Passport Designs Inc. was a software company that created early music production software, such as the pre-MIDI SoundChaser in 1982. Other programs included

Master Tracks Pro Master Tracks Pro (MTP) is music-sequencer software for Windows, to author and/or edit MIDI data. David Kusek and Don Williams ''et al.'' at Passport Designs originally created it, continuation of marketing and development by GVOX, and, as of A ...

and

Encore An encore is an additional performance given by performers after the planned show has ended, usually in response to extended applause from the audience.Lalange Cochrane, in ''Oxford Companion to Music'', Alison Latham, ed., Oxford University Pres ...

History

Founding and early years

The company was founded in 1979 by

Dave Kusek Dave Kusek is an American business executive, music educator, author, and software developer known for his work in the music industry. After working as chief engineer at Star Instruments in the 1970s, in 1980 he became the founding CEO of the mu ...

and John Borowicz, and incorporated in 1980, with Kusek as CEO and Borowicz as Vice-President of Development. They had previously worked together at Electronic Music Labs from 1973–76 and Star Instruments from 1976-79. The company was originally headquartered in

Montara, California Montara () is a census-designated place (CDP) in San Mateo County, California, United States. The population was 2,833 at the 2020 census. Nearby communities include Moss Beach and Princeton-by-the-Sea. Etymology According to historical source ...

, moving to

Half Moon Bay, California Half Moon Bay is a coastal city in San Mateo County, California, United States, approximately south of San Francisco. Its population was 11,795 as of the 2020 census. Immediately at the north of Half Moon Bay is Pillar Point Harbor and the un ...

and finally to Foster City, California. Engineering offices were also briefly maintained in

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

and

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

Early computer music software

The company was a pioneer in the field of computer music, introducing the pre-MIDI SoundChaser in 1982. This Apple II-based system included the Mountain Computer Music System, a programmable 8-voice wavetable synthesizer that fit in two Apple II slots, the Soundchaser 4-octave keyboard, and system software, written by Kusek, that emulated a four-track tape recorder. After Mountain Computer discontinued the Mountain Computer Music System, Passport developed the Soundchaser MX-5(MX-500) Card to use instead. The MX-5 contained a Mountain Computer Music System-compatible sound function as well as a MIDI interface and the keyboard interface of the Soundchaser Music keyboard in a single card. In 1983, composer John Melcher developed 4-Track Editor, a composing application that enabled music to be entered like a word-processor. The same year, Passport released Turbo-Traks, a 16-track version of their recording software. At this time, they also released Notewriter, a "real-time monophonic music transcriber", and Notetools, an add-on to convert Notewriter files to 4-Track Performance files. They also released a series of educational applications, written by Dr. Charles Brody.

MIDI

When the first MIDI specification was adopted in 1983, Passport put all of its development resources in this direction, licensing and developing a MIDI interface from Rittor Music in Japan and hiring Melcher to develop MIDI recording software. Composer Phil Stone was also hired at this time, first to develop audio for games on the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

, and then to port MIDI applications from Apple II to Commodore. The first of these were MIDI/2 and MIDI/4, two-track and four-track MIDI sequencer/recorders for Apple II and Commodore 64 platforms, including OEM versions of MIDI/4 for Yamaha and Korg. These were introduced at the 1984 National Association of Music Manufacturers (NAMM) trade show, the first commercially available MIDI sequencers in the United States. These were followed by Master Tracks in 1985, and Master Tracks Pro in 1986. This software pushed the Apple II to its limits, working with an optional card to extend the Apple's memory from 48K to 2M. In 1987, after Melcher left Passport,

was completely rewritten for the Apple Macintosh, and later the Atari ST series computers, and still exists for Windows and Apple O/Ses. Nine MIDI files by the company were included in Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions. From

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

, only PASSPORT.MID, and CANYON.MID ("Trip Through the Grand Canyon" composed by George Stone) remained, which are located in the MEDIA directory. Windows 3.1 only included the latter.

Other applications

PolyWriter, Passport's first music notation application, was released in 1984, followed by

, a professional music notation application capable of creating high-quality scores. The Encore feature set was adapted to different markets and sold as Rhapsody, MusicTime and MusicTime Deluxe. There was also a version called music@Passport, an attempt to integrate web-based music publishing into a desktop notation editor. Passport Memphis was a guitar tablature creation application that offered an easy to use drag-and-drop interface that enabled the user to create and print easy-to-read tabs. Alchemy was a waveform audio editor, originally developed by Blank Software and subsequently purchased by Passport, that integrated Macintosh computers with most current digital sampler brands that supported the MIDI Sample Dump Standard, including Akai, Casio, E-mu, Ensoniq, Korg, Kurzweil, Peavey and Roland. Later versions allowed users to create a sound library that could be shared those sounds across multiple sampler formats. The final version, version 3.0, was released in 1996. The professional standard

SCORE Score or scorer may refer to: *Test score, the result of an exam or test Business * Score Digital, now part of Bauer Radio * Score Entertainment, a former American trading card design and manufacturing company * Score Media, a former Canadian m ...

music engraving program was written by

Leland Smith Leland Clayton Smith (August 6, 1925 – December 17, 2013) was an American musician, teacher and computer scientist. He taught at Stanford University for 34 years, and developed the music engraving tool SCORE. Career Smith was born in Oaklan ...

with additions by Perry Devine of Passport Designs and released by the company in 1987. Shifting focus from music software to the nascent "multimedia" market, they introduced Passport Producer in 1992, and Producer Pro 1.0 in 1994.

Sale of the company

The company sold its assets to G-VOX in 1998, when Passport Designs ceased to exist as a company. In August 2013, G-VOX sold the rights to most of its software (Encore, MusicTime Deluxe, MasterTracks Pro, Bring Music to Life) to Passport Music Software, LLC. On 31 January 2022 Passport Music Software, LLC ceased trading and offered the company and its

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

for sale. In mid-2022 the original developer of Encore, Don Williams, bought the company and announced a new version of Encore for an autumn release the same year.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official website
Defunct software companies of the United States Software companies based in California Defunct companies based in California Software companies established in 1980 Technology companies disestablished in 1998 1980 establishments in California 1998 disestablishments in California