[HN Gopher] Canyon.mid
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Canyon.mid
        
       Author : 1_player
       Score  : 391 points
       Date   : 2021-10-06 23:20 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (canyonmid.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (canyonmid.com)
        
       | ChrisClark wrote:
       | I've used this as my ringtone for several years now. I think it's
       | perfect for it. And I just love the memories it brings.
        
       | mike_hock wrote:
       | Booting the old Windows 3.11 box just to listen to canyon.mid,
       | then shutting it down again.
        
       | samplatt wrote:
       | The soundtrack to level 1 of Chips Challenge.
        
       | protean wrote:
       | Canyon is good, but Passport.mid is the superior Windows midi
       | file...
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV9BtuPpW9w
        
         | acheron wrote:
         | Ah yes.
         | 
         | Another one I remember well that apparently was more obscure
         | than I realized is ISLAND.MID. It's the last one in this video:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ome3vfadYvs&t=586s
        
         | znpy wrote:
         | I haven't heard this music in about twenty years!
         | 
         | I first heard that in an english-course CD-rom and always
         | thought it belonged to that course and was thus lost forever!
         | 
         | Thank you for letting me re-discover this thing!!!
        
           | protean wrote:
           | Amazing! Love the feeling of rediscovery and reawakening of
           | some long dormant neural pathways brought about by hearing a
           | forgotten piece of music
        
         | madjam002 wrote:
         | Let's not forget about onestop.mid
        
           | flatiron wrote:
           | The king of all prebuilt windows midis!
        
         | pram wrote:
         | Agreed, wouldn't have been out of place in a Maxis game.
        
       | Aeolun wrote:
       | I didn't know how much I wanted to hear and see this. Much
       | nostalgia.
       | 
       | It suddenly occurs to me that I always thought I missed the most
       | interesting times in computer history, but I actually experienced
       | the majority of major changes (about DOS onwards).
        
       | kube-system wrote:
       | I can immediately tell that this was not recorded with the same
       | midi synth as my old win 95 PC.
        
       | zedr wrote:
       | I had this for years a my default ring tone.
        
       | cbm-vic-20 wrote:
       | Clint "LGR" Basinger collects 90s-era MIDI gear, and made a video
       | of his stack playing this track.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSdaPTuV8E
        
         | plucas wrote:
         | I encourage you to read the first sentence of QuadrupleA's
         | comment to this post in LGR's voice.
        
           | ckozlowski wrote:
           | I took you up on your suggestion and found it quite
           | satisfying. =)
        
       | thombles wrote:
       | Hah most PCs I used of that era would have complained about a
       | non-bootable disk being in drive A: :)
        
       | shp0ngle wrote:
       | In the 90s, the relevant user-facing OSes for computers were
       | MacOS and Windows.
       | 
       | In the 2020s, the relevant user-facing OSes for computers are
       | MacOS and Windows.
       | 
       | (However, to be fair, all the rage is now in phones, where
       | Windows is surprisingly non-existent. Apple's OS is still the
       | other one, though.)
        
         | einr wrote:
         | _In the 90s, the relevant user-facing OSes for computers were
         | MacOS and Windows._
         | 
         | There were at least real, meaningful attempts at competition in
         | the consumer space with, most notably, OS/2 and BeOS. (OS/2 is
         | seen as a commercial failure these days but quite a lot of
         | people ran it.) MS-DOS from Microsoft was also competing with
         | IBM PC DOS and Digital Research/Novell DR-DOS.
         | 
         | In the early 90s, Atari TOS, RISC OS and AmigaOS were not
         | completely down for the count yet.
         | 
         | In the UNIX workstation market you still had SGI IRIX, Solaris,
         | HP/UX, and more.
         | 
         | Now, looking even in that space -- well, _maybe_ there 's a
         | Linux box or two, but more likely you're going to find even
         | more macOS and Windows.
        
