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Amiga Music Preservation

188 points by codetrotter 5y ago

codetrotter 5y ago
Seems that a HN filter intended for Google AMP is triggered by the URL and changes it. But amp in this URL has nothing to do with Google AMP. The url is supposed to be http://amp.dascene.net/home.php http://amp.dascene.net/home.php @dang, can you override the change of the url so it's correct?
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Direct address in the meantime: http://109.190.61.142/home.php http://109.190.61.142/home.php
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    Clever :) I am too used to many sites sharing a single IP address that I didn’t even think about doing it that way.
    - shric 5y ago
      Also won't work for https
      - codetrotter 5y ago
        Depends on how it’s configured. It could still serve plain HTTP and redirect (HTTP 300 family) to the domain name and TLS.
melbourne_mat 5y ago
As someone who was involved in the Amiga scene I know how all this stuff works. Without that knowledge the site is very hard to use. It wouldn't be difficult to make an MP3 version of this site with an embedded player but I think the hosting costs might be difficult to pay for.
- sitkack 5y ago
  There are inbrowser tracker file players, esp with Wasm rendering could be done client side. That said, with super low bitrate codecs from Xiph it might be much much simpler to encode once and ship the compressed song. Sending the tracker files means that it can be much easier to visualize and slow down playback.
  - rasz 5y ago
    MOD trackers worked fine on 8MHz systems, there is no need for WASM here. https://warpdesign.github.io/modplayer-js/ https://warpdesign.github.io/modplayer-js/
    - codetrotter 5y ago
      A properly written WASM MOD player could probably be a lot nicer on the battery than one implemented in JS. Then again, JS does have some quite advanced audio specific APIs available in browsers these days. So profiling would be necessary in order to tell if a good implementation in WASM beats a good implementation in JS on power consumption.
      - sitkack 5y ago
        I was thinking more like your could run a m68k emulator in Wasm to run the original Amiga tracking software so it would sound just like the machine it was written on.
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    I found a few great JS-based trackers (and successfully tried a few mod files): https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb.mod https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb... https://mod.haxor.fi/Groo/mod.electrification https://mod.haxor.fi/Groo/mod.electrification (many songs available in the 'load' interface) I also did find a wrapper around an emscripten-JS'ified version of libopenmpt (a popular MOD player library..?): https://github.com/deskjet/chiptune2.js/ https://github.com/deskjet/chiptune2.js/
S_A_P 5y ago
For the folks that want to make music in that amiga tracker style- check out the Polyend Tracker. It’s a usb(a phone charger battery will run this thing for hours) powered self contained groovebox/synth/sampler with an 8 track tracker style sequencer. I just got mine a week ago and it’s already one of my favorite pieces of kit. I can go outside, lay in bed/on the couch and make music that I would have to be at a desk with my other gear and Mac to make otherwise. It’s small enough to throw in your laptop bag but large enough to feel like real gear. Highly recommend!!
- gregsadetsky 5y ago
  Main product URL: https://polyend.com/tracker/ https://polyend.com/tracker/ (it's out of stock directly from Polyend, but check with music stores, local and otherwise) Just got one too and still learning about it (and really really like it). Have you seen this great video? It's a good high level tutorial of most features (it's a tiny bit dated when compared to the latest firmware, but it's still mostly the same UI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQufJBVvAtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQufJBVvAtY Also... the Tracker supports .mod files..! https://help.polyend.com/944600-Is-the-Tracker-able-to-import-and-export-classic-mod-files https://help.polyend.com/944600-Is-the-Tracker-able-to-impor...
  - S_A_P 5y ago
    The Loopop video definitely had me interested at the time but I think I kind of just got busy and forgot about it. Then happened to have a conversation with one of the guys at Sound on sound and he sold me on it. Right now there is great kit out there for samplers. Also check out the Isla s2400 if a more 1980s sp-12/1200 workflow interests you. Both are essential gear for me now.
    - gregsadetsky 5y ago
      Thanks for pointing me to the Isla S2400! Just wanted to make sure, when you say "Right now there is great kit out there for samplers", I'm not sure what you mean? Are you referring to the Tracker, the S2400, or something else?
quadcore 5y ago
