For music what vi was for text
April 15, 2022 4:22 PM Subscribe
From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, the gold standard tool for computer-composed music was the tracker. With an origin in software piracy and digital counterculture, tracker-composed music defined new genres and has a legacy that continues today. Trackers: The Sound of 16-bit. (Warning: includes music that may transport geeks of a certain age back to their youth.)
I wrote a shit-ton of terrible music in FastTracker II in high school, and released it on hand-distributed cassettes. No concept of music theory what-so-ever (middle school orch didn't really emphasize theory - especially for the trombone section), but I picked up a lot of weird hands-on know-how from studying mod files from other composers.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:07 PM on April 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by kaibutsu at 5:07 PM on April 15, 2022 [5 favorites]
I remember having a huge collection of electronic music in this format before broadband Internet and MP3’s took over.
posted by interogative mood at 5:10 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 5:10 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
It seemed like magic to hear the computer play anything resembling music and the mods from demos and games were very good - I remember making a mix tape of my favorites in possibly the most 90s way achievable by mortal men.
I also wrote terrible MODs using stolen samples in OctoMed on my trusty Amiga500. Only one survives, want to hear it?
posted by AndrewStephens at 5:38 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
I also wrote terrible MODs using stolen samples in OctoMed on my trusty Amiga500. Only one survives, want to hear it?
posted by AndrewStephens at 5:38 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
I loved (and continue to love) this music, with my fascination probably really taking off with the Star Control II soundtrack. I always wanted to learn how to do it myself, but managed to put it off for, oh, 20 years or so until I finally dove into MilkyTracker to write the soundtrack for one of the games I published. I'm still learning tricks and techniques years later that are old (ancient?) hat for so many people, but a fun journey of discovery for me today!
posted by Zargon X at 5:48 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Zargon X at 5:48 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Is there a good webapp tracker out there, maybe something with a library of easy-to-load mod files?
posted by Nelson at 6:00 PM on April 15, 2022
posted by Nelson at 6:00 PM on April 15, 2022
Bassoon tracker is a js based tracker with a bunch of preloaded mod files!
It was the subject of an FPP a while ago.
posted by Television Name at 6:17 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
It was the subject of an FPP a while ago.
posted by Television Name at 6:17 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Trackers changed my life. I made a website to promote my Screamtracker & Impulse Tracker covers of NIN songs in 1995, and that's why I have the career I do. Heck, that started me down a path that led me to getting married to my wife.
When I went to college and took a course in Assembly language, while everyone else was struggling to wrap their heads around mnemonics, the language was immediately recognizable to me because unbeknownst to me, I was basically writing music in Assembly when I was using tracker software. (Which explained the name of that huge party that got namedropped in demos like Second Reality by Future Crew). And I was absolutely tickled when Aphex Twin posted a little behind the scenes clip from Drukqs, showing that Vordhosbn was largely made on tracker software. Because of course it was.
When Reason came out, I basically abandoned tracker software - even though you didn't have nearly as much control, the concept of softsynths was really exciting to me after years of only working with samples and trackers. These days I've got a Moog Sub 37, a DSI Tempest, and a Poly Evolver Keyboard, and really like live performance. While I'm sure I would have figured something to spend money on over the years one way or another, I've thought about how ironic it was that I've spent my adult money on expensive audio equipment all because I got started using incredibly powerful free software that was capable of making (as I referred to it at the time) CD quality music.
posted by Leviathant at 6:21 PM on April 15, 2022 [21 favorites]
When I went to college and took a course in Assembly language, while everyone else was struggling to wrap their heads around mnemonics, the language was immediately recognizable to me because unbeknownst to me, I was basically writing music in Assembly when I was using tracker software. (Which explained the name of that huge party that got namedropped in demos like Second Reality by Future Crew). And I was absolutely tickled when Aphex Twin posted a little behind the scenes clip from Drukqs, showing that Vordhosbn was largely made on tracker software. Because of course it was.
When Reason came out, I basically abandoned tracker software - even though you didn't have nearly as much control, the concept of softsynths was really exciting to me after years of only working with samples and trackers. These days I've got a Moog Sub 37, a DSI Tempest, and a Poly Evolver Keyboard, and really like live performance. While I'm sure I would have figured something to spend money on over the years one way or another, I've thought about how ironic it was that I've spent my adult money on expensive audio equipment all because I got started using incredibly powerful free software that was capable of making (as I referred to it at the time) CD quality music.
posted by Leviathant at 6:21 PM on April 15, 2022 [21 favorites]
Trackers are back! Lots of musicians playing around with this scoring method. There are even new hardware instruments like the Polyend Tracker and Dirtywave M8 that are full on tracker grooveboxes.
posted by q*ben at 6:40 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 6:40 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Trackers may be user-hostile, but they're not vi-level user hostile
posted by scruss at 7:56 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 7:56 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Speaking as someone who actually hard reset a computer the first time I ran vi because I couldn't figure out how to exit, I still find the traditional tracker interface more intimidating.
