[guitar modules] various (XM)

[uncloned]

Here are some coding examples and remember I was developing the technique so not all parts are excellent examples as well I am NOT an excellent module coder - not all all like the greats. But at least I understand these and can tell you what I'm doing if needed.

Beware I do use guitar feedback samples liberally - but the distinction should be clear. On guit09-5.zip I tried to include a bit of the noise a guitar makes when played in the style - but this seems to have been lost upon the listener and just sounds like "errors".

http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/deadland.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/guit09-5.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/time8.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/brain-8.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/school.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/thespell.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/agent77-.zip
http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/travell8.zip

Not sure if all of these were posted here or not - I know Time, Deadland, Guit0905 were.

[apple-joe]

AGENT77.xm: Not overly interesting generally, but I liked the approach to tonality nevertheless. Somehow I preferred the part from pattern 35 to the end, at least pattern 35 itself sounded refreshing itself. Anyway: "copyright 1998"? I'll have to take that into consideration too, maybe you had not been tracking for very long. Also, on the second listen I appreciated the percussion more, as I tried to focus more on it.

BRAIN-8.xm: Based on a higher level of inspiration than AGENT77-.xm? Nice string sound. Regarding the instr. 01 lead: I liked both the note choice, rhytm of the lead and the sound itself. The panning, echo effect (additional channel with equivalent content inserted a few rows down, but lower volume) and instr. envelope contributed to this.
All things considered, this track appeared more alive than AGENT77.xm.

Deadland.xm: My first impression was that there was nothing specifically which caught my attention or was particularly interesting as I followed the track in Modplug. However, it is amusing, cool background music, actually. There was the occasional use of excessive portamentos that I liked. The solo around pattern 14-15 is somewhat representative of a type that I find quite inspiring. Again, the relaxed approach to tonality.

GUIT09-5.XM: Seemed like the bass and drums attemptedly suggested a 6/8 rhythm, but within the context of 8/8 (given the 64 rows/pattern and obvious length of 8 notes (16 rows) for each arpeggiated chord instr. 01 played). It certainly made me react, and I may have to try something similar myself. I've experimented with varying time signatures, but not in this manner of throwing in a rhythm within another one. I also enjoyed both the distorted backing guitar as well as the other guitar sounds. Of course, there is the ambiguous factor: the longer the noise samples are, the more limited is the sum total of music composed at detail level.

I'll stop now and explore the rest of the tracks in not too long.

[apple-joe]

school.xm: The bassline is generic, but works nicely. The main bass theme is a bit better than it could have been simply by the accentuation of one note towards the end of the pattern. The tonality, mood of this track is appealing to me, as well as the attempts at structuring it in at least 3-4 parts. However, there is nothing that stands out as unusually interesting, like a fascinating lead of some sort. I may have neglected the percussion. Actually, to some extent I did. I'm listening to it a few times in a row, and the drums are allright, but maybe a little difficult to notice compared to the rest of the sounds, which explains my partial lack of focus on them.

TheSpell.it: I'm in the middle of this one now and like the others it is more interesting as a composition than as a tracked module. The rhythm guitar adds more to this song than the lead guitar in my opinion (putting the real sound samples aside for a secod). This time I didn't forget the percussion, and it was certainly more prominent here, for instance as a means of varying the intensity of the song.

TIME8.xm: I'm not quite sure about this one. In one sense it is chaotic in a negative way (check the relationship between the bass and the rest for example), but simultaneously it is entertaining. The instr. 01 theme which plays in pattern 18 and a few subsequent patterns is nice, and the portamento usage livens up the phrase itself. I also like the vocals. There is something about this song that renders it less interesting than it could have been, and I think this something is the bass. A more inventive, original bass could have improved the overall impression I presume.

Travel8.xm: Solid opening. Generally a little more interesting bass than the previous song, but then again it's a little less audible, due to the impact of various other sounds. Good drumming, but maybe more could have been done with the hihat? Wait, exactly that happened after a while, very nice. Pattern 37: the riff of what sounds like a muted rhythm guitar fits as I see it. It's based on a rather generic set of triplets with the occasional accentuation here and there, but it sounds good.
In total, I think I'd rank this one in the top half, although I don't remember everything about the song I checked out some days ago.

