MOD music -- ToonFX's Journal -- Fur Affinity [dot] net

MOD music

8 years ago General

Back in the era before .mp3 files became a thing I would listen to .mod and the various alternative versions of tracker based music on my computer. Compared with CD and radio music MOD files had a very different sound to them, -low bit-rate samples, computer synth based melodies, and tracks which could be very, very amateurish sounding. But like anything there would be tracks that were really impressive and transcended the limitations and became something that stood on its own as equally entertaining and long lasting as anything that you could find in other formats. Years ago I converted my favorite MOD files to mp3 so that I could listen to them on my phone and this week I've put the playlist up again and have been kicking it like it was 1995 all over again.

That's what brings me to the question of this journal: how many other people out there still listen to MOD files? And if you do what are some that you'd recommend as crossing that boundary of being enjoyable to listen even today?

Here's a couple of my favorites:

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=47034

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=47092

https://youtu.be/YKyB51o9AJg?t=3m7s (this was my introduction to MOD music via an Amiga computer at Babbages around 1990)

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=44366

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=48923 (instantly familiar to Bejeweled players)

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=70356

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=169093

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=149794

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=36447 (this was the music I used to accompany my first animation demo reel!)

Cheers y'all. I'm enjoying the music here.

28 Comments

Suule ~suule

A living breathing trainwreck

8 years ago

I would recommend stuff from Hired Guns as well! Great music in .OCT format (8-track tracker for Amiga)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_u2nSb3d48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMJvmW5O2qA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5GQeOYMls

And Perihelion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mNpc4oX89E

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

Cool stuff, -thanks for sharing!

Snapai ~snapai

Animator

8 years ago

Haven't messed with MOD in ages. Though I still feel the same curiosity playing with LMMS - tho I'm still not particularly musically inclined. Originally experienced mods from ordering a CD of PlayerPro which came with a bunch of MAD files on it - one of the early updates to MOD before it went to S3M and XM and all that...

As for favorite MODs, I still love the ridiculousness of STEVSPAM.mod - https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=59871

And of course, the 90s furry anthem, which I couldn't find on modarchive for some reason:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4KT1g5nBgc - BFURRY.XM

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

Oh yeah, my interest in MOD music kicked in heavily when a friend let me borrow a cd he'd bought that had something like.... 600 hours of music on it. I couldn't imagine having that much all at my fingertips and I set about listening to so much of it in my college days that it honestly became one of the noteworthy musical soundtracks of my sophmore year.

I hadn't heard that SPAM song before but yeah, it's great fun! There's was a similar track that I wish I could link to but I can't find it on the MOD archive either. It was a silly musical ditty where the composer took sound clips of his roommates saying things like that SPAM song did and applying tones and rhythm to it all. I loved it!

Can't say that I'd ever heard heard that last piece of music, but certainly with a name like that it must have been listened to by plenty of the folks on this website.

Snapai ~snapai

Animator

8 years ago

That last one was...let's see, when furry chat was entirely on FurryMUCK (people were just discovering IRC), art was largely on the us.vclart.net/vcl/, and Furnation was getting a C&D for having a midi of Jean-Michel Jarre's Industrial Revolutions Overture on their frontpage. XD

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

Wow... legal action over a MIDI file? I suppose it's possible but that stretches what I would have expected for grounds of a cease and desist since it's not the actual source recording. There were several examples of such reuse of intellectual property in the early videogame days but my favorite example was when Giorgio Moroder's music from The Neverending Story was used as the theme for Helikopter Jagd on the Commodore 64. Compare https://youtu.be/WpmJQkaOXcNo with https://youtu.be/kpXwV3woHi4

Miff ~miffthefox

Cotton Candy Chameleon [they]

8 years ago

I like MODs, they're a forgotten style of old-school computer music compared to like NES/SNES music. SIDs are also another really cool old-school format. However, the format I'm truly nostalgic for is MIDI, specifically as rendered by a Roland SC-55.

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

I didn't get to hear the SC-55 but I remember the awe I felt when I first got to hear Space Quest 3 played on a Roland MT-32!

https://youtu.be/PNbXTKuObCQ

THEbigcat ~thebigcat

8 years ago

I occasionally use a software called OpenMPT but haven't actually made anything yet.

Leo-san ~leo-san

Ctrl+Z slave

8 years ago

KnuxTheFox ~knuxthefox

Little foxie UwU

8 years ago

This is kinda obscure. It was a joint production between

2gryphon who was then known as Wolfsong and Cyber Cerberus (aka ccerberus).
The song is "The Omega Point", though the filename only reflects the two artists wolf_cc.it (Wolfsong and Cyber Cerberus)
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=68255

Another song that 2 doesn't have archived anywhere is this one written for Raphael Singing Wolf back in 1996 called "Animal"
https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=153471

AFAIK, these are the only 2 modular songs that

2gryphon made that weren't included on "The 2Sense Witchy Chicky Collection" archive DVD, which I highly recommend checking out.