         | nebula8804 wrote:
         | Its all because RMS decided to eat that thing from his foot
         | that one time. The world just couldn't stomach GNU/Linux after
         | that. :P
        
           | shp0ngle wrote:
           | Isn't Android technically GNU/Linux?
           | 
           | It has Linux kernel, but I am not sure about the GNU.
        
             | hansel_der wrote:
             | the average phone has software with virtually every
             | existing oss-license within and noone cares.
        
       | scorxn wrote:
       | Oh goodness, the nostalgia chills. Now to find In the Hall of the
       | Mountain King.
        
         | brassattax wrote:
         | If you want the full experience:
         | 
         | https://archive.org/details/win95_in_dosbox
         | 
         | Wait for it to boot, Start > Run, type mplayer File > Open,
         | click In the Hall of the Mountain King.mid
         | 
         | :)
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | It just didn't get more Windows than Canyon.mid. 90s corporate
       | Memphis in musical form, the kind of thing you'd hear over a 3D
       | computer animation -- or opening a corporate training video. Its
       | full title was "A Trip Through the Grand Canyon" or similar; no
       | surprise, that was also the subject of many a 3D computer
       | animation back in the day.
        
         | rzzzt wrote:
         | PASSPORT.MID is pretty cool, too.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | Oh, Passport was the tits. It had a little funk in it at
           | least.
        
       | rcarmo wrote:
       | Interesting to think that playing MIDI without any additional
       | software is no longer a feature you can get out of the box these
       | days (at least on macOS, YMMV).
        
         | raverbashing wrote:
         | True. Because: the sounds cards of the time had the midi synth
         | right there on the card (ok, not the full midi decoding, but
         | they had the OPL3 synth onboard). Later models (SB32 IIRC)
         | could decode the midi commands themselves.
         | 
         | Today it's easier to do it in software.
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | If you like that song you will like this video.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMSdaPTuV8E
        
       | anotheraccount9 wrote:
       | Windows 3.11 on a Tandy 1000... that's a hack right there
       | (http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/1kfaq.html#III.C.1) ;)
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | The irony is, Windows was developed on Tandy hardware. Because
         | it had more CPU and graphics oomph than any IBM offering up
         | through the AT, Microsoft developed Windows 1.0 on the Tandy
         | 2000 and shipped it with drivers for the PC. A driver disk for
         | the 2000 itself was available.
        
         | riq_ wrote:
         | It seems to be a Tandy 1000 RSX which supports Windows 3.1
         | 
         | Original photo is from here, which has Windows 3.1 running:
         | http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/RLRLX.html
        
           | einr wrote:
           | It's a 386SX, which absolutely will run Windows 3.1 but if
           | you're going to be real picky, it definitely won't be as
           | snappy as in the video ;)
        
           | FreeFull wrote:
           | Question is, would you be able to put a Soundblaster 16
           | inside it?
        
             | throwaway09223 wrote:
             | Tandy 3-voice can play midi without an add on card.
        
               | boondaburrah wrote:
               | Right but I know Yamaha OPL sound when I hear it.
        
               | einr wrote:
               | The Tandy 1000 RSX has several ISA expansion slots.
               | Putting a Sound Blaster in it is no problem.
        
       | jeffrallen wrote:
       | I miss Axel F mod files.
        
         | benschulz wrote:
         | I don't know that artist in particular, but perhaps you can
         | find them on The Mod Archive?
         | 
         | https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=search&query=axel+f...
        
           | crtasm wrote:
           | Axel F is the theme tune from 80s film Beverly Hills Cop
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E93VEydSRM
           | 
           | mod archive is a great site!
        
       | jonplackett wrote:
       | Man I feel old knowing I was alive early enough to have found
       | that midi file amazing.
        
       | mproud wrote:
       | LGR would approve.
        
       | qwerty456127 wrote:
       | I miss Windows 3.11 so much. It was so much more clean and
       | intuitive than today Windows...
        
         | mattowen_uk wrote:
         | I thought that a while ago... So much so, that I wrote a Proof
         | of Concept 'Program Manager' for Windows 10 that re-imagined my
         | current Start Menu in a Windows 3.1 style.
         | 
         | Oh. My. God. The whole paradigm falls down when you've got so
         | many folders full of apps. I don't know how to solve it.
         | 
         | It worked well back in the day though when most people only had
         | a handful of apps (that we used to call 'software') installed.
        
