Why so few new MOD/XM artists? (Page 1 of 10)

While I really enjoy listening to MOD/XM, I haven't felt the urge to try my hand at it.  Call it fetishism if you want, but I do like composing on a Game Boy that I can hold and carry around.  And from a personal musical standpoint, I really enjoy the (in some cases severe) limitations imposed on me by "real" hardware. (I say "real" because I also enjoy software that imposes these limitations, like famitracker, etc.)  The limitations force me to employ workarounds that often lead to results that can often be rather interesting.

Of course, I could impose those same limitations on myself with MOD/XM, but I'd totally cheat.

All that being said, I did recently download Milky Tracker...

I also think for newer people to the genre, a Game Boy or NES is easier to identify with.

no idea why i haven't downloaded milky tracker on this thing. thanks for the reminder!

Every time I have a poke at milky, I just wonder why I would use it rather than renoise... or something like neilsequencer. It kind of sits in that not limited enough to be interesting, yet not powerful enough to do everything I want (easily) spot..

I think many of us don't/didn't understand the workflow, at least I didn't myself for a while.

ALTHOUGH, the other day I was dicking around, and believe it or not I just "got" milky out of nowhere. Now, just to write something with it. It really isn't as intimidating as it may seem.

Last edited by an0va (Jul 12, 2011 4:29 am)

Since LSDJ I've been an newbie to trackers, and I'm slowly working my way up to the more advanced tracker options.
Right now, non of the easier trackers that I use have module exports, and frankly I don't need it.

So long as I have fun making the music, I don't care whether it's in WAV, MP3 or MOD.
But if the option's there, why not? Modules are significantly smaller in size than traditional audio files.

I think it also has to do with it not being 80s retro nostalgia blips and bloops "lol remember mario?"

That said, sometimes i enjoy the synthesis side of things. i like being able to say "i want that kick longer" and i can make it longer.

I do plenty of xm. soon to be more mods.

Lets put it like this. I dont like it. .xm and .mod file types tend to be used by trackers i am not fond of. part of it is because of the generally busy looking ui and the fact that i have no control over live play but mostly I find that the results tend to sound cheesy for me. the programs are far less primitive then a lot of other programs but the sonic editing is pretty weak. good samples = good sound is easy but if you cant manipulate the sound it is useless in the long run. sample synthesis can be exciting but it really needs the same attention for sound design as a subtractive gets at least.

the one exception i found to this is with nitrotracker. that gets points just because it is mobile and has a touch interface.

all in all xm and mod are just playback files in my mind. they are like mp3s except you have to have special programs to listen and like i said... cheese.

Last edited by wedanced (Jul 12, 2011 6:04 am)