Elisir may refer to:
Elisir is the ninth studio album by Italian singer-songwriter Alice, released in late 1987 on EMI Music.
The album was recorded after the 1986/1987 European Park Hotel concert tour and includes new interpretations of six songs from the singer's earlier repertoire as performed on the tour, as well as the previously unreleased "Nuvole" ("Clouds") and a cover version of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's "The Fool on the Hill", released as the album's lead single. The Elisir was a commercial success in both Continental Europe and Scandinavia and was later awarded the prize Goldene Europa for sales on the West German market.
The track "Hispavox" was first released as "Rumba Rock" on the 1980 album Capo Nord.
Elisir was released with a revised track list under the title Kusamakura in Japan in 1988, then also including tracks from 1986's Park Hotel as well as the previously unreleased recording "Le scogliere di Dover".
Both "Il vento caldo dell'estate" and "I treni di Tozeur" were again re-recorded and included in the 2000 career retrospective Personal Jukebox.
Roberto Vecchioni (born 25 June 1943) is an Italian singer-songwriter, singer-lyricist, lyricist and writer.
Vecchioni was born in Carate Brianza, province of Milan, to a family of Neapolitan origin. In 1968 he graduated in Classical Literature at the Catholic University of Milan, where he remained for two years as assistant lecturer of History of Religion. Later he become literature and history teacher in a Milanese High School, an activity that he continued during most of his career and that influenced several of his songs.
His career in the Italian music industry began in the late 1960s as songwriter for Italian pop stars including Ornella Vanoni, Gigliola Cinquetti, Mina, Iva Zanicchi. His first solo album was Parabola of 1971. In 1973 he took part in the Sanremo Festival with "L'uomo che si gioca il cielo a dadi", continuing to release works as singer-songwriter in the following years. His 1974 LP, Il re non-si diverte, obtained the Best Year's Album Award from the Italian musical critics. In 1976 he published his first commercial success, Elisir, but he gained public recognition only in the following year, with Samarcanda. With this work Vecchioni was acclaimed as one of the most skillful italian singer-songwriters: his inspiration draws mainly from autobiographical themes, intermingled with dreamy, literary and historical (often mythological) ones. His friend Angelo Branduardi played violin on the LP.
Modà is an Italian pop band from Milan. Formed in 2002, the band currently consists of lead singer Kekko Silvestre, guitarists Diego Arrigoni and Enrico Zapparoli, bass guitarist Stefano Forcella and drummer Claudio Dirani.
In the early 2000s, Kekko Silvestre met musicians Tino Alberti and Enrico Palmosi. Later joined by Silvestre's childhood friend Paolo Bovi, they formed a band, Pop Doc, which performed in local clubs in Northern Italy. Silvestre later decided to rename tha band after a discothèque in Erba, Lombardy. In 2001, Modà recorded their first demos, but during the summer of the same year, Palmosi left the group, later becoming the arranger of most of Modà's songs.
The following year, Silvestre met Diego Arrigoni, who became the band's guitarist. Shortly after, Stefano Forcella and Manuel Signoretto became Modà's bass guitarist and drummer, respectively.
In May 2003, Modà released their first self-produced EP, titled Via d'uscita. During one of their concerts, Modà were noted by Marco Sfratato, who was interested in their music and introduced the band to Pippo Landro, director of the independent record label New Music International. That way, Modà obtained their first recording contract. The band's debut album was released in October of the following year. Titled Ti amo veramente, the album was preceded by the single with the same title, which became a minor hit in Italy. The album also spawned the singles "Dimmi che non hai paura", released on 10 September 2004, and "Nuvole di rock".
MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”. A MOD file contains a set of instruments in the form of samples, a number of patterns indicating how and when the samples are to be played, and a list of what patterns to play in what order.
The first version of the format was created by Karsten Obarski for use in the Ultimate Soundtracker; tracker software released for the Amiga computer in 1987. The format has since been supported by hundreds of playback programs and dozens of other trackers.
The original version of the MOD format featured four channels of simultaneous audio playback, corresponding to the capabilities of the original Amiga chipset, and up to 15 instruments.
Later variations of the format have extended this to up to 32 channels and 31 instruments.
The format was designed to be directly playable on the Amiga without additional processing: for example, samples are stored in 8-bit PCM format ready to be played on the Amiga DACs, and pattern data is not packed. Playback required very little CPU time on an Amiga, and many games used MOD files for their background music.
A mod or modification is the alteration of content from a video game in order to make it operate in a manner different from its original version. Mods can be created for any genre of game but are especially popular in first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not stand-alone software and require the user to have the original release in order to run. They can include new items, modded weapons, characters, enemies, models, textures, levels, story lines, music, money, armor, life and game modes. They can be single-player or multiplayer. Mods that add new content to the underlying game are often called partial conversions, while mods that create an entirely new game are called total conversions and mods that fix bugs only are called unofficial patches.
Games running on a personal computer are often designed with change in mind, allowing modern PC games to be modified by gamers without much difficulty. These mods can add extra replay value and interest. The Internet provides an inexpensive medium to promote and distribute mods, and they have become an increasingly important factor in the commercial success of some games. Developers such as id Software, Valve Software, Re-Logic, Bethesda Softworks, Firaxis, Crytek, The Creative Assembly and Epic Games provide extensive tools and documentation to assist mod makers, leveraging the potential success brought in by a popular mod like Counter-Strike.