Back in November 2009, I was surfing around on good ‘ol YouTube and stumbled upon several tutorials on howto get started using Modplug Tracker. It was good to discover that Modplug still has a following but unfortunately it would seem that its users are unaware of its powerful features.
In the early days of trackers, all you could use for sound was internal wave synthesis and eventually samples (starting with 8bit mono). The biggest setback for users following these tutorials is they misunderstand the difference between adding samples and instruments from within Modplug favoring the use of adding a sample to the sample section rather than adding a sample to the instrument section.
The difference between the two methods can restrict overall control of your sounds and maybe cause the user to never discover that Modplug is capable of much more than playing single samples in a sequence.
I was then inspired by a tutorial I watched that was put together by a young chap called Lowtone10 and even though he also used the samples tab to add samples, I was very impressed that someone of the younger generation had an interest in music tracking and found the time to write a good basic tutorial for YouTube (watch Lowtone10′s Tutorial on YouTube).
Modplug Tracker Intermediate Tutorial Part 1
Following on from Lowtone10′s tutorial, the next step in Modplug is getting out of the habit of using the samples tab in favour of using the instruments tab.
In this tutorial, I briefly explain more about using Samples, GM DLS Midi Library banks and introduce VSTi’s to be used as Instruments.
I wanted to provide a voice-over for both these tutorials but didn’t have the time so feel free to pause at any point if some of the text moves too quickly!
Modplug Tracker Intermediate Tutorial Part 2
In the first tutorial we briefly looked at VSTi’s (Steinberg Virtual Studio Technology) and so the second part in the tutorial looks at controlling aspects of the VSTi using MIDI and Plugin Control parameters.
…and Finally
I would have liked to make a third tutorial to go deeper into VST effects and Instruments but now its up to you to discover what you and Modplug can do.
With plenty of websites hosting free VST’s and VSTi’s, there is a lot to get started with (my favorite free VST site is VST 4 FREE), the only thing my tutorials do not cover is a howto record your final track.
Modplug’s built in wav/mp3 recording does not seem to play too nicely when using VST’s so I make use of a free VST called HGS Wav Recorder to create a high quality master Wav of my finished music tracks.
