headphone output were the reason i mostly listened to my music as lossless WAV rips on it for many years when i needed a portable audioplayer with good sound. I think the first time i became aware of music played from the Sound memory was when i got my own Sega Mega CD back in 1999 and i tinkered around with Sonic CD, which had redbook CD audio for the main levels and Soundtrack variations that would be loaded into the sound ram and played from it when you would play the Past variations of each level. The game "Silpheed" used the Sound RAM of the Mega CD / Sega CD as well for the music.
i haven't tinkered with the ps1 built in reverb yet, but i have a feeling that might be the "glue" to get that real ps1 sound.
@@bitmapkid It really is. The game "Music" lets you chose different reverb algorithms to chose from. Kinda like you would in a DSP based reverb that comes with several presets like Hall, Church, Room, Studio and so on and so forth. The Sony SPC soundchip in the Super Nintendo also came with some built in effects which is the foundation of the mighty impressive sound of the SNES :) Even if it was only 32khz 8 bit.
I ran a music 2000 website back in the day. It was amazing what people came up with. I wish I could access that site now.
i remember getting a demo of fluid and Music on the front of a Playstation magazine and i played with it more than my other games !
I've been discovering the awesomeness of these CDs recently. Some really usable stuff on these actually!
gotta find those diamonds in the rough
Is there a website to access the CDs
THE FIRST EVER VIDEO ESSAY ABOUT 90S SAMPLE CDS WOOOOOOOOOOO
oh also thank you for mentioning trackers bc i dont know a lot of artists that also use them
i spent a lot of time staring at trackers in the modarchive days. they have a place in my heart : )
Never ever have I seen someone cover sample CDs! I love these things. Half Life, Tekken, all the classic games have those cool soundtracks. Very nice quality, very comfy video!
Edit: While you're at it, cover the arcade music in games like Tekken and Virtua Fighter. Always loved how cheesy that stuff was and what they used to make it.
Edit Edit: Also turn off the background music when you play samples. It's kind of distracting.
oh dang, yeah. i didn't even think about overlaying the sounds being an issue
Very good video! I use many of these CDs a lot in my music along with some hardware synths like a Roland JV1080 or Korg M1. Keep up your work, you deserve more subs and views! ^^
thanks so much!
Jealous of those hardware synths 😮 I’m a big fan of trying to recapture the vibe these games had while putting my own twist on it, so I really appreciate you covering this topic!
You can also use FFT like woxengo "span" and look at the note where the fundamental of the sound is, that way you can tune it without a reference tone and you might even get a bit more accurate than with your ears.
That sound you made is so nostalgic. Its pitch perfect for psx sound.
Reminds me of a demo disk with its rotating game selection menu.
Many sample CDs list the pitch of the sounds along with the BPM in the inlay so you didn't have to do it by ear. Remember, back in the day you'd be sitting in front of a hardware sampler while you recorded, programmed and saved each sound individually so you'd want the inlay to hand so you'd know what you were doing. The Datafile discs list pitches for the minimal amount of original content on them (less so the copyright-infringing stuff). I don't know if Spectrasonics discs did the same but the version you're working from in the video is a WAV rip from an AKAI format disc, which will have lost any of the sampler-specific program settings, including any pitch information, in the conversion.
Anyway, enough waffling. Nice track. I could definitely see it fitting in on the title screen of something Resident Evil inspired.
yeah i remember back in the day a lot of these cds would have their own ui software for exploring the sounds. the kind of stuff that you find on archive.org just captures the sound but has lost a lot of the packaging that came with it.
If from the ISO of the CD in question you convert it to another format using a dedicated software you keep the original pitch, even in some cases the configuration of the left and right sample of some complex patches, I have tested it by passing ISO to Kontakt for example and they are as they are in my CD3000, what you do lose is the touch of the circuit that offers each hardware, but it is possible to emulate it I guess, I still stay with the hardware but I like the idea that you can have access to it from a laptop anywhere!
Glad you showed some Spyro / Copeland music!
blows my mind that copeland did that
You keep re-iterating that you're not proficient at things. But the end result is great!
More credit towards yourself is due!!
thanks, that's kind of you to say.
Would love to see more videos like this, not a music producer myself but this was super interesting and all the comments with all this knowledge is so cool to me
thanks. glad you enjoyed it!
This is a cool as fuck video, thank you for making it
thank you for watching it!
Really great video. As someone who loves 90s electronic game soundtracks and also created some factory presets/patches for a Omnisphere 2, I think you’ve done a really good job in explaining and recreating the sounds of that era.
As well as game scores, you’ll hear those Distorted Reality sounds all over early 00s film scores by the likes of Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, etc. They were an absolute studio staple for so many composers.
