Trackers / tracking

Has anyone else been getting back into tracking recently? (Scream Tracker, Impulse Tracker, Schism Tracker, that kind of thing.) I'm really digging the minimalism of a compact, simple, free, largely self contained environment.

1998 - 2010 Jeskola Buzz

2010 - now Renoise

Trackin' since '92 (erm well except the last few months with learning Ableton too)

1993 - 1998 Scream Tracker 2 and Fast Tracker 2

 

a break from making music

 

2001 - 2005 Buzz

 

another break

 

2009 forward: Renoise

1998 to now with Buzz.

Oskari has been pumping out new versions in the last couple of years after a decade of no change. Still kind of buggy, crashes, GUI weirdness, etc., but still great fun.

I'd like to try one of those gameboy trackers, like lsdj.

2001-2003 Buzz and LSDJ. I actually had a ton of fun with LSDJ and found it really easy/fast to use.

 

Recently I've been messing with Sunvox on the iPhone/iPad.

buzz since many years

1997-2001: FT2

2001-2012: Buzz

2012 on: Renoise

 

That said, over the last few years I've been writing a lot more music with live instruments in Reaper, but whenever electronic production is needed, I use Renoise or Buzz.

Motherfucking Renoise Bitch.

  On 7/10/2013 at 4:50 PM, feartherush said:

Recently I've been messing with Sunvox on the iPhone/iPad.

that sunvox thing is quite steep..

 

http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

 

tracker+modular, multi-platform, donationware...fuuuuuuuuuu

 

Edited July 12, 2013 by iococoi

Sunvox is excellent but I'm too obsessed with Renoise at the moment to bother with any other tracker. Especially being able to turn interpolation off on samples and rock things Protracker style!

i'm messing with sunvox on my phone while i'm away from any workstation. on vacation in countryside for example.

Been using Sunvox on my phone on the train, and been using Renoise at work, but am a complete beginner with each of them. Seems like the key to success with trackers, pun not intended, is getting good with key commands. Or maybe I'm just over mousin' it for hours on end.

 

...Also, first post. Hi watmm.

buzz

 

always buzz

 

albeit with lots of VSTs

  On 5/5/2014 at 10:17 PM, lambda said:

Been using Sunvox on my phone on the train, and been using Renoise at work, but am a complete beginner with each of them. Seems like the key to success with trackers, pun not intended, is getting good with key commands. Or maybe I'm just over mousin' it for hours on end.

 

...Also, first post. Hi watmm.

Yeah, keyboard commands are pretty essential in a tracker. Less so in Renoise, but it really helps for precision. I'd be pretty happy if I could eliminate the mouse for most work, and Renoise seems to be the one modern DAW that can almost completely be operated using keyboard.

 

Also, welcome!

renoise!

Trackin' since 95

 

Also chiming in with the Renoise and Sunvox love.

 

I got sunvox on my iphone too and its a blast to jam live with other people. The touchpad stuff and interface switching makes it a bit of a chore to work with, but you can belt out some decent patterns and lush melodies pretty quickly. I really dig how patterns are represented by actual visual patterns in the song column too!

Edited May 6, 2014 by Entorwellian

Listening to Bogdan's back catalogue

 

What were the limitations of the old trackers?

 

He has such a thick swung sound...how was this done with such basic ware? 8 bit distortion?

Bogdan used FT2 iirc.

He could edit his samples externally in wave editor, add some fx to them and bring them back to FT2. 

 

If you like Bogdan i'd also suggest to check Vim! + more and more

Edited January 20, 2017 by telefunken

Cheers for that

 

The tracker scene is so retro and yet future if u know what i mean

Trackers and Editors are different things but I like em both. 

In tackers you kind of paint the sound and stack notes in 16/32/64 fixed slots.. It gives alot of freedom but sometimes Im in Editors just for better structure.   

  On 1/20/2017 at 9:25 AM, bendish said:

Listening to Bogdan's back catalogue

 

What were the limitations of the old trackers?

 

He has such a thick swung sound...how was this done with such basic ware? 8 bit distortion?

Trackers are essentially just sample players (at least the traditional style ones, ie. not Buzz/Renoise/Sunvox). 4 channels for old Amiga MOD files, up to 32 (iirc) for Fasttracker2 and Impulse Tracker, each channel being able to only play one sample at a time.

The only "effects" you get are pitch bend/vibrato (which I don't think Bogdan ever used) and some volume effects. Of course, there was also a rudimentary wave editor in trackers like FT2, where you could not only do the basic cut/copy/paste and set loop points etc, but you could also clip the fuck out of samples, resample to make things more lofi, and actually draw your own waveforms.

.. and in my opinion, the number one thing that makes trackers sound great, was turning off wave interpolation so the samples were super aliased, giving a 'glassy' tone to pitch bends with certain samples, and allowing for ultra gritty distorted kicks for hardcore.

I think Bogdan used to run his tracks through a metal zone pedal as well, but obviously that can't be heard in the original tracker files.

  On 1/20/2017 at 11:12 AM, modey said:

rudimentary wave editor in trackers like FT2, where you could not only do the basic cut/copy/paste and set loop points etc, but you could also clip the fuck out of samples

There used to be a button marked 'Conv.' - No idea what it was *meant* to do (convert to/from something or other maybe?) but it'd do some crazy saturation to the sample - Like invert the sample or something so the zero crossings were at maximum peak, and the peaks turn to zero crossings. Used that button a lot back in the day !

oh yeah I remember that, I think it had something to do with different sample formats, can't quite remember what it converted but I never had to press that button to get a sample to sound right!