       | FeepingCreature wrote:
       | A few years ago I was playing with Karplus-Strong synthesis, and
       | I decided to dump canyon.mid into it. Note that there's no drums,
       | I just dumped every note into the synthesizer. Also I think there
       | were some numeric bugs with my code.
       | 
       | I kind of like this version anyways though
       | https://soundcloud.com/feepingcreature-1/canyonmid-on-a-brok...
        
       | willcipriano wrote:
       | Wow, I haven't heard this in twenty years or so. I think I found
       | it searching through the windows folder pre-internet looking for
       | something to do.
        
       | jamiewildehk wrote:
       | I remember playing this on my Gravis Ultrasound and trying to
       | convince my friends it sounded better.
       | (https://youtu.be/Q3rb5Yi0BBI)
        
         | bloopernova wrote:
         | Gravis Ultrasound playing TIE Fighter music is the pinnacle of
         | game music for me.
        
       | gwbas1c wrote:
       | I don't think I ever listened to this on a computer with a good
       | sound card. I don't remember it ever sounding so good.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ipunchghosts wrote:
       | Sounds like something Vulfpeck should cover.
        
       | enneff wrote:
       | This reinterpretation of the song is really amazing
       | https://youtu.be/bjWFNgKE4uw
        
         | droidist2 wrote:
         | Very cool, the beginning has a Weather Report - Birdland vibe
         | to it.
        
         | Lorin wrote:
         | Didn't even have to click through it to predict that it'd be
         | Jake Kaufman's take on it - although he's now known for Shantae
         | and Shovel Knight among other things :)
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | Love it. virt also did a little tune called "here's your seven
         | day forecast" that's also from that era and really nice, like a
         | stereotypical weather channel tune.
        
           | dvtrn wrote:
           | Speaking of those classic weather channel vibes:
           | https://m.twitch.tv/retroweatherchannel
        
         | Underphil wrote:
         | I also did one a while back if anyone is interested.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/s_XYWwCu8vM
        
           | mixmastamyk wrote:
           | Now you're just showing off playing all the instruments. :-D
           | :horns:
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | i like the wardrobe change between instruments. did he just
             | get too tired to play the other 2 tracks on the same day,
             | or did the mrs. need the honey-do list before he could get
             | back to it, or just changed shirts to make it seem like it
             | was so time consuming it required multiple days in the
             | studio
        
               | Underphil wrote:
               | Hehe. It's because I'm incapable of finishing a project
               | in any reasonable timeframe. There might have been six
               | months between takes for all I know.
        
           | cormacrelf wrote:
           | Man. I remember making little mids on a flip phone in the
           | 2000s. When you're playing with the silly toots and beeps you
           | imagine them so much bigger. These covers are how it sounds
           | in your head when you're writing one.
        
             | Underphil wrote:
             | That's honestly why I do them. To make the sound that 10
             | year old me actually heard when listening.
        
             | Infernal wrote:
             | You just triggered a memory for me that I probably haven't
             | thought of in 15 years, but I recall circa 2003 sitting
             | down with my Motorola bar phone and my electric guitar and
             | programming it note by note (with the keypad!) to play a
             | few seconds of Enter Sandman as my ringtone.
        
       | micromacrofoot wrote:
       | This almost makes me cry. I forgot all about it.
        
       | smolder wrote:
       | My favorite old midi file is this one. It's playable in winamp or
       | any other thing with a default wavetable for midi synth. It was
       | the background music for an NES puzzle game, transcribed to midi.
       | 
       | https://www.khinsider.com/midi/nes/pipe-dream
        
       | mrblampo wrote:
       | Thanks for sharing this! My sister and I used to love listening
       | to this song on our Gateway 2000 when we were kids.
        
