Author Topic: Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1994-2001) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]  (Read 2097 times)

fusoxide

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Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1994-2001) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]
« on: July 29, 2023, 06:19:44 PM »
For those not in the know, Headspace (renamed to Beatnik in 1999) was an audio technology company founded by Thomas Dolby in 1993. It composed for video games, installations, websites, and other tech products. After the dot-com boom it shifted its focus to mobile audio by 2001, where it provided its engine to mobile manufacturers for playing back ringtones and other audio.

During 1997-1998, Headspace released a number of digital music libraries in the Rich Music Format (RMF), an encrypted MIDI-based format that allows samples to be included. These could be licensed by anyone for any usage if purchased, mostly for web sonification. Other companies also released RMF libraries, such as Sonicopia and Extreme Music, but these are currently lost save for a relatively small amount of individual tracks.

In 1999-2000, Beatnik partnered with FirstCom, who released the Headspace Music Library, which consists of 18 CDs. This contains remixes of older material, as well as whole CDs worth of new material. Unfortunately there aren't any lossless rips available.

TitleComposers/ArrangersYearDownload (RMF)Download (FLAC)
Headspace RMF Vol. 1: MellowPaul Sebastien, Brian Salter, Thomas Dolby1997
Not available yet
Headspace RMF Vol. 2: UpbeatBrian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Jim B-Reay1997
Not available yet
Headspace RMF Vol. 3: StingersBrian Salter, Paul Sebastien1997
Headspace RMF Vol. 4: AmbientPaul Sebastien, Blake Leyh, Kim Cascone1997
Headspace RMF Vol. 5: ClassicalBrian Salter, Kean Freitas1997
Not available yet
Headspace RMF Vol. 6: Sonic IconsKim Cascone, Paul Sebastien, Blake Leyh1997
Headspace RMF Vol. 7: UndergroundBrian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Blake Leyh, Kim Cascone1997
Headspace RMF Vol. 8: MoodsBrian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Blake Leyh1997
Headspace RMF Vol. 9: AtmospheresBlake Leyh, Brian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Kim Cascone1997
Not available yet
Headspace RMF Vol. 10: HolidayBrian Salter, Brown Bros.1997
Headspace RMF Holiday Sound EffectsKim Cascone1997
Headspace RMF Vol. 11: Sonic Icons IIKim Cascone, Brian Salter1998
Headspace RMF Vol. 12: TravelThomas Dolby, Mitchel Forman, Dan & Free, Brian Salter, Kean Freitas, Iki Levy1998
Headspace RMF Vol. 13: ElectronicaGianluigi Di Costanzo, Tony Hoffer, Brian Salter1998

Miscellaneous - some other packs I have that are related. These are mostly compilations of other tracks by Headspace, including sample tracks and ones they created for products. The Beatnik session file for the RMF version of the Headspace Music Library CD "Twilight Visitor" has also surfaced; I did export RMFs, although there's no metadata.
TitleComposersYearDownload (RMF)Download (FLAC)
Green Dinosaur CollectionThomas Dolby, Jim B-Reay, Paul Sebastien1996
Not available yet
WebTV ClassicMichael Pukish, Brian Salter, Thomas Dolby, Michael Walthius, Peter Drescher1996
Headspace RMF Sampler / Beatnik DemoBrian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Kean Freitas, Thomas Dolby1997
Beatnik patches bank GroovoidsBlake Leyh, Brian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Thomas Dolby, Kim Cascone1997
Headspace Music Library Vol. 2: Twilight Visitor (RMF ver.)Brian Salter1999
AOLTVThomas Dolby, Brian Salter, Paul Sebastien, Blake Leyh2000
Beatnik Player for PocketPC sample tracksSteven Clark, Brian Salter, Steve Horner2001

I haven't recorded all of these yet, but I definitely aim to have the entire table filled in the future. To play the RMFs you will need a program such as BXPlayerGUI.

Hope this is of interest to anyone here! It may not be vinyl or CD rips, but still library music nonetheless.
« Last Edit: October 29, 2023, 05:52:41 PM by fusoxide »
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Psyclon

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2023, 10:03:23 PM »
Oh wow-wowow!

Now this is interesting! I feel like we have 2000s again when I fumbled with VGZ and RSN file formats (Sega MegaDrive / Super Nintendo sound files respectively) after I finally got STK tracker modules running in ModPlug tracker. Heck, even the BXPlayer's GUI looks like TiMidity++ and XMPlayer and all these module/tracker/MIDI players from back then! Even right now as I type this, I have Winamp running with the AdPlug plugin playing back a DRO file from DooM II.

