Remember when cell phones only had ringtones in MIDI format? Imagine having to find a ringtone from the band Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, or OMD, in MIDI format back then. I think it would have been almost impossible; you would have had to make your own OMD MIDI ringtone. Fortunately though, over the years technology has come a long way and now, although all cell phones still support ringtones in MIDI format, you can still have your favorite song in excellent quality as a polyphonic ringtone. You can even have your favorite OMD polyphonic ringtones.
For those of you who don’t know, MIDI ringtones differ from polyphonic ringtones in the way they sound and the space they take up in your cell phone’s memory. A MIDI ringtone sounds like a small piano is playing the song, and while it sounds great, it has a lot of limitations. For example, with OMD’s polyphonic tones you can listen to the lyrics of any OMD song, such as If You Leave. Without an OMD polyphonic ringtone, such as a MIDI ringtone, you will only be able to hear the rhythm of the song played by distinctive piano keys.
After the movie Pretty in Pink, I fell in love with the OMD song If You Leave and instantly downloaded the OMD polyphonic ringtone on my cell phone. For about six months I had that OMD polyphonic ringtone every time someone called me.
Then I got a pretty cool cell phone that allowed me to set a different ringtone for each person who might call me. You can imagine that I ended up downloading the best OMD songs and gave my closest friends a separate OMD polyphonic ringtone. At first I had to look at the screen to see how he was doing, but now just by the sound of a different polyphonic tone from OMD I know who it is.
For my husband I have the ringtone If You Leave OMD and for my mother I have Souvenir. I gave my best friend Tesla Girls because it’s our favorite song. I have a lot of fun with my friends and family with each of OMD’s polyphonic tones.
Thank goodness cell phones can have polyphonic ringtones, I don’t know what I would do without my OMD polyphonic ringtones that I have become so used to. It might sound a bit exaggerated, but as a friend of mine says, once you go polyphonic you can’t go back, or something like that.
