I stumbled across this system many years ago (90s?) while researching computer recording.
MOD files were very popular with folks programming music for video games because of the finished audio file's small footprint and ability to use MIDI-like data with uncompressed digital audio samples.

Probably the best example of what a standard MOD file might sound like, based on something popular, would be Harold Faltermeyer's tune Axel F from the movie Beverly Hills Cop.

The early programs (Trackers) were only four track/channel, and could only play one note at a time.
The fact that you couldn't play chords, made users create extensive sample libraries consisting of single sample chord families.

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You may be wondering, "what is a music mod"?

Well, music modules, or mods as they are more commonly referred to, are pieces of music created on a computer.

Their origins stem back to a computer called the Commodore Amiga. The Amiga had computer chips inside it that excelled any other computer at the time, although the Atari ST was a fierce rival.

One of these chips, the sound chip, was capable of playing 4 channels of sound, or samples, simultaneously, without impacting on the computer's CPU. This power meant that quality music could be produced with ease on a home computer for the first time.

In order to create music, computer programs known as Trackers were born. SoundTracker, ProTracker and MED are all examples of these. Sound samples were loaded into memory, and placed at various places within 4 columns, and when the sequence of samples was played, music was produced.

It wasn't long before amateur musicians started creating their own music, and though they may sound primitive today, the music was enjoyed by many fans of the genre.

New computers arrived, and the PC became the computer of choice within the home. But tracking didn't die. New Trackers were born, such as FastTracker and ScreamTracker, which enabled musicians to use not 4, but 16 channels or more simultaneously. The musical creations became more elaborate and the tracking scene grew.

Trackers who had started out writing 4 channel mods moved on to these new trackers and became more accomplished in their output.

Time moved on however, and the composers had less and less time to pursue their hobby of creating music. Many of them started creating music commercially for computer games companies, some become DJ's and others chose to pursue other fields of work, such as software coding.

And so the Scene as it was known slowed down, the greatest composers no longer released music mods, and mp3s became the de-facto standard of music playback. To mirror this, the composers started making mp3s instead, with sound quality and complexity far exceeding their humble roots, but their energies were mostly diverted towards other persuits by this time.
http://mods.skywalk.co.uk/history.shtml
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Module files come in various formats including .MOD. Formats evolved from .MOD include .S3M, IT, .XM, .FAR, 669. Most contain improvements on .MODs.
http://www.tump.net/

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Being on a Macintosh at the time, the MOD player I experimented with was a program called Player Pro. This thing was like having a baby version of Pro Tools. You could edit files, reverse them, normalize them, do all kinds of crazy manipulations. While doing this research I found sites, exactly like this section of the org, where people would post their original compositions. It was so cool. I thought this was some great Secret Society because most of the musicians I knew had never heard of MOD files. There was even a tracking bible (The Zen Of Tracking) everyone referenced written by someone only known as Introspective The problem that I found, was that most of the posters were computer programmers and not musicians. So most of their compositions didn't sound...aah...very musical. With the glaring execption of a Swedish cat named Radix.

Oh yeah, they all had strange usernames, again just like here.

Radix, and few others that I can't remember now, were extremely musical and very funky.
He's the only one I still remember from the MOD file days. To add to the mystery, he would use different names based on the type of music he wrote. Radix was used for MOD files, Mosaik for ambient, Rymdlego for experimental and Sinespree for pop/dance.

Today while trying to clear some things off of my computer, I ran across a folder of his tunes and they still sound good. You can tell that some of the pieces were written specifically for computer games. The thing he's really good at is combining ambience, funk and melody along with substituting sounds/noises for traditional instruments in many tunes.

Early Radix music, in various MOD formats, can be heard here:
http://mods.skywalk.co.uk/mods.shtml

Tunes you shouldn't miss:
la blue girl, donovan's moonbike, emelie

Winamp is supposed to play these file types.
But based on my experience today, if you're gonna listen to this you might want to snag "DeliPlayer":
www.deliplayer.com

Current Radix music, in mp3 format, can be heard here:
http://mods.skywalk.co.uk/mp3.shtml

And lo and behold i've finally run down his webpage.
He's done it up old school, staying true to the MOD tradition, in straight text format.
It took me back to the point that at first I didn't realize that some of the text were
actually links. It was like I was using Pine software again. What a time warp.

