I bet you downloaded Gorts Synth because it's the smallest SF2 on the site Actually it's a very good sound font it's just that it isn't a standard collection of samples as you might expect. Instruments in that particular sound font (and some others) are just instructions on how the sound card should synthesize sounds using some basic waveforms and lots of filters and effects. To get a real sound font I recommend you download one of the big ones (Reality is my favourite and "only" 32 megs) or the individual instruments.

EDIT:
Don't use ModPlug to rip instruments out of the sound font, it will do a terrible job. I recommend you use Awave Studio instead.

Hmm.. so now we have twisted ourselves around aye?

First you say that staves are more readable because you can instantly tell what position they are in, instead of having a symbol like [G-5] then you say that staves are rhythmically more readable since they use symbols instead of graphical representation?

Please make sense with your arguments, staves are in no way good for rhythm, and that's that, any drummer will tell you this.

I think you maybe misunderstood, I'm currently using the most popular music composition package, it has no trouble whatsoever in converting midi into notation.
What I mean is that a typical midi tune will often contain information beyond a typical staff note, since there are much less limitations for an electronic composer.
If a composer has no limitations to think about, the staff will look horrible, which shows to prove my point that they are deprecated.

Korval:
Not a prob with the program or anything
It's just that staff view in musical apps only appeals to people who have used it very much previously, or if converting from paper by hand.
It just isn't logical at all, and feels very limiting.
So you should concentrate on making it feel as authentic as possible for those who already feel at home writing staves.

I've been using midi for music since 1986, and quite frankly, never had the need to try out all the shareware stuff out there. (nor was my sequencer a pc in the the beginning)
I recognise the hobby to compose music and prefer to pay for quality software.
Although tracking still remains the best alternative for live computer generated music, and is also very useful to make sampled drum patterns for any other software.

midi files are probably the most important form of notation today...

"I bet you downloaded Gorts Synth because it's the smallest SF2 on the site ;)"

Yeah, I wasn't sure what a soundfont was (still aren't), so just wanted something small.

"Don't use ModPlug to rip instruments out of the sound font, it will do a terrible job."

As I said in my last post, I don't know what a soundfont is, or how to ‘rip’ one with MODPlug. MODPlug doesn't seem to recognise it as anything.

"I recommend you use Awave Studio instead."

Link?

For those looking for samples:
http://www.kiarchive.ru/pub/misc/sounds/samples/ft2/
Be forewarned: they're all in .xi format (although ModPlug Tracker can convert them for you), and many of them are quite large (16-bit by 44.1khz).

That makes the assumption that all the instrument samples in a piece are centered at middle C, which, while it's the right way of doing things, rarely happens in a MOD.

Many trackers have some basic features built in, such as highlighted text every quarter note, chord editors, and the like, that are supposed to help you with this. Of course, that doesn't prevent newbs from releasing amusingly bad modules, but they're there if one wants to use them.

While we're (sort of) on the topic of mods, I offer these humble examples of what can be done with them:
http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/I/illegal0.xm
http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/I/illegal8.xm
http://www.modarchive.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi/F/forsomeonespecial.xm

In general, I don't have a problem with .mod formats (except for the instrument and channel limitations). I find the basic concept of the .mod format, music information bound to instrument samples, to be the best way to create music. It lets you know precisely how the music will sound to the end user.

I fully expect my music editor to export to a .mod-type format; it'll even have instrument editing capabilities (though this might come from a back-end plugin application).

My problem has always been with .mod editors.

Actually, it can. You can use either precise beats-per-minute, or more imprecise (and, in general, preferable) speed designations.

Besides, for a drummer, the speed isn't necessarily the most important issue; it's the rhythm. And that is already described by the note lengths.

Oh, you're talking about drum sets. In that case, that's not playing one instrument; that's playing lots. So, having a different notational scheme is expected.

First, it may be a straight forward way of describing the duration of a note, but, as with many things, the straight-forward way isn't necessarily the best way. It just takes up way too much room.

As an example, take programming using "vi" as the primary editor.

I'm told by many who swear by vi that it is a great editor. They explain that vi allows them to move around a text document without touching a mouse. And this is, basically, the primary reason to use vi. It is not straightforward to use. It is not simple. It is complicated, but it fullfills its design goal very well: it keeps your hands on the keyboard.

