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Inspired by LazerBeat's "Why so Few MOD/XM artist?" thread, I thought we should discuss what's so great about mods and trackers.

History of Trackers and Module Formats:

Mod tracking all started when Commodore Amiga introduced computers with the Paula sound chip. Paula was a big step for home computing. Until then home computers had barely any capability of playing digital sound, but Paula changed that with 4 8-bit PCM sound channels. It should be noted that through software mixing the Paula can produce more channels than the original 4.

More on Paula: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_A … pset#Paula

Soon after Amiga computers with Paula were introduced a man named Karsten Obarski wrote Ultimate Soundtracker in 1987. Soundtracker was based on the tracker concept invented by Chris Huelsbeck which was first used in his own C64 music editor. Soundtracker is known as the father of all Amiga trackers and future trackers improved upon the tracker concept itself and the .mod format giving more advanced alternatives as computers evolved, but not replacing .mod. Many clones of Soundtracker appeared such as NoiseTracker, a modified version of Soundtracker with many improvements and Protracker one of the most famous trackers of all time. Protracker ran on newer versions of Amiga OS and was very stable to boot. Some trackers such as OctaMED took advantage of tricks like software mixing to give the artist more flexibility in song writing.

Mods were originally intended to be used in games, but the demoscene and musicians started composing them for other uses. As you can guess musicians just plain made music with them, and the demoscene used them in demos. Coincidentally the demoscene, being full of talented programmers and musicians, pushed trackers and the .mod format into what it is today. Many wrote their own trackers with features not present in Ultimate Soundtracker, and musicians took full advantage of these features creating music as beautiful as the efficient code in demos.

Of course other computers at the time had digital audio capabilities, but none were as influential as the Amiga. If you happen to own an Atari ST, Apple IIgs, or even a Spectrum 48k you can still use sample trackers on them too. (There are probably other computers, but I'm too lazy to research it.)

While Amiga trackers gave musicians digital audio some yearned for the distinct sound of older sound chips. This is were the term Chiptune originated. Artist looped very short samples, often pulse waves, to emulate vintage sound chips. In doing this they created a charm that the old chips didn't have, the sound of repitched and aliased wave forms. Now of course the primitive synthesizers in old computers and game consoles aliasing, but mods have a different and more desirable characteristic, as seen by the Pro Sound mod phenomena.

Chiptune:

As technology advanced computer audio matured and with MS-DOS, PCs had even more capability. Many PCs used Soundblaster cards which allowed for many audio channels. As the demoscene moved onto these new computers they woud write new trackers for them. Fastracker 2 is one such program. Written by two members of the group Triton, it introduced a new format called .xm or extended module. FT2 was able to use 32 channels at once and added many useful commands and other features. FT2 wasn't alone however, Screamtracker had a different layout that some preferred and had support for FM synthesis on cards that included an OPL2/3/4 chip. Impulse tracker, which based it's interface off of Screamtracker's, further advanced module composing adding filters and 64 channels of audio.

By the time the next generation of trackers came about computer audio had advanced so much that most thought trackers were irrelevant. One could use Cubase or Reason to make music on their PC for a reasonable price and many thought of trackers as confusing and archaic. Mod musicians and others pressed on though and today we have programs such as Renoise, Milkytracker, and ModplugTracker. If you are intereted in making mods with a modern program take a look at this thread under: 1 - Chipmusic For a Modern DAW On a PC/How Do I Make Music On a Modern PC With a Modern Tracker: http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/3988/ … hip-music/

How to Play Mods:

XMplay for Windows http://www.un4seen.com/

Milkytracker for Win/OSX/Linux http://milkytracker.org/ Renoise works too, but it's less accurate and might requirer tweaking to get a song playing correctly.

(I know there are many more ways to play mods, but I'm tired right now. I'll add more later)

Where to Find Mods/XMs/Etc:

http://amp.dascene.net/ Vast collection of mods dating all the way back to the beginning.

http://modarchive.org/ A place for artist to uploads their own mods.

http://www.exotica.org.uk/ Another great place to find mods wether they're from the demoscene or games. Also includes the HVSC SID collection and mp3 recordings.

http://modp3.mikendezign.com/ A small collection of Amiga mods in mp3 format.

Now let's hear why mods are so great! Here are some of my favorites:

I'll be adding stuff to the OP and changing some things so any criticism is welcome.

Last edited by Rouwe (Jul 28, 2011 12:56 am)

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Tokyo, Japan

Im going to be a huge populist and go for

Unreal by Purple Motion - YT link

Deadlock by Elwood - YT Link

I don't have the mod of it, nor do I know if it is uploaded anywhere but "Horses by CTrix" is one of the best things EVER.

Last edited by Lazerbeat (Jul 24, 2011 1:19 pm)

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Spokompton

Dune (aka brothomStates/Lassi Nikko)
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/dune/
http://amp.dascene.net/detail.php?detai … ;view=2313
I discovered him early on in learning about trackers and tracking and it spoiled me. I've been disappointed with almost all other modules I've heard since. Highlights: "alterraid", "4b33" (it's pretty short, but check out the filesize...), "frequent", "control e", "zzzbla", and more.