He's got some tunes available there:
http://www.mosaik.se


"I just came up with a melody, and then tracked it down.. then I put drum/basslines on it and noticed, hey this is 10/8 tempo.. I think its much more fun tracking without thinking of any music 'rules' there might be, and then afterwards I can take a look and see what I've really done"
- Radix (from The Zen of Tracking by Introspective)


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm
[Edited 12/4/04 17:52pm]
[Edited 12/5/04 8:30am]

Dear God!

I used to use RBF's "MED" a tracker program which allowed a combo of MIDI and initially 4-channel audio. This would later evolve into 8-channel thus "OctaMED" and eventually 64-channels which at the time was relatively ambitious because the hardware or upgrade to support this for the ol' Amiga format was still relatively high. For example, a 4MB Memory card pre-SIMM, was around £80 ($55)!

My Commodore Amiga 1200 stil resides in my studio for sentimental reasons!

Hundreds of tracks where written in the MOD format and I also used SMPTE to record onto my 4-track/8-track recorder.

A lot of my early stuff was a hybrid of MOD-MIDI format. Was a dream for making 'Jungle', 'Drum&Bass' and 'House' music!

Respect to C=, Ray-Burt Frost and Teijo Kinnunen!

'dre

Dre,

Aah, a member of the MOD brotherhood. Those were some wild days.

A cool place to listen to MOD files was at the Hornet Archive (http://www.hornet.org)
(which amazingly is still active but hosted by the Scene.org)

There's an active Amiga-based MOD site here:
http://exotica.fix.no/main.html

Some of the hip sites for individual samples are no longer active but are being archived.
Like Maz-Sound (old site archived at www.soundtrackers.de)
I used to have organized folders of samples from that spot (drums, horns, bass, efx, etc.)
Another cool thing was that if you played someone's MOD file and dug a sample that was being used, you could use your Tracker to "rip" the individual sound out and save it. The only thing anyone asked was that you retained the sound ID which listed its source. Come to find out many of the ripped sounds were 4th or 5th generation rips at the very least.

The good old days.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

You're bringing back memories here, man

Raijuan said:

Aw shucks

Well, that makes at least 3 of us.

Show us your TRACKERS!...



...FastTracker II

And the great...



...PlayerPro for Macintosh

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm
[Edited 12/7/04 10:47am]

Memories man...



OctaMED SoundStudio!!!!

Many a song started here back in the teenage years!

'dre

No i'm not a MOD or TRACKER but this stuff sounds very interesting.
Anyone remember the 'Fairlight' computer sampler.[ Australian Fairlight CMI
(Computer Musical Instrument ) Google :- search * http://www.ghservices.com...000661.htm
One of the 1st. sampling computer's , and all the go with the experimental 'pro's of the 70's.
This thread jolted my memory to a documentary I watched last night. It had Robert 'MOOG' talking about the evolution of early sound generators and the big jump to fairlight.I think they said the first 'rappers' used it... and made a bit of eclectic musical magic . Should have taped the show...
Thanks for da links tA ...will check 'em out.

I had 2 A500's and a modified A2000 with the Fatter agnus and deniece chips and would Mod alllll day looooong
[Edited 12/7/04 13:32pm]

FLUX said:

Yes indeed.


Fairlight CMI



And then The Synclavier (favored by Frank Zappa)


But I believe it all started with the original "sampled" sound (or replay) keyboard...

The Chamberlin

followed by...

The Mellotron

The world of sampling's humble beginnings.


I think you'll dig the Radix material keeping in mind when it was done and the fact that many of the pieces were written for video games.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm
[Edited 12/7/04 17:42pm]

TheRealFiness said:

Alright Mr. Amiga.

Well that makes 4!



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

i still think Amiga's kick ass

TheRealFiness said:

I missed the whole Amiga/Atari computer period.

Started on a Mac Performa 630CD at a blazing 33 MHz ...



It was enough to run early versions of PlayerPro though.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

Thank God for technology's grand progression

TheRealFiness said:

amen 2 that and I am NEVER gettin' rid of my A1200!

'dre