One I particularly love is the soundtrack of the game Utopia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RGtHOj8pM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RGtHOj8pM
pan69 5y ago
Hoffman, still one of my favorite ones. Still active today. http://109.190.61.142/detail.php?detail=modules&view=3357 http://109.190.61.142/detail.php?detail=modules&view=3357
empressplay 5y ago
wow, there are files of mine on there I thought I lost decades ago lol
- codetrotter 5y ago
  That’s pretty cool :) I often value digital archival because it lets me find old stuff that others made. But finding old stuff that was made by oneself, carefully saved by someone else, that must be even nicer!
exogeny 5y ago
Here are some recommendations for those on HN new to the tracker scene: Jester - Elysium Jester - Stardust Memories Tip and Firefox - Enigma Greg - Odyssey Pt. 2 Firefox - Galaxy 2 Mantronix - Act Of Impulse Dr. Awesome - 12th Warrior NHP + BKH - Enigma Year Captain - Space Debris Captain - Beyond Music Uncle Tom - Occ-San-Geen Romeo Knight - Beat To The Pulp What a crazy and beautiful era for creativity! A German, Swedes, a Swiss, a Norwegian, two Frenchmen, two Finns..all with four channels and about 200k of space. Not to mention they were probably all teenagers at the time too! The demoscene is such a great deep dive -- I'm only referencing about three years of productions here, there's so much more that came after on the PC side and even lots before too if you dig into the C64 and Atari scenes. So much goodness! Wrong continent and era for me unfortunately. :)
- gregsadetsky 5y ago
  Here's a playlist with all of these songs! Thanks for the great recommendations https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnRRE4-idfADx_BgudiHYizK7KC5axQH_ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnRRE4-idfADx_BgudiHYizK7...
  - exogeny 5y ago
    My pleasure! Let me know which one is your favorite :)
    - Underphil 5y ago
      Enigma has been my ringtone for the best part of 15 years now so I already know :)
  - the-golden-one 5y ago
    .. also Deadlock by Elwood. Or in fact, anything by Elwood…
    - danwills 5y ago
      I would have to agree and I love Elwood too (so much!). I think we should note though, that Elwood's main contributions were during the PC-tracker-scene 'era' (FastTracker2) and not so much an Amiga thing.
arrakeen 5y ago
highly recommend the works of radix, especially FIRE&ICE2
- bsagdiyev 5y ago
  radix is one my favorite artists, “tpolmgirl” and “ma petite fleur” are also great. The first was actually played during the art scene part of the BBS documentary which is where I first heard it.
- danwills 5y ago
  I completely second that (we are moving well beyond the Amiga tracking scene now but hey, it's all AWESOME!!) Some of Radix/Mosaik's later work I think is absolutely stunningly beautiful too: Leandi, Aerials (On bandcamp) etc. Well worth a listen!
dylan604 5y ago
While not exactly tracker music, if this "sound" is appealing to you, here's a channel that might be of interest: https://www.di.fm/playlists/outrun https://www.di.fm/playlists/outrun
rkok 5y ago
Great to see that the preservation effort is still alive. Though having missed the glory years of tracker music, since a young age I have had a strong affection for its sound. Another treasure trove for tracker music is The Mod Archive: https://modarchive.org/ https://modarchive.org/ Some of my favorite tracker music: - Purple Motion - Starshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xHPIuX3s4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xHPIuX3s4 - Robert Allen - Epic Pinball Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqC9yS9oLCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqC9yS9oLCY - Dr. Awesome - Space Deliria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g60hfiO1WY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g60hfiO1WY - 4mat - Chipmusic is dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSoqzkWhF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSoqzkWhF8 - 4mat - Eternity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzG7OJ76t8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzG7OJ76t8 For those who like ambient: - Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHJ7IWBpRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHJ7IWBpRs - Deus Ex: Naval Base https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj4jfiqiLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj4jfiqiLw
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- danwills 5y ago
  Mod Archive has an in-browser player! Another comment somewhere in here links https://modtu.be https://modtu.be which seems to be a fairly awesome in-browser player too! Blurry lines between amiga and PC tracker scenes hey? there was a lot of back-and-forth. Impossible not to have Purple Motion on any classic-mods list though, I absolutely agree!
  - nickt 5y ago
