Amiga Music Preservation | Hacker News Reader

Amiga Music Preservation

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Here are some recommendations for those on HN new to the tracker scene:

Jester - Elysium

Jester - Stardust Memories

Tip and Firefox - Enigma

Greg - Odyssey Pt. 2

Firefox - Galaxy 2

Mantronix - Act Of Impulse

Dr. Awesome - 12th Warrior

NHP + BKH - Enigma Year

Captain - Space Debris

Captain - Beyond Music

Uncle Tom - Occ-San-Geen

Romeo Knight - Beat To The Pulp

What a crazy and beautiful era for creativity! A German, Swedes, a Swiss, a Norwegian, two Frenchmen, two Finns..all with four channels and about 200k of space. Not to mention they were probably all teenagers at the time too!

The demoscene is such a great deep dive -- I'm only referencing about three years of productions here, there's so much more that came after on the PC side and even lots before too if you dig into the C64 and Atari scenes. So much goodness!

Wrong continent and era for me unfortunately. :)

Here's a playlist with all of these songs! Thanks for the great recommendations

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnRRE4-idfADx_BgudiHYizK7...

My pleasure! Let me know which one is your favorite :)

Enigma has been my ringtone for the best part of 15 years now so I already know :)

Thank you. If you like tracker music you might like this one too

Binaerpilot: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mPZ2AmFjEVSeZjnW7O...

.. also Deadlock by Elwood. Or in fact, anything by Elwood…

I would have to agree and I love Elwood too (so much!).

I think we should note though, that Elwood's main contributions were during the PC-tracker-scene 'era' (FastTracker2) and not so much an Amiga thing.

Yes, this -- I didn't want to be too pedantic :) If we were getting into the PC scene, Elwood would have made an appearance with Purple Motion and loads of others.

There's a modern remix of Space Debris on the soundtrack of the 2011 game Rochard by Recoil Games. It was made by the original artist Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsapsOqc7UI

>Wrong continent and era for me unfortunately. :)

As someone who was in the midst of it here in Denmark, I can tell you that, as a teenager who was used to anything cool always coming from the US, I assumed that there were much cooler demos being made in the states that we simply didn't have access to.

That's so wild. I was lucky to grow up in a relatively large city in the era of BBSes and then IRC, so I was able to find a decent community of fellow nerds. If there was one thing that consistently blew us away, it was the demoscene -- everything about it seemed so amazing and creative and we were all just so bummed that we were on the wrong continent to ever attend Assembly or TheParty.

Apart from maaaaybe Renaissance on the PC I'm hard-pressed to really name a significant American demogroup whereas I get a huge smile thinking about a party where you had Silents sitting next to Phenomena sitting next to Sanity sitting next to Scoopex.

In a way I give a lot of credit to the scene for my eventual career as a tech entrepreneur. What I loved so much to do with my computer was create: draw ANSI, make music, build websites from scratch. Eventually that became starting companies, but so much of that spirit was generated from my marvel at what some European teenagers were able to do with computer 1% as powerful as mine.

LizardKing - Desert Dawn

Moby - Elekfunk

Also shouts to Sklathill, whose stuff I can't find in Mod Archive otherwise I'd recommend him too.

Seems that a HN filter intended for Google AMP is triggered by the URL and changes it. But amp in this URL has nothing to do with Google AMP.

The url is supposed to be http://amp.dascene.net/home.php

@dang, can you override the change of the url so it's correct?

Direct address in the meantime:

http://109.190.61.142/home.php

Clever :)

I am too used to many sites sharing a single IP address that I didn’t even think about doing it that way.

Also won't work for https

Depends on how it’s configured. It could still serve plain HTTP and redirect (HTTP 300 family) to the domain name and TLS.

It's amazing to find some music there that I composed about 30 years ago. I'd shared it via diskette with a friend who slapped it into a demo, then he mailed the demo on another diskette to someone else who would duplicate and send out more copies, one of which made it maybe to a demo party that ended up feeding the archive. All of this by snail mail, there was no consumer internet back then. Pretty unexpected survival of these artifacts!

That is an amazing story.

I had a few nice conversations with some of my favorite musicians (Firefox, Uncle Tom, Jester, etc.) and many of them are shocked and overjoyed that things they worked on for fun a lifetime ago are being enjoyed by new waves of people every day.

Fun fact: the tracker songs recorded from real amigas (or faithful emulations) have a certain nuance to the samples which you learn to recognize, due to that everybody disabled the D/A low-pass filter back in the day, which is normally really required after a D/A to reproduce the actual analog samples.

