Yamaha TG100
A half-rack General MIDI tone generator that shipped before the standard was finished.
Overview
The TG100 is a General MIDI tone generator. EQ Magazine (April 1993, p.141) reviewed it and noted that, whatever the spec sheet implied, it offered only the usual 128 voices in the General MIDI default mode. That is the standard GM patch set, with nothing more exotic behind the front panel. The box was built to conform to a standard, not to exceed it.
The standard was still wet cement when the TG100 shipped. A columnist in Electronic Musician worked through the practicalities of General MIDI scoring and listed the TG100 among the "currently available GM devices." The others were Roland's SC-55 Sound Canvas and its SCC-1, SC-155 and JV-30 siblings, the Korg 03R/W, and Turtle Beach's MultiSound card. The rest of the piece explained why composing for GM was harder than it looked. The official "General MIDI System Level 1" document ran only eight pages. The column reported that the MMA and the Japanese MIDI Standards Committee were still working out how hardware should actually behave, and the relative levels and envelope speeds of individual sounds were among the chief unresolved concerns. A TG100 owner in 1992 was buying into a promise, not a settled platform.
What the TG100 could do was slot into a computer-based MIDI rig with a minimum of fuss. Software vendors of the era treated it as a reference point. PG Music's Band-in-a-Box Pro for Windows listed the TG100 among the supported drivers alongside the Roland MPU401, Sound Blaster, MultiSound and AdLib. The same company's PowerTracks sequencer named it in its DOS requirements list next to the Roland SC7 and Midiator interfaces. It is not glamorous work, but it is the job a tone generator gets hired for: sit at the end of a cable and make the sequencer sound like something. The TG100 was common enough in that role to turn up in the fine print of more than one software package.
The EQ verdict is the honest one. This is not a hidden-gem module with a cult patch set or a filter that breathes. It is a conforming GM box, and the contemporary press said so. Its appeal now is more historical than sonic, since it is one of the early devices that had to live with the ambiguity while General MIDI was being standardized in public. Whether that is worth owning depends on whether the buyer wants a piece of that history or a sound module that will surprise them. It will not surprise them.
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