I have a sketch for an OpenMPT demo-video

Saga Musix · October 27, 2018, 08:42:38

See, I don't need to explain myself to someone who already assumes what my opinion is. If you ever listened to my music, you would be very well aware that I do anything but oldskool chiptunes, and that I am very well aware that OpenMPT is capable of doing any style of music, just like any modern DAW.

ASIKWUSpulse · October 27, 2018, 10:31:39

Videos can be a kind of Active Attraction (if it gets popular). Yes, it has benefits for what it's made for.
But now that I think about it, for Open-Source projects the benfs can give cons:
1. Rising popularity makes website-traffic bigger, which leads to slowdowns or straight out crashes if it's really stressed.
2. That results in needing new "capable hardware or bandwidth", which cost money for the developers

Then if the rising population prefers to just download OpenMPT, and the percent of funders doesn't increase, the price for the hardware will be hard to pay. If the decision is that you don't want to change hardware or enlarge bandwidth, you have to stand out a period of new users that complains about slow loading or connection timeouts, to only after that fall back where you began before the video was released (ok, maybe that's a little overstatement). But I believe that's what the OpenMPT-developers thinks; Passive Attraction is best for Open-Source projects. I may say that one video beside all the screenshots will give a nice touch, but that's up to the website-developer/developers to decide.

Where I live (Sweden), I don't know anybody who have heard about trackers, other than Hyochan, Weird Bananas, some others I don't remember the name of. But locally where I live, those that I know of haven't heard about them, or they haven't let me know about it. But many of the named ones are from the Tracker-Wave of like 2000-2007? I only know that I was a latie who started tracking non-public at home somewhere between 2013-2014. Tracker-conventions in Sweden may have occured earlier, but I haven't heard of any nowadays, and I live an half-hour close to the second biggest city here. I may have slipped off topic. Anyway I'm grateful for the people holding the culture up, because it's fun to track-compose music

Saga Musix · October 27, 2018, 10:48:21

Quite frankly, a video advertising an audio editor modeled after obscure home computer music software from the 1980s is not going to make our server explode from popularity. Believing that a video could make OpenMPT (or Renoise) hugely popular to a general crowd is a false hope - trackers will always stay a niche, and I prefer it that way for my own sanity's sake. Hardware demands are certainly the least of our problem, but having to support even more users next to my main job certainly would be a more relevant issue. But as said, it's not like a video would change that. And I don't want such a video to paint OpenMPT into a specific corner (and this topic already makes people fight which corner it should be) but rather keep the homepage lightweight and clean. If you want to review how awesome OpenMPT is and point more people towards it, you can always do it, but I don't think our website is the right place to do that.

QuoteTracker-convetions in Sweden may have occured earlier, but I haven't heard of any nowadays, and I live an half-hour close to the second biggest city here.

You may want to consider visiting Datastorm or Compushere. The demoscene is pretty active in Sweden but the whole tracking and demo business is still very obscure of course, you very rarely hear about it in mainstream media.

monsterovich · October 27, 2018, 10:51:08

Quote from: Saga Musix on October 27, 2018, 08:42:38
If you ever listened to my music, you would be very well aware that I do anything but oldskool chiptunes, and that I am very well aware that OpenMPT is capable of doing any style of music, just like any modern DAW.

I have and it's good. However if you just type "OpenMPT" in youtube search or in google whatever, you won't be able to find anything quality but chiptune-like music and mostly with bad sound. Modarchive is ~~a trash can~~ much worse. No one will ever be attracted to try OpenMPT in this way.

I'm not against chiptunes btw. Why can't they just sound like this.

Saga Musix · October 27, 2018, 12:25:03

Thanks for clarifying your point. However, I am pretty sure that in this particular regard one "official" video is not going to change a lot - if this is the content the community posts at a large scale, there is little we can (or want to) do about it (in particular putting a video on the OpenMPT homepage is not going to change the situation). All I can do is encourage you to post more "different" videos, if that's what you want to see.

