ModPlug Central

I began to write music to the 90th on ZX-Spectrum.
It was difficult to make everything that you want and to find room for it to 3 canals of the sound processor. But it was demanded by that time and possibilities of the equipment.

Then there was PC, sound cards with MIDI.
The main advantage of tracker music was that the module comprised ALL necessary for reproduction, despite the small size.

There is no need for small file size today. VSTi as before in MIDI, lie out of the module.
From true Tracker editor there was only a structure of creation of the module. It also attracts me. On the contrary, pushes away someone...

Traditionally tracker music is considered, so-called, Demo-Scene. And where other styles?
Why they so are not enough? Today in Tracker it is possible to make almost any style...

There can be a problem in weak distribution of editors? I understand that there is no advertizing because it is the free project of enthusiasts. But also on torrents I very seldom see distributions of Tracker editors.

It is unlikely, someone keeps statistics, but it would be interesting to know at least the approximate number of users of Tracker editors. 

QuoteBut also on torrents I very seldom see distributions of Tracker editors.

I know some people live by the mantra that a software doesn't exist if there's no torrent for it, but I see absolutely no reason for free software to be provided as a torrent if it's a small download anyway.

Trackers are clearly less desirable for the common user due to their steep learning curve, hence they are not so popular. I think that's inherent to the concept and not something that would be fixed by better advertising, more torrents or whatever. However, I can tell you that the number of OpenMPT users (according to our statistics) has been rising over the course of the last years. The user base is all but dead (although maybe not very vocal).

It is a pity that such good tool is ignored. It seems to me, the more audience, the it is more than ideas for development...

AIMP Player is very widespread in Russia.
On my question of support of a MPTM format, they answered that is known only by MTM, but he died. The only thing, promised to enter in the following versions the line "Artist" at the Tags display in the IT files. (Before there was only a line "Name of a Song").

Quote from: Alex TEHb on August 15, 2020, 11:55:48It is a pity that such good tool is ignored. It seems to me, the more audience, the it is more than ideas for development...

Quite honestly, I am happy with the amount of users we have. We already have more ideas than we can ever implement, and while some people claim that more users would automatically attract more developers, I am convinced the opposite is true: The more users an open-source project has, the worse the user-to-developer ratio usually is.
Currently we basically have two developers and several thousand active users. If we now had a million users, this wouldn't mean that suddenly we had a thousand active developers. We'd probably have ten more developers but a million more ideas how to "improve" the software.

Regarding external software, I can only recommend for them to use libopenmpt to play MPTM files. There's just too many little details to get right because the format is largely backwards-compatible to previous OpenMPT versions, and libopenmpt is pretty much the only way to play every MPTM file the way it was intended to be played.

I am completely satisfied with OpenMPT and its support.
There is not enough, exactly, audience of users, a variety of styles.

Alas, did not save the link, once was on the Polish website. There were more rock compositions.
And there could be also classical music, a techno, industrial, new age, etc. If it was more users...

Looking at mod-archive, it seems that except electro-house nothing else in the trekerny editor can be made.
But same not so!
Everything rests to users and availability of various instruments.

Therefore started this conversation.
What is necessary to interest people?

QuoteLooking at mod-archive, it seems that except electro-house nothing else in the trekerny editor can be made.

While it is true that most people are probably making electornic music with trackers, ModArchive features a much wider variety of music. The problem isn't that it doesn't exit, it's rather than it's very hard to organize and structure all this data. There was a big metal tracking scene in the late 90s, and lots of its output can be found on ModArchive (and more is to be added in the following months).

QuoteWhat is necessary to interest people?

I'd say that they themselves have to be ready to live with the idiosyncratic nature of how trackers do certain things. As said, there is a steep learning curve compared to regular sequencers, one has to be motivated to take this learning curve. Why learn for years how to make authentic-sounding metal music in a tracker when it's so much easier to just record 4 tracks from real instruments into a DAW?

To add to what already has been said, when writing music, its really a matter of using the tool you are most comfortable in. When it comes to abilities between a tracker and a sequencer, nowadays they are mostly equal. By that I mean, if one knows the tools well enough, they can make the exact same song in both pieces of software, but it may go easier in one vs the other.

