Folks, I just finished uploading a ZIP containing all of my meager attempts at Tracker tunes throughout the decade(s). Needless to say, some of them suck <G>, some aren't even "music" at all, while others are semi-decent -:) Note that I'm primarily a MIDI musician, but have dabbled with Tracker format music on and off throughout the years.


Contents of ZIP (not including the various readme text files):

BREAKDWN.MOD = "Break It Down" (an oldie, and a suckie <BG>).

CLINTON_.MOD = "Clinton's State of the Union Address" (not music at all, but rather a funny thing <G>).

COL.MOD = "Computers On Line" (a severely lame tune that I composed for a demo scroller that I coded as an online advertisement for my business years ago).

GRABBAG.XM = "Grabbag" (XM converted from the MIDI of "Grabbag", the main theme to Duke Nukem 3D, with permission from Lee Jackson).

JERKYBOY.MOD = "The Jerky Boys Rap" (Hehe, a tape of this one got played eons ago on one of the local radio stations (Y-100) when I lived in Miami).

LOSTSOUL.XM = "The Lost Souls" (XM converted from an original MIDI that I composed for "Eternal DOOM").

OVERDRIV.MOD = "Overdrive" (an oldie, but getting a little better).

ROCKYTOP.XM = "Rocky Top" (WHAT???! A **Bluegrass** Tracker tune <LOL>?!).

STARSING.XM = "If Only Stars Above Could Sing" (tune that I composed for a commercial project a few years ago that unfortunately went belly up ("Curse of Pyragon: Fabled Lands"), also has lyrics so's you can sing along <G>).

SUSPENSE.XM = "Suspense" (XM converted from an original MIDI that I composed for "Eternal DOOM").

TECHFUNK.XM = "Technical Funk" (not finished, but getting there... one of these days <G>).

TVENGINE.MOD = "Jet Engine Sounds for Terminal Velocity" (not music, but rather a $%it-rig that I created for the old DOS game "Terminal Velocity". The idea was to substitute the in-game Tracker music with this file, in order to have spaceship jet engine sound effects when flying around in the game).

UAC50.XM = "UAC 5-0" (XM converted from an original MIDI that I composed for "Eternal DOOM").


Snag the ZIP from here -> http://tang.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Stuff/Weeds_Tracker_Tunes.zip , readme (also included in the ZIP with several other text files) is here -> http://tang.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Stuff/Weeds_Tracker_Tunes.txt .

Hope ya'all like 'em -:)

I've been a fan of Tracker format music since, well, I don't remember how long... well over a decade and a half <G>. Note that I'm not particularly fond of Techno/Electro type of stuff (to say the least <LOL>!), but I've always liked the driving Techno beat which is the usual fare of most Tracker format music -:)

Throughout the years I stumbled upon two Tracker format pieces that were outstanding <IMHO>: "Dead Lock" by Jussi 'Elwood' Salmela (circa 1997?), and "Guitar Slinger" by Jogeir Liljedahl (circa 1992)... both of these Tracker tunes are simply amazing. Anyhow, I was Googleing/Yahooing/surfing the other day and stumbled upon their web sites (maybe stale news to the Tracker scene oldtimers, but nevertheless):

Jussi 'Elwood' Salmela
http://www.inetware.it/elwood/xm_htm.htm

Jogeir Liljedahl
http://www.liljedahl-music.com

Download all of their tunes from the afore mentioned sites -:)

What ^he^ said -:)

Heck, I didn't switch from DOS+Win3.11 to Win98 until mid-2001!

Hehe, a man after my own heart <LOL>! I didn't make the switch until July 2000 <LOL>! But then again, I still have an operational 486 <BG> -:)


(re: UMX files) I used to use Cubic Player for DOS, someone had created a plugin for UMX format playback. Matter 'o fact, I used Cubic Player up until when I started using XMPlay. Cubic Player had a feature whereby it could load the Tracker samples into one of my AWE32's onboard RAM, allowing it to use/apply most of the native EMU effects provided by the AWE32 -:)

Not anymore it isn't.

I must digress. While XMPlay has become quite the all around media player (especially with all of the plugins, and extra formats that Ian has added internally), it's *primary* purpose is still to playback Tracker format music.

There are a million media type players out there, but very few Tracker format music players, especially one as excellent as XMPlay -:)

I'm sure that most folks who are familiar with XMPlay don't associate it with, say, a CD or MIDI player, but rather when explaining to somone else about it refer to it as a Tracker music player -:) Just my two cents :wink:

Well, nowadays there's XMPlay users who've never heard of tracker music nor the demoscene.

For a music player that is predominantly for Tracker format music <LOL>?

I'd love to see a "general" sort of subforum here, or possibly a Tracker music related forum... would be a good place to discuss good Tracker tunes -:)

P.S. Almost forgot to mention, I *STILL* have an operational 486DX-100 running Windows 3.11 WFWG <LOL>! -:)

http://www.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwoods_Homestead/Weeds_Homestead_96_Large.jpg

http://www.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwoods_Homestead/Weeds_Homestead_39_Large.jpg

http://www.cmoo.com/~snor/weeds/Weeds_Backwoods_Homestead/Weeds_Homestead_99_Large.jpg <- YEP! It still runs, and even connects to the Internet <LOL>!