         | littlebentoo wrote:
         | > listening to this song
         | 
         | Song? It's just music there's no singing in it. Midi is an
         | instrumental only declarative format.
        
           | underwater wrote:
           | How am I only just learning that a a piece of music is only a
           | song if it has vocals? Even the name makes that obvious.
        
             | frogulis wrote:
             | Calling instrumental pieces "songs" does exist in real-life
             | common usage even if it's not "technically" correct. After
             | all, the ancestor post did just that.
             | 
             | Depends how prescriptive you want to be.
        
               | mkl wrote:
               | A classical music lecture series I listened to [1]
               | claimed this came about because that's what iTunes calls
               | all tracks/pieces/songs. Seems plausible, but probably
               | other MP3 players did the same thing too.
               | 
               | [1] Sorry, no link, don't remember what exactly it was.
        
             | markshead wrote:
             | Felix Mendelssohn wrote a collection of pieces called Songs
             | without Words for the piano. This might suggest that the
             | term "song" can be more nuanced than simply whether or not
             | there are vocals.
        
               | rob74 wrote:
               | The original German title is "Lieder ohne Worte"
               | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_Without_Words), and
               | there is AFAIK no strict requirement for lyrics to count
               | as a "Lied" (or at least "Lied" is not connected to
               | "singen" the way "song" is connected to "sing").
        
           | jay-anderson wrote:
           | I've sung or hummed along to canyon.mid a time or two. We're
           | good. The meaning of the word 'song' has expanded in popular
           | usage. I play the horn (french horn) and I smile an nod when
           | someone calls a clarinet a horn.
        
           | GaylordTuring wrote:
           | > Midi is an instrumental only declarative format.
           | 
           | There's nothing stopping you from using midi data to generate
           | singing: https://youtu.be/Ab4zUFKxVpk?t=87
        
             | mrblampo wrote:
             | Here's a much weirder example of using midi data to
             | generate singing: https://youtu.be/ZY6h3pKqYI0
        
               | smcl wrote:
               | Here's another nice example of this -
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRlhKaxcKpA
        
               | BoxOfRain wrote:
               | This is absolutely terrifying and I hate it.
               | Congratulations to the author, it's very interesting!
        
               | bartvk wrote:
               | That is low-key terrifying. And amazing, too.
        
               | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant-Q_transform
        
           | pjbeam wrote:
           | Since when does a song require singing..?
        
             | Biganon wrote:
             | It's literally in the name
        
               | mekkkkkk wrote:
               | Words can expand from their original meanings, you know.
               | Look at any music player or just everyday speech, you'll
               | see "song" being used to refer to a discrete unit of
               | music in the same way you could use "track" or "tune".
        
               | Biganon wrote:
               | Maybe, but we can still protest against changes when they
               | are silly. Nobody in French would call Debussy's Clair de
               | Lune "une chanson", why should the English language be
               | oversimplified? Also, good music players use the word
               | "track", and one song (or other musical piece) can span
               | over multiple tracks, e.g. Pink Floyd's Atom Heart
               | Mother.
        
               | mekkkkkk wrote:
               | It's not about simplification, it's just the way language
               | works and evolves. Like how "track" originally referred
               | to the literal engraved track on a phonograph record, yet
               | you claim that that's obviously the correct term for a
               | musical piece. At one point someone argued like you do
               | now about that word.
        
           | mrblampo wrote:
           | Boooo.
        
             | littlebentoo wrote:
             | What does that mean?
        
               | mrblampo wrote:
               | Sorry, I may have been making unfair assumptions about
               | your intent with your comment about the definition of
               | "song." Let's assume that you are just eager to help me
               | understand proper usage of the term. Thank you for
               | pointing this out. I'm aware of the distinction, but was
               | making a choice to ignore it, because I think most people
               | ignore it. And when I was a kid playing around with
               | Windows 3.1 I definitely would have called it a song.
        
       | adamredwoods wrote:
       | I had an Iomega Zip drive, too! So cool, but the higher
       | capacities were too expensive and the parallel adapter didn't
       | work everywhere. I forget if there were compatible discs, not
       | made by Iomega, that were cheaper?
        