It is this nuance that makes it so that a tracker is not that widely used. I do use OpenMPT, but I also use a sequencer but for different type of projects. When creating a song, my methodology is different for a tracker vs a sequencer. In a sequencer, I'll record my midi notes using a keyboard while I hit the record button and do it track by track. In a tracker, I work pattern to pattern and usually work in groups of 4 patterns.

The biggest reason for me to go for a tracker over a sequencer, is if I want to create a module, for example for a demo project. Another reason could be to create chiptunes, something that is so much easier in a tracker.

So... it really does matter what one would want to accomplish whether or not their choice of software is determined on beforehand.

When it comes to modern music, one should keep in mind that a tracker works really well when you are one person composing the entire music. If you are in a band/group and you want to compose as a group, a tracker will make things so much harder than a sequencer by definition alone because you then have performers. They just want to play their instrument, so all you need to do is hit record. One could even just hit record and have a jam session, and then one person uses whatever was played to construct the real song, something that is much harder to do with a tracker and external sound recorder.

Decided to sum up the results.

Reflected on future Tracker music, and it is necessary to compare it to sequencer.
It is not absolutely correct, but itself arises...

= Possibilities of tracker and sequencer, approximately, identical.

- Certainly, to learn to write tracker music it is more difficult (but not on many), than in a sequencer.
- Work with VST in sequencers, perhaps, is thought more over and is supported better.
- It is more difficult to find ready instuments for the tracker.

+ Free Tracker.
+ Tracker does not demand knowledge of musical notation (however, with arrival of Piano Roll the sequencers made up for this point).

Sequencers are more attractive, but thousands of people still work in trackers.
What keeps us in it? Habit?
Then, the majority of trackerman - people very adult...
But me, apparently, as among us it is a lot of youth...

Hello, I would like to add to this discussion, I believe that some reasons why most musically talented people don't use trackers is because 1. Composers might prefer scoring software like Musescore or a Daw like Cakewalk by Bandlab, both of which are free and very powerful, 2. Because Mod tracking software is attached to a subculture that at times seems to be dark and evil looking, especially when people use names like "Dark Virus" or something like that, it doesn't exactly appear very friendly or normal, quite the opposite, it looks demented, dark and evil. I first found Amiga mod music in the early 90's like 1993/94 and some of the songs I found had the word "demon" in the name or "hell" or "satan", this makes mod tracker people look demented and twisted and normal people ie. non-satanic people find those kind of things very undesirable and even scary. The Amiga Mod Tracker community has painted themselves as being satanic because of the song names and forum user names they choose to use (and I'm not just talking about this forum, but also other Amiga mod music sites and tracker sites). Daws like Cakewalk by Bandlab and Pro Tools on the other hand are used by most musicians and probably Cakewalk is used even more these days because it is now free, there is also Musescore 3, Tux Guitar and Audacity.

It has been asserted before (https://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=6324.0) that your opinion on the tracker scene is completely baseless and there are countless counter-examples. Yes, you will find users making dark music using all kinds of software. It's only your personal perception that people in the tracking exclusively make "dark" or "satanic" music and that noone else outside of the scene does that.

If you think we are all just a bunch of satanists, can you please just leave us alone and stop re-registering to the forum to re-assert this nonsense? And while you are at it, please stop judging our forum users by their name, thank you.

How old are you Saga Musix, 16 or maybe 9? My perception is based on what I see and I see a lot of 666, demon, satan and a lot of other childish crap in the tracker scene. I don't see this kind of stuff on the Musescore Forum for instance. And if I have misinterpreted who you are, my apologies. And yes sometimes the truth hurts. The reason I left this forum the first time was becaause of this stuff but I thought I would give it another chance but if you (Sagamusix) are going to shout at me like a 9 year old child because maybe Dark Virus is a friend of yours then I may reconsider. I was only using that particular user name as an example of the many user handles I have seen on different forums in the tracker scene. Maybe your one of those Millennials that don't like old guys and I'm an 80's kid and I saw the beginning of the tracker music scene on the old dial in BBS's that I used to dial into with a Modem back in the late 80's and early 90's so I know what I am talking about because I have been around for quite a long time, and I am not saying everyone in the tracker music scene/Demoscene is satanic but too many give the impression that they are.