Windows Media Player? That's like no-school, or was the .wav/.mid scene especially hot in your particular area?

Hehe, the Windows 3.x Media Player could play any media file that you had the MCI drivers installed for, just like the Windows 9x (+) media players can :wink: -:)

These two clunky things are roughly the oldskool equivalent of XMPlay:

Oh man, that brings back fond memories... WinPlay3 and Mod3Win! I used to use 'em both! -:)

I guess keyboard operated DOS textmode players cannot really be compared here since we're on a Gooey (GUI) but what about Visual Player?

How about the old DOS Cubic Player? I used that one extensively, as it supported loading the Tracker samples into my onboard AWE32's RAM, allowing one to use the EMU effects when playing back music -:)

Winamp = oldschool <LOL>? My idea of oldschool would be the Windows __3.x__ media player -:) Winamp was one of the first programs that my first reaction to the interface was <puke>, due to it's modernized look to it.

Personally I *DETEST* any sort of automatic and/or web update features in ANY program <aarrgghh!>.

Not sure, but could this problem be somehow related? -> http://un4seen.com/forum/?topic=4597.0

Thanks for the info folks, but I think that I figured out the problem.

What was confusing, is that the "Send to" functions of Windows simply adds a file (as well as complete path) as a command line parameter to any specific program. I knew that XMPlay supported playing a file via command line (i.e. "XMPlay C:\Music\Song.xm"), and even tried that as an experiment. The first tries, it didn't work... XMPlay started with nothing loaded in.

After some twiddling around, I realized that XMPlay seems to have problems (possible bug report?) with strange characters contained within an directory name.

The following works fine:

C:\Weeds Downloads\Song.xm

but this does *not* work:

C:\¥Weeds Downloads¥\Song.xm

(hehe, long story about the "¥" <G>, but I have quite a few files and directories that I use that within the name).

Anyhow, that was the problem, the "Send to" works fine, except for the directories that have that (or possible other screwball) characters in it.

Made me curious.. Why not just use the Context menu option 'Add to XMPlay-list (to add it into any xmplay-able file's right-click menu)?

If I'm not mistaken, that would simply add the file to XMplay's current playlist (along with any other media files that are already listed in it). What I was hoping to do was to simply "Send to" XMPlay, and have XMPlay immediately open and play a specific file.

Strange thing, as SendTo support is pretty common with a lot of programs. You can create shortcuts in your "Windows\SendTo" directory for almost anything... Notepad, Wordpad, MSIE, Netscape, Media Player, etc... and when right-clicking on a file within Windows Explorer (or what I like to use Windows/Total Commander), you can "Send to" any supported file to the various specific viewer/utility/player/browser etc...

I was attempting to add XMPlay to my Windows 98 "SendTo" directory, but can't seem to get it to function properly.

There are several media types that are associated with other players currently installed on my PC (such as MP3s), and occasionally I'd like to be able to temporarily open them using XMPlay via right-clicking on the file within Windows Explorer (or in my case, Total Commander), and then clicking on "Send to" in the popup menu.

I created a shortcut for XMPlay in my "Windows\SendTo" directory, but when right-clicking on a file and then left-clicking on "Send to", XMPlay starts up but does not load in the file.

Am I missing something here, maybe an additional command line parameter that needs to be added to the SendTo shortcut?

Thanks in advance for any help -:)

It's on the "look into" list for 3.3 (which I shall be starting on after BASS 2.2 is released).

Many thanks, Ian! :bigthumbsup: -:)

I use XMPlay simply for the cool reverb and surround sound features -:)

For Tracker format music, there is *NO* other freeware utility that comes even close to the sound and reverb effects of "Awe Module Player for Windows" (as well as the DOS version), and the "Cubic Mod Player for DOS"... which loads the samples into AWE32 onboard RAM, allowing the EMU chip to generate reverb and chorus... other than XMPlay -:)

Also, the reverb effects in XMPlay can be used when playing MP3 files as well -:) Never found a freeware reverb plugin for WinAmp that had as nice of sounding reverb as the built-in effects of XMPlay... and come close to the superb surround sound features of "MPXPlay for DOS".

As far as skins and GUIs in general, that's my only gripe... I *HATE* pretty XPee-Pro-6000-Mickey$oft-modern type interfaces LOL, much rather prefering a simplistic look (similar to the afore mentioned DOS programs).

Sorry to dig up this older thread, bu as I've prolly previously stated elsewhere in the forums, I'm 200% for an INI file -:)

In that case, I would definately suggest updating your anti-virus software and then completely checking your computer for viruses.

Another silly quetion, but have you run some sort of virus scanning software and are *sure* that your PC isn't infected with a virus? Sounds to me that if you can unzip XMPlay and run it once, and then the preceding times that you try to run it gives your the virus infected error message, that you may actually be infected with a virus.