Passport Designs
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| Private | |
| Industry | Music software |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Founders | Dave Kusek, John Borowicz |
| Products | Master Tracks Pro, Encore, etc. |
| Website | PassportMusic.com |
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 and Encore.
The company was founded in 1979 by Dave Kusek 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, moving to Half Moon Bay, California and finally to Foster City, California. Engineering offices were also briefly maintained in Minnesota and Portland, Oregon.
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 contains not only Mountain Computer Music System compatible sound function but also MIDI interface and keyboard interface of Sound Chaser Music keyboard in 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.
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, and then to port MIDI applications from Apple II to Commodore.
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