         | EVdotIO wrote:
         | I don't know about cheaper, but Fuji, HP and photography
         | related companies made disks. Completely unrelated, but the
         | SCSI versions made them pretty much plug and play with tons of
         | hardware. There is an old Roland sampler I have made in '88
         | that uses one, and Zip disks leave floppies completely in the
         | dust. It's truly night and day on every level.
        
           | batman-farts wrote:
           | The rural K-8 elementary school I attended had a lab full of
           | Mac LCIIs up through early 2000, and chose to buy a bunch of
           | Zip drives and use them as external dedicated storage
           | upgrades. I don't think I ever saw anybody use them for data
           | transfer, just storing stuff like Mario Teaches Typing and
           | DinoPark Tycoon. Us kids were specifically instructed to
           | never try to eject the Zip disks.
           | 
           | Right after I graduated, they found the budget to upgrade to
           | blueberry iMacs. The superintendent/principal was also the
           | only person I ever saw using a G4 Cube in the wild; that
           | Apple salesperson must have done a hell of a job. One of the
           | office secretaries had one of the education-market-only beige
           | all-in-one Power Mac G3s too.
           | 
           | I believe sometime in the mid-2000s, they moved on to a
           | contract with Dell like everybody else. I guess the iPad era
           | has seen Apple regain some education market share, but they
           | used to absolutely dominate schools.
        
         | Kadin wrote:
         | Yes, Iomega eventually licensed disk production to a few other
         | companies. I know for sure that Maxell and Verbatim made them,
         | and Wikipedia says that Toshiba, Fuji, Epson and NEC also
         | produced some.
         | 
         | When they were originally released, I believe the first model
         | was SCSI-only and cost $199. Disks were $20 each and held
         | 100MB. Eventually the price of disks dropped a bit, until they
         | were around $11 or so in multipacks the last time I bought any.
         | 
         | They also had backwards compatible 250 and 750 MB drives, but I
         | don't know how well they ever sold. I never saw either in
         | person. I think by the time they hit the market CD-R drives and
         | media had dropped in price so much that Zip disks weren't
         | economical as either a backup or file-transfer media.
        
           | boondaburrah wrote:
           | That and the later drives were made cheaper and click-of-
           | death was beginning to become an issue. My 100MB SCSI drive
           | still works and reads the old Maxell disks no problem though.
        
         | gfosco wrote:
         | I think there were indeed some 3rd-party zip disks. I had
         | several drives, thought they were really cool at the time.
        
         | codazoda wrote:
         | Ah, my first tech job. It was an amazing ride going from a few
         | hundred thousand dollars to a two billion dollar company. I
         | bailed when things started to tank.
        
         | cjbprime wrote:
         | There was a puzzle in the MIT Mystery Hunt a few years ago
         | where teams were given a physical Zip disk (amongst other
         | outdated tech) and had to figure out how to read its contents
         | :)
        
       | gchucky wrote:
       | There was an easter egg in Windows 95 for clouds.mid.[1] You had
       | to create a folder and rename it a few times, and then it would
       | play the song[2]. Even hearing it now takes me back to a simpler
       | time...
       | 
       | [1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/69883/musical-easter-
       | egg... [2] https://soundcloud.com/brianorr/clouds
        
         | subroutine wrote:
         | "Creative Labs Sound Blaster"... ah the nostalgia
        
         | mrleinad wrote:
         | I miss those good times when developers were given freedom to
         | do things like these.
        
           | drKarl wrote:
           | I think nowadays an easter egg would be a hard sell on a Pull
           | Request...
           | 
           | Most likely back then there were absolutely no code
           | reviews...
        
           | mbg721 wrote:
           | Life-insurance mainframes never had easter-eggs, did they?
           | This is just a measure of how seriously people rely on
           | software.
        
             | all2 wrote:
             | Wrong. :)
             | 
             | My dad worked for a rather large insurance company. One of
             | the hacks printed the user's name, marched it around the
             | border of the terminal (thin client to the mainframe) and
             | then deleted itself before giving the user their prompt
             | back.
        