I used to play with OpenMPT back when Oliver was still developing it and it was called ModPlug Tracker. Don't get me wrong I thing Music trackers are pretty cool but I was just giving my impression about the Tracker/Demoscene, no need to jump all over me, I realize I have spoken about this type of thing before, but I thought it was worth restating in a little different way. Do you always tell people you disagree with to go away? And I never said you are all a bunch of satanists did I?

I wrote about technical capabilities, an udobnost of writing and a raprostraneniya of trackers music...
I am surprised how people find a pretext to change the subject in everything.

OMPT is means of self-expression, instrument.
Who will use this instrument and that at it will turn out - depends on the person!
Dear, Soundman, you can use OMPT and make the LIGHT contribution in fight against dark and gloomy.
Write pure, inspiring music.
I think, from it there will be more advantage, than from a talk...

You are right Alex, and I like the way you explained it to me.

QuoteHow old are you Saga Musix, 16 or maybe 9?

Ah, an ad-hominem attack. Or is it ageism? I hope you are aware that those rank quite lowly in rhethoric arguments (read: they are plain old insults). But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, given that you previously asserted that "tracker music [is] always so demented" (direct quote). If you want to have a serious discussion on this topic, you should leave those insults against me and our community, and the generalizations at the door.
But I will ignore that for now and try to give you a serious answer. And it will be my last one on that topic.

QuoteMy perception is based on what I see and I see a lot of 666, demon, satan and a lot of other childish crap in the tracker scene.

When the tracker scene was in its infancy (so the late 80s/90s), many contributors were indeed kids or teenagers, few of them were young adults. Anything they did is merely a mirror of youth culture. None of these themes are exclusive to the tracker scene at all.
Most of those people grew up (some of them just grew old). Some decided to nevertheless stick to the funny and weird nicknames they chose during their teenage years, because why not - people are normally not judged by their nicknames. Lots of people you see here and in other music communities you mentioned are the very same people that already where in the scene back then. A nickname doesn't tell you whether someone is a "dark" person or not, in fact I would argue most of those people are decent human beings nowadays (maybe they weren't when they were teenagers).
That being said, the "demonic crap" you see is a minority in absolute terms, just like in more mainstream music, and it is typically used jokingly. I just briefly scanned through my playlist of thousands of modules and I couldn't really find anything satanic in song titles. Obviously that doesn't mean that there is no such stuff - but I think you have a perception bias here because you are aware of an apparent problem and now you see it everywhere. Quite honestly, you are much more likely to find a huge amount of dehumanizing, sexist and misogynistic lyrics in mainstream music these days and I think some of those are real issues compared to the fun some people had in the tracking scene during their teenage years (and sometimes beyond that).

QuoteI don't see this kind of stuff on the Musescore Forum for instance.

I dunno, just on the frontpage of the Musescore forum I found a post by someone named "undeadman05" - that's also quite a dark and unfriendly nickname, don't you think? But maybe you chose to ignore that because you are already convinced that their community is better. I guess the actual question remains - why are these nicknames a problem for you to begin with? Why can't you just let people be themselves?

It seems like your perception is heavily skewed against the scene, maybe because you had an issue with the Amiga scene (or a few people of it) in the 90s. But what you basically claim to be unique to the tracker scene is not unique at all. Let's have a look at the rest of the music world:
There are lots of metal bands playing music with "satanic" lyrics. Is this a reason for you to shun any electric guitar, any drum kit, and any other tool used to make this music because a few people in the metal scene jokingly sing about satan?
Other genres like EBM are very popular in the electronic music scene and often have apocalyptic, dark lyrics. They are not made using trackers, but most often using popular mainstream tools like Cubase. Is this now a reason for you avoid Cubase (and its community) as well and say that the entire electronic music scene is a bunch of dark / satanic / negative people? By following your logic that the entire Amiga community painted themselves as being satanic (because a handful of artist chose such themes), you also have to extend the fact that anyone using a guitar (or maybe every rock/metal band) is just as bad as the few metal bands singing about satan. If you agree that this wouldn't make any sense, then please reconsider what you said about the tracker scene.

