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[m0d]

A prompt for anyone who feels interested in writing about their relationship with the module format, its place in computer history and  if there are particular reasons you have kept to this mostly underground format and whether you have preferences for modules over alternative, not necessarily mainstream, but other widespread forms of music be it vinyl or a huge MP3 collection, if there are particular module artists that changed or influenced your life in some way.

Don't worry, I'm not doing market research  just seeing our boards fairly (and reasonably so) quiet. I'd like to get to know more about those that love the module format, no matter which website but of course if the modarchive is your home, its always good to know who is out there.

Wishing all the best, with strength for the next year,

[capnholt]

Made my first XM in 1996.  Was crazy to discover I could make music myself, changed the course of my life: studied music in college, kept up composing as a hobby til now.  Modules themselves I stopped making around 2002 when I started wanting to play with synths and algorithmic music.  Then settled on Logic and GarageBand.  But it was mods that started it all. 

First thing I’d do every day when I came home from school in 96-97 was check TMA to see what was new. Some of the tracks people put up here really inspired me; when a new Elwood would drop, I’d have it stuck in my head for days, and it’d keep me up at night.  So many other gorgeous tracks from so many people.  And that’s what I loved the most: this was the new folk music.  Just anonymous people making music for themselves and a few friends and the few of us who were lucky enough to be tuned in on the shiny new internet. 

FT2 itself looked like a spaceship console and the white grid scolling by over a black background was like watching the stars.  I think it was FT but maybe it was another piece of software that had a visualizer mode where the notes would move left to right across the screen as glowing balls; all of this gave me my first mental visualizations of notes on a grid in space and time. 

It was open-source music: I could see where you guys put every note, I could make modifications and learn how it all worked. 

I might have uploaded one track to TMA once.  Was too perfectionistic to do it more.  But m0d, you and everyone else here changed my life.  You gave me a place to feel at home, and a hobby to build confidence and wonder. 

Tonight I’m awake a little late and for some reason decided to come here, it’s probably been years again since my last visit.  So glad to see you all still here.  Thanks for all of it.

[looper231]

First experienced modules back when I was 5 years old... It was on PS1 and warez :p

One of the first modules that I've listened to were by Estrayk/WOTW, since theirs were very common in cracktros. I've later leant, that the demoscene exists too and all of the tracks I loved are also linked to the demoscene, so I started exploring! I first stumbled upon Modarchive in 2018, when I was looking for a way to download all my Estrayk favourites. Liked the site so much, I registered and started collecting favs and listening to random tunes almost 5 hours a day!

Meanwhile, in 2008 I've discovered The Sound of SceneSat and I learned about Nectarine much later! I got to know about scene people and made some friends too.

In 2020 I've made my first ever track in MPT. It was initally supposed to be a port requested by my friend, but then it grew into something else :-)

Module music changed my life in a lot of ways and it all started in 2006 on that PS1... I can definitely say, that It defined my music taste and led to crazy situations and friendships.

[Axxy]

For those that don't know...

I started off on the Spectrum until the Amiga really changed everything about home computing, just as much as the Speccy did back in the 80s.. The Amiga is and was the best computer I have used over the years. Both computers were mainly for games, but the Amiga offered a bit more, i.e. the demoscene.

We used to copy a lot of stuff back then, including the latest demo's from various groups if we were lucky and buy disks from PD stores, hardly any Internet at that time. I used to collect lots of demos but I was more interested in the music than anything, so I started collecting Protracker modules or rip them from the demo itself. So many creative people back then....

When me and my mates were getting into early 90s online PC gaming, I managed to transfer the modules onto my PC, and as there were a few early mod replay programs I could continue to listen to them. I must say, I still continued to rip as many mods as I could on the PC as well, and now including MS-Dos demo's, as the PC scene took off and later windoze demo's.

In the early days, Netscape (browser of choice I think), I used to download demo stuff at an Internet Cafe (do they still have them?), or Hornet, Aminet, Scene.org and even here at MA, The Usenet newsgroups and a few other websites no longer around.

I was never a scener, just archiving tracker modules for personal use. I can't play any musical instruments and don't consider myself musically inclined whatsoever, but I have made a few modules myself, mostly shyte, but what do you expect.

I still continue to download and archive tracker modules over the last 20-30 odd years, contributed some of them to the large archives online a while back and help the odd person trying to identify or track down missing modules on various websites including here.

It's also nice to see new musicians continue to create some fine tunes even today in tracker format and also those musicians from back in the day who found they're way back and creating music again in recent years!!

[Zeb]

I first came in contact with tracker files on the Amiga.

No idea where it all started but I remember the first demo I saw and it was Demons Are Forever by Doctor Mabuse Orgasm Crackings. Still love that demo now.

I remember many years ago having a copy of Game Music Creator and not really knowing much about the program, a relative had a crack at making a piece of music but we couldn't get a second pattern to play and only had pattern 0 available. Musical family, relative I was with at the time made a snazzy tune up from that one pattern.

It was a few years until I had a crack at making music myself. First was converting the demo tune Grundlagen from Oktalyzer to Protracker 4 channel and I hate to blow my own trumpet but I did a grand job and then went on to add new bits to the tune at the end. The next piece was converting Say Say Say by Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson to Protracker. I did well and liked it but got so frustrated that I couldn't find a sample to fit at one particular place so I ended up deleting it and haven't touched it since. I stick to coding instead, something I've done since the mid 80s.