Final impression after listening to all of it: I generally enjoy the tonalities, the rhythms. There's obviously a sincere focus on structure, the development of the music. However, I'll maintain that the music is better as compositions than tracked modules. Then again, they were tracked 11-12 years ago, so I think I should find out how your tracked material sounds today (that is, your material of today, tracked the good old way).

[uncloned]

OK,

Here are my impressions of your comments.

1. I was tracking for quite some time. I am amazed at your assumptions.

2. That "noise" is one of my trademarks. People who don't play guitar and many who do can't do what I'm doing. That I incorporated really really long samples is a technique and it is hard to do - and is NOT an avoidance of writing music as your comments seem to imply. Did you happen to catch how the *backwards* feedback toward the end of guit0905 smoothly returns to the opening tonality - G if I remember right.

3. For God's sake the composition IS more important. My mind boggles that this is even an issue, even a thought. Do you dismiss classic songs from the 60's because they were done on 4-track tape and not in a digital studio? Shakes head

4. I notice you didn't do harmonic analysis of my work even with the patterns available.... this would have been the most interesting part.



Applejoe - you are certainly welcome to say what ever you want about my music - but you write in such a dismissive manner you could piss off someone.

I've heard 4 channel mods that have blown my socks off and I've heard super-duper electro-trance spectaculars with perfect production that do essentially the same thing for 8 or more long tedious minutes.

Production is nice but it doesn't mean anything if the music isn't good in the first place.


From what I'm gathering is you are mentally making a catalog what you like and don't like in other people's music.  I suggest rather you start making and posting more music. I personally disagree with the idea of waiting until the music is perfect - there is no clarity more focused than putting your music out there for others to hear and tell you how they hear it through their ears.

I appreciate the rather extensive listening - I suggest you make less assumptions though.

[apple-joe]

1) I stand corrected.

2) Checking guit0905 again now. I don't think I reacted - while listening - to the mentioned, specific detail in the sense of acknowledging what you described, but I did enjoy the use of the feedback.

3) Yes, but there is nonetheless the possibility of a different impression in some cases: an idea, a work which is not overly interesting generally, but made much more interesting by tracking it impressively. What I tried to convey concerning one of your songs there was the opposite of this, but perhaps formulated too dimly, or at least not in a way sufficiently clear to avoid confusion. Two final notes on the issue: Your reaction related to this appears disproportional seen against the background of your apparent appreciation of ModplugTRACKER. At the same time, I must reiterate that my approach to tracking is quite oldschool, hence my possibly odd observations here and there.

4) I think most songs appeared very open harmonically, so I obviously decided not to focus much on that aspect, but rather look at others. Maybe I was wrong, I might check again.



I wasn't aware I sounded dismissive. That said, I was very conscious about not to approach the material too carefully/uncritically, but when all was written, I must admit my guess was that I had been too positive. Read through it again, I singled out quite some specific details I enjoyed, no? Perhaps if our understandings of this were mixed we would end up with a conclusion not exaggeratedly unjustified. I'll think twice about how I sound next time, and maybe you could re-calibrate the sensitivity while we're at it?

On your 4-channel mod/super-duper electro-trance remark: I agree completely.

Regarding production: You have a point, but then again, in the context of trackers, manipulating the sound in various ways will affect the overall impression, and might render an originally mediocre piece rather enjoyable. Imagine a few of your own tracks without the panning, without the portamento, without the volume adjustments, without the echo effects. It matters, but, certainly: to varying degrees in different cases. However you approach it in the tracker naturally doesn't change the more fundamental harmonic and rhythmic relations of the concept of the work, how it is played on real instruments, but since we're dealing with tracked modules, one should not disregard some of the more prominent characteristcs of which.

I do focus on what I like and not, I guess, it seems natural to me. I wonder whether not stating that explicitly while commenting on the music would change the underlying factors?

I'll probably post music in not too long. I have checked out a few things in Modplug recently, but I am in a learning mood these days, so it's more about brief  experiments and testing of effects, ideas. I have uploaded several tracks or clips before of a sort which I guess should indicate that I have agreed with you about the perfection issue.