Eric Persing was (and still is) a genius.
I enjoyed hearing your thought process on all this; enjoyed the track too! It brings me back to a time when there was a sincere awe for the console and how I was connecting with it.
Really put together well, great video!
This was really cool. Thanks for sharing!
Very informative video and cool selection of sounds
Great video, topics like this are so charming to me!
Distorted Reality sample discs were legendary af
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks!
Great vid! Thanks shouting out the vgm sound sources spreadsheet, what a great resource!
thanks! and yeah, that source is amazing
Such a sick song you made! Drums creatively boppin and droppin
I love the Sony PlayStation 1 It had so many wonderful games with many amazing unique songs. Final Fantasy 7 music was special and so wonderful, Resident Evil had amazing music, Parasite Eve music was fantastic. The track at the end was great. Cool video. ^_^
Just stumbled across this, what a fantastic video! Will definitely be sharing.
thank you!
Honestly, you made a good beat! Thanks for the spreadsheet of albums to check out too! And, besides the fab filter plugin (around $200 for those who aren't into paid plugins) you presented in a way that honestly anyone could do with enough patience, which is always a plus!
Very nice video demonstrating the whole process!
thank you!
This is amazing, can't wait to start digging on all these samples. And by the way your track was so freaking good
10:52 Woah, SoundTeMP!!
I can tell this spreadsheet is gonna be a gold mine, thanks for sharing this!
Need For Speed is what got me into jungle, house, trance and techno R.I.P Saki Kaskas
Fantastic video and your track definitely sounds like it could have been in Parasite Eve.
Hey, Just saw your video. An amazing way to tune your sounds is to use a tuner. For example ableton comes with a stock tuner call "tune" which tell you which key you're playing in. Essientially your tuner will tell you how far out of tune you sample is. it will usually say a + or - number. Then you adjust the fine tune to whatever the tuner is displaying. If the key is -26 off adjust the fine to to +26. Them adjust to the tuner to match the key you're playing on your midi keyboard, Hope that helps. There are plenty of free tuning vsts out there not sure if your daw comes with one but its an amazing method to get you tuning right.
Also you did a great job by ear. Continue to excell at your great work, you've got it in you!
Lovely video, glad this sort of drumwork is making a comeback
Nice track. Love this video. Thank you
good video ! the algorithm blessed me today
This is neat. Thanks for the vibe
This was a fantastic video, and now I want to mess with these samples. haha
this video is just incredible!
thank you!
Found this very intersting thanks for all your work !!!! and your track too me has a SPORE vibe about it i would happily play a city builder to this well done 🙂
I adore these sample CD's especially Distorted Reality. I grew up on these games and the music in them so now I any chance I get to use them in my own music and when I cover songs, I use Distorted Reality to pay homage to those games and songs.
Your'e very humble! Fabulous job!
my personal trick for tuning things is to literally just use a guitar tuner app. i also use it if i have a melody in my head that i don’t know the notes to and i don’t want it to get lost while im finding the notes on a piano-just hum into the tuner and it’ll give u the notes
I’m digging the slowed down version of Daedalus. I just subscribed. This channel is refreshing af.
Excellent video
thank you!
Great work!
thanks!
Nice video track came out dope. I love layering distorted reality and Zero g loops when i make 90s dark noir beats and even some 80s stuff haha they have great textures to compliment with your own drums and chord progression.
thanks! and yeah, i keep coming back to these cds. so many cool sounds.
hideki nagauma says he has no formal musical training and just uses relative pitch, so i think you're in good company
Fascinating stuff. I don't know anything about music but I love the PlayStation sound.
This is the first upload I’ve heard from you, love the pace of this your voice is so relaxing, nice little piece of music too
thanks so much. glad you enjoyed it.
This is so dripping with nostalgia, loved watching this
That finished track is so beautiful. It has an amazing blend of airy, nostalgic vibes. I'd happily pay to buy it from whatever platform you upload it to.
What a nice channel I've bumped into. Had a quick scour through your videos, all look interesting. I will be keeping tabs! Subscribed :)
thanks so much!
Paradise Bird Theory by DJ Krush. The main menu theme of Crackdown 1. Holy shit. 😳😳😳
90s video games had some soundtrack extras that were insane also
Glad I found your channel, it’s great
Also where can I find these old sample packs?
there's a bunch of them on archive.org.
Only 414 subscribers? Wild. Great video, really enjoyed this.
I also grew up with these sample cd's. My dad is a relatively (for the field) well known composer of experimental electro acoustic music so there was always a lot of strange noises coming from his studio. He also uses reaper :)
before i posted this video i had under 100 subscribers. i'm kind of scared...
your dad sounds like a cool guy
I didnt think anyone would figure it out lol The track you made was very good imho ❤
thank you!
