A long-forgotten piece of my past has recently resurfaced. I didn't think much about it, but I am the guy who wrote JAZZ.MID and REGGAE.MID that come with the SoundBlaster.

OK, here's the story. I was working for Voyetra Technologies at the time, a company that was writing DOS MIDI Sequencing software (before Cakewalk) and they were supporting all the MIDI interfaces of the day. While I was working there, the SoundBlaster came on the scene (the first) and we got hooked up with Brown-Waugh, at the time the sole distributor of Creative Labs products, and we landed a deal to make a scaled-down version of the sequencer to go with the MIDI Interface Kit. Voyetra also wrote the MIDI driver, and... supplied a few demo songs. 

I don't know where the rest of them came from, but I had written a shitload of demo MIDI sequences for them as an employee. I was just happy to be able to make music of any kind and get paid for it. :-) 

JAZZ.MID is completely my composition. However, REGGAE.MID is actually a song that I wrote with a childhood pal of mine, Marc Frucht. As I recall he had mixed feelings about me handing it over to Voyetra, but it would have otherwise never been heard by millions of nerds all over the world. I think the consensus between us these days is that it's pretty damn cool that so many people have heard it. The original tune was called “Hey Mon” I think I have a recording of us both singing it somewhere. I know he does.

I remember going to Comdex in Atlanta back in the early 90s and having dinner with Dick Brown (from Brown-Waugh) as well as Mr. Sim, the inventor of the Sound Blaster. As I recall he (Sim) was impressed with the fact that I had re-recorded the VOC files for the parrot and compiled them into the talking parrot application. He actually gave me an opportunity to do them over more professionally and he would have included them with the sound blaster, but I was young and stupid and didn't realize how big the SoundBlaster was going to get. Oh well... it's really a very very small piece of geek history.

So, have any of you heard these tunes? Whaddya think of Jazz.mid? It sounded great on my Korg M1 at the time. I have several other jazz combo sequences that are pretty cool. I recall spending an insane amount of time on them.