(Don't judge me, I was young.)
posted by biogeo at 8:52 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
(Don't judge me, I was young.)
posted by biogeo at 8:52 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
Trackers are the whole reason I am a sound designer and electronic musician today. I started out on the even more obscure APTracker Acorn Archimedes and RiscPC by Andrew Pepperell (the same Andrew Pepperell that wrote Alfred maybe? That would be highly amusing for me...) which was a ProTracker clone with effects modelled on FastTracker, if I remember correctly. I even submitted a few tracks to some demoscene folks in Germany, through the magic of BBSes. But the Acorn line of computers was as doomed as the Amiga (despite ARM now largely dominating RISC processors!), and my high-school friend who had a PC would tinker on his electronics projects while I monopolised his computer to create tracks on ScreamTracker3. There's a lot of memories and familiar names in this video!
I'm a little disappointed that this didn't go further into the (thriving) subculture of electronic musicians who used and are using trackers - UK Hardcore and Jungle would have been very, very different without the Amiga, while Industrial Hardcore (NSFW), Breackore and Gabber simply wouldn't exist.
posted by prismatic7 at 9:29 PM on April 15, 2022 [9 favorites]
I'm a little disappointed that this didn't go further into the (thriving) subculture of electronic musicians who used and are using trackers - UK Hardcore and Jungle would have been very, very different without the Amiga, while Industrial Hardcore (NSFW), Breackore and Gabber simply wouldn't exist.
posted by prismatic7 at 9:29 PM on April 15, 2022 [9 favorites]
Tracking with Vim is clearly where it’s at.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:50 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by aspersioncast at 9:50 PM on April 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
For anybody interested in music made with some modern trackers (both hw and sw) check out the Lines forum tracker jam album on bandcamp. It's a collection of tracks made by various artists from the Lines music forum using various trackers all drawing from a shared pool of samples. Full disclosure: I contributed a track
Also, all joking aside, Renoise with vim controls would be like my ideal music program.
posted by Television Name at 10:53 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Also, all joking aside, Renoise with vim controls would be like my ideal music program.
posted by Television Name at 10:53 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
I miss Jeskola Buzz, from before he lost the source code and people started hammering on it. Some of the sounds you could only make because of errors in program and you couldn’t guarantee it would sound the same if you ever upgraded. But it was still a blast. Confusing as hell to get started in and an interface not even a mother could love, but after a friend showed me how to make it work, I went to town.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 11:20 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 11:20 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I missed that BassonTracker FPP a few years ago. That is seriously cool.
posted by biogeo at 11:30 PM on April 15, 2022
posted by biogeo at 11:30 PM on April 15, 2022
Oh, I loved Buzz, but Oskari was such an arsehole to that community. Some of the machines though - M4, Ninja Delay, and Geonik (RIP) DF filter - simply don't have any equivalent in modern DAWs...
posted by prismatic7 at 1:45 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by prismatic7 at 1:45 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think he missed something on the Amiga timeline. In 1989 I moved in with a certain roommate that had a Yamaha/Casio something or another, a drum machine, a 4-track recorder, mics, amp, effects pedals, etc.
So I built a MIDI interface from an article in BYTE magazine that had the schematics for a PC MIDI ISA card build. After recognizing that 95% of that was just adding a fast UART to the PC of which I didn't need, the actual serial-MIDI part was Basic. My first non breadboard/wirewrap build. I went to All Electronics and got some stuff and all acid resist marker and such etched out my own bespoke MIDI interface for my Amiga 1000. Not that hard.
My Amiga 1000 was so buff by that time to be ridiculous, snipped connections on the video chip to make it more NTSC compliant (the original had the wrong resistor value). A dead bug mod (a chip just double sided taped to the motherboard with it's legs sticking up) with wires going places to other snipped connections to be able to bypass that low-band-filter thing that the Amiga 500 had brought along. The 7MHz 68000 chip was gone and replaced with an expansion board that had a 14MHz 68020/68881 combo with a whopping 4MB of RAM, a SCSI controller to a pilfered 80MB shoebox drive pilfered from a Sun workstation, and an 8-bit audio sampler.
There was a tracker back then that did the 4 channels on the Amiga native and more channels through MIDI. Otherwise I wouldn't have built the MIDI interface in the first place.
Oh, we had such fun just futzing around that year.
Anyways, there was some long forgotten tracker in 1989-90 range that was MIDI capable and had a large number of channels.
Surprised he didn't get into the SoundBlaster AWE32 board, but that was another short lived time before everything was just 16-bit PCM digital and every computer came like that out of the box.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
So I built a MIDI interface from an article in BYTE magazine that had the schematics for a PC MIDI ISA card build. After recognizing that 95% of that was just adding a fast UART to the PC of which I didn't need, the actual serial-MIDI part was Basic. My first non breadboard/wirewrap build. I went to All Electronics and got some stuff and all acid resist marker and such etched out my own bespoke MIDI interface for my Amiga 1000. Not that hard.