LPChip · October 27, 2018, 16:28:07

Quote from: monsterovich on October 26, 2018, 23:42:16
We really need new users. Perhaps, someone who would make high-quality commercial music. Only the community will stop being bogged down in chiptunes and grow up into something modern. You may not agree, that's my pragmatic view. I want the best for OpenMPT.

Why exactly do we NEED new users? If we don't, will the software go away, because there's not enough income? Oh wait, OpenMPT is free..

Secondly, this statement alone shows how little you are aware of who makes what kind of music. I am actually a commercial artist using OpenMPT. I have released an album containing music made with OpenMPT which can be found here: https://lpchip.bandcamp.com/ and also on Spotify, google play, iTunes, and what not. Its just that when you go for commecial music, you won't be releasing modules but mp3's because of all the VSTi's we use nowadays.

LPChip · October 27, 2018, 16:33:32

I have released quite a few videos in the past of OpenMPT that IS NOT chiptune music. Its still available on Youtube.

Here are a few examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5j_rJzFXUo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbJrJD328Bg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFGTIFgUIM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRK6khjG21A

monsterovich · October 27, 2018, 16:48:51

Quote from: LPChip on October 27, 2018, 16:28:07
Why exactly do we NEED new users? If we don't, will the software go away, because there's not enough income? Oh wait, OpenMPT is free..

You clearly don't understand the difference between "known", "popular" and "free". Free or commercial (it does not matter) software can be unpopular or unknown, if it has bad marketing. That's exactly what is happening with OpenMPT. If the income is much lower than leaving users, then the software can literally "disappear" or like you said "go away", yes.

Quote from: LPChip on October 27, 2018, 16:28:07
Secondly, this statement alone shows how little you are aware of who makes what kind of music.

You can be sure. I'm fully aware of who makes specific kind of music and of which quality.

Quote from: LPChip on October 27, 2018, 16:28:07
Its just that when you go for commecial music, you won't be releasing modules but mp3's because of all the VSTi's we use nowadays.

Not just because of VSTs/VSTi's. For example: my .mptm modules contain a lot of lossless multi-sample instruments. The size reaches over 32MBs that's larger than the same song in .flac.

P.S. flac > ogg, aac > mp3

Exhale · October 28, 2018, 06:08:17

There is no reason not to market a great product such as Modplug, and there are many reasons for us as a community to be proud of it, I have been thinking on doing a basic youtube series about simple concepts in modplug and using it with the free vsts out there, top 10 free vsts from a modplug perspective, that kind of thing.
I think if you want to market it, market it... make the video, post it on the forums here and if people like it and it is exactly what is needed to dive people directly into producing modplug tracks you might drum up support for it to be added to the bottom of the webpage or something.

ASIKWUSpulse · October 28, 2018, 08:55:24

Quote from: Exhale on October 28, 2018, 06:08:17
There is no reason not to market a great product such as Modplug, and there are many reasons for us as a community to be proud of it, I have been thinking on doing a basic youtube series about simple concepts in modplug and using it with the free vsts out there, top 10 free vsts from a modplug perspective, that kind of thing.
I think if you want to market it, market it... make the video, post it on the forums here and if people like it and it is exactly what is needed to dive people directly into producing modplug tracks you might drum up support for it to be added to the bottom of the webpage or something.

I agree, that would be good. Forget the homepage video

You really shouldn't hestitate with doing a youtube series, mind that doing tutorial of how to use a tracker and create chiptunes with it will be mediocre. There's people on youtube that have already done that. I don't have a working microphone and really don't know how to describe for people how I create music, because I flow into too much details, but I really want them to understand how fun tracking can be, and that it's not only chiptunes. I have remixed some old tunes of mine created in midi-software, and many of them are chiptune inspired, but I think they doesn't sound like chiptune. I send some midi-files if you want to listen. They are instrument-mapped after the Roland SC-88 though, so they might sound wrong with any other device than Sound Canvas, but I recommend using the trial of Sound Canvas VA to play them.

