Music from Windows OS sounds created with ModPlug Tracker

Ah, trackers. This cool video brings back memories of the program I learned how to write electronic music on: Impulse Tracker. Nights after my web design job I’d sit for hours in front of my Pentium IV in DOS learning hexadecimal so I could add notes one by one and then toss on note effects. It was primitive compared to what we have today, but it taught me a lot about DSP and composition and without it I wouldn’t be where I am today (my most recent album is Coaster, which was done with FL Studio. Mercifully my early attempts at music done with IT have vanished into the ether ;-)).

Trackers are sample based, and back in the day when hard drives were smaller one had to think about file size carefully when dealing with multimedia stuff. The easiest route to go was to just use sounds already on your hard drive in the Windows system folder. The artist, SomethingUnreal, expanded on the idea and made a track from Windows XP and Windows 98.

The artist uses ModPlug Tracker:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimed…
That will install itself as a program, which you can start running from the Start menu, as you would with most other programs. 😉

A while ago, I made a VERY brief (sorry) guide for getting started with ModPlug Tracker, and at least getting SOME sound out of it.
It’s at my site, here:
http://robbi-985.homeip.net:8000/info…
(Since that’s a text file, it might be easier to read if you download it (right-click, Save Link or Target As) and view it in a text editor like Notepad.)