So you got a higher pass-through of some of the higher frequencies contained in the played samples (as the original filters were too wide and cut into the real data), but also you got higher aliasing harmonics, that shouldn't be there but kind of make it sound better in total. Actually, in music production you often add filters in the chain that artificially create harmonics to "excite" the audio and make it more interesting for the ear. This was kind of an unintentional exciter :)

On the Amiga 500, the D/A filter was switchable by software, by toggling the power LED. I'm pretty sure some engineer thought it was crippling to have the filter there permanently online, and sneaked in a toggle feature but couldn't find any free GPIO :)

More in depth description of the D/A reconstruction filter and mod-player emulation issues arising from it:

https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt

Turning the filter off is quite noticeable. I did a sample test, with and without the filter. Not by turning off the power LED in assembler, but using a setting in WinUAE.

The samples are on my site: https://www.markwrobel.dk/post/amiga-machine-code-letter8-wa...

I recall some tracker format used that power LED as an actual effect, or 5th channel?

Great to see that the preservation effort is still alive.

Though having missed the glory years of tracker music, since a young age I have had a strong affection for its sound.

Another treasure trove for tracker music is The Mod Archive: https://modarchive.org/

Some of my favorite tracker music:

- Purple Motion - Starshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3xHPIuX3s4

- Robert Allen - Epic Pinball Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqC9yS9oLCY

- Dr. Awesome - Space Deliria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g60hfiO1WY

- 4mat - Chipmusic is dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSoqzkWhF8

- 4mat - Eternity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHzG7OJ76t8

For those who like ambient:

- Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Water https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHJ7IWBpRs

- Deus Ex: Naval Base https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aj4jfiqiLw

Mod Archive has an in-browser player! Another comment somewhere in here links https://modtu.be which seems to be a fairly awesome in-browser player too!

Blurry lines between amiga and PC tracker scenes hey? there was a lot of back-and-forth. Impossible not to have Purple Motion on any classic-mods list though, I absolutely agree!

Bassoon tracker is another good in-browser tracker, with a nice Amiga-like feel to it.

https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/

- Purple Motion - SSI Intro https://modtu.be/?m=384106

It’s a slow burn… favorite parts at 4:52 and 8:51.

- 4mat - Starworx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pke0cannA3w

For the folks that want to make music in that amiga tracker style- check out the Polyend Tracker. It’s a usb(a phone charger battery will run this thing for hours) powered self contained groovebox/synth/sampler with an 8 track tracker style sequencer. I just got mine a week ago and it’s already one of my favorite pieces of kit. I can go outside, lay in bed/on the couch and make music that I would have to be at a desk with my other gear and Mac to make otherwise. It’s small enough to throw in your laptop bag but large enough to feel like real gear. Highly recommend!!

Main product URL:

https://polyend.com/tracker/

(it's out of stock directly from Polyend, but check with music stores, local and otherwise)

Just got one too and still learning about it (and really really like it). Have you seen this great video? It's a good high level tutorial of most features (it's a tiny bit dated when compared to the latest firmware, but it's still mostly the same UI)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQufJBVvAtY

Also... the Tracker supports .mod files..!

https://help.polyend.com/944600-Is-the-Tracker-able-to-impor...

The Loopop video definitely had me interested at the time but I think I kind of just got busy and forgot about it. Then happened to have a conversation with one of the guys at Sound on sound and he sold me on it. Right now there is great kit out there for samplers. Also check out the Isla s2400 if a more 1980s sp-12/1200 workflow interests you. Both are essential gear for me now.

Thanks for pointing me to the Isla S2400! Just wanted to make sure, when you say "Right now there is great kit out there for samplers", I'm not sure what you mean? Are you referring to the Tracker, the S2400, or something else?

Both the Tracker and the 2400. :) They do things differently, but each is great and produce results that the other would not.

And honestly the new MPCs are pretty good too, just not my preferred way of working.

I bought one a few weeks ago and I really like it as well.

That said, if there's one beef then for me it's the hard limit of 8 channels. That limit makes it very hard to do anything with chords, somewhat limiting the kinds of genres it's suitable for. Growing up with FastTracker 2, it feels a bit like a needless limitation. If my 486DX computer could do 32 channels why can't a modern piece of kit?

Even with that, though, it's a very well thought out piece of gear. I'm impressed with the software UX, they clearly spent a lot of man-hours iterating on that. Once you figure out the button combos and shortcuts it's really quite productive.

I've been thinking about getting one since they first came out because while I enjoy the tracker workflow, I don't enjoy making music at the computer these days, especially since working from home during the pandemic.