    Bassoon tracker is another good in-browser tracker, with a nice Amiga-like feel to it. https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/ https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/
- Sosh101 5y ago
  - 4mat - Starworx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pke0cannA3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pke0cannA3w
bmdavi3 5y ago
If this is the time to offer our personal chiptune favorites, Loonie - Biohazard really does it for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMHDHwsEQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMHDHwsEQA
bullen 5y ago
For some reason stereo just makes me nauseus. Maybe the mono 8-bit generation will never like stereo 16-bit. http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk
- hansjorg 5y ago
  The Amiga was stereo, but only 8-bit. There were just two hardware channels per stereo channel though, with no mixing between them, so it doesn't sound very nice with headphones.
  - bullen 5y ago
    Aha, that explains alot, thx!
ridaj 5y ago
It's amazing to find some music there that I composed about 30 years ago. I'd shared it via diskette with a friend who slapped it into a demo, then he mailed the demo on another diskette to someone else who would duplicate and send out more copies, one of which made it maybe to a demo party that ended up feeding the archive. All of this by snail mail, there was no consumer internet back then. Pretty unexpected survival of these artifacts!
- exogeny 5y ago
  That is an amazing story. I had a few nice conversations with some of my favorite musicians (Firefox, Uncle Tom, Jester, etc.) and many of them are shocked and overjoyed that things they worked on for fun a lifetime ago are being enjoyed by new waves of people every day.
bitwize 5y ago
I'm composing the music to my video game in Protracker on (emulated) Amiga -- just to add a little 90s cyberpunk authenticity to go with the theme of the game. It may not come out nearly as good as some of these masters' work, but if it turns out to give the feel of the era it'll be past the threshold of "good enough".
raffraffraff 5y ago
One of my favourite pieces of computer game music is from Speedball II, released on the Amiga https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM0hHzM4to https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM0hHzM4to There's a guy who remixes old computer game music on a modern DAW, so you're not actually listening to music producer by the Amiga any more. However, his remix of the Speedball II music is worth listening to... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kyeAX27GDC4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kyeAX27GDC4 I love the fact that he took in-game sounds and mixed them into the music (like the injured player being carted off, and the ice-cream seller in the crowd)
subbz 5y ago
Check out modtu.be, the most advanced mod archive player around. https://modtu.be/ https://modtu.be/
- danwills 5y ago
  Thanks for the link! Great stuff! I was slightly surprised to find the site at the article link doesn't seem to have playback built-in, but this looks like a really awesome web-player! ModArchive also has in-browser playback available too.
l33tman 5y ago
Fun fact: the tracker songs recorded from real amigas (or faithful emulations) have a certain nuance to the samples which you learn to recognize, due to that everybody disabled the D/A low-pass filter back in the day, which is normally really required after a D/A to reproduce the actual analog samples. So you got a higher pass-through of some of the higher frequencies contained in the played samples (as the original filters were too wide and cut into the real data), but also you got higher aliasing harmonics, that shouldn't be there but kind of make it sound better in total. Actually, in music production you often add filters in the chain that artificially create harmonics to "excite" the audio and make it more interesting for the ear. This was kind of an unintentional exciter :) On the Amiga 500, the D/A filter was switchable by software, by toggling the power LED. I'm pretty sure some engineer thought it was crippling to have the filter there permanently online, and sneaked in a toggle feature but couldn't find any free GPIO :) More in depth description of the D/A reconstruction filter and mod-player emulation issues arising from it: https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt
- markwrobel 5y ago
  Turning the filter off is quite noticeable. I did a sample test, with and without the filter. Not by turning off the power LED in assembler, but using a setting in WinUAE. The samples are on my site: https://www.markwrobel.dk/post/amiga-machine-code-letter8-wavetabel-synthesis/ https://www.markwrobel.dk/post/amiga-machine-code-letter8-wa...
  - Jare 5y ago
    I recall some tracker format used that power LED as an actual effect, or 5th channel?
avnigo 5y ago
This album [0], Tracked (1991-2000) by Purple Motion is excellent. Got all the nostalgia. [0]: https://purplemotion.bandcamp.com/album/tracked-1991-2000 https://purplemotion.bandcamp.com/album/tracked-1991-2000