This is for sure an absolute niche find you have posted here and an absolute rarity in terms of "execution". But here also comes my personal problem. I'd like to dive into this, but just like with regular MIDI, the sound is vastly different per soundbank (or hardware synthesizer if you still have one. I have a SoundBlaster Z but they got rid of their HW synths ages ago in their consumer PC hardware lines I guess). So I checked the soundbanks/patches that come with the program and - how do really know which sound is supposed to be the right one? I remember very well the arguments which SF2 file would play the best for each thing, so "if you want to litsen to DooM MIDIs, use XX soundfont but if you want nice strings, use that soundfont". Currenly I use a 950 MByte soundfont for MIDI playback where some commentors shiver because "It sounds off" to their ears. And that is MIDI problematic in a nutshell.

What do you, fusoxide, think about that whole matter?


fusoxide

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2023, 10:17:54 PM »
This is for sure an absolute niche find you have posted here and an absolute rarity in terms of "execution". But here also comes my personal problem. I'd like to dive into this, but just like with regular MIDI, the sound is vastly different per soundbank (or hardware synthesizer if you still have one. I have a SoundBlaster Z but they got rid of their HW synths ages ago in their consumer PC hardware lines I guess). So I checked the soundbanks/patches that come with the program and - how do really know which sound is supposed to be the right one? I remember very well the arguments which SF2 file would play the best for each thing, so "if you want to litsen to DooM MIDIs, use XX soundfont but if you want nice strings, use that soundfont". Currenly I use a 950 MByte soundfont for MIDI playback where some commentors shiver because "It sounds off" to their ears. And that is MIDI problematic in a nutshell.

What do you, fusoxide, think about that whole matter?
patches111 is the preferred bank for the Headspace RMF tracks, and what I used for these recordings, as it sounds the best. It is 1.1 MB and was the default bank of the Beatnik Player plugin. There's also a lower quality version called patches, which is the default bank in Beatnik Editor sessions. WebTV Plus devices also have a variant of the bank with even further degraded quality. There's also patchesp, which was the default bank of Beatnik Player Pro, and replaces some of the instruments with different higher quality samples. And then there's a bunch of mobile banks which are not at all ideal for playing these RMFs.

Another complexity here is that later versions of BAE (from around 2000 onwards) have slight differences in terms of synthesis. Some of them (e.g Garden of Time) thus do not play correctly on the newer versions (which is included with BXPlayerGUI); unfortunately the old plugin is limited to 22 KHz, which isn't ideal for recording these.
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Psyclon

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2023, 10:20:00 PM »
Gotcha. This is pretty much the information I needed. Is there any potential cover art / media coming along? Just something in case I find something I'd like to put into the tags as cover art?
To me, this whole format is new to me. I just knew about RMI which are MIDI with text for karaoke reasons, but a hybrid of like RMF is a first-timer!

fusoxide

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2023, 10:41:19 PM »
The first five volumes have little covers/icons that were shown on the Headspace website. Couldn't find any sort of cover art for later ones (and the site from 1996-99 wasn't fully archived either), so I just used the Headspace logo, rather than putting together my own covers.

Hope you enjoy these gems - many of these clearly have a lot of work put into them for sure, and are also genuinely great tunes too. I suppose RMF is comparable to sequenced music formats in video games, which are typically based on MIDI while using custom samples. It probably stayed more niche than regular MIDI due to it being proprietary though.
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Fuzi

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2023, 04:23:47 AM »
Very interesting fuso, thank you 8]

Reminds me of Flash and the time when adding sensorial design to the web was all the rage. We were so worried about bandwidth. We woke up today and Elon has gridlocked the sky with Starlink… but still, we're stuck with HTML and Javascript lol

I am immensely grateful that LMT is not a Bruton's sample fiends shop and is rich of all types of interesting collections, music lovers, and archivists

As Martin Sheen says in Badlands: "… takes all kinds!"
Life with ⓁⓂⓉ is so rich!

fusoxide

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #6 on: July 31, 2023, 10:47:23 PM »
Glad there's been interest in this little library. By the way, if anyone has the CD library and is willing to share FLAC rips, please do so. I have been working on an archive of Beatnik content, and these CDs are very hard to find.

Also finalized recordings for the Travel library, and added some other miscellaneous packs to my first post. Hopefully I could get Classical recorded soon-ish, which should be nice and easy. Some of the others will take more work to record due to playback quirks, as well as there being so many files.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2023, 11:34:30 PM by fusoxide »
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keir

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #7 on: August 05, 2023, 06:14:23 PM »
Thanks, this is great stuff!

I upscaled a couple of the little cover/icon images to twice the size so although they're still small they're a bit more useable, here they are if anyone wants them


fusoxide

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #8 on: August 05, 2023, 09:41:45 PM »
Here's the other three icons if anyone wants them or to upscale them. I'll try and get the remaining collections recorded this month (but will need to re-record a few tracks in other collections, due to incorrect playback).


On that note, I'd also like to discuss Headspace's pre-RMF (mostly MIDI) collections, prior to launching Beatnik and RMF in 1997. So in 1994, Paul Sebastien founded the music publisher Power of Seven; this was acquired by Headspace the following year. Power of Seven composed opening themes for games, and also had at least two libraries: Hip Clip Library (likely low-quality pieces of streamed music) and Hip MIDI Trax. Unfortunately both of these are lost, although Jim B-Reay (a contractor) posted two Hip Clip tracks on his SoundCloud: Dark Helmet and Moving.