               | mbg721 wrote:
               | I stand corrected. At least it wasn't the policyholder's
               | name.
        
             | xattt wrote:
             | I'd love to see if Philips of Zoll integrated any Easter
             | eggs into their AEDs or monitoring equipment.
             | 
             | Perhaps get an extra 50 joules of defib by putting in the
             | Konami code on the directional keys.
        
           | tomc1985 wrote:
           | You can thank the need to appeal to the 'serious business'
           | people for that
        
             | bellyfullofbac wrote:
             | Windows XP has no easter eggs because MS wanted to sell it
             | to the US military, and the policy was, no undocumented
             | features.
             | 
             | I suppose they could also just document it...
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Eikon wrote:
           | Except that it increases software complexity, possibly bugs
           | as well as security vulnerabilities.
           | 
           | I definitely don't won't this kind of "features" in software
           | I use.
        
             | mhd wrote:
             | Happy developers are engaged and make fewer errors.
        
             | neuronic wrote:
             | Yep worked for a pretty large company and they had a
             | (capable), high ranking dev guy who was prone to add easter
             | eggs in the UI. Konami code would cause something to fly
             | across the screen etc. The live product was taken down
             | twice due to these easter eggs.
             | 
             | There are no more easter eggs.
        
               | stavros wrote:
               | How did the eggs cause the product to go down?
        
               | Aeolun wrote:
               | Sad times. If you never accidentally trigger these then
               | who cares...
        
             | floam wrote:
             | I don't won't you
        
               | savolai wrote:
               | I really appreciate the wuality of discussion here. Every
               | time.
        
             | fouric wrote:
             | The amount of complexity, bugs, and security
             | vulnerabilities in modern software is _already_ at a
             | staggering level purely due to non-easter-eggs. Not only
             | will allowing the developers to occasionally have some fun
             | help them to be more engaged (and produce higher-quality
             | software as a result), but a well-implemented easter egg
             | touches a highly localized portion of the system and won 't
             | introduce any of the above in the first place.
        
             | black3r wrote:
             | I miss the good times when security wasn't an important
             | thing to always keep in mind because there weren't that
             | many hackers and script kiddies.
        
             | hansel_der wrote:
             | sad story bro
        
           | CyberRabbi wrote:
           | They weren't given the freedom. They took the freedom.
        
       | xiamx wrote:
       | I think it would've been even more immersive if the screen was
       | warped to cover the CRT
        
         | mPReDiToR wrote:
         | On that theme, have you tried cool-retro-term?
         | 
         | It's nostalgic.
        
       | tiagok wrote:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPkwIn5W0IE&t=8s
        
       | petercooper wrote:
       | Since we're all reminiscing here, let me throw in Michael
       | Walthius's _Echoes_ from 1994 which totally dragged me deep into
       | the MIDI collecting world:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQyhRd0Wsew
        
         | willismichael wrote:
         | Ha! Michael Walthius was one of my primary inspirations when I
         | was trying to make my own midi arrangements. I was just a kid
         | trying to self-teach music theory and composition.
        
       | bambax wrote:
       | Story of the song is here:
       | http://vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/Trip_Through_the_Grand_Canyo...
        
       | lproven wrote:
       | A decade or so back I got to take a tour of London's Italian
       | Quarter. It's mostly gone now but fragments still exist, like the
       | Chiappa mechanical-organ factory:
       | https://www.facebook.com/chiappalimited
       | 
       | It would be an amazingly cool hack to adapt a pipe-organ to play
       | Midi tracks off a USB key.
       | 
       | Or, the flipside, to design a machine that could print pipe-organ
       | rolls from MIDI tracks.
        