- Sharlin 5y ago
  And it’s on Spotify!! I was excited to find it a while ago, though I do have most of the songs as original mods somewhere on my disk too…
mnw21cam 5y ago
I remember back in the early 2000s, I built a whole set of scripts to automatically download the next set of files from aminet, unarchive them, play them, let me give each a rating (0 to 9), and store that away so I could later tell it to play tracks with a rating of X+ in random order. I think I made it about 1/3 the way through all of aminet. The vast majority of tracks were awful, but there was a decent number of absolute gems in there.
danwills 5y ago
Massive tracker music fan (and quiet author, hardly anything released) here, my main exposure was as the PC-scene arose (from ScreamTracker onwards). I'd like to recommend some mostly-pc tracker-music authors that are perhaps not necessarily the 'Pop-Stars' of the tracker scene, but I still think they made really absolutely awesome, different and interesting music in this format: Dune aka Brothomstates (https://modtu.be/?m=26492 https://modtu.be/?m=26492) Shad (https://modtu.be/?m=337401 https://modtu.be/?m=337401) Croaker (https://modtu.be/?m=89553 https://modtu.be/?m=89553) Yolk (https://modtu.be/?m=55561 https://modtu.be/?m=55561) Sulphur (https://modtu.be/?m=385511 https://modtu.be/?m=385511) Xhale (https://modtu.be/?m=55280 https://modtu.be/?m=55280) Groo (https://modtu.be/?m=30096 https://modtu.be/?m=30096)
- Jare 5y ago
  That is a magnificent list of musicians. Note that some links may show only tracks in one particular format, and they likely have a much larger list of contributions in other formats. May I add Jesper Kyd (https://modtu.be/?m=313332 https://modtu.be/?m=313332)
tluyben2 5y ago
I have been looking for the past 10 years for one particular 'cracked game' intro music with a starfield that pulsated to the music (the song was over 10 minutes I think and took up a few k; I cannot for the life of me remember the cracker group name, let alone anything else): it was waveforms instead of samples. Jungle Command did a lot without traditional sound tracker like tools but it is not from them. I will just enjoy listening to 1000s of Amiga songs in search for this one. My normal goto music was from Romeo Knight or Uncle Tom by the way. Stupid factoid: I was jean Michel Jarre fan begin 80s and this song [0] by Romeo Knight got me into guitar playing (it was the first song I could play on a friend's guitar, well, sort of). And that got me into metal which I definitely do not regret. Favorite Uncle Tom one [1]. [0] https://youtu.be/i0bvhWs810g https://youtu.be/i0bvhWs810g [1] https://youtu.be/zR9a4vTuuoo https://youtu.be/zR9a4vTuuoo
nxtbl 5y ago
Stone Oakvalley's work on these and Commodore 64 sids hasn't been mentioned yet? He has gone through and recorded all of the Amiga modules and C64 sid tunes as mp3. C64 tunes are even recorded separately for three/four different sid chip variations. New releases of HVSC collection have also been recorded promptly. https://www.paula8364.com/ https://www.paula8364.com/ for Amiga, 484GB x2 https://www.6581-8580.com/ https://www.6581-8580.com/ for C64, 159GB x3
ErneX 5y ago
Echoing by Banana https://youtu.be/3CRYkFAlgvo https://youtu.be/3CRYkFAlgvo
freediver 5y ago
Not to forget Barry Leitch of Lotus 2 fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw Jon Hare & Richard Joseph with Cannon Fodder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2fulUF64w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2fulUF64w And probably my favorite of all time, Chris Glaister's Lost Patrol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47CRLL0kjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47CRLL0kjE
cjdell 5y ago
I first discovered music MOD files on the CD-ROM of the magazine "What PC?" in 1995. I was only 10 years old at the time so hadn't even heard of the Amiga but I was instantly hooked on the music style. I would record the MODs from the family computer on to my cassette player so I could listen to them without hogging the computer. Listening to these again is such a nostagia trip. "Space Debris" was one of my favourite songs...
jug 5y ago
Danko - Complications https://youtu.be/DXDa8EL93hE https://youtu.be/DXDa8EL93hE Purple Motion of Future Crew - Unreal 2 https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU (composed by a 16 yo) Making of Second Reality with said Future Crew: https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU 9 fingers - Spaceballs: https://youtu.be/n4M7e79XTYk https://youtu.be/n4M7e79XTYk And making of: https://youtu.be/WgriMuXZ3QY https://youtu.be/WgriMuXZ3QY Kefrens - Desert Dreams: https://youtu.be/jziQBWQxvok https://youtu.be/jziQBWQxvok
iloveyouocean 5y ago
Buddha on a Bicycle, buddha1.far I have been searching for this track for decades, but I fear it is lost forever. My favorite 'mod' track, created with the Farandole Composer software.