If keeping my hands on the keyboard were a concern for me when choosing an editor, then I would use vi, regardless of whether or not it is straightforward. It'll only take a month to a year, and it fullfills one of my concerns with an editor: keeping my hands on the keyboard (granted, I don't use vi because I spend well over half of my programming time thinking rather than typing, but that's beside the point).

The same is true here. Am I saying that western notation is perfect? No, it probably isn't. However, it is very good at what it does, and it is far superior to any tracker view in terms of both playing the music (with instruments) and composing it. The entry fee for learning it may be a bit steep, but the overall benifits outweigh the costs.

Second, what if you have multiple parts on the same staff? Or, better yet, a piano where one hand is playing one set of notes while the other is playing something else. This would typically be a chord or something simple, but not necessarily always. Once again, we come back to the basic illegibility of the tracker view; it simply takes too much room to display something that a staff view can in far less space (which is a statement that I note that you no longer attempt to refute).

Remember, the visual display of music is intended to make music easier to play and/or compose. What happens under the hood is of little consequence or importance.

True or false, this is a non-sequitor. The acceptance or avoidance of digital music by orchastral performers has nothing to do with the thrust of this conversation. We're talking about visual notation, not digital music.

Off topic, but:

I'm sure that the drop in popularity of Metallica has nothing to do with recent shifts in popular music, or the end of a fad/beginning of a new one, or people stealing their music via MP3's online. No, it must be because they oppose MP3's.

/sarcasm

See my last reply.

Though I would like to know if the final presentation of these orchastras are really intended to be in .mid, or is that just a convienient tool for the composer to get an idea of what it would sound like? My guess would be the latter, much more so than the former.

This is really getting off-topic, but I have to ask:

You aren't, by chance, one of those people who actually believes that orchastras and other live performances will, eventually, give way to computer performances, are you? I hope not; otherwise it shows a glaring lack of understand of, not only music, but the vast differences between even a mere recording and a live performance.

You can imitate the sounds, but you can't recreate the performance. And if you can't do that, then it's not going to replace actual live performances.

Standard musical notation is imprecise by design. It isn't that way just because there wasn't something better. A piece of music isn't great simply because of who wrote it; it must also be conducted and performed. Each performance of a piece of music is unique; imparting the character not only of the composer, but of the players and the conductor. To say that this imprecision is somehow a detriment to music simply shows a lack of understanding of the artform itself.

Aren't you guys forgetting that the purposes of tracker-notation and staff-notation are diffent?

the staff was created god knows when, the tracker notation somewhere in the 80's.

The purpose of the notations are so different that you can't really compare them.

The tracker notation was created in the amiga days to represent the 4 hardware channels on the 'Paula' sound chip. Ever since then, the tracker notation has been oriented to simplify handling the limited polyphony available. Well, recently when cpu power has increased dramatically, the polyphony no longer is a problem and notes can be played on 'virtual channels' bound to 'control channels', i.e. the ones you see on your tracker screen.

The tracker notation is simple to learn, but someone who's used staffs all his life has a hard time understanding it. Example: My cousin and i once tracked some classical tune (whose name i can't remember, it had something to do with goblins or gremlins or something) into something.. much different. He couldn't understand the tracker screen at all. He's been playing the piano for about 12 years now. I had the staff but i couldn't understand that. We wound up translating that staff to the tracker by him telling what note and how long (see, i'm a tracker oriented person so i don't include the lenght to the note, i use noteoffs ) it played and me tracking it down.

Granted, you can't play violin from a printed out sheet of tracker notation.

Tracker notation is a whole different approach to writing down the stuff. It shouldn't be compared to staff. More like to the event list of some midi sequencers. Actually the way Scream Tracker 3 compressed the pattern data when saving made the pattern columns into "event lists", i.e., not storing the empty lines.

E-4 5 32 ...
... . 01 ...
... . 32 ...
C-3 . 01 G20

Why even bother trying to play an instrument from that? You'd lose your sanity trying.

But i dare to claim that for the totally inexperienced person who has never tried to write or read any notation whatsoever, the tracker notation is easier to understand.

The tracker notation matches the inexperienced's way of thinking when writing music. It does match mine, anyway, and i tried sequencers first.
The pro doesn't think this way, though.

I don't recall articulation being part of the MIDI standard. You'd have to make those marks by hand, by lengthening or shortening notes manually. Slurs, a very important, and useful, notation, aren't in MIDI eitehr. There are any number of vital notational markings that are not covered by the MIDI standard.

