[linux-audio-user] composing with trackers

greg gkjoyce at gmail.com
Fri Mar 2 23:49:54 EST 2007


RDM: love the acronym
yeah I had a big problem with trackers in that I would hear something 
but have no means of birthing it, and once the loop was playing I would 
be bound to what I was hearing.  I have a similar problem with singing 
though because I find I am thinking with my mouth and vocal chords.  Of 
course i've never composed anything of value.  check out 
muckvoid.googlepages.com for evidence.
Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
> I've used very few trackers.  I think I was turned off that the
> default is for all notes to be the same length, and that changing the
> number of beats in any measure seemed kind of involved.
> If you've never written music, and you don't own any instruments, and
> you open a program for the first time that shows you 8 divisions per
> measure with a steady beat, you'll probably make a lot of music before
> you discover what other options are available.  Multiply this by a
> million users, and you've got the makings of a long-term association
> with RDM (retarded dance music).  Try entering Debussy into a tracker
> and see how intuitive it is; and yet the music itself is very easy to
> listen to.
> I bet people's music would be far more beautiful if they would sing
> freely and often and then transcribe what they were singing, instead
> of transcribing before the music even exists.  Or maybe it's just a
> case where the number of people who write good music is less than the
> number of people who write bad music in general?


> 
> On 2/28/07, Dave Phillips <dlphillips at woh.rr.com> wrote:
>> Greetings:
>>
>> I have no idea if anyone's ever used a tracker to create a hit song, but
>> it is unfortunate that trackers are usually associated with a particular
>> style of music. I have heard some very cool stuff in module formats,
>> though I'll agree that most of the music-made-with-trackers that I've
>> heard tends towards rather uninteresting dance beat music. I don't
>> believe that trackers necessarily impose any kind of style restriction,
>> you can bend them into doing non-beat oriented stuff. Kuno's "Substantia
>> Grisea" is an excellent example.
>>
>> Developers are often surprised at what users wind up doing with their
>> tools.
>>
>> Trackers seem to have come along at a time just before cheap samplers
>> hit the market, which might have drawn attention away from the
>> developing tracker communities. Nevertheless, those communities remain
>> strong, a lot of people like to make music with trackers, and I don't
>> think they're overly concerned with their lack of popular success. ;)
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> dp
>>
>>
> 
> 




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