I'm looking for a music composer to botch some stuff together for the heck of it, so I figured I'd ask here. Dunno why, as this is a programming forum...

Anyhow, does anyone know of a free MIDI composificationising program, preferably using a fairly logical interface (staves, tracker...)?

Activates n00b mode
PS: Does the MOD format work like MIDI (stores notes), or like WAV (stores long, wiggly line )? If it's like MIDI, then that'd be fine too.

So, it stores the notes kinda like this (or not (ie á la MIDI)):

Beat:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

s                     
a 1                 
m 2             
p 3              
l 4             
e

& the samples (1 - 4 (in this case)) are stored in wav format.

My understandink, is she beink correct?

But it stores a bunch of short sounds and how to put them together, right? That was the real question.

Anyway, note (from my prev post):

That means I'm not quite sure.

PS: Actually, the real question was "Where can I get a free MIDI (or related) composificationising app?"

Does Fast have a website? & is it free? I seem to remember it not being.

I'm not that fond of midi (knew about the variation), it's just it creates tiny files compared to most wave formats, & are a hell of a lot easier to edit once they have been ‘compiled’, as it were.

If there was a file type that eliminates the variation problem while still using a similar format, I'd use that. And, IIUC, MOD does.

MOD/S3M/XM/IT do indeed store a list of short samples, plus 'pattern data' indicating when to play which samples. I highly recommend these formats for games. Yes, they're usually larger than MIDI - but they're also usually smaller than OGG. (MP3 doesn't count because it's patented ) If you're worried about file size, go for IT - it has sample compression, which the others don't have.

DUMB's docs contain information for getting started tracking, and as a bonus you can use DUMB to play the songs back Click here and scroll down to the section entitled "Downloading music or writing your own", about 3/4 of the way down.

Look at MAZ sounds. It hosts tons of trackers, players, etc. There's also some MIDI stuff. If you want to get serious with tracking, checkout Renoise.

The mod plugin that comes with WinAmp (there are others of course, and better ones) does reasonably well with most mods but totally fails if the song uses some "advanced" features of the tracker it was composed with. If you want proof you can download and listen to <a href="htt://www.geocities.com/miran014/music/oxy4_chp2.zip"">this (7k)</a> first in WinAmp and then in Impulse Tracker (it was composed in IT with a little help from MPTracker). If you can't hear the difference, you're deaf...

EDIT:
...or download and listen to this (1.1MB).

DUMB also fails miserably on that one. However! I am working on it right now Filters will be the hard part, but I think I can do it.

I think you'll find Winamp is worse than DUMB - the plug-in that comes with Winamp can't do plain old arpeggios correctly (at least not last time I tried). I can't vouch for fmod - it's completely silent with this file on Linux

I just read this

and I must say I disagree. FT2 is NOT easiest to use. The one bad side of the 0ldSk00l Amiga trackers was their interface and FT2 followed the tradition. Scream Tracker (from Future Crew) however broke this tradition with a new intuitive and easy to use interface and IT is the successor of Scream. So Impulse Tracker is far more suitable for people starting with trackers than FT2. The only reason IT was never as popular as FT2 is because most newbies decide to start their tracking experience with IT, make shitty music and polute the internet with it while on the other hand only the seasoned veterans who know how to use the ugly traditional tracker interface keep on using FT2 (and the lookalikes) and make kewl music with it. And there's another good thing about IT: the documentation. AFAIK Impulse Trackers manual is the best piece of documentation a newbie or an experienced musician could want.

So to sum it up, comparing IT and FT2 is a lot like comparing Allegro with SDL. IT is more powerfull, easier to use and has great documentation, while FT2 on the other side is used to produce more professional music.

PS: FT2 and IT are now very antiquated programs written for DOS but are still quite commonly used as they have no proper Windows replacements. Some trackers however come close, namely there was Buzz which was later replaced by Psycle, then there was NoiseTrekker and its successor Renoise. MadTracker and especially ModPlug Tracker don't even come close to being good programs.

EDIT:
@Funklord: does noone read the thread before posting anymore? I just recommended Renoise a few posts ago... Oh and even if I think the traditional tracker interface sucks, I still think Renoise IS kewl.

funklord, its already been mentioned, but anyway. its more 'shareware' then free because several features (they are not vital, but nice) however these features cost 45$usd..

it still rocks.

From what I can tell, Renoise is good if you plan to export your music to WAV or OGG. However, its file format is closed; don't expect to find a library anytime soon that can play its files. I don't think it'll even be possible to write a player for Linux, without doing some evil trickery to make VST work. (I could be wrong here - I know very little about VST - I just have this feeling that it's unportable.) I don't think Renoise can save XM files, and it doesn't import all XM files properly; I have one that sounds completely wrong.

Funklord: try to be just a TINY bit objective

IT's main advantages over FT2, imho, are:

• Two instruments can share a sample

• Sample compression

The first two are good for amateur games, of course; many people still only have 56k connections. The last-mentioned is very useful for making tunes sound less robotic, and you don't have to sacrifice several channels and spend time distributing the notes between them in order to make it work.</li>

I'd add filters to the list if they were supported better outside IT. Filters may have compatibility problems, but I believe everything else in IT is pretty standard now.

winamp has always been a crappy mod player. The best player for any format, is the program that created it. (usually)