As I said, I don't disagree.

However, the point I was making is that, for a text editor designed to make keyboard navigation powerful, it works well. Now, neither you nor I see any real benifit to that. But, for those who actually see a benifit in that, VI is a good program.

The way this connects to notation is that, for the stated design goals for a notational scheme that enhances instrumental playability and ease of composing, western notations works very well.

Your guarentee is false. I've seen dozens of .mid files converted into notation, including the drum track, and not one has been limitted to a mere 11 measures per page, which is what the tracker view would take. In fact, thanks to the rhythmic needs of the drum track (32nd notes, so a measure is 128 lines), the tracker view can display less than 5 measures per page, while the notation view can, even in the space-poor Melody Assistant, can still show 15-20 measures on a page.

It's more likely that Nobuo either had an SNES audio emulator to work with, or he had a dev-kit with special editing software so he could work with the chip itself. Oh, he might use some external program to get the basic score, but he would have to make sure that it sounds precisely the way he wants it to in the SNES's SPC700. An actual .mid file was likely never involved.

Unless, of course, you believe that a mere .mid file can produce anything even remotely similar to Thanatos's music in Secret of Mana.

First, I don't think the concept of a composer who doesn't directly conduct the orchastra that plays his/her music is anything new.

And I seriously doubt any orchastra can reasonably play a MIDI file without human intervention. Take basic articulation, for example.

MIDI doesn't have articulation. However, the program the composer used to make this file probably does. Therefore, what ultimately happened is that the program had to convert the articulation into actual changes to the note lengths/volume. That means that a staccoto quarter note looks, in the MIDI file, more like an eighth note (or smaller) than a quarter note.

What this means is that, when someone loads the MIDI file into a notation program (so they can print out a score for an orchastra), what they will see is either a complete lack of articulation, or they will see very strange notes.

An unarticulated quarter-note, for example, isn't really supposed to last for a quarter of the measure. Instead, it would be written more precisely as a double-dotted eight note. Only a legato quarter note lasts the full quarter measure. A good notation-to-MIDI converter will convert un-articulated quarter notes to notes with a duration slightly less than a full quarter measure.

What this means is that, when loaded later, you don't see quarter notes; you see a bunch of double-dotted eight notes. Now, a human has to go through and replace all these odd notes with real one combined with articulation.

Note that there aren't even jump instructions in MIDI, so something as simple and fundamental as DC Al Coda can't be directly implemented in the format. A human would have to go through and do some pattern matching to find out where the Coda was and re-notate the entire score to apply the DC Al Coda.

More likely than tossing MIDI files around, the composer and the conductor agree on a notation program, and the composer sends a file to the conductor in that program. An actual .mid file is likely never involved.

On dynamic range, which is the only moderately valid argument you've made, I'd like to point out that, if super-high or super-low notes become useful, all you need is a new clef or two, and, quite easily, they fall right back into line.

Next, I'd like to point out that the human ear has a certain dynamic range that it can hear. I don't know what the range is, but I would imagine that C10 is probably really close to it. Obviously anything outside of this range is useless in terms of making music of any kind.

Lastly, as far as dynamic range and sound manipulation is concerned, I'd like to know one thing: those MOD pieces that you state use lots of very high or very low notes. Do they really use 7000Hz sound frequencies or 22Hz sound frequencies, or are the samples simply improperly tuned?

What I mean is this. In a MOD, when making a sample, you give it a .wav file and you tell it what the base pitch of the .wav is. If the base pitch of the .wav was really, say, 55Hz, and you tell it that this is A4 (440 Hz), you're going to use a lot of 8 and 9 octave notes to get sounds that are in the mid-to-upper-mid dynamic range.

Also, you say, "if digitised it can be made better," that's the fundamental problem: digital isn't better analog. You may think it is, but that doesn't make it so.

Our only real problem with analog signals is that recording and playing them kept introducing noise and artifacts. This is due to our recording and playback mechanisms, not to anything fundamentally related to analog signals. I predict that the current audio "digital revolution" will revert to an analog revolution once we find a good means of recording, storing, and playing true analog signals.

And what "limitations" are you refering to?

People said that records and radio would kill live performances too. They were wrong then, and they're wrong now. Live performances might not be as big a deal as they once were, but they will never go away.