         | Majromax wrote:
         | For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQHdFAm7g7E --
         | controlling a pipe organ via MIDI
        
       | QuadrupleA wrote:
       | Ah, the many eras of corporate music. Canyon.mid exemplifies the
       | late 80s / early 90s aesthetic - gets me fired up to optimize my
       | multimedia strategy.
       | 
       | The current era is mostly inspiring 4 chord repetitions with
       | muted guitar and piano, with B-roll of cinematic nature footage
       | and racially diverse businesspeople shaking hands. Also jaunty
       | ukulele riffs with dance claps and some kind of "oh oh ayy-oh"
       | vocal hook.
       | 
       | What creative bounties will the coming decades bring?
        
         | pedrow wrote:
         | In the old days you had to sing the corporate song yourself,
         | e.g. Ever Onward I.B.M.[0]
         | 
         | [0]:
         | https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/multimedia/everonward_trans....
        
           | fsckboy wrote:
           | Ever Onward IBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU
        
             | sneak wrote:
             | https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/punched-
             | cards/2/1...
        
         | WesolyKubeczek wrote:
         | Isn't the ukulele thing straight from Israel Kamakawiwo`ole's
         | take on "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", or a bleak imitation
         | thereof?
         | 
         | I want my 60s-70s orchestral muzak back. Complete with grainy
         | 24fps footage of sunny cities with enormous futuristic-looking
         | business centers and viaducts, successful-looking smiling
         | people riding those ginormous cars to work. Keith Mansfield,
         | David Lindup, Alan Hawkshaw. Big names of library music.
         | 
         | The synthwave era in comparison sounds somewhat decadent. But I
         | like it too.
        
           | motogpjimbo wrote:
           | For anyone interested in this genre, there is a very large
           | collection of 60s/70s library music available on Spotify.
           | Searching for "KPM 1000" will get you started.
           | 
           | There is also a documentary on the subject:
           | 
           | https://www.amazon.co.uk/Library-Music-Film-Shawn-
           | Lee/dp/B08...
        
         | taylorfinley wrote:
         | In answer to your closing rhetorical, I'd like the throw a
         | curveball: Corporate Businesswave, the genre of truly creative
         | artists riffing on soulless corporate jingle culture. Plenty of
         | 80s/90s aesthetic to go around here. I personally love "Money
         | Can Buy Happiness" and "Mark to Market" by New Century, "Pump
         | and Dump" by Shadow and Mirrors, and "Insider Trading" by
         | Michael Weber.
         | 
         | A good jumping-off point:
         | https://open.spotify.com/playlist/39pqsBTsb9UNYv1dXbZpff?si=...
        
           | kfarr wrote:
           | Thanks for sharing, favorite so far is also "Money Can Buy
           | Happiness".
           | 
           | The song would be perfectly at home in the GTA Vice City
           | soundtrack including lyrics like: "More is more and less is
           | less, money can buy happiness" "Life can be so effortless,
           | money can buy happiness"
        
           | IggleSniggle wrote:
           | Thank you for this!
        
           | huskyr wrote:
           | Probably the most famous example of this genre is James
           | Ferraro's "Far Side Virtual", which can be listened to in its
           | entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd-uSm8ittU
        
         | tgv wrote:
         | The infinite four chord inspiration sound is quite dreadful
         | (shame on you, Hans Zimmer), but I do hope we never revert to
         | the times of KPMG, we're strong as can be:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCvKXgp-Awo. If you haven't
         | heard it, first prepare some ear bleach before you click.
        
           | robin_reala wrote:
           | How about the Capgemini rap?
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHCnDVHzqv4
        
           | liotier wrote:
           | I actually quite like the KPMG anthem's jungle remix:
           | https://soundcloud.com/joey-devilla/the-kpmg-song-jungle-
           | sty...
        