Like you though, I worry about the channel limit. While 8 channels would be plenty for sequencing monophonic parts, as soon as you start throwing chords in there, or even just mono parts where you want the notes to overlap and decay naturally, 8 channels seems a drastic limitation. The hardware in there must surely be able to handle 32 channels? An internal battery would also have been a useful feature.

Stone Oakvalley's work on these and Commodore 64 sids hasn't been mentioned yet?

He has gone through and recorded all of the Amiga modules and C64 sid tunes as mp3. C64 tunes are even recorded separately for three/four different sid chip variations. New releases of HVSC collection have also been recorded promptly.

https://www.paula8364.com/ for Amiga, 484GB x2

https://www.6581-8580.com/ for C64, 159GB x3

I remember back in the early 2000s, I built a whole set of scripts to automatically download the next set of files from aminet, unarchive them, play them, let me give each a rating (0 to 9), and store that away so I could later tell it to play tracks with a rating of X+ in random order. I think I made it about 1/3 the way through all of aminet. The vast majority of tracks were awful, but there was a decent number of absolute gems in there.

Not to forget Barry Leitch of Lotus 2 fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSsq7HCNHw

Jon Hare & Richard Joseph with Cannon Fodder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc2fulUF64w

And probably my favorite of all time, Chris Glaister's Lost Patrol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b47CRLL0kjE

This album [0], Tracked (1991-2000) by Purple Motion is excellent. Got all the nostalgia.

[0]: https://purplemotion.bandcamp.com/album/tracked-1991-2000

And it’s on Spotify!! I was excited to find it a while ago, though I do have most of the songs as original mods somewhere on my disk too…

Massive tracker music fan (and quiet author, hardly anything released) here, my main exposure was as the PC-scene arose (from ScreamTracker onwards).

I'd like to recommend some mostly-pc tracker-music authors that are perhaps not necessarily the 'Pop-Stars' of the tracker scene, but I still think they made really absolutely awesome, different and interesting music in this format:

Dune aka Brothomstates (https://modtu.be/?m=26492)

Shad (https://modtu.be/?m=337401)

Croaker (https://modtu.be/?m=89553)

Yolk (https://modtu.be/?m=55561)

Sulphur (https://modtu.be/?m=385511)

Xhale (https://modtu.be/?m=55280)

Groo (https://modtu.be/?m=30096)

That is a magnificent list of musicians. Note that some links may show only tracks in one particular format, and they likely have a much larger list of contributions in other formats.

May I add Jesper Kyd (https://modtu.be/?m=313332)

I have been looking for the past 10 years for one particular 'cracked game' intro music with a starfield that pulsated to the music (the song was over 10 minutes I think and took up a few k; I cannot for the life of me remember the cracker group name, let alone anything else): it was waveforms instead of samples. Jungle Command did a lot without traditional sound tracker like tools but it is not from them. I will just enjoy listening to 1000s of Amiga songs in search for this one.

My normal goto music was from Romeo Knight or Uncle Tom by the way.

Stupid factoid: I was jean Michel Jarre fan begin 80s and this song [0] by Romeo Knight got me into guitar playing (it was the first song I could play on a friend's guitar, well, sort of). And that got me into metal which I definitely do not regret.

Favorite Uncle Tom one [1].

[0] https://youtu.be/i0bvhWs810g [1] https://youtu.be/zR9a4vTuuoo

As someone who was involved in the Amiga scene I know how all this stuff works. Without that knowledge the site is very hard to use. It wouldn't be difficult to make an MP3 version of this site with an embedded player but I think the hosting costs might be difficult to pay for.

For anyone that just wants to listen to the music in the collection I recommend installing the iOS app 4champ

https://4champ.net/

https://apps.apple.com/app/4champ/id578311010

And going to radio mode and toggling it to Radio ON.

This immediately starts streaming music from Amiga Music Preservation and playing it.

The iOS app also runs on macOS, although its UI is not ideal for use on a computer as it is more geared towards touch screens. I mainly use it on my iPhone for this reason, much more than I use it on my MacBook Pro M1.

One final note about the music player 4champ: It's generally a good player and I listen a lot using it, but it sorely lacks a "previous song" function in Radio mode. So if it plays a good tune and you don't favorite the tune while is playing, or make note of the name of it and its artist, you will have effectively no way of finding that song again. But other than this it's a solid player.

thanks for mentioning 4champ here - it brought some new users, looking at the download stats in appstore. I'll be sure to address your comment on providing means to go back in the radio mode play queue in a future version. :)

No android program?

The list of stations Radiodroid uses has at least a couple playing Amiga tracker music, I don't know how they compare to the one discussed here.

vlc maybe?

