Did Amiga MOD Scene Make Techno A Thing?

Did the Amiga Music scene make it all possible?
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[@rednight2476]

It didn't start on the Amiga, but Amigas where definitely used for it especially in the 90s (an that other 68k based computer that came with midi ports)

[@ichigen511]

Definiately this. Techno music and EDM was created on an entire plethora of early equipment. No single hardware gets credit for the EDM scene. If anything Atari STs running Cubase were some of the earliest EDM sequencers ever but no even that really there were hardware sequencers that were being used to sequence Atari STs had the first visual sequencer. I believe before Amiga and the MOD scene. To be real clear EDM has been being made by groups like Kraftwerk and 808 State and they didn't use Amigas or anything like it.

[@carledwards9477]

That was a truly groundbreaking machine and the effect it had on music was so much more than people realise!

[@HoldandModify]

Absolutely.

[@DonSolaris]

Just to confirm that you are correct. I was a part of the Amiga scene back in the 90s, making music for one "software distribution group", nowadays I am a sound designer for Roland Corporation, Japan. For those not familiar, Roland = Techno (and House music). References: TR-909, TB-303, Alpha Junos, JD-800, TR-808, etc. There's a cool documentary on YT about a Roland TR-808.

[@phil2768]

We had an Atari ST at school in the 90s for music lessons. It was pretty awesome for the time too but obviously I had an Amiga at home. Good days!!

[@HoldandModify]

Very cool!

[@DavePoo2]

I think the Amiga and the C64 were part of the beginning of digitally created music, but it was all happening at the same time back then. You've got the C64 in 82, and the same year the MIDI standard was announced, you have the Atart ST in 85 with it's MIDI ports, the Amiga turns up that same year (but isn't really popular until about 88) and then in 89 you get Cubase music sequencer for the Atari ST. Digital music and digitally composed music was born in those years.

[@HoldandModify]

ah ok, great info and always appreciated.

[@DavePoo2]

0:19 - Pool of Radiance!

[@SledgeFox]

Was probably the best SSI RPG! So amazing!

[@cjadams7434]

i remember getting a new midi interface for my AppleIIGS for xmas..and we had to configure the dip switches on it.. something just wasn’t working with my Yamaha DX7 - we actually managed to get a hold of the developer on xmas morning who was happy to help us get setup!… had to have been like 1987 or so

[@josephphillips9243]

There are many bands and different years depending on your source and you have to be dictionary specific with terms such as invented and inspired. Most however agree it is bands like Kraftwerk in the 70s that inspired techno and derivatives 20 years later. There are many people who have recreated Kraftwerk on the Amiga and Atari as a tribute.

[@HoldandModify]

there were go. digging deep!

[@kevinhanley6462]

The Amiga has meant music was being made in bedrooms instead of music studios. The Atari ST had built in MIDI, so was used for music more than graphics. Both machines require a sound sampler. The Amiga has always had 8 bit stereo, but the Atari ST/FM was mono and the ST/E was stereo. Public Doman is the demoscene of many techno tracks and acid house, mainly on the Amiga.

[@dreamyrhodes]

More in hardcore. There been projects using Amiga for making music. Octamed also allowed to attach midi to more than 4 channels. But the Atari was bigger in music production in the 90s because it had build in midi ports, unlike the Amiga who needed an extra device to the parallel port. Amiga had the benefit of being able to play samples but their low 8bit quality made it being used mostly for distorted hardcore sounds.

[@SensibleChuckle]

I used to download tons of songs from GEnie. Loved the music in pirate demo scene videos and in games like pal version of Crystal Hammer played on NTSC at the faster frame rate made it the right dance music speed. As the Amiga faded away it was a graceful transition to the rave and echno that turned into trance and later dubstep. The bazillions of genres that i felt were rooted in trackers from the Amiga and Atari. I'm glad im not the only one with this unoeoven theory.

[@HoldandModify]

well said ! that’s what i did…similar transition

[@DarrenJCrawford]

I saw a short behind the scenes off the British Music Awards that just past, and a guy driving the music for this one song was using an Amiga 1200 with some effects, it sounded great.

[@DavePoo2]

Calvin Harris

[@tekk9995]

A lot of Dutch DJ's / artists started their career on the Amiga. Secret Cinema (Jeroen Verheij) for instance. Or some (Dutch) hardcore DJ's as well.

[@mrfairdinkem]

DJ Aphrodite, Calvin Harris and others used Amigas with Octamed to launch their careers. Also a lot of the Jungle beat genre used trackers on computers like Amigas to create such music.

[@HoldandModify]

Awesome info and thanks for sharing. That's sweet!

[@j.tann1970]

I once made a visualizer for playing MOD files on the Atari STE. I did not code the MOD playback routines but I added to the source code by first making it output to the STE stereo DACs then made a graphical display that had waveform displays for left and right outputs plus bouncing VU meters. It was my first major assembly code project and I was proud of it. Such a shame the floppy disk with the source got lost by my family whilst I lived in another country for 9 years! I would have loved to re-learn what I did in emulators today and maybe add to it. 😒

[@sarreqteryx]

Techno existed LONG before the Amiga, Delia Derbyshire's work being the earliest example in the early 1960s. The Amiga certainly made it monumentally easier, but it was not what made it possible.

[@HoldandModify]

i’m looking that up. that’s great! thank you!

[@clivedamagedgoods]

Two words. Urban Shakedown!

