Trackers - what's your story?

I came late to the party, started on Apple Logic/Mainstage then went right to Octatrack. I was rockin some heavily fx laden guitar for years before the transition though and would “play” the fx knobs as part of my style so the electronic part was not unfamiliar to me and in a way I was playing some electronic music with a guitar as my synth…

Now that I’m here though I find myself very interested in the history of electronic music devices, composition, and whatnot. I never even heard of a tracker until I joined this forum… Curious and interested though…

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Ah same story with me and an 83 that sat in a drawer waiting for me to buy a transfer cable, finally bought a cheap 84 locally for the USB. It’s really fun to use in a public place and think about how it looks to be furiously pressing buttons on a graphing calculator with headphones in :rofl:

Jeskola Buzz changed my life in the 90s.

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I tried Jeskola Buzz but couldn’t catch on to it. This was when I first started my musical journey in the early 2000s. I didn’t have the patience to learn it or wrap my head around it. I preferred using Reason at that moment in time. If I had more time, I wouldn’t be opposed to learning a tracker.

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My musical journey started when I started hanging out with a small demoscene group. The guys introduced me to trackers and my first rig was a tracker and a pc speaker which was piggyback wired to a 8 ohm home stereo speaker. It sounded gnarly as hell!

Although I never became a “trackstar” and moved on to DAWs and hardware ages ago, I still have big respect for tracker musicians. One og scener I know still makes jawdropping music with Renoise and DIYed vst plugins :diddly:

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Trackers!!!

I love them!!

I’ve gone through my software and hardware cycles (of every shape and form) over the years. Analogs, digitals, computers, all manner of DAW, etc. However, trackers remain to this day a favorite of mine. I don’t get to use them quite as much as I’d like, but I still do once in a while.

I actually discoverd FM Composer about a year ago, proceeded to make about 10 tracks or so, and then haven’t touched another tracker since. I imagine I’ll discover, or rediscover another one anytime now. I think FamiTracker might be next up for some NES music. :smiley: (I’ve always wanted to make Megaman 3 style music for example)

The first tracker I ever touched was a Jens Christian Huus “JCH” of Vibrants editor on the C64 in the late 80s I believe. Followed by NoiseTracker on my Amiga 500. Then I went through all the popular ones on the PC later on, Screamtracker, Fastracker, etc.

I made a lot of tunes on them, but I wasn’t as much into working with samples back then. I did it, but it wasn’t really my thing. When I tried out FM Composer last year, it blew me away because I could make FM sounds in the tracker, then track them. (then right around that time I got my Digitone) The FM Composer dev is a really nice guy. He implemented a couple of features that I asked about, and put one of my tunes in as a demo. I’d really like to pick it up again sometime soon. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a tracker to play with, and like FM.

Don’t get me started on the Demo Scene. I’ve been watching since 1986 :smiley:

Here’s a few of the tunes I whipped up in FM Composer:

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Oh.

It’s time for Elektron Facts™

Trackstar was one of the name suggestions for Octatrack, and it actually came close to being named that.

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Loopzifier!! :monkey::notes:

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Yes! Although that was more of a working name… or the more demonic ‘Loopzifer’ that exist in some early sketches.

And being on topic, many have called Octatrack ‘Ableton in a box’, but the real comparison is of course Octamed in a box.

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I nearly forgot about Octamed. Slide that one in between NoiseTracker and the PC Trackers in my post. :smiley:

I used LSDJ for ages as well, really fun tracker! I think it primed me for understanding Elektron machines, the process was pretty familiar.

What Gameboy were people using? I had a Color but it sounded like shit. Seem to remember the others having various issues as well unless you mod them.

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Fast Tracker was the one me and some friends used. Truly a fun software.

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I started on Soundtracker and moved to OctaMED when it was still only MED. Now you know how old I am. :slight_smile:

Even used OctaMED to sequence MIDI gear. Still do, occasionally.

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SoundTracker on the Comodore Amiga back in 1988 was my first introduction to making music on a computer. All the years on the amiga there was different versions and generations of trackers being released and the Noise tracker 2.0 was, at least for me, the pinnacle of trackers. Never got any better.