188 points by codetrotter 5y ago

Seems that a HN filter intended for Google AMP is triggered by the URL and changes it. But amp in this URL has nothing to do with Google AMP. The url is supposed to be http://amp.dascene.net/home.php http://amp.dascene.net/home.php @dang, can you override the change of the url so it's correct?

squarefoot 5y ago
Direct address in the meantime: http://109.190.61.142/home.php http://109.190.61.142/home.php
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Clever :) I am too used to many sites sharing a single IP address that I didn’t even think about doing it that way.
  - shric 5y ago
    Also won't work for https
    - codetrotter 5y ago
      Depends on how it’s configured. It could still serve plain HTTP and redirect (HTTP 300 family) to the domain name and TLS.

melbourne_mat 5y ago

As someone who was involved in the Amiga scene I know how all this stuff works. Without that knowledge the site is very hard to use. It wouldn't be difficult to make an MP3 version of this site with an embedded player but I think the hosting costs might be difficult to pay for.

sitkack 5y ago
There are inbrowser tracker file players, esp with Wasm rendering could be done client side. That said, with super low bitrate codecs from Xiph it might be much much simpler to encode once and ship the compressed song. Sending the tracker files means that it can be much easier to visualize and slow down playback.
- rasz 5y ago
  MOD trackers worked fine on 8MHz systems, there is no need for WASM here. https://warpdesign.github.io/modplayer-js/ https://warpdesign.github.io/modplayer-js/
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    A properly written WASM MOD player could probably be a lot nicer on the battery than one implemented in JS. Then again, JS does have some quite advanced audio specific APIs available in browsers these days. So profiling would be necessary in order to tell if a good implementation in WASM beats a good implementation in JS on power consumption.
    - sitkack 5y ago
      I was thinking more like your could run a m68k emulator in Wasm to run the original Amiga tracking software so it would sound just like the machine it was written on.
- gregsadetsky 5y ago
  I found a few great JS-based trackers (and successfully tried a few mod files): https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb.mod https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb... https://mod.haxor.fi/Groo/mod.electrification https://mod.haxor.fi/Groo/mod.electrification (many songs available in the 'load' interface) I also did find a wrapper around an emscripten-JS'ified version of libopenmpt (a popular MOD player library..?): https://github.com/deskjet/chiptune2.js/ https://github.com/deskjet/chiptune2.js/

S_A_P 5y ago

For the folks that want to make music in that amiga tracker style- check out the Polyend Tracker. It’s a usb(a phone charger battery will run this thing for hours) powered self contained groovebox/synth/sampler with an 8 track tracker style sequencer. I just got mine a week ago and it’s already one of my favorite pieces of kit. I can go outside, lay in bed/on the couch and make music that I would have to be at a desk with my other gear and Mac to make otherwise. It’s small enough to throw in your laptop bag but large enough to feel like real gear. Highly recommend!!

gregsadetsky 5y ago
Main product URL: https://polyend.com/tracker/ https://polyend.com/tracker/ (it's out of stock directly from Polyend, but check with music stores, local and otherwise) Just got one too and still learning about it (and really really like it). Have you seen this great video? It's a good high level tutorial of most features (it's a tiny bit dated when compared to the latest firmware, but it's still mostly the same UI) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQufJBVvAtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQufJBVvAtY Also... the Tracker supports .mod files..! https://help.polyend.com/944600-Is-the-Tracker-able-to-import-and-export-classic-mod-files https://help.polyend.com/944600-Is-the-Tracker-able-to-impor...
- S_A_P 5y ago
  The Loopop video definitely had me interested at the time but I think I kind of just got busy and forgot about it. Then happened to have a conversation with one of the guys at Sound on sound and he sold me on it. Right now there is great kit out there for samplers. Also check out the Isla s2400 if a more 1980s sp-12/1200 workflow interests you. Both are essential gear for me now.
  - gregsadetsky 5y ago
    Thanks for pointing me to the Isla S2400! Just wanted to make sure, when you say "Right now there is great kit out there for samplers", I'm not sure what you mean? Are you referring to the Tracker, the S2400, or something else?

