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I know what a DAW is since I use Logic Pro X, but what is a tracker? What are they good for?

poisonarena 5y ago
Trackers came before modern DAWs, a tracker used to be a sort of different way to compose music on computers, a sort of different kind of DAW, using a sort of notation, with time scrolling down, instead of to the right. It was popular for making music for early video games, especially when size was a big factor in creating music for computer games. But with the layout and and function you could do unique tricks that are very familiar with early VGM and Demoscene music
- k__ 5y ago
  unique tricks?
  - snek_case 5y ago
    I think they mean tricks things like reversing samples, or having a segment of an audio sample keep looping after starting playback so you could "stretch" it longer. Also pitch-shifting samples so you can play them at different notes. Trackers were strange kinds of sequencers that were very focused on using samples to make music, and they were created at a time when memory was expensive, so you'd typically have fairly low resolution samples (8-bit 22KHz?), and people tried to use those samples creatively because you might not have many of them, both because of memory and hard drive space, but also because they weren't as easy to get as they are today. Most people didn't have the internet at home before the mid-late 90s, and even when people started to have the internet at home, it wasn't like today, the music making community was smaller. I first discovered trackers in a French gaming magazine around 1997 or 1998, but they had already been around much longer. Said magazine had came with a CD that contained multiple different tracker programs and a collection of music files in different formats (MOD, XM, etc). The compelling thing was that these files were small, because they contained a few audio samples and the data on how and when to play them, so you could fit a tune that was multiple minutes in 1 megabyte or less. For an example of what tracker software looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NjqNwHidpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NjqNwHidpk
    - aasasd 5y ago
      Here's a good recap of what sampling looked like in the time of Amiga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs “Ta-da-da-da... aaaaaaand we're out of memory.” Likewise apparently DJ Shadow pulled off quite a feat with his Akai MPC60 on ‘Endtroducing’, because the sampler could store something like twelve samples, also not too long. A sorta related anecdote is how the British ‘mind the gap’ was this terse because it was recorded on a solid-state memory, costing dearly in '68 even for the small amount by today's standards.
  - motogpjimbo 5y ago
    Trackers allow note data to be annotated with various "effects", triggered via special codes. Some of these effects are things like pitch bends and filter adjustments, which can easily be done in any sequencer. However, effects like retriggering the current sample from an arbitrary offset or rapidly alternating notes in an arpeggio are fairly unique to the tracker workflow. It's not that you can't make those sounds in a conventional DAW, it's just that you probably wouldn't in practice.
- CyberDildonics 5y ago
  So sort of composing something by sort of laying down samples in a sort of time line?
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
If Logic and other DAWs are like a modern IDE, trackers are like vim/emacs A different way of working that is considered outdated or arcane by the mainstream, but proponents of them love the faster workflow and ability to control them with only the (qwerty) keyboard
nickt 5y ago
Wikipedia has a good overview / history [1] and BasoonTracker [2] has a good demo if you want to have a go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker [2] https://github.com/steffest/BassoonTracker https://github.com/steffest/BassoonTracker
Yaa101 5y ago
Simplistic explained they are sequencers that can use samples. Trackers were used in the day to make old school Jungle/D&B songs.

Trackers came before modern DAWs, a tracker used to be a sort of different way to compose music on computers, a sort of different kind of DAW, using a sort of notation, with time scrolling down, instead of to the right. It was popular for making music for early video games, especially when size was a big factor in creating music for computer games. But with the layout and and function you could do unique tricks that are very familiar with early VGM and Demoscene music

k__ 5y ago
unique tricks?
- snek_case 5y ago
  I think they mean tricks things like reversing samples, or having a segment of an audio sample keep looping after starting playback so you could "stretch" it longer. Also pitch-shifting samples so you can play them at different notes. Trackers were strange kinds of sequencers that were very focused on using samples to make music, and they were created at a time when memory was expensive, so you'd typically have fairly low resolution samples (8-bit 22KHz?), and people tried to use those samples creatively because you might not have many of them, both because of memory and hard drive space, but also because they weren't as easy to get as they are today. Most people didn't have the internet at home before the mid-late 90s, and even when people started to have the internet at home, it wasn't like today, the music making community was smaller. I first discovered trackers in a French gaming magazine around 1997 or 1998, but they had already been around much longer. Said magazine had came with a CD that contained multiple different tracker programs and a collection of music files in different formats (MOD, XM, etc). The compelling thing was that these files were small, because they contained a few audio samples and the data on how and when to play them, so you could fit a tune that was multiple minutes in 1 megabyte or less. For an example of what tracker software looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NjqNwHidpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NjqNwHidpk
  - aasasd 5y ago
    Here's a good recap of what sampling looked like in the time of Amiga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs “Ta-da-da-da... aaaaaaand we're out of memory.” Likewise apparently DJ Shadow pulled off quite a feat with his Akai MPC60 on ‘Endtroducing’, because the sampler could store something like twelve samples, also not too long. A sorta related anecdote is how the British ‘mind the gap’ was this terse because it was recorded on a solid-state memory, costing dearly in '68 even for the small amount by today's standards.
- motogpjimbo 5y ago
  Trackers allow note data to be annotated with various "effects", triggered via special codes. Some of these effects are things like pitch bends and filter adjustments, which can easily be done in any sequencer. However, effects like retriggering the current sample from an arbitrary offset or rapidly alternating notes in an arpeggio are fairly unique to the tracker workflow. It's not that you can't make those sounds in a conventional DAW, it's just that you probably wouldn't in practice.
CyberDildonics 5y ago
So sort of composing something by sort of laying down samples in a sort of time line?

dkdbejwi383 5y ago

If Logic and other DAWs are like a modern IDE, trackers are like vim/emacs A different way of working that is considered outdated or arcane by the mainstream, but proponents of them love the faster workflow and ability to control them with only the (qwerty) keyboard

nickt 5y ago

Wikipedia has a good overview / history [1] and BasoonTracker [2] has a good demo if you want to have a go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker [2] https://github.com/steffest/BassoonTracker https://github.com/steffest/BassoonTracker

Yaa101 5y ago

Simplistic explained they are sequencers that can use samples. Trackers were used in the day to make old school Jungle/D&B songs.