Music module

From DmWiki

Music Modules are a family of music file formats created by editors adapted from the Tracker music editor. These involve a list of blocks made up of tracks each containing a list of lines composed of notes and commands.

Blocks

Blocks can be reused several times in a song to save on memory and file size. Some editors and file formats allow only a fixed number of lines (usually 64) in each block while some newer ones allow a variable number of lines for different blocks.

Tracks

Typically the notes in a track are formatted as the musical note name (eg. A#) followed by the octave number indicating the frequency of the note to be played back.

The command following the format following the note is the number of the instrument to be played, followed by a command in hexadecimal numbers. Some module formats allow more than one command per track per line but it is usually only one or two. Some module formats force one of the commands to be a volume change only.

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Resources

Skale Tracker (http://www.skale.org): A freeware music editor that imports and exports to .XM and .MOD module file formats as well as exporting to Ogg Vorbis streams and MIDI files. It is available for Windows and Linux (Intel compatible binaries only).

Open ModPlug Tracker (http://www.modplug.com/): A freeware and open-source music editor that imports and exports to .XM, .S3M, .MOD, and .IT file formats. It also has some MIDI support. It is available for Windows only.

The Tracker's Handbook (http://www.modplug.com/mods/handbook/handbook.htm): A brief and somewhat incomplete introduction to making music modules.