After I saw a video from Woody Piano Shack about a groovebox that was designed to mimic the Sega Mega Drive (a console whose sound chip is basically a stripped-down Yamaha DX7), I decided that, hey, I've got a website. I should talk about how the better system made its music. Yeah, sure. The Super NES didn't have anything like ToeJam & Earl on it.
Anyway, whether you think the Super NES was superior to the Mega Drive or not, indie game developers seem to love the 16-bit era right now, but the music is almost always wrong. If you want a Super NES-style game, you should go the extra mile and write Super NES-style music, for it. Fortunately, all of the original synth modules and ROMplers that the OG composers used are still available in VSTi or Soundfont form, and the methodology for creating a sample that genuinely sounds like it came off the Super NES is very simple. You can even do it with Audacity. Let's look first at all the equipment you'll need to start this process from scratch.
Necessary equipment.
Computer running some version of Windows, Linux, or MacOS
MIDI controller
Audacity (any version)
Polyphone soundfont editor
Digital audio workstation, such as FL Studio
plogue sforzando
You'll notice something about these... with the exception of the computer and the MIDI controller, it's all free. That's right—assuming you've already got the basic equipment for electronic music composition, you don't need to spend any money at all. If you don't, I'll cover low-cost MIDI controllers and composing rigs later. Now, let's address some of the most common synth modules used during the Super NES's lifetime.
Synth Modules of the Period.
Roland Corporation
SoundCanvas SC-55 | R-8 Rhythm Composer
| U-220 | MT-32
E-MU Systems
Proteus/1 | Emulator II | EMAX
Others
Kawai K1 | KORG M1 | KORG WaveStation | Fairlight CMI Series IIx | Gravis UltraSound
A place where people tend to stumble is sample CDs. Most of the composers at the time; including Koji Kondo, Soyo Oka, and David Wise; tended to use the Akai S1000, Roland S-10, or SampleCell; this allowed them to use non-standard sample library disks from Best Service, Digidesign, and others, which haven't been available generally since the very early 1990s. Fortunately, we don't need the entire sample library, we just need one sample; and lot of these library disks ended up on the Internet Archive.
Otherwise, the other gear can all be found in VSTi or soundfont form. The SC-55 goes by "SoundCanvas VA" now and is available from Roland Cloud. There are loads of soundfonts on the Internet Archive that claim to be the SC-55, but they're really not; usually, it's just Microsoft General MIDI by a different name.
Happily, the E-MU stuff is much less expensive. In fact, it's free. The Proteus 1, 2, & 3 were made into virtual instruments for the Emulator X3, all of which can be found on the Internet Archive. The E-MU Emax and Emulator II factory library have been reproduced in soundfont form and is also available on the Archive.
The Kawai K1 is recreated by an unofficial VST plugin, called K1v; while KORG has an official VST collection of all their old stuff, which includes the M1. Really, the only 2 Fairlight samples I've ever heard from a Super NES game are SARARR/Arr1, which is duplicated by the Emulator II factory library soundfont (located at 76 Voices 3/001 Dig Vcs); and ORCH5/Orch2, which isn't duplicated by any soundfont I've ever found. However, when it comes to orchestra hits, people tend to prefer the SC-55's. Finally, the Gravis UltraSound MIDI set has been made into a soundfont, also available from the Internet Archive.
If you're really keen on the Fairlight's ORCH2, though; it originated from the 1968 London Symphony Orchestra recording of the "Infernal Dance" from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, which you can find on YouTube. Just click there and use Audacity to sample the first chord. (Image source: DuckDuckGo search)
Can you record completely new samples for this? Well, yes, I suppose. It just wasn't done all that much. These composers were extremely busy and on inhumanly-tight schedules. Hardly enough time, some might say, to start a microphone recording and play a note on a cello.
What you SHOULDN'T use.
Without trying to gatekeep anyone, an authentic Super NES sound cannot be achieved from the 16-Bit Game Station soundfont. This is a MIDI canvas that was derived from several modern-age VSTi plugins, such as VSCO 2, Spitfire Audio LABS, and BBC Symphony Orchestra.
I would also advise against using the most common of the Super Nintendo soundfonts, either. While you can use it for reference when processing your audio, the samples are... not very good. That's the fault of the original sound designer working on the game, not the person who made the soundfont. 049 String Ensemble 1, for instance, was sampled much too low to be useful at higher pitches; plainly Kikuta was going to use principally basses, cellos, and violas in the Secret of Mana score, while you might require 4th-position violins.
Finally, do not use the Yamaha DX7 or any other digital FM synthesiser. The sounds made by this class of synthesisers were more emblematic of the Sega Mega Drive, while Nintendo was trying to get away from tone-based instrument programming.
The Super NES SDK samples.
One thing that tended to happen a lot was, composers didn't bother sampling anything new and restricted themselves to what was provided in the Super NES's software development kit. Or, they used it as a starting point so they wouldn't have to waste time sifting through 500 strings patches just to arrive back at the Proteus/1 anyway. While all the SDK samples are not completely known, these tend to show up a lot...