Mellow-D
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/m … m-late90s/
Some of these "late 90s" mods blew my mind. Partly because I already had one of them on the Merck Squadron sampler 12" I had purchased some years prior - that was a pleasant surprise. Also 4mat mentioned Appelsap but I'll drop that link again cos it's awesome. ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/mellow-d/appelxm/

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Brunswick, GA USA

+1 on anything by Elwood, and http://www.mickrippon.com/mods.php

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Great stuff guys! I've added a section in the OP on where to find mods, if you have any other suggestions I'll add them.

Crystal Hammer by Karsten Obarski himself. Youtube

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New York City

Great post!
However, the "father of all trackers" is always considered to be Chris Huelsbeck's editor for the C64. Soundtracker is teh one that started the Amiga, sample-based, Protracker craze.

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akira^8GB wrote:

Great post!
However, the "father of all trackers" is always considered to be Chris Huelsbeck's editor for the C64. Soundtracker is teh one that started the Amiga, sample-based, Protracker craze.

Thanks! I've edited in that tidbit about Chris Huelsbeck's editor, haha should have known that.

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Tokyo, Japan

Great info, Any chance we could link specific tunes rather than archive sites with composers names? If someone is looking through this thread wanting to get a general taste of some awesome mods, 85 tunes from one artist might be a little unwieldy.

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vancouver, canada

in the late 90's the MOD-on-crack formats like .XM and .IT expanded the 4-channel canvas to 32 or even 64(!) channels.  now that composers didn't have to deal with channel economy, music in this era started to balloon into compositions of insane complexity. 

it was normal for a lead melody to take up 3 channels: 1 main channel and two echo channels.  Chords would take up 4-5 channels, one for each note.  Actually, the number of chord channels could easily double if the composer wanted to fade chords in and out between each other.  phasing effects were more common (take a channel, duplicate it, and detune the copy).  Drums and other percussion would take 4-8 channels, some of them being solely dedicated to long drum loops.

here are a couple of picks of such artists and some of their works: (I HIGHLY RECOMMENDED YOU TO PLAY IN FASTRACKER OR SCHISM TRACKER AND WATCH THE NOTES FLOW, FOR MAXIMUM ENJOYMENT)

Necros
one of the tracking scene greats before the advent of softsynths.  known for:
- strong song structures and sense of harmony
- gold-standard tracking technique
- versatility in a huge range of styles
- distinctive electronica style that aims for realism (i.e. doesn't sound like it was tracked)
- other trademarks: superb leadwanking abilities, bright synth stabs, ethereal pads

Wired96 report
http://modarchive.org/data/downloads.ph … red96r.s3m

infinity (w/ khyron)
http://modarchive.org/data/downloads.ph … finity.s3m

Orchard Street
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/musi … m-orch.zip

Mindspring
http://modarchive.org/data/downloads.ph … dspring.it


Hunz
you guys probably know him from his latest chipmusic work, but in the 90's he was a super-prolific tracker musician.  he was known for:
- whimsical, devil-may-care approach to songwriting and structure - not afraid to throw conventional compositional rules out of the window for more experimental elements
- strong emphasis on intricate rhythms
- super-high quality samples; some songs were released as versions with fully 16-bit samples in a time when it was still considered a luxury
- some of the cleanest mixing i've ever heard - all parts are heard clearly and placed neatly in the stereo spectrum without any muddling of frequencies
- one of the very few musicians to record his own vocals and lyrics.  also happens to have hands down the best singing voice of any tracker musician.

On Me - awesome synthpop song and one of the best examples of original lyrics/vocals in tracked music.
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/fm/fm-om16b.zip

Clone it - fantastic acid jazz with vocals and chipstyle leads
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/musi … -clone.zip

Send Me Drift'n - great melodies and yet more vocals in the module
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/musi … fm-smd.zip

Scotch and Sand - chiptune
http://modarchive.org/data/downloads.ph … nd_sand.xm


EDIT: added source module links to all songs

Last edited by bryface (Jul 26, 2011 1:49 am)

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São Paulo, Brazil
bryface wrote:

i


Wired96 report

infinity (w/ khyron)

Orchard Street

Mindspring


On Me
ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/fm/fm-om16b.zip

Clone it
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/musi … -clone.zip

Send Me Drift'n
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/musi … fm-smd.zip

Scotch and Sand

that's what I'm talking about. Thank you for sharing the gold. smile

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Brazil

Now I'm totally interested in Hunz sound, but I will only be able to listen to the modules when I get home. sad
I'm really interested in recording and sampling vocal into the songs I write, this will be a great lesson to me.

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Just found this browsing youtube, a little generic, but good none the less. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u2YTz84HIg

LazerBeat wrote:

Great info, Any chance we could link specific tunes rather than archive sites with composers names? If someone is looking through this thread wanting to get a general taste of some awesome mods, 85 tunes from one artist might be a little unwieldy.

Yeah, that would be preferred, but most mods aren't in mp3 or other standard audio formats. If you guys can try to post Youtube videos or if possible links to mp3s. Try to include artist names too if you can.

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São Paulo, Brazil

this one's dope.

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New York City

Mortimer Twang is a beast. I love his work.
One of my favourites.

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Tokyo, Japan

Akira you should post some of your favorites.

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New York City

I been trying to look them up on YouTube but the tunes are not there. A lot of what I like has not appeared on any demo productions.