Saying that a recording is anything close to a live performance is like saying that, because I can see a picture of the Mona Lisa, I have no reason to see the real thing. Or that, because I can take a video tour of the International Space Station, I shouldn't want to go there. In all of these cases, the imitation always pales in comparison to the reality.

Why do you think people pay the money they do to see their favorite bands on tour? It isn't just the crowd or the on-stage show.

A live performance is always better because the music will be subtly different. Maybe you have a different conductor than the recording you've lived with. You, almost certainly, have different players, who are going to interpret the music slightly differently. All this comes together to create a unique experience.

Not only that, I hate to point this out, but both CD's and Computers are digital devices; real sound is analog. No matter what you do, information will be lost in this conversion. I once knew someone who prefered tapes to CD's because, he claimed, that he could hear the "digitality" of the CD.

You seem to live in this arena of "digital music," where music is produced from sound samples (not necessarily of real instruments). Regardless of my opinion on this arena, attempts to project it onto the larger world of composition simply fail. It's a big world of music, and digital music is only a small (and very underground) part of it.

You seem to have missed the point, so I'll say it again. The fundamental UI design goal of VI is to make moving around a text document with the keyboard as powerful as possible. In this, you have to admit, they succeeded. As such, if that is a feature you consider important, then you should use VI.

Obviously neither of us consider this feature very useful, as neither of us use VI.

The same is true of music notation. If you consider ease of view, playing, and composing to be features that you consider important in notation, then a tracker view just doesn't stand up well compared to a staff view.

Obviously, being able to fit only 5.5 measures on a page is not good for either viewing or playing. And, in terms of composing, it barely shows a basic phrase. Being able to look at 8 measures without having to flip pages between them is better for composition.

Precisely. Which is why they include staff views. This is the easiest way to look at music in terms of playability and composition.

Have you ever tried to write a staff view program? This is not a simple matter, believe me. Certainly not nearly as simple as it seems just from looking at it. You don't include this feature as mere "backwards compatibility." This feature is, generally, the difference between low-end software and high-end software.

One of the reasons you can't see how invalid your arguments are is that you, apparently, simply haven't played music before. You are simply speaking from inexperience.

I've heard people argue vehemently against VC++ as an IDE. They talk up the benifits of Emacs, VI, or even notepad by comparison.

And yet, very few of these people seem to be involved in the kind of project that requires VC++: large-scale programming. VC++ is designed, not for somebody with a 30-file probject, but for a 1000+ file project where the average lines-per-file is 1000-2000. Where you may be coming onto the project in the middle or as a maintainance coder, and you have no idea where function/variable/class X is defined.

The same is true in this case: you only look at western notation in the form where it chaffs you, not the form where it really shines: composing and playing.

No, but that answer is obvious from reading what I wrote. You will note that I mentioned neither a hex editor nor a "tracker style interface". Now, I can only infer the reason you read these into what I said. I would presume that you believe that a .mod-type file format cannot be created from a normal staff-view interface; that it can only be built from a tracker interface or a hex editor.

Without question, Nobuo had access to either an emulator or a real SNES devkit. He may have been playing on his "comfy sequencer/keyboard setup", but the MIDI effects would have been converted and piped on the fly through the SPC700 chip/emulator. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to know precisely how anything he was doing would sound.

Actually it testifies more to these two facts:

1) Nobuo used real instruments in his sound data.
2) General MIDI is composed of real instruments.

Nobuo is an orchastral composer. What else would he use besides real life instrument samples?

I'm afraid I fail to see how articulation data (or even lack thereof) is redundant. This is a part of the music data, just as much as the base length (quarter note), its pitch, and the current volume.

Nice try. You're attempting to avoid the fact that MIDI is a lossy format compared to actual notation.

Explain precisely how MIDI retains articulation/looping information that can then be read and interpreted by another program. Prove to me that there exists high-end software that can apply articulation into a MIDI file in such a way as to be able to retrieve it later perfectly. Prove to me that high-end software can apply a slur to a region of music, save it in MIDI, and reload it with that slur restored.

Assuming that this is an arbiturary sound sample rather than an instrument, I have to ask: why wasn't the "annoyance" removed from the low sample instead of adding an arbiturary high pitch?

I would put sound effects like that where they belong: on a percussion track. After all, much like many percussion instruments, it has no pitch.

