Format:

unknown (0891) IT 8.88

Size:

3142145 bytes

BPM:

120

Speed:

6

Channels:

23

Song Length:

21

Samples:

19

Instruments:

21

Patterns:

17

Tracks:

1

Track length:

391

SHA1:

711f9f6d39313c39c310291bc70de96f56f837dd

SHA256:

5bc7fef4155ca16cd891987ed54a22c8f158d3804ea60fc8bcc3ac40cfc0ae42

MD5:

246604f99a67ba0b61dfa9ff0e307dd9

Hi there,

Welcome to OpenMPT. I bet you opened this song and listened to this, and not
even realised I wrote something here in the comments at first, but you have
opened this song for the so maniest time now and thought, hey lets click on
this Comments thingy and was like Oh wow, there's actually something written
here! Glad you made it to the Comments tab. :)

"Internal Mechanics" was made for the "OpenMPT Example Song Compo". Its my
way to give something back to the awesome developers of OpenMPT. One would
classify this song's style/genre as: Demostyle. It could very easily be a
demo song on a synthesizer. :)

This song was composed by me, LPChip. The samples were provided by Saga Musix
 the developer of OpenMPT who also organised this competition. The samples
are free to use by anyone, but if you do so, at least give credits to him. :)

I used a lot of different methods to accomplish certain tasks so studying
this song will allow you to learn some interesting things.

For example, I used 3 different ways to make an echo (plugin, writing pattern
code and using the instrument envelope. Each method has their pros and cons,
and by using these methods, I was able to make it so each echo can't be
replaced by the other techniques.

This song also heavily relies on filters, and I used a few neat tricks here
and there. As a note: Because filters applied to instruments are carried onto
the channel they play, any other instrument played in that channel will
continue to use those filter settings. For that reason, some instruments will
set the filter to their defaults, and enabling/disabling the filter settings
will not seem to have any effect whatsoever.

OpenMPT's sample/instrument engine is very powerful. I used it to simulate a
synthesizer. For example, the instrument Rez(11) in channel 3 (sub-bass) uses
filters to attenuate its bass part and uses the random filter slider setting
in the instrument to make each hit sound different, as if someone programmed
lots of filter changes onto the preset, or as if the key was pressed with
different velocities. Try it out! Go to the instrument tab, instrument 11 and
press the same key a lot of times to hear its effect. :)

I used 3 basses simultaneously to get a very detailed and deep bass sound.
The first one is obviously the sub-bass from the previous paragraph. The 2nd
is a bass with more high frequencies to attenuate that there is bass, and the
3rd is a bass with a filter on it to make it sound dull as variation, causing
the bass to sound really well. There's actually a 4th bass if you count the
guitar's lowest notes too, but they're part of the guitar melody and for that
reason I don't consider it to be a bass.

I'm really proud of how the drums came out. I wanted to go for the korg
wavestation kind of rhythm where you have these metal sounds as part of the
percussion. Given that the sample pack actually contained 2 sounds for this
purpose, it was possible. I used the Oxx effect to make the kickdrum sound
like it was not played with lots of velocity which helps getting that groove
going. The D0A (volume slide down) was used to make the open hihat sound more
closed and not have this abrupt stop when the following sample is played.
Yes, I could've used instrument note-off or continue settings to counter
this, but that made the hihat continue to sound and made the sound messy.
This is more tidy and makes it sound more like a real drum performance. :)

One of the other things I am really proud of, is all the little attenuations
throughout the song. I've put a tremendous effort in adding sounds here and
there to fill up the silence, but in such way that they stay in the
background, yet give you that feel of "wow, that totally fits there, and the
song is empty without it." I did this with short notes with echo's but also
with leads that aren't actually playing a melody (and this remain part of the
background). And of course lateron the piano.

I'm really proud of the piano in patterns 6 and 7 (duplicated and slightly
modified to: 12 and 13). This came out so well. I had the idea to compose
this, but I never thought to pull it off this well. It now sounds like a real
piano played it. The piano has a random panning effect to it (the guitar too
btw) which really makes this work stereo wise.

The electric guitar is basically the normal guitar with a filter-with-
envelope applied to it, routed to a distortion plugin that is routed to a
ParamEQ to add clarity. Normally these plugins will increase the volume way
too much, so I've used the amplification setting to x0.2 to drastically
reduce the volume so I could make it scream a lot more. (basically its the
same as the volume slider on the mixer that the guitar amplifier is linked
to, except that here in OpenMPT you have slightly less control over the
volume. But this was compensated by increasing/decreasing the gain in the
plugin itself. These little changes won't change the sound much, which helps
finetuning the volume after the amplify: x0.2 was set. Reason: after using
this plugin, you can't use volumes in the pattern anymore effectively,
because of how high the gain is set. If I lowered the gain a lot, it would
respond more to the volume, but then it would also sound less distorted. This
is also why you'll find a volume of v01 in the pattern. This still makes a
lot of sound, but the volume is softer as the gain is not on full. It doesn't
do much, but enough to notice the difference. I used volume v00 instead of
note off === because I've set the filter envelope to continuous (meaning that
it keeps following the envelope and changes the sound continuously). Try it:
Go to the instruments tab and find instrument 19. Then press the red curved
line button (sine) from the toolbar above the black window where the
envelopes are drawn. Now, set the octave to 4 and press and hold Z and B. You
can see how the sound changes as the envelope goes higher and back down
again.

Also note with the electric guitar, I wanted to have the best sound for these
chords, and for that reason, the distortion plugin was set for these specific
frequencies. You won't be able to play any lead with it with one or more
octaves higher. If you want to, you'll have to edit the plugin settings, but
then the current sound will be lost.

I did add a 2nd distortion plugin during the making of this song for a lead,
and it worked well enough, but with 2 distorted guitars playing at the same
time, things got too messy, so I decided to use the other leads instead and
removed the plugin with its settings from the song again (clean-up process)

Wow, thats a lot of text right there. :) I've explained most of the song that
I wanted to explain so you can learn from it. I haven't covered every little
secret in there, so there's still something for you to find if you examine
the song closely.

I hope you enjoy the song as much as I had fun making it, and I hope this
will inspire you to make music with OpenMPT too.

A side note: I have almost 22 years of experience making music with a
tracker, and released a CD with music mostly made with OpenMPT. :)

- LPChip
www.lpchip.nl

PS. See you on the forums. :)

• https://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/OpenMPT MPTM/LPChip
• https://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/OpenMPT MPTM/LPChip/internal mechanics.mptm

• ModTube: OpenMPT MPTM/LPChip/internal mechanics.mptm
• PlayMOD | internal mechanics.mptm

1. 80s Clap
2. Amen Snare
3. Wavestation Percussion 1
4. Wavestation Percussion 2
5. Atomic Snare
6. Room Kick
7. Closed Hi-Hat
8. Open Hi-Hat
9. DeciBass
10. Noisy Saw Bass Deluxe
11. Rez
12. Saw Lead
13. Octave Lead
14. Horny Brass
15. Beautiful Fifths
16. Beautiful Fifths
17. FazerPad
18. Regenzeit
19. Elec Guitar
20. CityGuitar
21. AmbientPiano