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

Thanks for sharing! I wasn't familiar with either of these but enjoyed listening to them. At first I wasn't sure what to make of Omega Point but after awhile it started picking up and began giving me an Unreal Tournament vibe which I like. The Animal track surprised me with the amount of vocals in it, -I'm most familiar with MOD (style) files having vocal clips limited to half a second or so in order to fit within the memory limitations of the time so full lyrics are an unusual thing for me to hear.

BarneyHusky ~barneyhusky

Photographer

7 years ago

O.o these were MODs????

KnuxTheFox ~knuxthefox

Little foxie UwU

7 years ago

Technically, they were Impulse Tracker files.

BarneyHusky ~barneyhusky

Photographer

7 years ago

Yeah but still, I would never have guessed!

ceagle ~ceagle

Feathery

8 years ago

Thanks for the links! Tiz kinda like listening to ol' video games in the background... :9

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

MOD music was heavily used in videogames because it leveraged the need to have software be highly efficient in storage usage while having a range of music capabilities that might approximate real instruments. Thanks for listening!

KnuxTheFox ~knuxthefox

Little foxie UwU

8 years ago

I just thought of another one. The Commodore C-64 had a pretty popular SID music scene back in the day, and I had downloaded an entire archive of literally thousands of SID files, and came across one that I was very impressed by, considering the SID could only do 3 instruments at a given time. The archive didn't have much information on it back then, but was credited 198? Thargon. So, this was sometime in the 80s by a mysterious composer, or possibly miscredited as Thargon was the name of a game. Now I'm having trouble finding it, and it's compounded by the fact that there was a composer who went by the same name as the title of the song "Future Freak".

Ah...found it: http://www.pokwef.com/asd/music/sid.....ture_Freak.sid

PunkTiger ~punktiger

The Original since 1993!

8 years ago

I used to dabble in the occasional SID on my C64. I still have my Stereo SID cartridge (from Dr. Evil Labs), which adds another SID chip to the C64 through the cartridge slot. I had a few stereo SIDs, but they're lost somewhere on one of my disks.

Of course, Compute!'s SID editor was my go-to at the time.

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

Nice! I remember a lot of music from the C-64 days but because I've only occasionally thought to look into the .sid scene I haven't carried the music with me regularly on my phone to listen to as an exported .mp3 file. I did purchase a set of cds back in 2001 which were re-instrumented versions of classic .sid tunes and I definitely have that on my phone right now. Future Freak is a pretty good approximation of the music I'm familiar with! Some of my favorites from that era were the Epyx Games series (California Games, Summer Games, Winter Games, etc.) but hands down my favorite is Forbidden Forest! That music will forever be in my head 'till the day I die!

KnuxTheFox ~knuxthefox

Little foxie UwU

8 years ago

You can play lots of modular formats on your phone with MODo, including video game music files
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.illogical.modo&hl=en

Cabcat ~cabcat

Anthro Artist

8 years ago

We had a C-64 where the SID chip blew and we didn't have sound nor were able to play every game :(

KnuxTheFox ~knuxthefox

Little foxie UwU

8 years ago

That sucks. At least you can emulate the chip, or the whole computer, now.

Cabcat ~cabcat

Anthro Artist

8 years ago

True, so many good old games.

PunkTiger ~punktiger

The Original since 1993!

8 years ago

I still have my Amiga (the originator of MOD files), and I've got a modest MOD collection of my own. So yes, I\ll still whip out some MODs to listen to every so often.

Aaaah, nostalgia.

ToonFX ~toonfx

Traditional Artist

8 years ago

Nice! Now and again I have a nostalgia attack and wish that i could mess around with an Amiga. Fortunately at least with regards to MOD music you can listen to them pretty easily on alternative platforms.

Firehazard ~firehazard

Naylte ven, naylte yen.

8 years ago

Are you familiar with WinUAE, perchance? That's what I use. And there's a website called The Old Computer that has disk images of basically every program ever made for it (as well as ROMs for every other platform in history); you just have to go through a free registration process.

BarneyHusky ~barneyhusky

Photographer

7 years ago

Back on the days when CDROM's just got given out by computer magazines, I got one that had a bunch of DOS programs, .PCX and .GIF files and a bunch of .MOD files. One of them stood out.

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=166351

On my 16-bit Soundblaster card (which I still have in my possession) this song sounded like a blast, even though the speaker system I used was cheap. I lost the mod directory when my hard drive crashed, but thankfully there's plenty of spaces on the internet nowadays where you can find MODs. And I pretty much got my collection back.

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