           | lathiat wrote:
           | When I think four chord song I think of Axis Of Awesome :)
           | 
           | Medley of a bunch of pop songs on the premise they all use
           | the same 4 chords.
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I
        
         | splatzone wrote:
         | Relevant Tantacrul video about the current era of corporate
         | music: https://youtu.be/AIxY_Y9TGWI
        
         | pnut wrote:
         | Obligatory post http://datassette.net/businessfunk/
        
           | libele wrote:
           | it's incredible the number of things you can do with eggs
        
         | headmelted wrote:
         | Gets me fired up to jump over a dolphin. Weird.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/q26aQKRjebI
        
         | jim-jim-jim wrote:
         | I feel like there was at least one additional generation of
         | corporate muzak between these two movements, but I am slightly
         | too young to really put words to it. I remember bank and tech
         | commercials being full of xylophones and marimbas around the
         | turn of the century. Think the soundtrack to _American Beauty_.
         | James Ferraro 's _Far Side Virtual_ definitely touches upon it
         | too.
        
       | _nickwhite wrote:
       | If I ever start my own company with a real phone system, I'm
       | putting canyon.mid as the on hold music. How cool would that be?
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | _" Please hold, your call is important to us!"_
        
           | _nickwhite wrote:
           | Gen X-ers and Older Millennials will request to be put on
           | hold again just to jam out to that Windows 3.1 nostalgia.
        
             | geocrasher wrote:
             | I learned the other day that there's an in-between called
             | Xennials.
        
             | krinchan wrote:
             | > Older Millennials
             | 
             | Bloomberg has dubbed us Geriatric Millennials now. I'm
             | sorry you missed the memo.
        
               | tomc1985 wrote:
               | Elder Millennials!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | What is a company phone system? You mean, you're going to write
         | a bot that plays music while gathering information? /s
        
       | password4321 wrote:
       | _The PCjs machine below starts Microsoft Windows 3.10, using an
       | IBM PC AT running PC DOS 3.30._
       | 
       | https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/windows/3.10/
       | 
       | I couldn't get Media Player to start, I guess they don't have the
       | sound card implemented / wired up. But they do have Visual Basic
       | 1!
        
       | twoodfin wrote:
       | "Object Packager"! I'd spend hours trying to figure out what you
       | could do with a utility sporting such a cool name & icon.
       | 
       | Did anyone ever use it for its mysterious but intended purpose?
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | I did. It wasn't very cool after all. I know what you mean
         | about the icon, too. And why wasn't it easier to get that kind
         | of cool custom icon for one's favorite, and still current, MS-
         | DOS apps at that time? Frustrating.
        
         | mikewave wrote:
         | IIRC - fuzzy old memories, but I think you could use it with
         | OLE to combine a few different embedded OLE sources into one
         | document, e.g. a Microsoft Draw vector piece and a Media Player
         | MID into one component that could be embedded elsewhere.
         | 
         | Very useless. Most Win 3.1 machines with 1-4MB RAM could barely
         | even start MS Draw without churning swap like they were trying
         | to make butter....
        
         | kvakvs wrote:
         | It wrapped media objects into compatible OLE 1.0 objects for
         | insertion into OLE containers (example: office documents,
         | presentations etc). It was a component of OLE before later
         | versions and before OLE became ActiveX, and learned to embed
         | stuff by themselves.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding#O...
        
           | thom wrote:
           | It's weird to think how big a part of desktop computing this
           | once was, and now there's no real expectation for it. Web
           | content's also not particularly embeddable. I used to love
           | KParts in KDE - I'd start the morning with Konqueror open
           | with some tabs showing web pages, some tabs showing my Excel
           | time sheet or the Word docs with specs for what I was working
           | on, and it was just totally normal that all this stuff worked
           | and composed together.
        
       | cousin_it wrote:
       | I think "computery" music (synthesized on the user's device from
       | individual notes) reached its peak with tracker/keygen music:
       | https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/ That was maybe the last
       | moment before video games switched to recorded music, and
       | chiptunes became a nostalgia genre.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | For the game I'm developing, I'm making its music in Amiga
         | Protracker. I'm probably going to render it down with MikMod or
         | similar for the actual game tracks, but the intent is to
         | capture that 90s vibe.
        
       | sabujp wrote:
       | live : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eRgGS4SuJ8
        
       | greyivy wrote:
       | A real treat was listening to this on the Yamaha softsynth
       | software that came with my IBM Aptiva.
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-07 23:02 UTC)