Love this era of ps music. Parasite eve 2 has gems for sampling. Need more videos like this!
1k subscribers? blasphemy. this is incredible work. thank you for the google doc as well 🤝
Damn I need to get some of those samples CD’s
That's amazing man wow
thanks!
Still got my original Polestar Magnetics CD from around '92/'93 somewhere..
Great video! Your speech pattern and voice would be great for true crime/horror content, I kept thinking about it throughout the video lol
Awesome video! I would recommend you check out a vst called Omnisphere 2. It has a lot of those classic sample libraries in the presets and in key... So it will def make your life easier!
Just yesterday I was playing around with the Distorted Reality sounds inside the plugin!
nice. one of my favourite artists used a lot of omnisphere so i always wanted to get it, but was priced out of it when i was younger.
Even a jv1080 vst osut there with amazing sounding presets
Really cool! 😎
sick video
I legit thought you were going to have at least over 100k subs. Amazing video
thanks so much... one day maybe!
The funny thing is that RIAPER looks like something from the 90's and I didn't realize it right away haha
sample cds are cool
very awesome :D
thank you!
Definitely getting strong psx vibes from your track.
This sounds like the main menu music to a $20 dollar PSX game that doesn’t exist and yet, you remember it fondly.
Musically, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 2 (hell, even the the trailer for Silent Hill) changed my world.
oddly has a bit of Goldeneye (the movie rather) vibes, or any tracks done by Éric Serra (Léon: The Professional comes in mind too). He does tend to use a bit sample CDs as well, similar 90s hardware too
That dolphin game.. thanks for putting it into the video, I was searching for it long time! couldn't find it because I was sure it was a whale lol.. Key childhood memory, I think I played it once when I was like 2-4 years old on my uncles playstation on some demo disc.. More than 20 years ago. It kept coming into my mind all the time but I was never able to find it again.. so thx! It is Fluid (aka Depth)
and great video there
glad i could help! it's a great little artifact (hard to call it a game...) i'll probably have a video up about it in the future.
what a great video
thank you!
I'm so sure I've heard that drum loop on the Age Of Mythology soundtrack
7:20 Same beat as in Leftfields' El Cid ❤
You did it.
its got a vibe
Great video mate, learned something today
Thanks for checking it out!
Xstacic gold mine is also used in ratchet and clank for ps2. Btw id love more videos of your process making music with cool old samples like these.
thanks! i had a couple of other things i wanted to dig into, deconstructing samples and things. i'll add it to my list : )
@@bitmapkid let's GOO!!!
I get some psx vibes from it yes. Maybe a menu music. Or a jungle/beach level of a 2,5d game with some combat but overall bit slower pacing (something like "Tai Fu Wrath of the Tiger"). Altho am not 100% sure if this is only because i watched this video - i wonder if anyone gets similar vibes if the track is being played to them without any context. I might be thinking of ps1/psx cuz it was the the topic and drawn images already in my head cuz of it (and all the bg visuals thruout the video).
Chroma is a new plug in that can help with sample pitching, unfortunately it wasnt out when you made this
Honestly sounds like it could be a Sneaker Pimps track. Well done!
thank you! high praise
I was very lucky, to have the honor of opening for Sneaker Pimps, once. Confirmed
The individual instrument and sound effect samples used in the game can be extracted using PSound.
Great video! I spent my teen years in the mid to late 90's playing these games.
I have a ton of old 90's sample CD's myself and they are great fun to browse through to find the gems of the era.
Also, here's a little hack for working out the tuning on a sample. Use an EQ or analyzer that has the tuning/frequency info built in. (Voxengo Span is a good free one)
Play the sample on its own and hover your mouse cursor over the bass fundamental within the analyzer (The loudest low-end frequency spike) and it will show you what note it is playing. That's then a good starting point to working out what chord is playing!
Subscribed! 😁
oh nice, what a tip! thank you
HELL YEAH SPITFIRE AUDIO!
1:04 - looks so much like Fast Tracker II by Triton
i'd buy that track
Intriguing. To my mind the finished track conjures a scene where Agent 47 and Lara Croft casually pass by each other at a plush hotel lounge. The beats hit in a slightly sinister tone, while the intermixed melody is pleasantly adventurous. A sophisticated composition which nicely echoes the experimental personality of the 1990s.
you just made song in same key as mine washing machine which adds nice ambience while listening
it was on purpose ; )
Tomb Raider is jv1080 with the orchestral expansion card.
Parasite Eve ❤❤