There are inbrowser tracker file players, esp with Wasm rendering could be done client side. That said, with super low bitrate codecs from Xiph it might be much much simpler to encode once and ship the compressed song. Sending the tracker files means that it can be much easier to visualize and slow down playback.

I found a few great JS-based trackers (and successfully tried a few mod files):

https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb...

https://mod.haxor.fi/Groo/mod.electrification (many songs available in the 'load' interface)

I also did find a wrapper around an emscripten-JS'ified version of libopenmpt (a popular MOD player library..?):

https://github.com/deskjet/chiptune2.js/

MOD trackers worked fine on 8MHz systems, there is no need for WASM here. https://warpdesign.github.io/modplayer-js/

A properly written WASM MOD player could probably be a lot nicer on the battery than one implemented in JS. Then again, JS does have some quite advanced audio specific APIs available in browsers these days. So profiling would be necessary in order to tell if a good implementation in WASM beats a good implementation in JS on power consumption.

I was thinking more like your could run a m68k emulator in Wasm to run the original Amiga tracking software so it would sound just like the machine it was written on.

Here’s mine: https://mmontag.github.io/chip-player-js/browse

One of my favourite pieces of computer game music is from Speedball II, released on the Amiga

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GrM0hHzM4to

There's a guy who remixes old computer game music on a modern DAW, so you're not actually listening to music producer by the Amiga any more. However, his remix of the Speedball II music is worth listening to...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kyeAX27GDC4

I love the fact that he took in-game sounds and mixed them into the music (like the injured player being carted off, and the ice-cream seller in the crowd)

wow, there are files of mine on there I thought I lost decades ago lol

That’s pretty cool :) I often value digital archival because it lets me find old stuff that others made. But finding old stuff that was made by oneself, carefully saved by someone else, that must be even nicer!

Hoffman, still one of my favorite ones. Still active today.

http://109.190.61.142/detail.php?detail=modules&view=3357

One I particularly love is the soundtrack of the game Utopia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7RGtHOj8pM

Danko - Complications https://youtu.be/DXDa8EL93hE

Purple Motion of Future Crew - Unreal 2 https://youtu.be/Dmhtc5S4atU (composed by a 16 yo)

Making of Second Reality with said Future Crew: https://youtu.be/LIIBRr31DIU

9 fingers - Spaceballs: https://youtu.be/n4M7e79XTYk

And making of: https://youtu.be/WgriMuXZ3QY

Kefrens - Desert Dreams: https://youtu.be/jziQBWQxvok

I'm composing the music to my video game in Protracker on (emulated) Amiga -- just to add a little 90s cyberpunk authenticity to go with the theme of the game. It may not come out nearly as good as some of these masters' work, but if it turns out to give the feel of the era it'll be past the threshold of "good enough".

If this is the time to offer our personal chiptune favorites, Loonie - Biohazard really does it for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMHDHwsEQA

I first discovered music MOD files on the CD-ROM of the magazine "What PC?" in 1995. I was only 10 years old at the time so hadn't even heard of the Amiga but I was instantly hooked on the music style.

I would record the MODs from the family computer on to my cassette player so I could listen to them without hogging the computer. Listening to these again is such a nostagia trip.

"Space Debris" was one of my favourite songs...

Echoing by Banana

https://youtu.be/3CRYkFAlgvo

While not exactly tracker music, if this "sound" is appealing to you, here's a channel that might be of interest: https://www.di.fm/playlists/outrun

Buddha on a Bicycle, buddha1.far

I have been searching for this track for decades, but I fear it is lost forever. My favorite 'mod' track, created with the Farandole Composer software.

highly recommend the works of radix, especially FIRE&ICE2

radix is one my favorite artists, “tpolmgirl” and “ma petite fleur” are also great. The first was actually played during the art scene part of the BBS documentary which is where I first heard it.

I completely second that (we are moving well beyond the Amiga tracking scene now but hey, it's all AWESOME!!)

Some of Radix/Mosaik's later work I think is absolutely stunningly beautiful too: Leandi, Aerials (On bandcamp) etc. Well worth a listen!

For some reason stereo just makes me nauseus.

Maybe the mono 8-bit generation will never like stereo 16-bit.

http://csdb.dk

The Amiga was stereo, but only 8-bit. There were just two hardware channels per stereo channel though, with no mixing between them, so it doesn't sound very nice with headphones.

Aha, that explains alot, thx!

Check out modtu.be, the most advanced mod archive player around.

https://modtu.be/

Thanks for the link! Great stuff!

I was slightly surprised to find the site at the article link doesn't seem to have playback built-in, but this looks like a really awesome web-player!

ModArchive also has in-browser playback available too.

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