I hope from these examples it's clear that (close to) noone in the aforementioned groups takes the stuff they sing about seriously, and that you cannot extend your opinion on a few individuals to an entire group (that's called discrimination). The same is true about the tracker scene and its handles. You need to adjust your sense for reality and start to understand that noone here or in aforementioned subcultures means to be satanic or unfriendly, and I believe that is crystal-clear to the average listener and most people don't take any offense in it. If you don't like that, that's fine but then please ignore those communities / genres instead of forcing your opinion on them.

QuoteDo you always tell people you disagree with to go away?

I'm a patient person but when you keep bombarding me with the same nonsense arguments again and again, I may lose my patience with you, yes. You have added nothing new to your posts from a few months ago so why do you have to bring up the same topic again? You could just have moved on instead of registering on the forums again to tell us how wrong we all are (according to your standards). And most importantly in the context of this thread, the real reasons why only few people use trackers have already been established and are well-known. If you don't believe me, you just need to search a bit (e.g. on social media) and you will notice that many people shy away from trackers due to their sheer complexity - not because they find the community appalling. It's quite obvious that an extremely technical niche product will never be as popular as its more intuitive, less technical counterparts. And while we're at it, new tracker users are mostly young teenagers who have no issues with weird nicknames, so it's unlikely that they shy away from the scene for the reason you claim.

And no, I wasn't shouting, not even figuratively. That's what you interpret into someone disagreeing with you.

PS: This is an open, inclusive community but a line has to be drawn when people are intolerant against the rest of the community. And that includes people who try to "salvage" me by sending unsolicited bible quotes.

I am not intolerant against the community, but I guess I generalized to much and for that I apologize.
But I don't understand why you consider someone sharing Holy Scripture with you as though they did violence to you. I was sharing the words of life with you and warning you of the judgment to come, how is that a bad thing. When I saw the link on your personal webpage called "Satanic Kids Enterprises" I not knowing you interpreted that to mean that you were into satanism, so I wanted to warn you of the judgment to come and show you the way of salvation from the second death in the Lake of fire, so am I a bad person for doing that, no, evil people don't care if someone goes to hell, but I care. By the way Saga Musix, are you threatening me when you said you might lose your patience with me? We're you planning on using the force choke on me like Darth Vader 🙂

Quote from: Soundman on September 22, 2020, 22:34:20
By the way Saga Musix, are you threatening me when you said you might lose your patience with me? We're you planning on using the force choke on me like Darth Vader 🙂

As another person who moderates/administrates this forum, yes Saga Musix is not just a developer, he also administrates this forum, please understand that the biggest priority for us is that this forum is a nice place to go to where we respect each other. By saying "How old are you Saga Musix, 16 or maybe 9" you are basically directly insulting the person who can ban you for life. He will not ban you for one insult though. We are civilized, but there will be a point where our patient runs out.

Now I understand that there's this discussion going on about something on his website, but please keep in mind, that the original topic is about the future of Tracker music. By going this in-depth is basically saying: I don't care about the actual topic. A little bit of side discussion is fine, but as I see it, we really should get back on-topic.

soundman, you are a clown... I admit when I was 12 and I first started tracking there was a magic to the whole thing and the names people chose for the songs felt like spells or whatever, but I grew up XD and I have no idea where you are getting all these satanically named modules from, but share bastard! XD
in all seriousness though... I think daws are simply more approachable because of the piano roll and ability to record and edit recordings directly in the software... I really think modplug can one day do both those things, but obviously its all far from trivial

Quote from: Exhale on September 24, 2020, 19:26:46
I think daws are simply more approachable because of the piano roll and ability to record and edit recordings directly in the software...

In OMPT there is a function of export of each channel separately.
It gives the chance to add a voice or to process each separate path in the third-party editor (mixer).
In my opinion, it is even better! An opportunity in addition to process music effects which are not (or they others) in OpenMPT.

You should not demand that EVERYTHING was in one program. Here more than once mentioned complexity of development of Trackers musics. Additional functions will add additional difficulties...

