Unknown authors or modules

[Axxy]

Sorry about the wall of text that follows!

After working my way through my collection and uploading some missing modules to AMP, I've now decided to turn my attention to my Unknown Modules directory, which tbh, has been long overdue I may add. At the moment, it currently contains 146 unknown modules (.mod) which have been sitting there, probably for at least 15 years or more! 

It has become apparent that this isn't going to be easy.  Just within the first dozen or so modules I looked at, I managed to find just 3 that could be identified and 1 a possibilty from the AMP database. There is a number of variables why this is so:

fakes
dupes
bad rips
naming conventions
the mists of time! 
the list is endless... 

The 3 I have identified were obviously downloaded many years ago, or ripped (possibly by me or someone else), but with a bit of detective work, identified from this site. Back in the day, if I ripped something and I had no idea who the author was, I would name it from its group or production, at least it gives me something to look for, hence how I identified the 3 anyway.

I named one unk_arise minimum 1.mod, so looking for "minimum" on AMP reveals 34 mods with minimum in their title, mostly by Taron, who happens to be in Arise, fortunately, using the info (minimum1) button reveals that mine and yours is in fact the one I'm looking for. Good job I didn't have to look through all 34 to find it.  Was the same process for the other 2. I did notice that one of them had a credit in the AMP mod, whereas mine had the same sample text but not the credit, in this case, <soldier of eclipse>.  The 1 possibility one is, on AMP you have it in .med format while mine is in good ol' protracker format.

I've attached 3 modules to illustrate what a pain in the arse, trying to identify unknowns are!

AmigaTrek

Listed on AMP by Feanturi but in .med (octamed), mine is a protracker mod. no credits. Did he convert it to .mod or someone else ripped/converted it.

Adprod-music

Looks like a ripped mod by Gryzor and probably from his Mods Anthology collection.

Artemis or (c)1991 npd v2.0

No idea where this came from, maybe Mods Anthology again, no credits and no mod name as such.

The last two maybe already on AMP, under their proper mod names. No idea because I can't find them.



So, how do you lot identify and verify what is on AMP already and what is added in the future?

Is there a possiblity to add some extra functionality to the AMP search options? or some form of filtering for it?

Its a pity that some of the Info data couldn't be added to the module search results, like

samples used
number of patterns
patterns used

Filesize is irrelevant because the results return compressed size rather than uncompressed size, but even using the big modlist doesn't always help identify a mod if they don't match by a few bytes.

Or any other advice to making the job easier?

/end of wall of text! 

[Asle]

Hey,

 I have no secret to find an unknown zik. AMP's "unknown composer" proves that enough, I guess.
 My method is generally if the music rings a bell .. and it did:

Artemis or (c)1991 npd v2.0
This comes from this demo. The link to the original is there as well.

--edit
AmigaTrek
Not really an "unknown" author, there. I think the MMD0 is the original as the converted file is invalid; 3 extra bytes, which makes it of uneven size - nowhere in the Amiga world can it happen).

Adprod-music
I know this one .. can't locate it. I'll keep looking


Sylvain

[daxb]

Identifying unknown mods could be a waste of time because it is sometimes/often impossible. Myself for example, at the beginning of makeing mods didn`t changed sample text on remixes. I just didn`t care.

[Axxy]

Identifying unknown mods could be a waste of time because it is sometimes/often impossible. Myself for example, at the beginning of makeing mods didn`t changed sample text on remixes. I just didn`t care.

This is true. I can understand why some have no credits in them, ie. first attempt, remixing, just a shit tune,  etc. etc.

But, a lot of the ones that I have that are unknown, are not first attempts. There is some quality tunes in there, more than likely from some Amiga production gone by.  I'm only speaking from a collectors POV, just trying to tidy up some loose ends, so to speak....

The main gist of the post, was to find an easier way to find said tunes from AMP' database. Atm, you can only search by module name, if it matches and look using the Info button to check samples, patterns etc.  You can't always search by filesize, coz 3 bytes out won't return a match.

