Way back, before I got a Commodore Amiga in 1992, I used to look forward to visiting our family friend Colin who wowed me on each visit with his Amiga 500. He would show me the latest fantastic audio/visual demos on that computer. Remember, I still only had an 8-bit Commodore 64 at that point, so hearing (and seeing) a home computer play back music that featured realistic sounding instruments and effects was totally mind-blowing. These demos were part of the massive 'demoscene' that dominated the Amiga and other micros in Europe during that time.
At its peak in the late 80s to mid-90s, the Amiga demoscene featured some fantastic songs, many of them created using the freely available Sound Tracker software and saved in .mod format. Most were released during demoscene parties that took place all over Europe.
Countless .mod files were made for the Amiga, but one of my all-time favourites is a track called Space Debris, written by Markus Captain Kaarlonen. The song took part in a music competition during the Anarchy Easter Conference Party in 1991and came first place unsurprisingly. Besides having a fantastic melody, the song really pushed the Amiga and proved you could create incredible music with only 4 voices playing at the same time.
Sound Tracker made writing and composing music so much easier and accessible to people like me who had an interest in writing music, but not the skill of being able to perform or the money to buy fancy hardware and sequencers. Space Debris and many other mods are what got me into writing my own 'tracked' music.
Computer and VGM (Video Game Music) may not be everyone's cup of tea, but give it a listen if you've not heard it before. Remember, this was created on a computer that came out in 1987!
And if you think that version sounds a bit dated, then try this amazing modern remix by D4XX
No comments:
Post a Comment