I've been reading a little about composing music and sound for pre-cd consoles (NES, Sega Genesis, SNES) with curiosity, but there's a little that

I'm having a hard time getting the concept of.

So from what I understand, on those consoles, they had to "code" the music/sound while programming the game, typing in certain codes to make certain sound.

But I heard even in those days, actual instruments were involved in the development, mainly synth keyboards.

So the question there was did they just have composers make music with those instruments then record them (Tapes or on computers?) and hand them to whoever

was writing the game's code for them to listen to it so they could translate it step by step, matching the notes played in the recorded music into the best batching sound making code lines the console could do?

Or did they somehow connect their keyboards to a workstation computer to map the keyboard keys to play different sounds from certain console codes on the computer?

It must of been hard if they had to translate the music's notes step by step, were they able to write their own software to help convert the music?

I'm also wondering if the case was any different on Genesis, or other consoles with FM chips. Was it possible to use any of those FM synths like Yamaha keyboards from the 80's to compose straight to the Genesis's sound chip since they were both FM based, or would that composed FM music still need to be translated indifferently?

As you can tell, I'm probably overthinking this so hopefully this wouldn't be too hard for anyone to explain. I'm all ears here, If you happen to have stores of composing music and sound for video games taking place in the time frame I described, I'd be really interested in hearing them and it would probably help me gain the idea.

Thanks.

Back in the 1980's most of the composers were actually programmers who also knew music. And they were code everything in via a trackr like system. MIDI and bank files with samples are still used today for 3DS games and even on the Wii in some cases.

Thank you guys for the helpful answers!

I'll see if I can answer your questions--sorry for the very lengthy reply!

No worries in the slightest, I found all of it very fun to read as well as very helpful! I really appreciate you taking the time to describe as much as you have

So the "coding" (actually writing computer programs) was done once--to write the Sound system. AFter that, anyone would create these "notelist" files could write the music, given some semi-technical instruction.

-> So the question there was did they just have composers make music with those instruments then record them (Tapes or on computers?) and hand them to whoever was writing the game's code for them to listen to it so they could translate it step by step, matching the notes played in the recorded music into the best batching sound making code lines the console could do?

Not really. As I mentioend above, once you have a programmer write a system, then the composer/sfx person doesn't necessarily need to be able to write comptuer code to write the music for the game.

In these cases what would a "System" mean? Unless you were just referring to the Console's "Sound Operating System" at the beginning, as if you were saying "Writing to" the sound operating system. In those sentences I'm comprehending it as something like a program written for the composer to help them compose music under the limits of the console, or something along the lines of that. I apologize for my confusion

-> Or did they somehow connect their keyboards to a workstation computer to map the keyboard keys to play different sounds from certain console codes on the computer?

Not quite sure I understand that quesiton. But, for example, for SNES games I did, we designed a special MIDI interface to the SNES (it went to the cartridge slot). That would let me play a note on the keyboard, and have it play from the synth chip in the SNES itself.

In these cases what would a "System" mean? Unless you were just referring to the Console's "Sound Operating System" at the beginning, as if you were saying "Writing to" the sound operating system. In those sentences I'm comprehending it as something like a program written for the composer to help them compose music under the limits of the console, or something along the lines of that. I apologize for my confusion

Yes, I was just referring to the "Sound Operating System" (although the SOS was something that game developers generally had to write themselves-- the consoles didn't come with one, for the most part.
It is pretty confusing.. the SOS runs on the console itself, and it interprets data files to control the synthesizer.

Basically I was asking if there was a way to simulate/emulate the sounds of the console's sound chips on the computer being used for development. With that "Special MIDI Interface" did you hear the sounds resulting from the key presses straight out of the SNES, with it being plugged into a TV/Speakers or was it also plugged into a computer with the sounds going into it so you could hear them from that?

No, there were no 'emulators' that would run on a PC to let you hear what the sound chip would sound like. This was 1990, when a state of the art PC was a 30Mhz--computers these days are literally a thousand times more powerful when you consider clock speed, multi-core and vector instructions. :)
"VST" wouldn't be invented for another 6 years.


Yes, you could hear the results of pressing on a MIDI keyboard and hear the results coming right out of the SNES.

When we finally got that working, it was a great boon to productivity (before that we had to do a lot of file copying--using floppys, and run some other magic to make the SNES make sound).