OPL3 music 3

For those who may not know, the Yamaha OPL3, also known as the YMF262, was the primary MIDI synthesizer chip on the Soundblaster Pro 2.0, Soundblaster 16, and various other old PC soundcards. It used to be extremely common in old PCs, and for this reason, a good number of DOS games utilized this chip for music, as well as its predecessor, the YM3812, also known as the OPL2. These chips were based around what is known as FM synthesis, a method of sound generation also used by the YM2612 in the Sega Genesis/Megadrive, as well as tons of different synthesizers in the 80s and 90s.

FM synthesis has a very distinctive sound, which I am fond of, though unfortunately it tends to be quite difficult to compose music for, so as a result a lot of composers took shortcuts by either trying to shoehorn General MIDI tracks into FM, or by using programs like Sega's GEMS sound system. Both of these methods tended to produce terrible sounding music, but, there was one program that could fully exploit the OPL3's capabilities to make awesomely killer FM music... enter Adlib Tracker II.