If I had to assign it a pitch, I would give it A4, simply because this is the base frequency.

That statement is not logical. "Digital" is a concept; it cannot use something. Please clarify.

I have no idea why the contravention of the laws of physics is required (which law, in particular?), but decreased resistance is easy enough to swing. If you really need decreased resistance, use a superconductor.

I could understand working in a notation that didn't rely on 12 tones between octaves. These notational schemes exist. And they look nothing like a tracker view.

And, as far as things that a live band cannot play, I don't understand the problem. There's nothing in the notation that requres that it be played by real instruments, or instrument-like samples. An A#-5 can be played just as well by a flute sample as some arbiturary noise sample.

Both of these are not the same as hearing two different orchastras perform the same piece of music.

So, how do you explain what that person I described was hearing? He claimed to be able to tell the difference. Personally, unless there was actual aliasing happening (this was in 1994 or so), I have no idea what he was talking about.

There are always going to be enough people who appreciate music sufficiently to take in a concert every now and then.

And some forms of music just don't work well recorded. Take Jazz, for example. Every performance is unique. Improvisation is expected, if not required. Oh, sure, Jazz buffs may buy CD's of their favorite Jazz musicians, but when they come to town, those buffs will be there to hear their "current" version of these same songs.

Calling orchastral music a "relic of the past" shows complete and utter disdain for the art of music in general. They aren't there just for "nostalgia," Classical music, and orchastral music in general, is good music. I consider it to be the highest form of musical expression.

Not only that, symphony orchastras still exist and still make money. They may not be "popular," but that is ultimately unimportant. What takes place in the corporate world doesn't change the artform of music.

If you're talking about a 15-second song for some commercial, use whatever you want. But, if you're talking about the production of actual Art, that's different.

Which could be the reason why they can get away with MIDI. I have no knowledge of Arabic Musical Notation, so I can't say one way or the other if MIDI is lossless to it. However, I can say that MIDI is lossy for western notation.

Ok! they have succeeded greatly in making moving text as powerful as possible,
I remember the good old days, when we had to open harddrives and move the bits individually to accomplish this.

Agreed

This argument is flawed in the way that you assume 2 things:
1. Tracker view is bad
2. Staff view is the center of the world

I do not want to argue with you about this anymore since it is quite obvious you made up your mind

You are entitled to your opinion, but the rest of the world needn't share it...
The most useable interface for all types of music is a matrix view.

The staff view is still just a drop in the ocean compared to the complexity of these programs, most people don't use it.
Difficulty in implementing a staff view, is the quantisation needed before showing, to approximate how much quantisation is needed is a bit difficult.

Conversion from Notes -> MIDI is smooth & straight forward
Conversion from MIDI -> Notes is much more difficult

Which did we say was the better container?

Yes, and that I'm having this argument with someone who just got his first violin as birthday present and is now trying to prove what his music teacher told him.
I could argue that my experience in music probably stretches more than 17 years, I started back when midi was just a buzz word and GM wasn't even thought of.

People hate things made by MS, it's human instinct. =)

These things go hand in hand, a company becomes big, counsil goes on vacation, middle-management gains upper hand and decides VC++ is probably good since we can make a deal with MS.
Surely I'd be working on a 1000 file 1-2k row file project on an MS OS, that is just torturing yourself, when a company becomes so big, it needs to move to a more mature OS like Solaris or Linux (depending on if they can use GPL or not).

I think western notation looks cool, and of course it's more fun if you switch editors once in a while too, like using staff instead of the matrix editor is a bit like switching fonts in documents, but not everything can be done in staff view, nor is it "better" or more readable than anything else.

Why would they go through all that trouble when it is much easier to create a midi converter.

devkits or not, that's besides the point, you clearly haven't been in contact with too many synths.
I know the GM set of instruments in and out, and you don't need to be a genius to hear that FF6 and roland sound scaringly alike.

His brain maybe?
I'm sure he was thinking: let's move the GrndPiano and the StringHit around, so we get them in the same order as GM.
They probably did a direct patch/sample dump from roland and deleted the unused ones.

No it is a name for a data structure, and does not need to be stored.
The viewer should show these kinds of things as necessary

This is not a difference between bmp and jpeg as it may seem to you.
MIDI stores notes with an accuracy of 1000 ticks per second, try that with staff.
I think it is just silly to discuss this, who do you think designed midi? mickey mouse?
The people who came with the clever and standard midi solution all probably used western notation earlier, they needed something better and more realistic, so they created midi.