quadcore 5y ago

One I particularly love is the soundtrack of the game Utopia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RGtHOj8pM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RGtHOj8pM

pan69 5y ago

Hoffman, still one of my favorite ones. Still active today. http://109.190.61.142/detail.php?detail=modules&view=3357 http://109.190.61.142/detail.php?detail=modules&view=3357

empressplay 5y ago

wow, there are files of mine on there I thought I lost decades ago lol

codetrotter 5y ago
That’s pretty cool :) I often value digital archival because it lets me find old stuff that others made. But finding old stuff that was made by oneself, carefully saved by someone else, that must be even nicer!

exogeny 5y ago

Here are some recommendations for those on HN new to the tracker scene: Jester - Elysium Jester - Stardust Memories Tip and Firefox - Enigma Greg - Odyssey Pt. 2 Firefox - Galaxy 2 Mantronix - Act Of Impulse Dr. Awesome - 12th Warrior NHP + BKH - Enigma Year Captain - Space Debris Captain - Beyond Music Uncle Tom - Occ-San-Geen Romeo Knight - Beat To The Pulp What a crazy and beautiful era for creativity! A German, Swedes, a Swiss, a Norwegian, two Frenchmen, two Finns..all with four channels and about 200k of space. Not to mention they were probably all teenagers at the time too! The demoscene is such a great deep dive -- I'm only referencing about three years of productions here, there's so much more that came after on the PC side and even lots before too if you dig into the C64 and Atari scenes. So much goodness! Wrong continent and era for me unfortunately. :)

gregsadetsky 5y ago
Here's a playlist with all of these songs! Thanks for the great recommendations https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnRRE4-idfADx_BgudiHYizK7KC5axQH_ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnRRE4-idfADx_BgudiHYizK7...
- exogeny 5y ago
  My pleasure! Let me know which one is your favorite :)
  - Underphil 5y ago
    Enigma has been my ringtone for the best part of 15 years now so I already know :)
- the-golden-one 5y ago
  .. also Deadlock by Elwood. Or in fact, anything by Elwood…
  - danwills 5y ago
    I would have to agree and I love Elwood too (so much!). I think we should note though, that Elwood's main contributions were during the PC-tracker-scene 'era' (FastTracker2) and not so much an Amiga thing.

arrakeen 5y ago

highly recommend the works of radix, especially FIRE&ICE2

bsagdiyev 5y ago
radix is one my favorite artists, “tpolmgirl” and “ma petite fleur” are also great. The first was actually played during the art scene part of the BBS documentary which is where I first heard it.
danwills 5y ago
I completely second that (we are moving well beyond the Amiga tracking scene now but hey, it's all AWESOME!!) Some of Radix/Mosaik's later work I think is absolutely stunningly beautiful too: Leandi, Aerials (On bandcamp) etc. Well worth a listen!

dylan604 5y ago

While not exactly tracker music, if this "sound" is appealing to you, here's a channel that might be of interest: https://www.di.fm/playlists/outrun https://www.di.fm/playlists/outrun

rkok 5y ago

Great to see that the preservation effort is still alive. Though having missed the glory years of tracker music, since a young age I have had a strong affection for its sound. Another treasure trove for tracker music is The Mod Archive: https://modarchive.org/ https://modarchive.org/ Some of my favorite tracker music: - Purple Motion - Starshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xHPIuX3s4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xHPIuX3s4 - Robert Allen - Epic Pinball Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqC9yS9oLCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqC9yS9oLCY - Dr. Awesome - Space Deliria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g60hfiO1WY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g60hfiO1WY - 4mat - Chipmusic is dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSoqzkWhF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSoqzkWhF8 - 4mat - Eternity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzG7OJ76t8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzG7OJ76t8 For those who like ambient: - Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHJ7IWBpRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHJ7IWBpRs - Deus Ex: Naval Base https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj4jfiqiLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj4jfiqiLw

deleted 5y ago
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danwills 5y ago
Mod Archive has an in-browser player! Another comment somewhere in here links https://modtu.be https://modtu.be which seems to be a fairly awesome in-browser player too! Blurry lines between amiga and PC tracker scenes hey? there was a lot of back-and-forth. Impossible not to have Purple Motion on any classic-mods list though, I absolutely agree!
- nickt 5y ago
  Bassoon tracker is another good in-browser tracker, with a nice Amiga-like feel to it. https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/ https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/
Sosh101 5y ago
- 4mat - Starworx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pke0cannA3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pke0cannA3w

bmdavi3 5y ago

If this is the time to offer our personal chiptune favorites, Loonie - Biohazard really does it for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMHDHwsEQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMHDHwsEQA

bullen 5y ago

For some reason stereo just makes me nauseus. Maybe the mono 8-bit generation will never like stereo 16-bit. http://csdb.dk http://csdb.dk

hansjorg 5y ago
The Amiga was stereo, but only 8-bit. There were just two hardware channels per stereo channel though, with no mixing between them, so it doesn't sound very nice with headphones.
- bullen 5y ago
  Aha, that explains alot, thx!