Why do I stick to these tracker formats? Because so much in the charts now is utter crap. If I listen to the radio it has to be local that has more talking than music because I really don't care much for modern music now - seems to by R&B/rap shite everywhere that puts me in a bad mood.

Just can't beat some well written tracked music.

[Oloturia]

As a teenager I had access to many cracktros. I often jumped them because I wanted to play the game, but some of them were catchy and I indulged in the trainer to listen to them. Anyway when I bought a PC that music went to the oblivion, with a few exceptions. In the 00's MP3s took almost all of my listening time.

Fast forward to 2018 I had a really strong flu, with temperatures above 39.5 °C, and I felt really bad. Couldn't stay awake for 10 minutes, had troubles standing, etc. My worst flu since I was adult, and as an adult it wouldn't be appropriate to ring to my parents and ask for cuddles as I did when I was a child, so I tried to find a "safe space", some (virtual) environment where I could feel "at home". My decision was to listen to a compilation of several hours of cracktros, that I put in loop for the few days of my illness. They brought me back to my teen years, when everything seemed (only seemed indeed) simpler.

My immune system eventually did its job and I recovered quickly. Listening again to the compilations I found some really good catchy tunes and I wondered why they don't have the celebrity that they deserve. I started to search more music like the ones I've listened during the flu and the more I searched the more I found. Years passed and now sometimes I do DJ-sets with cracktros and demoscene music, at the moment in strictly no-profit, non official venues because there are some quirks with Italian copyright's intermediary and because I don't know many of the authors (i.e. if I say that a tune is 4-mat's and the intermediary hasn't 4-mat in their database and is too lazy to check on the internet, the royalties for the evening goes to a pool of the most paid artists, like Taylor Swift or Eros Ramazzotti, and I really don't want this to happen, besides I risk a fine too if I put some music that I can't prove released as public domain or with a CC license). The evenings did very well, people danced a lot and we had fun.

Fun side story: during one of the evenings I was beaten by a completely stoned girl that was holding an enormous tree branch, she disturbed also the performer before me throwing a child's tricycle among the public, so I don't think she was angered by the MODs. I thought that being myself a big man and her a little woman I could overpower and disarm her easily. I was wrong, VERY wrong. Anyway I wasn't badly hurt and now I have a story to tell.

Second side story: searching for modules I also found some issues of the Amiga Cracker Journal, that I've never heard of. I read some articles and I found it to be a fantastic source of what the cracker scene was, with many anecdotes revealing a lore that I've never fathomed. I did a small presentation during a hacker event and it raised a lot of interest.

Side story of the second side story: during that presentation there was a laser printer with a keypad that printed zines on the spot. One of the zines was about relationship anarchy and when I read it I said "my god! that's me". After two months I met a girl in a poly relationship and now we're in love. The coincidence is staggering.

Fun fact of the side story of the second side story: the relationship anarchy manifesto is written by the same person that did the comic "Soldering is Easy" that I often use as a presentation when teaching how to solder. That manifesto was all the time under my nose but it needed a flu to trigger the cascade of events that lead me to all this.

[RedStealth]

So, I grew up without a PC for the better half of my current life, so most of my exposure to great tunes of anything remotely similar to a module format, were the various songs you'd find in the NES, SNES, and Genesis/Megadrive libraries. I grew up with a lot of 16-bit games for the most part, although I did have access to a PlayStation 2 as a kid.

So, fast forward to maybe 2013 or so, and I start learning that they make music that sounds like video game music all on it's own, and it's called chiptune. I listen to a LOT of chiptune when I can, granted I still didn't have a lot of access to the internet at the time.
During 2016 or so, I meet with some people online, and they introduce me to a little song known as StarChips. I was blown away by a chiptune of such structure and quality, and so I simply had to know more. It was in a YouTube video at the time, so I was wondering why it used such a strange looking program with a bunch of mysterious symbols scrolling up some screen.
These people ended up introducing me to the concept of tracker music, even having some of their own to show off, although unfortunately I can't recall any names to try and search for here...

I continued to find and listen to more tracker music, finding such masterpieces as Unreal from Purple Motion, or really any song by Purple Motion.
This music hit the perfect chords of nostalgia that the 16-bit era SNES soundtracks held, as well as the perfect amount of 90s era style that I'd listen to growing up in other kinds of music. Since then, tracker music became my favorite genre of all time, and will continue to be.

[Ceekayed]

Despite not having worked with oldschool trackers for a while (still using Renoise though!), I just wanted to drop by to give my thanks to the Modarchive crew and #modarchive and #mod_shrine in IRC. I'm working as the audio team lead at a large game company these days thanks to the community. I highly doubt I would've had the motivation to improve my skillset as much as I did without the positive and encouraging social element the scene had. So many absolutely brilliant people to have taught me a thing or a dozen about sound design and composing in the past just by proxy of talking about tracker music with them.

[Viraxor]

I would continue making repetitive crappy 3/10 house in a DAW if I have never heard of modules (specifically Carlos' modules. These jazz modules are a really big influence on me).