I already said that MIDI is a realtime format, thus, there is no timecode.
SMPTE on the other hand is an addition of timecode. (with much higher accuracy)
it is standard midi subdata now.

Open logic audio, choose new midi track, open it in staff view, play some notes, choose the slur and add it from the left.

Because the annoyance only happens in that particular part of the song.
Would you retune your piano just because it doesn't sound good in conjunction with a bagpipe?

that's where you are wrong, all sounds have an average pitch, and depending on what it is mixed with, it is imperative to hear it.

Good way to make sure it gets played back at original pitch.

Tried making anything digital without logic?

Resistance, magnetism, background noise, radiation, static electricity.. do I need to continue?
Yes, I'll be keeping my instruments, cables and people in 0.1 degrees kelvin, any other bright ideas?
Resistance is the smaller issue, background noise the bigger, everything is magnetic, emits radiation, and collects static electricity.
I suggest you take a course in sound engineering if you need to learn more about these basic things.

There is absolutely no point to staff notating something if it isn't even gonna be played back with a live instrument or given to a computer illiterate person.

Honda and Hyundai are both not the same thing although they both use the same ideology of being cars and starting with H.

I've been able to tell the difference between CD/MD/K7/Vinyl, CDs have sharp edges whilst analogue techniques always sound a bit round (MD/MP3 music too for that matter),
Your friend was an imbecil, CD player DACs used to be very good in the beginning, but around 1990 the el cheapo CD players started coming, and your friend probably owned one of those. He is one of those people who takes cancer warnings in the newspaper seriously.
Did he own an 8cm reel-to-reel machine since he was so picky?

There are always going to be people who piss in the shower no matter how often you tell them not to.

yep, it's a slightly different kind of art, I think I was talking about this earlier?

It is outdated, old, as in no more fresh, it needs to renew itself if anyone is to be interested, just listen how Nobuo manages to renew it and make it listenable once again.

I guess we all have as much time and money as to pursue our hobbies to the fullest

so now it is a definition of art and not art?
I can tell you that there probably is an equal amount of effort going into a 15s commercial as 20 bars of classical music.

And no, I was not talking about commercials.

So already we have established that western notation could not ever be used by more than 20-30% of the worlds population.
That leaves us with only the alternative to look for a better underlying system for notation, like midi.

Your knowledge of MIDI is lossy.

How about programs which use the MIDI standard as the base of their format? In the software I use, I can add all the articulation data (well, by typing it on the staff ) I want, but it doesn't alter playback in any way (logically).

I've tried a rather dedicated (and expensive) MIDI notation program though, which allowed me to add "standard" articulation and it affected the playback as well (iirc). This is very application-dependent though (as everyone just loves to have their own format(s) ) and everything will be lost if saved to a standard MIDI.

I currently use two programs to compose. The first one is used to create the skeleton of the song. The second one is then used to:

- add details like bends, volume changes, etc
- finalizing the song without any intention to make a staff out of it (since I don't have a live band or anything at my disposal ) - you could say "making it computer-playable", adding some "dirty hacks" to make it sound realistic

If I wanted spread out my staffs, I'd probably do this instead:

- use the first program to create the skeleton again
- since recording the playback isn't the first priority now, I don't have to add all the "dirty hacks" to emulate articulation and realism, I'd just use dedicated notation software to add details and finalize the staff

Of course, I'd like to have my arrangements (check "My Music" if interested) played on a real orchestra.

FYI: "Killing" a thread does not remove it from anywhere except your forum view.

THIS IS THE LONGEST FORUM TOPIC I SEEN EVER!

however - about MODs...

MODules are in fact the best way of making music.
they provide high quality sound, aren't too big,
aren't taking too much CPU horsepower (if player is smart ofkoz)...

They grew on Amiga however there were tunes on C64
that are also modules... (Digital samples only or
DIGI with synthetic sound)

On PC first was ProTRacker (probably around 1988-89) which was clone of Amiga's protracker - the MOD format was exactly the same but later MODs on pc were extended...

Technically MOD is like MIDI but with samples
(Gravis Ultra Sound plays MIDI this way - via
sample patches!) instead of Sound Card's "built-in intruments"

that's all for now...