E-MU Proteus/1 - Instruments - 005 Strings
E-MU Proteus/1 - Instruments - 023 Trombone 1
E-MU Proteus/1 - Instruments - 042 Bass Syn 1
E-MU Proteus/1 - Instruments - 049 Marimba
E-MU Proteus/1 - Instruments - 055 Standard 3
KORG M1 - Programs - 11 E. Piano 1
KORG M1 - Programs - 12 Trumpet
KORG M1 - Programs - 17 Organ 2
Processing sounds.
Dock sforzando or the VSTi of your choice into a mixer track on your DAW and select an instrument patch to sample. Then, in Audacity, set the recording source to "Stereo Mix" or "Windows WASAPI" and click Record. Go back to your DAW and play either C4 or A4. If it's a one-shot sample, like a string pluck or a mallet, let the entire sound play out before letting up on the key. If it's a looping sample, like a string ensemble or synth-pad, play as much of it as you think you'll need in order to find a seamless loop point later (usually around 2 seconds). When finished, switch back to Audacity and stop the recording. Pare out all the silence (you may need to zoom all the way into the waveform to find where the audio starts and stops). Next, since Audacity can't save an 8-bit sample, we can simulate the effect using a light bitcrusher. Under "Effects" select "Nyquist Prompt", then type the following string...
(quantize s 64)
You can crush the bits more by reducing the number, but 64 is good for our purposes. Next, under "Tracks", select "Stereo track to mono". Even though the Super NES was capable of stereo sound, all of the source samples had to be monaural, which the composers and sound designers would then give stereo panning to in the actual implementation. Finally, under "Tracks / Resample...", change the sample rate to 8000 Hz, and save the resulting waveform in WAV format.
Back in the '90s, you would leave the samples as loose files to be uploaded into the ROM later, these days it's more useful to create a soundfont out of the samples you take. One-shot samples (mallets, plucked strings, drums, etc.) can be loaded into sforzando and played as instruments, but looping samples need a little extra attention. That's what Polyphone is for! Polyphone is a free SF2 editor that is really quite simple to use; here are the basics of how to use it, as they relate to creating a Super NES-style sample set.
Open Polyphone and create a new soundfont. Click the sine wave icon to specify a new sample file; just find the sample you took earlier. Once loaded into the program, its waveform will appear in the editor window. Left-click on the waveform to specify a start-point for the loop and right-click to specify an end-point. The area between the green and red lines will loop as long as the key on the MIDI controller is held down. In order to make a seamless loop, click the ▶ button to start the waveform playing, beginning with the start of the sample and continuously looping between the start- and end-points. At this point, you can fine-tune the loop points using the Up and Down arrows in the Loop section of the Information box (bottom-left side of the editor).
Once your sample loops seamlessly, click the Speaker icon to create an instrument from the selected sample. If you want the instrument's name to be different than the sample's, you can change it here. Make sure to keep the "Link sample" box checked, otherwise the instrument will be empty. Go to the instrument you just made, and click the eighth-notes icon to create a preset from the instrument. Name it, then click "OK". Congratulations! You now have the beginnings of your own Super NES-style soundfont! Repeat the process for all the samples you wish to make presets out of. If you want to put non-looping samples into the soundfont, double-click the "Loop playback" icon (by default, a rectangle with a closed loop) and select the flat black line. This will turn off the loop points and cause the sample to play out only once per keypress. Be sure to save your soundfont after every step! Polyphone is notoriously unstable and may crash on you, and it would be a sorry state of affairs to lose all your work.
Writing the music.
There's really only two things you need to remember when writing a Super NES-style piece. First, tracks are all monophonic; if you're like me, it'll be hard to remember to not play chords, but it's important. Second, the Super NES could only handle a total of 8 simultaneous sounds. If you don't play any chords and you restrict yourself to 8 tracks, you won't have any problem coming in under budget... at least with the music.
Something that may be foreign to modern game composers is the fact that Super NES background scores tended to consist of many unique songs, designed as loops 30-90 seconds in length. This limitation was generally because of the relatively high cost of memory at the time, but it's become part of the '90s zeitgeist now. It's up to you whether you keep to that time limitation, but in any case, the song must loop. Also, so-called "dynamic" musical scores were technically infeasible until the Nintendo 64; if a place needed a new layer to the music, then it called for a completely different song.
If you are earnestly writing music for a game project, the implementation procedure will be slightly different depending upon how the game engine has been developed to handle sound, and you'll need to talk to the director about how you should present your finished music. If they're going full-on Super NES mode, you will need to provide a MIDI score and the samples you took.
Parting thoughts.
It's the little details that make a game memorable. Your team's project is more likely to stand out amongst the piles of 16-bit roleplayers if it sets out to imitate the Super NES and it actually sounds like it. It's a little more involved than just loading a lot of SysEx files into FM8, but going the extra mile to not only create authentically 8-bit audio pipeline-sounding samples, but to also use period equipment, will show players that you do genuinely care about their experience.