[@RoarMcRipHelmet]

I would agree that the U.K. genres jungle and drum'n'bass owe much of their claim to fame due to trackers on the Amiga (although in the later 90's these genres moved away from the tracker sound). Countless jungle and drum'n'bass artists used trackers back in the day, and some even do it now (Renoise or Polyend). When it comes to techno and trance, though, I think sequencers (hardware, or software such as Cubase on Atari) together with hardware samplers were much more influential on modern techno&trance than trackers were. There is very little "tracker" about modern techno and trance which is very much about automation of effects (e.g. sidechaining from the bassdrum track). And while there certainly were techno artists who used Amiga back in the day (you mentioned Moby, but I'd really point out Hardsequencer's "Amiga EP"), they were in the minority, and the techno&trance from the demoscene became its own niche and didn't make it onto vinyl and even less so radio. I'm sure many modern artists began their music making journey on trackers, but there were/are many other ways to start your bedroom studio, in particular Cubase VST and later derivatives.

[@sorryithoughtyouwasachair]

I remember Club Kinetic back around 93/94 time stoke, uk, there was a dude doing a "PA" using two amigas and a mixer. Cant remember the guys name but do remember it was someone known in the scene around then and that the place was bouncing. Also with uk raves we were back stage at a big Pandemonium one in Birmingham 92 or 93 and all the visuals for the projectors were 2 amigas and a video mixer. Lots of bits of demos haha. So Id say the amiga was central to that scene back then.

[@HoldandModify]

That’s a great share! thank you! love hearing these OG stories!

[@SledgeFox]

Let's agree that the Amiga sound was ahead of it's time! 👍 I remember friends going crazy how good Amiga music was... And some bought one soon after

[@HoldandModify]

Totally!

[@przemekkobel4874]

Even today people like LukHash are making music with Amiga as a sound source, and despite all the improvements over the years, there's that audible hiss. MIDI was plausible, as software development started pretty early for that platform, but I think ST dominated that market. Probably for the reasons seen even today, after googling for "atari midi problems" and "amiga midi problems" and comparing scale and severity of the issues.

[@HoldandModify]

whoa.. didn’t know that! thanks for helping!

[@MrJozza65]

For sure the Amiga was influential, but it wasn't the sole platform, just one of many different exciting technical advances that happened around that time. There were new synth technologies, the introduction of MIDI, drum machines, sequencers, all of which were being updated at a phenomenal pace back then. Although unlike much of the kit at that time, the Amiga was certainly more affordable, and opened up the possibility of making mainstream music to many who wouldn't have been able to stretch to the tech being used by the pros at the time

[@HoldandModify]

oh wild! ok thank you for filling in more info. love hearing this stuff!

[@benwu7980]

I wouldn't go so far as to say it started on the Amiga, but Protracker very much lowered the cost barrier for bedroom production, and then the amazing Octamed went further (imo). I still have the later versions on disk, but it started as MED back in 1989. Great times.I'd say that FruityLoops was the eventual evolution of those programs. Did not have much of the crack / bootloader stuff beyond actual demos, but got most of them later. I remember when State of the Art 1 and 2 got released, utterly insane quality.

[@HoldandModify]

Fruity Loops! I bought that and some gear way back. That’s how I discovered I had no musical talent. Sold it all. heh

[@keyboard_g]

Aimiga with those thumbnail images.

[@autofox1744]

The Amiga certainly, but also the Atari ST; those actually shipped with MIDI ports built in.

[@HoldandModify]

yeah pretty wild Amiga only ever got native MIDI in the CDTV.

[@darrenjkendall]

6:21 I don't think you're crazy or insane, like you I was around when the Amiga was launched and to be honest, in my humbled opinion what you said about the Amiga being solely responsible for the advent of "dance music" probably is a little bit skew, but when used in a studio with correct MIDI equipment and such titles as Music Maker plus corresponding MIDI interface from the Amiga I do believe it gave music artists the ability to create and explore what they saw in their minds eye 👁️. Great video Q. 😊

[@chingo9002]

Why didn't you show some production tools from that time?

[@breadmoth6443]

so are the formats s3m, it (impulse tracker), mod, and all sorts of other formats came from amiga?

[@off1k]

Amiga gave the birth of 'tracker' software (.mods) in 1987 with 'The Ultimate Soundtracker'. There are many different tracker formats on many different systems but Amiga in the pioneer.

[@baltimoreluke]

The Amiga's built-in sound chip, Paula, was capable of playing back samples with relatively high fidelity for its time. So it was used by music producers. Buuuuut it didn't give birth to EDM. The birth of modern EDM is better attributed to something like the Moog synthesizer, or the Theremin is you wanna go back further.

[@idubzh243]

In fact, Abba (yes, go watch some videos), Kraftwerk and a few others, are the beginners of techno music. They didn't invented it but paved the way...

[@ichigen511]

Hate to rain on your parade but EDM started in the 1970's when disco DJs were beat-matching similar RPM 'd records on the Technics 1200 MKII turntables (the MKI did NOT have a pitch fader). If we are going to give credit to a machine for the birth of Techno or similar sub-genres of Electronic Dance Music then the Tehcnics 1200 MKII is the King of Kings. Next came hardware sequencers (Alesis), drum machines (Roland) and samplers (Akai). All created and developed and used before the Amiga MOD scene showed up. The Amiga gets little credit for the birth of EDM, it just happened to be one of the cheapest ways to make this kind of music (and does deserve credit, Moby for example started his career on an Amiga). If anything the Atari ST running CuBase was the first visual sequencer in the history of EDM and deserves more credit than the Amiga MOD scene. Come on bro do some research!

[@HoldandModify]

Thanks for adding more info! For real. I don’t claim to be the expert. Just an Amiga fanboy sharing how it felt to me. :)