MOD music file

Module file (MOD music, tracker music) Amiga MOD music files - music stored in module files created with trackers. MOD came many years before MP3s and also set a unique standard for how music sounds from a computer.

MOD files originated on the Amiga, but because of their flexibility and the extremely large number of MOD files available, MOD players are now available for a variety of machines (IBM PC, Mac, Sparc Station, etc.)

The samples in a MOD file are raw, 8 bit, signed, headerless, linear digital data. There may be up to 31 distinct samples in a MOD file, each with a length of up to 128K (though most are much smaller; say, 10K - 60K). An older MOD format only allowed for up to 15 samples in a MOD file; you don't see many of these anymore. There is no standard sampling rate for these samples.

The sequencing information in a MOD file contains 4 tracks of information describing which, when, for how long, and at what frequency samples should be played. This means that a MOD file can have up to 31 distinct (digitized) instrument sounds, with up to 4 playing simultaneously at any given point. This allows a wide variety of orchestrational possibilities, including use of voice samples or creation of one's own instruments (with appropriate sampling hardware/software). The ability to use one's own samples as instruments is a flexibility that other music files/formats do not share, and is one of the reasons MOD files are so popular, numerous, and diverse.

15 instrument MODs, as noted above, are somewhat older than 31 instrument MODs and are not (at least not by me) seen very often anymore. Their format is identical to that of 31 instrument MODs except:

1. Since there are only 15 samples, the information for the last (15th) sample starts at byte 440 and goes through byte 469.
2. The songlength is at byte 470 (contrast with byte 950 in 31 instrument MOD)
3. Byte 471 appears to be ignored, but has been observed to be 127. (Sorry, this is from observation only)
4. Byte 472 begins the pattern sequence table (contrast with byte 952 in a 31 instrument MOD)
5. Patterns start at byte 600 (contrast with byte 1084 in 31 instrument MOD)

Mod versus Midi

In the 1990s those of us that enjoyed listening to and creating MOD files all pretty much agreed that MIDI sucked. MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and seemed to be the non-hackers way to share flat sounding anemic music. The midi file had its original purpose as a way to store and mix electronically synthesized music but by the time the personal computer became popular midi was adapted to a computer format that was already past its time. MIDI is a serial protocol that allowed different digital instruments to exchange information and control each other.

MIDI was created around 1983, well before MOD files. It was not created specifically for personal computers whereas MOD files were created for the Amiga computer system by Amiga users. In this a direct comparison between MIDI and MOD is somewhat unfair. However critics of MIDI have existed going back to the 1980s shortly after its introduction. MIDI was designed for electronic keyboards and the designers never had other instruments in mind such as guitars. Although guitar midi pickups exist, it has never sounded particularly well and remains flat.

If you had a fresh install of Microsoft Windows 3.1 on MSDOS 6.2 you might remember that sample midi files were included with the system as well as a midi player. By this time we were into the 1990s and MIDI was already 10 years old. People were trading music via BBS or the Internet on their dialup connection and they were either trading, for the most part, MIDI files or MOD files. Die hard Windows nerds that were afraid to venture out of their comfort zone stuck to flat sounding MIDI files while the Amiga zealots and hackers were all trading MOD files with their sharp sound and unique expression of many popular songs. Neither MIDI nor MOD was a true replication of the original music (such as a wave file representation) but no one could afford to download 200MB of wave file when the MOD file was only a few KB and would fit on a floppy disk if needed. MOD sounded more like the real thing than did MIDI.

It is not a debate today and no one under the age of 40 even knows what MOD vs MIDI is about. Furthermore, comparing the two as a computer file format doesn't take into consideration the original intent of either. However, if you had a personal computer in the late 1980s or well into the 1990s and you were into music, then you probably had a strong opinion and likely preferred MOD files over MIDI. Many game developers of the day used MOD music tracks for their games. MOD just sounded cool and MIDI was considered lame.

software

ProTracker

ProTracker - for AmigaOS

Fasttracker II

FastTracker II is a singular piece of software that helped define trackers, demoscene, and the music produced with it. This was an MSDOS program very popular in the 1990s. A project now exists to provide a clone of Fasttracker 2 that runs on modern operating systems like Windows 10 and MacOS. The clone is built in SDL, a cross-platform media library, the work of Olav “8bitbubsy” Sørensen. [Fasttracker 2 Clone].

xmp

Console, Linux, tested on Ubuntu / Mint

The Extended Module Player, or xmp, is a portable command-line module player. Xmp plays many mainstream and obscure module formats including Protracker (MOD), Scream Tracker 3 (S3M), Fast Tracker II (XM), and Impulse Tracker (IT). Libxmp loads the module and renders the sound as linear PCM samples in a buffer at rate and format specified by the user. Applications for libxmp include players, module information extractors, module-to-mp3 renderers, game music, etc. A smaller subset of libxmp is also available. below).

install

apt install xmp

MikMod

Console, Linux, ncurses interface full screen in console terminal / classic MOD player for Linux with curses or X interface. better keyboard commands than xmp. Good old fashioned mod file sound.

install

apt install mikmod

Warning, it is easy to accidentally delete a mod file with this program.

MilkyTracker

This one has a graphical user interface. It loads in a window but has a console feel, very reminiscent of the old Fasttracker 2. We tested version 0.90.85 on Linux Mint 18.3 and it functioned well.

Official description from the MilkyTracker Web Site: MilkyTracker is an open source, multi-platform music application for creating .MOD and .XM module files. It attempts to recreate the module replay and user experience of the popular DOS program Fasttracker II, with special playback modes available for improved Amiga ProTracker 2/3 compatibility.

The most recent version is from the web site or github. Ubuntu repository has it available however it wont be as current if you use apt.

apt install milkytracker

SchismTracker

Like MilkyTracker it runs in a gui window but looks console. This one dumps core when tested.

apt install schism