I also wasn't aware of the overly assumptive tone, but I'll not rule it out. Then again, one assumption was corrected, so it wasn't all futile.

[uncloned]

Being critical:

The point isn't, in my mind, to be positive or negative. It is to know what you want isn't the correct way because there is no correct way.

When we start talking about a "correct way" we cease to talk about art and start talking about commercial music which is furniture and cabinetry making.

What do you mean by I think most songs appeared very open harmonically?

[uncloned]

I think my tracks would stand on their own still without a lot of the effects thrown in. As you noted the compositions were solid.

Also... these modules were meant just to give Mr. Eagle somewhere to start from with the goal (if he wanted to follow up on) of humanization of his guitar solos. BUT these are not by any means excellent tracker coding examples.

And lastly most people consider a module "well tracked" if it meets some ideal of "sounding real" - which is - if you look for it not real at all, One prime example is I've seen people modify echos to eliminate a very brief dissonance between the original and the echo as the melody moves. In the real world this does not happen - dissonance occurs.

My interest in modules (mostly) was doing things I couldn't (easily) do in another medium. People nowadays dismiss them but I actually love the original 4 channel protracker sound. I love the unreal sounding voices and guitars when transposed. Trackers got hung up on "production" (see paragraph above) and in a way lost something unique.

Now I was a guitarist many years before trackers doing recording on tape. So I wasn't interested in "reality" in my tracking until I started to put my vocals and my guitar in. And even then I played this loose. There is a point of diminishing returns for me.

Mostly now I midi and digitally record performances (and its really hit and miss) though the microtonal capabilities of OMPT is really interesting. Being able to use OMPT to play my keyboard in any arbitrary tuning with any arbitrary sample is way interesting - and not easy to do another way that I know of. (Csound might... but that is very complicated comparatively)

[apple-joe]

I agree that it's not very helpful to try focusing on one allegedly correct way, yet both you and me would in most cases create something better than a rookie using Modplug, so some factors can not, at least not immediately, be disregarded. Unless you dispute this point, which I doubt.

Open harmonically, as in appearing not to stick with a specific key which makes it more bothersome to identify what's going on (do remember that I in many cases wrote that I liked the tonality, anyway), but I might have been too shallow and impulsive related to this. Come to think of it, maybe there was the tendency of actually establishing a tonal center, but borrowing tones from other keys. I didn't look into the subject, at least, I was a little surprised when you emphasized it, since I hadn't thought about it and I usually focus on the harmonic relations.

By the way, I guess you're familiar with this site?: http://krum.ethz.ch/ftp.modland.com/ - A Protracker folder among other things. It is indeed fun to look at the older work. At any rate, are there any particular trackers you'd recommend? I've only recently come across for instance virgill. Very inspiring.

[uncloned]

a rookie tracker.... or a rookie composer?

I think you mean composer. There is a big difference between the two.

My harmony is something I'd like to talk about - it borrows heavily from contemporary classical music. I often set out to cloud the tonality. I often use quintal and quartal chords  - even chords based on major seconds. Root movements in 3rds, major and minor, are favored over 4ths and 5ths. I avoid using the 3rd on the tonic and thus making the mode more ambiguous (though in general scale usage points the way here) and to soften cadences. Added tone chords are plentiful and use the logic of the sus 4th (as well as those maj 2nd clusters) - Also - look for hidden stacked 5ths and 4ths - i.e. my sample is a 5th and I play two on top of each other like this:

(a)
D
(g)
C

or


(d)
G(g)
C

I have a lot more work than this collection of modules so not every tendency is necessarily fully represented. However, if you search on what I've posted here (click on my name in the main free music forum) you will find this and more represented.  

This one piece has basically everything I've mentioned and more

http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=2361.0

Modules composers - look for swirl by mod dan, london flight by and.... the true turning point and the composer who made me certain I wanted to learn mods - -mindless-. He is a soundscape composer. Awesome work. He is at The Mod Archive or I can email you some - PM me your email and I will.  This guy now is Nurse With Wound.

Also - look up the work of SamZen here and on his website.