My Amiga 1000 was so buff by that time to be ridiculous, snipped connections on the video chip to make it more NTSC compliant (the original had the wrong resistor value). A dead bug mod (a chip just double sided taped to the motherboard with it's legs sticking up) with wires going places to other snipped connections to be able to bypass that low-band-filter thing that the Amiga 500 had brought along. The 7MHz 68000 chip was gone and replaced with an expansion board that had a 14MHz 68020/68881 combo with a whopping 4MB of RAM, a SCSI controller to a pilfered 80MB shoebox drive pilfered from a Sun workstation, and an 8-bit audio sampler.
There was a tracker back then that did the 4 channels on the Amiga native and more channels through MIDI. Otherwise I wouldn't have built the MIDI interface in the first place.
Oh, we had such fun just futzing around that year.
Anyways, there was some long forgotten tracker in 1989-90 range that was MIDI capable and had a large number of channels.
Surprised he didn't get into the SoundBlaster AWE32 board, but that was another short lived time before everything was just 16-bit PCM digital and every computer came like that out of the box.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
Came here looking for the reference to Aphex Twin's tracker video of Vordhosbn but Leviathant had it covered above. It's worth checking out if you missed it earlier.
posted by jeremias at 3:24 AM on April 16, 2022
posted by jeremias at 3:24 AM on April 16, 2022
My only experience with trackers was briefly playing around with a DOS-based one in either 1994 or 1995 that was included on one of those awful 5,835 SHAREWARE TITLES ON ONE CD-ROM shovelware collections. I don't think it came with any instructions and I think I just bounced off it.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:25 AM on April 16, 2022
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:25 AM on April 16, 2022
It may not have even worked with whatever sound card I had at the time. I remember going through an entire directory of MODs (with DOS 8.3 names, ugh) and not really having a clue as to what to do with them.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:28 AM on April 16, 2022
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:28 AM on April 16, 2022
I downloaded MODs endlessly from USENET and catalogued and burned them to CDs in compilations like "fast" "slow" "silly" etc..... Shout out to "catch that goblin"
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:31 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:31 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
Mmm changed my mind eMacs is the way.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by aspersioncast at 7:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Catch that goblin! I think that mod does something slightly unusual to achieve its rapid sequence of cartoon noises at the end, because at a certain point I switched to a music player that didn't quite get it right, instead playing them very slowly. One of the quirks of the mod format, I guess: since it's being "rendered" by the player, you're relying on the player to get everything right. Anyway, that's a really fun tune.
posted by biogeo at 9:38 AM on April 16, 2022
posted by biogeo at 9:38 AM on April 16, 2022
Skaven / Future Crew - Catch that goblin!! - YouTube
posted by zengargoyle at 10:09 AM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by zengargoyle at 10:09 AM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
Thank you to the YT commenter who identified the shuffling bleep song playing from 1:31 to 1:45 as the theme song from Alley Cat, a shitty CGA game I spent hours playing on the 286 in the back room of my father's store after school.
posted by HeroZero at 10:43 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by HeroZero at 10:43 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Alley Cat, a shitty CGA game
Pistols at dawn it is, then
posted by jklaiho at 10:50 AM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
Pistols at dawn it is, then
posted by jklaiho at 10:50 AM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
Listening to mods I converted to mp3 right now!
I loved the mod/demo scene when I discovered it way back when.
I have some I downloaded off a BBS over dialup.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 10:52 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I loved the mod/demo scene when I discovered it way back when.
I have some I downloaded off a BBS over dialup.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 10:52 AM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Alley Cat by Synapse Software Corporation
Publication date 1984
posted by mikelieman at 4:46 PM on April 16, 2022
Publication date 1984
posted by mikelieman at 4:46 PM on April 16, 2022
Jake Kaufman composed the entire Shovel Knight soundtrack in Famitracker. Live on-stream, apparently, during the funding campaign. I've not actually found the streams themselves (because I haven't really looked. I'm not sure they'd be terribly interesting to watch but what do I know?) but here's a youtube video of the Propeller Knight stage+boss music playing in the tracker. Fun stuff. Thanks for posting!
posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand at 6:08 PM on April 16, 2022
posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand at 6:08 PM on April 16, 2022
I've been having fun making chiptunes in Deflemask, which is basically a tracker that emulates NES/C64/FM/etc chipsets. It'll even output a ROM that can play on the target hardware.
posted by credulous at 2:59 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by credulous at 2:59 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was surprised to learn that Aphex Twin used PlayerPro for a lot of composing on Druqks. That was where I got my start and as a Mac user doing tracker music it felt like being in a niche of a niche. Unless I missed it, it wasn't even mentioned in the exhaustive list of trackers in the video.
posted by subocoyne at 10:48 AM on April 18, 2022
posted by subocoyne at 10:48 AM on April 18, 2022
→
OctaMED could do midi, and more than four channels
posted by scruss at 8:11 PM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Anyways, there was some long forgotten tracker in 1989-90 range that was MIDI capable and had a large number of channels.
OctaMED could do midi, and more than four channels
posted by scruss at 8:11 PM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Never mind that the songs we created with my friend were horrible, but because we had no audio interfaces or proper microphones, we actually tried to sample sounds by using headphones plugged into mic inputs. It works… kinda? It's certainly An Aesthetic.
posted by dst at 6:51 AM on April 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by dst at 6:51 AM on April 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
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