Descent Correct General MIDI Roland SC-55 Soundtrack
30The complete General MIDI soundtrack to Descent, composed by Ken Allen, Brian Luzietti, Larry Peacock, Leslie Spitzer, Jim Torres, and Tim Wiles, played via NukedSC55 emulating a Roland SC-55mkII. Why yet another SC-55 recording? Because all sets of SC-55 recordings (and all SC-55 MIDI files) that we could find suffer from two flaws: lack of channel initialization, and FM tracks being played by the General MIDI device.
"Lack of channel initialization" means that some MIDI files do not set the drum map, reset the pitch bend, or set the volume, panpot, reverb, or chorus registers. If the General MIDI device is not reset by other means between tracks, then any such file will be influenced by the last settings from the previous file. This is particularly egregious if the previous file modified the pitch bend setting of the drum channel. Our recording resets the General MIDI device between files.
Most of the game's music comes in two variants: a file with the .HMP extension containing only the General MIDI tracks, and another file with the .HMQ extension containing only the FM tracks. But other pieces come as a single .HMP file that contains both the General MIDI and FM tracks; the game's original playback routine used metadata embedded in that .HMP file to tell which track should be played by which device. Publicly-available HMP-to-MIDI converters and players do not interpret that metadata, and so the FM tracks are played alongside the General MIDI tracks. This is most apparent in "Mars Military Base" and "Tethys H2O Mine". Our recording only plays the tracks that are supposed to play on General MIDI as the game intended.
0:00:00 - Descent Theme
0:03:52 - Briefing
0:06:48 - Lunar Outpost
0:10:11 - Lunar Scilab
0:13:57 - Lunar Military Base
0:17:30 - Venus Atmospheric Lab
0:20:03 - Venus Nickel-Iron Mine
0:23:08 - Mercury Solar Lab
0:25:47 - Mercury Core
0:28:46 - Mars Processing Station
0:31:42 - Mars Military Dig
0:35:15 - Mars Military Base
0:40:14 - Io Sulfur Mine
0:43:14 - Callisto Tower Colony
0:46:16 - Europa Mining Colony
0:49:41 - Europa CO2 Mine
0:53:35 - Titan Mine
0:56:45 - Hyperion Methane Mine
0:59:55 - Tethys H2O Mine
1:03:08 - Miranda Mine
1:07:11 - Oberon Mine
1:09:57 - Oberon Iron Mine
1:13:10 - Oberon Platinum Mine
1:16:13 - Neptune Storage Depot
1:19:05 - Escape
1:19:26 - Ending
1:21:36 - Credits