ridaj 5y ago

It's amazing to find some music there that I composed about 30 years ago. I'd shared it via diskette with a friend who slapped it into a demo, then he mailed the demo on another diskette to someone else who would duplicate and send out more copies, one of which made it maybe to a demo party that ended up feeding the archive. All of this by snail mail, there was no consumer internet back then. Pretty unexpected survival of these artifacts!

exogeny 5y ago
That is an amazing story. I had a few nice conversations with some of my favorite musicians (Firefox, Uncle Tom, Jester, etc.) and many of them are shocked and overjoyed that things they worked on for fun a lifetime ago are being enjoyed by new waves of people every day.

bitwize 5y ago

I'm composing the music to my video game in Protracker on (emulated) Amiga -- just to add a little 90s cyberpunk authenticity to go with the theme of the game. It may not come out nearly as good as some of these masters' work, but if it turns out to give the feel of the era it'll be past the threshold of "good enough".

raffraffraff 5y ago

One of my favourite pieces of computer game music is from Speedball II, released on the Amiga https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM0hHzM4to https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM0hHzM4to There's a guy who remixes old computer game music on a modern DAW, so you're not actually listening to music producer by the Amiga any more. However, his remix of the Speedball II music is worth listening to... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kyeAX27GDC4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kyeAX27GDC4 I love the fact that he took in-game sounds and mixed them into the music (like the injured player being carted off, and the ice-cream seller in the crowd)

subbz 5y ago

Check out modtu.be, the most advanced mod archive player around. https://modtu.be/ https://modtu.be/

danwills 5y ago
Thanks for the link! Great stuff! I was slightly surprised to find the site at the article link doesn't seem to have playback built-in, but this looks like a really awesome web-player! ModArchive also has in-browser playback available too.

l33tman 5y ago

Fun fact: the tracker songs recorded from real amigas (or faithful emulations) have a certain nuance to the samples which you learn to recognize, due to that everybody disabled the D/A low-pass filter back in the day, which is normally really required after a D/A to reproduce the actual analog samples. So you got a higher pass-through of some of the higher frequencies contained in the played samples (as the original filters were too wide and cut into the real data), but also you got higher aliasing harmonics, that shouldn't be there but kind of make it sound better in total. Actually, in music production you often add filters in the chain that artificially create harmonics to "excite" the audio and make it more interesting for the ear. This was kind of an unintentional exciter :) On the Amiga 500, the D/A filter was switchable by software, by toggling the power LED. I'm pretty sure some engineer thought it was crippling to have the filter there permanently online, and sneaked in a toggle feature but couldn't find any free GPIO :) More in depth description of the D/A reconstruction filter and mod-player emulation issues arising from it: https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt

markwrobel 5y ago
Turning the filter off is quite noticeable. I did a sample test, with and without the filter. Not by turning off the power LED in assembler, but using a setting in WinUAE. The samples are on my site: https://www.markwrobel.dk/post/amiga-machine-code-letter8-wavetabel-synthesis/ https://www.markwrobel.dk/post/amiga-machine-code-letter8-wa...
- Jare 5y ago
  I recall some tracker format used that power LED as an actual effect, or 5th channel?

avnigo 5y ago

This album [0], Tracked (1991-2000) by Purple Motion is excellent. Got all the nostalgia. [0]: https://purplemotion.bandcamp.com/album/tracked-1991-2000 https://purplemotion.bandcamp.com/album/tracked-1991-2000

Sharlin 5y ago
And it’s on Spotify!! I was excited to find it a while ago, though I do have most of the songs as original mods somewhere on my disk too…

mnw21cam 5y ago

I remember back in the early 2000s, I built a whole set of scripts to automatically download the next set of files from aminet, unarchive them, play them, let me give each a rating (0 to 9), and store that away so I could later tell it to play tracks with a rating of X+ in random order. I think I made it about 1/3 the way through all of aminet. The vast majority of tracks were awful, but there was a decent number of absolute gems in there.

