MOD Memories

[IntvGene]

Well, long before MP3s, I was first introduced to music on my computer with the introduction of MODs (music modules), and my first MOD player which I had on my old PC.

From what I understand, they began on the Amiga, as a smaller format that could loop the samples and keep their size relatively small, which actually mattered back then. I had a couple of friends with Amigas and STs, but my first MOD player was on the PC, and it had the requisite graphical enhancements and effects for me to watch as I listened to the music. My first song that I remember was Dee-lite's Groove is in the Heart. I would show it to friends, and we would sit in awe of this computer playing the music. Simply amazing.

I didn't have a lot of songs, as my hard drive was pretty tiny at the time, but it's funny looking back, at the development of the scene, and it's still very much alive, but sadly, I've moved on to new technology.

I never had the skill to make anything myself, and a couple of friends made some simple stuff on a tracker. Did anyone make their own MODs? Any other MOD memories?

[Queen Of The Felines]

Ah, MOD memories. I remember the day back in 2002 when Joe asked me to be a MOD, I was sitting...

Oh. :embarrassed:

Seriously though, I still have a MOD creation program called PlayerPro for my Mac. Pretty nifty, though I didn't have any particular talent to make anything good. :(

Kristine

[Ze_ro]

If I recall correctly, MOD was more or less the native format that Amiga's used for music... sort of the way SID's are the native format for C-64's. That's why it's so easy to find MOD music from Amiga games, since people just yank it right out of the program.

My brother was a die-hard Amiga fan, so I had known about MOD music for quite some time. However, I don't think I got really into it at all until I started playing this goofy like PC game called EITtris. It was a four player competitive Tetris game with some really nasty attack powerups that you could send to the other players. However, instead of having it's own music, it just had a built-in MOD player, so you could stick in whatever MOD's you wanted, and it would play them while you played. The more I played the game, the more MOD's I downloaded off the net until I had a pretty good collection of them.

I was never a very talented musician though (I'm an engineer by trade, so art is pretty much out of my grasp)... certainly not good enough to outdo any of the MOD's that I downloaded... so I never really even bothered to try writing any MOD's.

(By the way, EITtris is an amazingly fun game, give it a try if you have some spare time. It's completely free as well)

--Zero

[Mayhem]

I've still got Fasttracker on my old 486 and a bundle of MODs too. If there's anything interest, I can try getting them off for download.

[Jorpho]

Amigas were indeed far, far better for playing MOD files than PCs were. My old 486 wept with pain whenever I tried to play MOD files in Windows. Quality MOD files can be hard to find anyway.

Of course, there was still many a quality Megazeux game with superior MOD soundtracks. Ah, Skaven's Catch That Goblin... What a tune!

At some point, long, long before Hamsterdance became popular, I also found a MOD version of Bad Base, the techno tune on which it is based. Never found that one again.