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Tell Your Story: how have music modules affected your life?

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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  :angel: :angel: 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.

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