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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.