Saga Musix · October 28, 2018, 10:41:10

Quote from: monsterovich on October 27, 2018, 16:48:51
You clearly don't understand the difference between "known", "popular" and "free". Free or commercial (it does not matter) software can be unpopular or unknown, if it has bad marketing. That's exactly what is happening with OpenMPT. If the income is much lower than leaving users, then the software can literally "disappear" or like you said "go away", yes.

This is simply not true. Do you have evidence to back up your claims that this is happening to OpenMPT? Because I can tell you pretty much the opposite, OpenMPT has a very steady user base for many years now. It may not show in the forums but that's a general trend on the internet, small forums are not frequented much anymore when everyone just goes to Facebook or Twitter instead.

It's only natural that a niche product like OpenMPT has less users than even free sequencer-like DAWs. I have talked to many sequencer users and while they can see how a tracker interface could sometimes be beneficial to them, they (rightfully) prefer to keep using their sequencers because there are simply many things that cannot be done easily in a tracker. I'm not saying they cannot be done, but they require a lot of dedication and patience which few people have.

All in all, I'm pretty happy where OpenMPT stands in the year 2018. It could be much, much worse. If your favorite music software is not depicted in the light you envision, that's solely your problem at this point, but you can also do something about it as I said before.

Quote from: monsterovich on October 27, 2018, 16:48:51Not just because of VSTs/VSTi's. For example: my .mptm modules contain a lot of lossless multi-sample instruments. The size reaches over 32MBs that's larger than the same song in .flac.

That's a bogus reason. Modules may be growing in size, but so are the intertubes. I have already shared tracks in that size range in their original module format years ago. Size is not a limitation, especially not in 2018.

Alice (Midori) · October 30, 2018, 01:30:12

Honestly i don't really see much merit in videos like these either. OpenMPT doesn't really need forced promotion, it's a specific tool for specific user base, and I doubt that even well-executed advertising (gosh how much i hate this word in context of something that's not even commercial) would have caused a sudden avalanche of new users.

Besides, if your only cue as for the estimated number of users is this forum, rest assured that a very significant chunk of people who do track with it don't even post here. The lack of Youtube material is probably related to the fact that most of OpenMPT users are the nerdy types who would rather RTFM rather than watch video tutorials. I keep seeing tracks on SoundCloud that are tagged with #openmpt every once in a while, there are communities that make quite a heavy use of it (like Battle of the Bits) and i know of some Bandcamp albums made with it.

QuoteYou clearly don't understand the difference between "known", "popular" and "free". Free or commercial (it does not matter) software can be unpopular or unknown, if it has bad marketing. That's exactly what is happening with OpenMPT. If the income is much lower than leaving users, then the software can literally "disappear" or like you said "go away", yes.

If by that you meant that declining userbase would lead to the software becoming totally unavailable, this is total bollocks, since OpenMPT as an open source project will remain accessible for anybody on GitHub

ASIKWUSpulse · October 30, 2018, 12:07:18

QuoteI'm not against chiptunes btw. Why can't they just sound like this.

Chiptune-modules are "raw", lacking much of todays music post-effects. Some can be applied through DirectX- and VST-plugins, but trackers isn't the best adapted for that compared to other sequencers, most of them are unable to. Besides, it's a spicing thing / saturation, there's no must. If you really want to have post-effects, then use the methods that 80's/90's computer- and game-composers used; create the illusion of post-effects.

It might not sound exactly as a real effect, but it's fair enough making it sound close to!

LPChip · October 30, 2018, 15:00:41

OpenMPT is very well adapted for VST plugins. If it weren't, I would've switched over to a sequencer many many years ago.

ASIKWUSpulse · October 30, 2018, 15:48:20

OpenMPT is indeed well adapted to VSTs. By saying not being the best, I don't mean it being buggy or having bad VST-support, but to use the VST features can be complex, like you often need to use the Zxx, \xx, PC or PCs repetitively. Copy and paste is a part of the tracker experience though, so it isn't all that bad. I have used the PCs in one of my modules to create a cool Ring-Modulation effect with the DirectX Gargle on a Saw-Wave.

There's maybe a feature of OpenMPT I haven't seen yet that fills in the macros automatically in a fade?