Demoscene / Module Music

[res0nat0r]

Is anyone into this stuff like I am?

Here is a definition from wikipedia:

Demoscene

The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer. The main goal of a demo is to show off programming, artistic, and musical skills.

I used to be big into these back in the early 90s and would try and download as many as I could and check them out. If anyone is into digital art, and electronic music then you should do yourself a favour and look into these, there is a ton of very great artwork in here.

Luckily there are a few websites which are out now that record alot of these so that you can watch them via a video if you don't have a high end system (like me), since these are designed to be run via an .exe and tax the crap out of your system.

Most of these are made to compete in a 'party'. There are many of these held over the year, but groups try and get together a demo, or other type of artwork to compete at one of these parties for first place. The longest running and biggest is Assembly.

Lets start with a classic demo: Second Reality.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtCW-axRJV8[/youtube]

Now this might not look to impressive now, but this came out in 1993 and was very groundbreaking and was pretty much where everything started. Alot of the shading and effects were never done before, these guys pushed the limits of what video cards and graphics could do.


Here are some modern ones:

NOTE:

Do yourself a favor if you are going to watch on youtube and click on the youtube watermark and view the video on the site, I cant embed the widescreen 720p HD versions. These look best on your bigscreen tv and soundsystem, download the HQ links!.



CNCD / Fairlight / Orange - Frameranger:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luhHghCAEaQ&hd=1[/youtube]

HQ download here

This has a pretty awesome d'n'b soundtrack and a robot and spider fighting each other, can it get any cooler?


Andromeda Software Development - Rupture:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myz9rZEmmg4[/youtube]

HQ download here

This has a cool rock soundtrack and looks like TRON. Badass.

Farbrausch - Debris

HQ 1280 download here

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg[/youtube]

Cool cityscapes.



Halfbit Cheese - Field Trip

Super HQ download here

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqvUidM2mo&fmt=18[/YOUTUBE]

This is great. It looks like something out of a Pixar movie. Great soundtrack also.

Farbrausch - Euphotic

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvvunAFzfeQ&hd=1[/youtube]

Nice underwater scenes.


--

Module Music

Computer generated music.

Archive here:

http://modarchive.org/

These usually have extensions: xm, it, s3m, mod

Here is an example:

Symbiote - Phantasmagoria
Keith303 - Err Amak Et Amorve!


These are written with software called 'Trackers', here is a free modern one called Renoise:

http://www.renoise.com/

These are supported by default in Winamp.

I have about 350M / ~600 files of this type of stuff from back in the early 90s when I used to try and collect this music more if anyone wants them.

Let me know what you think of this stuff!!


Links:

http://www.scene.org - This site has about every demo ever made
http://www.pouet.net - This has everything indexed from all the demo groups with pics and reviews
http://www.capped.tv - Youtube for demos
http://www.demoscene.tv - Youtube for demos

[demonAfro]

Re: Demoscene / Module Music

Yeah, I used to quite enjoy all the stuff that came along on pouet.net amazing what these guys can do with 64kb demos in a world where bloatware is the norm.

[Santa]

Re: Demoscene / Module Music

64k is great, but 4k is the top

I still go to demo parties, even if I'm not active anymore. Next one will be Breakpoint, in Germany, where I will meet my sceners friends from all over Europe.

If you wanna have a look at the best productions from last year, check the nominees for the Scene Awards.

8-bit is enough!

Santa/TRSi

[res0nat0r]

Re: Demoscene / Module Music

^^cool

If you know of any productions lately that are sweet list em here, there is so much to look out for good stuff is easily missed.

[TomTom]

Re: Demoscene / Module Music

Fairlight! There is quite a big demo scene in Germany...always like to see the best ones of each year.

[res0nat0r]

Re: Demoscene / Module Music

Fairlight are one of my fav's they have been around forever and have tons of good stuff.