At some point in 1995-96, the MIDI stuff was integrated into Headspace's own library, and new material was composed by Sebastien, Thomas Dolby, B-Reay, and possibly other contractors. They released new MIDI libraries based around genres/themes, including the Green Dinosaur Collection, which contains a selection of these tracks. After Headspace's WebTV project, Brian Salter (who was also involved with WebTV) was given a trial contract to compose two collections of jazz and soundtrack-inspired MIDIs. This led to him joining as a full employee, where he composed much of the tracks found in these RMF collections. Unfortunately we don't have many of the full MIDI collections, only parts of them - some WebTV devices manufactured by Sony shipped with selections of these.
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fusoxide

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Re: Headspace RMF Library (1997-1998) [RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2023, 01:30:45 AM »
An update: I got in touch with Jim B-Reay! He was happy to talk about his work, and sent me archives of the stuff he did for both Hip Clip Music and Hip MIDI Trax, which I've brought together here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1Ce-gZk1ZIpVZDFCGmIy0O79DAXVJV_cK Most of these are dance/pop-oriented.

He also sent me links to some interesting blog posts he wrote about his work in 2009:
https://talesfromthe90s.blogspot.com/2009/10/1995-hip-clips.html
https://talesfromthe90s.blogspot.com/2009/10/summer-1996-awesome-denouement.html
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Craig-UK

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Re: Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1995-1998) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2023, 11:11:49 AM »
Thank you very much for sharing these. I have no idea how to listen to the RMF files but the flacs are awesome, thank you

Psyclon

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Re: Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1995-1998) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2023, 03:08:16 PM »
Do you have Jim B-Reay's RMF stuff or just those MP3s?

fusoxide

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Re: Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1995-1998) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2023, 03:54:46 PM »
Thank you very much for sharing these. I have no idea how to listen to the RMF files but the flacs are awesome, thank you
There's BXPlayerGUI, which is a GUI program that is a wrapper for BAE. Select the "Beatnik Standard" bank for the intended sound. There's also playBAE, a command line tool that can play these.

By the way, I seen on another forum you mentioned having the Headspace Music Library CDs in your collection. Do you have any lossless rips of those? We would greatly appreciate that.
Do you have Jim B-Reay's RMF stuff or just those MP3s?
Jim did not do any RMFs; that format was not released until 1997, and he was only involved in 1994-96, when it was MIDIs. The MP3s are the original versions made for the Hip Clip Library. Unfortunately those CD-ROMs are lost and I don't have any dumps of the files, nor any info on specific volumes and what tracks were part of which one. Maybe I could ask Jim for WAV/FLAC versions though. I also changed the title of the thread to cover Headspace's pre-RMF libraries.
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Psyclon

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Re: Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1995-1998) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2023, 06:06:24 PM »
Just to get it straight to me: Those MP3s are MIDIs played back on someone's system and then recorded or directly from Jim? I mean, MIDI is obviously not the issue, I am more concerned about "sounds different then intented due to the use of a different synthesizer/soundfont" if you know what I mean. If these are Jim's, I gladly take them as this is "his". If ... you get what I mean.

(Many albums from other labels have a very strong MIDI feel and it is often cringeworthy how cheap they sound - as if played back by consumer hardware on a Win95 machine. Yuck!)

EDIT: According to your links provided, he used his real hardware - so I assume those MP3s are "safe to be the real deal". I just seem not to fully understand whether he was doing MIDIs on a disk or actual audio files as he talks about great space of a CD-ROM to juggle with. So these were probably WAVs as that would be fine for infotainment disks back then.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2023, 06:12:19 PM by Psyclon »

fusoxide

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Re: Headspace MIDI/RMF Library (1995-1998) [MIDI/RMF/FLAC]
« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2023, 06:48:50 PM »
Yes, he used a variety of synths for the Hip Clip tracks, then for the MIDIs he used Yamaha TG100 for testing them. My Google Drive folder has a subfolder of MIDI recordings that were recorded by my friend from her own TG100.

So to my understanding, the CD-ROMs included the tracks in low, medium and high quality - though not sure of the specifics. Wouldn't be surprised if it was 22khz ADPCM WAV like other CD-ROM music libraries I've heard from this time period, lol. Seems that Hip MIDI Trax was released on CD-ROM too; Paul's bio on the old Headspace site mentions:
Quote
Team leader/director of Power of Seven, Inc.'s successful 'Hip Clip Music' and 'Hip Midi Trax' cd-rom series (1994). Managed a team of composers and technicians from product inception to completion.
Although it seems it was just Jim doing the music; I think he just wanted to make those libraries sound like bigger projects than they actually were. It seems he didn't do his own music for Headspace until around 1996, since before that he wanted to save his ideas for Psykosonik.
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