danwills 5y ago

Massive tracker music fan (and quiet author, hardly anything released) here, my main exposure was as the PC-scene arose (from ScreamTracker onwards). I'd like to recommend some mostly-pc tracker-music authors that are perhaps not necessarily the 'Pop-Stars' of the tracker scene, but I still think they made really absolutely awesome, different and interesting music in this format: Dune aka Brothomstates (https://modtu.be/?m=26492 https://modtu.be/?m=26492) Shad (https://modtu.be/?m=337401 https://modtu.be/?m=337401) Croaker (https://modtu.be/?m=89553 https://modtu.be/?m=89553) Yolk (https://modtu.be/?m=55561 https://modtu.be/?m=55561) Sulphur (https://modtu.be/?m=385511 https://modtu.be/?m=385511) Xhale (https://modtu.be/?m=55280 https://modtu.be/?m=55280) Groo (https://modtu.be/?m=30096 https://modtu.be/?m=30096)

Jare 5y ago
That is a magnificent list of musicians. Note that some links may show only tracks in one particular format, and they likely have a much larger list of contributions in other formats. May I add Jesper Kyd (https://modtu.be/?m=313332 https://modtu.be/?m=313332)

tluyben2 5y ago

I have been looking for the past 10 years for one particular 'cracked game' intro music with a starfield that pulsated to the music (the song was over 10 minutes I think and took up a few k; I cannot for the life of me remember the cracker group name, let alone anything else): it was waveforms instead of samples. Jungle Command did a lot without traditional sound tracker like tools but it is not from them. I will just enjoy listening to 1000s of Amiga songs in search for this one. My normal goto music was from Romeo Knight or Uncle Tom by the way. Stupid factoid: I was jean Michel Jarre fan begin 80s and this song [0] by Romeo Knight got me into guitar playing (it was the first song I could play on a friend's guitar, well, sort of). And that got me into metal which I definitely do not regret. Favorite Uncle Tom one [1]. [0] https://youtu.be/i0bvhWs810g https://youtu.be/i0bvhWs810g [1] https://youtu.be/zR9a4vTuuoo https://youtu.be/zR9a4vTuuoo

nxtbl 5y ago

Stone Oakvalley's work on these and Commodore 64 sids hasn't been mentioned yet? He has gone through and recorded all of the Amiga modules and C64 sid tunes as mp3. C64 tunes are even recorded separately for three/four different sid chip variations. New releases of HVSC collection have also been recorded promptly. https://www.paula8364.com/ https://www.paula8364.com/ for Amiga, 484GB x2 https://www.6581-8580.com/ https://www.6581-8580.com/ for C64, 159GB x3

ErneX 5y ago

Echoing by Banana https://youtu.be/3CRYkFAlgvo https://youtu.be/3CRYkFAlgvo

freediver 5y ago

Not to forget Barry Leitch of Lotus 2 fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw Jon Hare & Richard Joseph with Cannon Fodder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2fulUF64w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2fulUF64w And probably my favorite of all time, Chris Glaister's Lost Patrol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47CRLL0kjE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47CRLL0kjE

cjdell 5y ago

I first discovered music MOD files on the CD-ROM of the magazine "What PC?" in 1995. I was only 10 years old at the time so hadn't even heard of the Amiga but I was instantly hooked on the music style. I would record the MODs from the family computer on to my cassette player so I could listen to them without hogging the computer. Listening to these again is such a nostagia trip. "Space Debris" was one of my favourite songs...

jug 5y ago

Danko - Complications https://youtu.be/DXDa8EL93hE https://youtu.be/DXDa8EL93hE Purple Motion of Future Crew - Unreal 2 https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU (composed by a 16 yo) Making of Second Reality with said Future Crew: https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU 9 fingers - Spaceballs: https://youtu.be/n4M7e79XTYk https://youtu.be/n4M7e79XTYk And making of: https://youtu.be/WgriMuXZ3QY https://youtu.be/WgriMuXZ3QY Kefrens - Desert Dreams: https://youtu.be/jziQBWQxvok https://youtu.be/jziQBWQxvok

iloveyouocean 5y ago

Buddha on a Bicycle, buddha1.far I have been searching for this track for decades, but I fear it is lost forever. My favorite 'mod' track, created with the Farandole Composer software.