@Asle

Nice spot on the Artemis tune! 

Adprod-music also rings a bell with me which is the annoying part.

[swirlythingy]

Yes, I've had lots of problems with this as well, and it's really annoying.  Maybe the AMP database could be extended to include a "known alternate names" field?  That would certainly make a lot of things easier, even on existing pages where there are a lot of duplicates under different names already.  For example, Spaceman's page has about 4 or 5 copies of the first music from "Digital Innovation", all under totally different names!  (And I can add at least one to that - the ripped copy I've got, from before I discovered AMP, is called "di1".)

EDIT: Shit, hit post too soon!

The most annoying problem is when it turns out the tune I'm looking for is in the AMP database, but under a slightly different name, or with hyphens or spaces added or removed, or a slight truncation, so I can only find it by accident!  Example: Bruno's "on the road", which is "ONTHEROAD" in my copy.  Tunes where the name is hyphenated in one copy (as in "troubled-journey") but not in another are even more vexing.

Anyway, the attachment is one of the tunes which puzzled me.  I can't find it, but that may be because I don't really know what I'm looking for (the tune's filename, for example, is "airborne", but the track name is "air").  Sample quality is awful because it's been converted to an Acorn format with logarithmic samples and then back again.

[Axxy]

I seem to remember that the DI mods were easily rippable with module names intact back in the day or downloaded from Aminet or something similar with correct names.

You can type keywords into the AMP search and return results of module names with hyphens and other spurious characters, so it's not that much of an issue. I would have typed "road" or "troubled" for those 2 rather than the name of the module as such.  You can also take a guess at filesize from the results as well, if the uncompressed module is 100k, no point in looking at mods in the results >100k.

As for the airborne.mod, no idea. But I've seen loads of these types of mods, usually using samples from ST-whatever, half the time sounding quite bad, maybe a 1st time attempt at tracking. Tbh, I usually would have deleted those upon hearing the first 10secs of the tune and I've probably deleted many 1000s of mods because of that reason.

I would say that most of the mods in my unknown folder are from well known (at the time) Amiga productions.  They sound familar from scene stuff I watched and listened to back in the day, or sound familar with a certain composer styles. The majority are probably sitting on AMP, filed under their proper module names, credited to the original composer, and just no easy way to identify them from the files we have.

Maybe a forum for "guess who did this one!" 

[Asle]

Adprod-music

Looks like a ripped mod by Gryzor and probably from his Mods Anthology collection.

This indeed comes from Mods Anthology, in the MAZ5:Misc.A-F directory. No author is reported, however.

For example, Spaceman's page has about 4 or 5 copies of the first music from "Digital Innovation", all under totally different names!  (And I can add at least one to that - the ripped copy I've got, from before I discovered AMP, is called "di1".)

hum, this must be sorted out then. I'll look into it.

Anyway, the attachment is one of the tunes which puzzled me.  I can't find it, but that may be because I don't really know what I'm looking for (the tune's filename, for example, is "airborne", but the track name is "air").  Sample quality is awful because it's been converted to an Acorn format with logarithmic samples and then back again.

This, also ring a bell but ...
it's on modland also in the "- unknown" directory (in both PTK and STK format).

Search goes on.

Regarding the Search method on AMP. I'm still building up my reply

Sylvain

[Asle]

Adprod-music

Looks like a ripped mod by Gryzor and probably from his Mods Anthology collection.

With the HUGE help of Zeg, this is now identified. It comes from this prod.
Link to converted files in there as well. Titles were given in the scrolltext.
Oh, and author is Taron/Arise .

Sylvain

[Axxy]

Nice one guys!!

Was that a known production or something you found?

[Asle]

Nice one guys!!

Was that a known production or something you found?

Well, we didn't know it on Kestra . But, Zeg has a huge memory (and very big lists). So, since I hinted to him that there was a good chance the music was from Taron, he went from there, and here you have it. He digged up the prod added it to Kestra. I provided the musics links and that's it.
It was fun all the way

Sylvain