If you’ve been following the saga of E-MU’s ROM cards, you know their sound designers were a feral pack of creative geniuses who loved nothing more than misspelling words, inventing sci-fi villains, and slipping inappropriate meat puns into their synthesizer patches.

And then… the 1991 General MIDI (GM) Standard was enforced by the global MIDI Manufacturers Association.

This ROM card is the musical equivalent of a beige cubicle. It is the sound of E-MU’s rebellious programmers being forced to tuck in their shirts, sit at a desk, and follow an internationally mandated, 128-item checklist. There was no room for “PsykoCowboy2.” There was only the Standard.

Let us observe what happens when untamed 90s synth wizards are forced into absolute, bureaucratic compliance:

You can almost feel the physical pain the programmers experienced when naming patches 065. Alto Sax and 073. Flute. They desperately wanted to name them “Sax Sex” and “Flutation,” but the shadowy overlords of the GM committee were watching. They had to play it straight all the way through the brass and woodwinds.

When you get to the synth pad section, you see 101. Goblin and 103. Star Theme. While these sound like classic E-MU weirdness, they aren’t! These names were legally required by the international GM treaty. The committee simply demanded that every synthesizer on earth must possess exactly one Goblin.

The absolute best part of the General MIDI standard is the deeply confusing sound effects category slapped at the very end. The committee decreed that for a keyboard to be fully compliant, it must be able to generate a 123. Bird Tweet, a 124. Telephone, and a 125. Helicopter. Thus, you had producers buying a $2,000, state-of-the-art Z-plane rack synthesizer just so they could trigger the sound of a ringing rotary phone.

Standard General MIDI dictates that patch 126 must be “Applause” and 127 must be “Gunshot.” But look closely at the list! E-MU’s designers couldn’t take it anymore. In a final, desperate act of defiance, they scrubbed the gunshot, deleted the applause, and shoved in a 126. TR-808 drum kit before sprinting out of the studio.

Ultimately, this card served one incredibly noble purpose in the 1990s: allowing you to play the Doom PC game soundtrack or the Windows 95 canyon.mid file with absolute, unparalleled studio fidelity.