Switching over to PC computer in the early nineties I left trackers behind and software like Cakewalk and Cubase VST took over. Once in a while I start up an Amiga emulator and Noise Tracker and get all nostalgic.

Never really tried trackers on the PC platform, kind of strange because there was (and is) some really nice alternatives. (Like Renoise)

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Digitakt - Noise Tracker in a box. Parameter locks, sample pool, sampling.

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kind of off-topic but I’ve used Chuck quite a bit as a MIDI recorder/looper/generator with my MnM. A tracker-style interface would be killer. I’ve since found out that Monome’s teletype module features something like this.

No MadTrackers here? 13 year old me never could get that damn FastTracker to work with my shitty sound card. So, it was MadTracker for me. Joined a tracker channel on mIRC in an attempt to learn the program, and got some really helpful information from a guy who actually called me and guided me through the basics. Thanks stranger!!!

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I came at it from reverse, started with hardware in the late 80’s, when x0x machines were still available for peanuts, I had a 606, 303, 202, 101, electric mistress flanger, watkins copycat tape echo, Yamaha VSS-200 sampler and a Amstrad Studio100, I was really happy with that little setup.

Then eventually I sold it off due to wanting money to party etc.

In the few years in between I had various setups and access to studios, and was fortunate enough to enjoy a moderate amount of success.

Then a few years later in the mid 90’s got a Amiga 600 and Octamed sound studio, this was my first real experience of trackers, I loved the per step parameter control but missed having some synths, so I started buying a few more bits of gear, the old x0x stuff by this time had skyrocketed in price, so I made do with things like a TX-81z, Roland MV-30 and a few other bits.

Then the internet became available in the late 90’s, I found out about a gameboy cart for making music called nanoloop and bought it, it was pretty capable but a bit cryptic to use I thought.

I eventually happened upon a new Swedish company who were building a synth based on the Sid chip, I got in contact and made arrangements with Daniel to buy one of the first available public batches, I ended up doing some presets for it, and some of my patches used the table function like a mini 3 track sequencer, Daniel really liked the idea and my patches were even mentioned favourably in the Sound on Sound review.
I had some quite nice email exchanges with Daniel, and when the Machinedrum came out I was really excited to see such a great and impressive machine being made by this small company.
I was not in a position to buy one because I had recently become a father, but I always intended to as soon as I was able.

Well, right around the time I had got the money together for the MD the Monomachine SFX-6 was in development, I immediately fell in love with the look and concept of it, I bought one of the very first units and became a beta tester and again contributed presets and ideas for features, I can’t remember all of them which were implemented but definitely the step mode was one.
The Monomachine was a game changer for me, combining as it did multiple synthesis types, with a configurable almost modular setup, and of course per step parameter locks, and the joystick. It only made me want a MD even more, the UW model was announced and again I didn’t have the money, so I waited for a while to get the money together, eventually the mkII came out and finally I got one!

Obviously ever since then I have bought most of the Elektron machines, and did beta testing on the Octatrack and Analog 4.

I think that @ess nailed it when saying that Elektron machines are like trackers, and I also think that they are like playing a video game too.

I also have a collection of gameboys with various nanoloop carts, LSDJ etc. which I have collected in recent years, I’m tempted to try out renoise because of my fondness for the tracker interface, but I don’t think it is a good idea for my productivity as I already have far too much gear and far too many projects on the go,

So for me the Octatrack is my tracker, but with the advantage of no hexadecimal and lots of nice realtime control, the best of both worlds. I often think it is probably the greatest electronic musical instrument ever made, certainly one of them.

I’d love to see Elektron take the tracker idiom further though, I’m certain that there are interesting concepts as yet unimagined, I have some great ideas for a new Elektron product which kind of ties all of this together, but maybe it is a tad ambitious and possibly a tad too niche :rofl:

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A lot of parallels there with my history (some differences of course). I also had some great exchanges with Daniel.

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Yes he was an absolutely awesome guy wasn’t he?

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