I demand nothing of modplug, as a singer and pianist and guitar player i definately want recording in modplug some day, but there is no rush

I am not sure that there is much future of tracking, because we are all stuck in the past. Once one tries to go beyond what libopenmpt can do, you're basically already in the MP3/OGG world - no one sees the point in real time anymore. A similar thing happened in the games industry - we went from chips straight to CD audio / ADPCM / MP3.

Even if a song was made in trackers like Madtracker/Skale/Renoise, it was often released as mp3 because distributing VST plugins with a song wasn't going to happen (Radix and Wayfinder come to mind). Real time synthesis is definitely possible to do in a tracker, especially wavetable and FM cost barely any CPU. People have done custom tools, often made for 4k or 64k demos. Buzz also allowed for some basic synth plugins, but like VST trackers, the Buzz project files often no longer work properly because they never include the right 'machine'/plugin, and it can be difficult to search the internet to find the exact version originally used.

But it's obvious that new trackers do not gain much traction at all. Even Klystrack, a chiptune tracker, is criminally underused. Which doesn't make sense considering how around 70% of modarchive are chiptune mods. It's really a zone for enthusiasts, and these days, people would rather use  stricter limitations of actual soundchips (FamiTracker/Deflemask), rather than a state of the art tracker.

But personally I would love an active tracker that supports different types of synthesis mixed with samples, and can still be played back real time. Like if OpenMPT and farbrausch V2M had a baby.

Trackers have exactly the same future as sequencers and any other type of DAW when you look at it from that standpoint. Yes, we are no longer using tracked music in games. But we are also not using Cubase project files in games! Tracks have just the same right to exist as any other DAW in this scenario. They don't even need sophisticated synth engines, because most sequencers don't have them either. Plugins are the answer to that, and have been for the last 20 years. The V2 is actually a good example why it wouldn't even be helpful if it was part of the tracker itself - the tracker would be outdated very quickly once the next better synth is released. With plugins, you can just use whatever synth sounds best or is the most powerful, and you can keep switching at any point in time without having to re-learn your workflow.

Hm...
I read a post and I am surprised what idea, various at us, that such tracker music.
I do not want to watch some wiki. There, for certain, again will be someone's subjective opinion issued in the quote...

In my understanding, tracker music is the music written in the editor who provides data in the form of separate tracks.
With the advent of Piano Roll this concept became less concrete...

Difficult to be focused on something that so distinguishes modern tracker music. It is not important for me whether ready samples are used or the sound is synthesized... Process of writing of music is important. But it remains at the author. Already ready-made product is provided to us (if it is a MP3).

Tracker music value just in modules. They can be studied, edited... Invaluable material for beginners! Even only for the sake of it I vote for tracker!

I think if more DAWs published file format specs, or at least had a EULA that didn't explicitly prohibit any reversing, we'd have a variety of software that could play and edit those project files, and users would share them more often. Maybe this will happen with Hydrogen or Giada, given a couple decades.

I don't understand your point about the wiki, Alex.

Quote from: Saga Musix on November 17, 2020, 19:33:59
Yes, we are no longer using tracked music in games. But we are also not using Cubase project files in games!

We should be using tracked music in games and demos. Especially demos. But you only find synths in 64k demos these days. I don't think soft synths should be a gimmick, it should be embraced as an intricate component of the software. So many good games and demos gain character by having dynamic real-time sound engines, etc. Not some MP3 player to include in your demo/game.

Quote from: Saga Musix on November 17, 2020, 19:33:59
Trackers have exactly the same future as sequencers and any other type of DAW when you look at it from that standpoint.
[...]
Tracks have just the same right to exist as any other DAW in this scenario. They don't even need sophisticated synth engines, because most sequencers don't have them either. Plugins are the answer to that, and have been for the last 20 years.
[...]
With plugins, you can just use whatever synth sounds best or is the most powerful, and you can keep switching at any point in time without having to re-learn your workflow.

I'm not insulting trackers or saying they have no right to exist. Obviously trackers now compete with DAWs, and share the same VST plugins. That's their future. Renoise is really just a DAW that spits out WAV/MP3/OGG, using the same plugins and concepts as any other DAW. OpenMPT doesn't escape from this fate really.

I'm talking about "Module files" like MOD, S3M, XM, IT. There's simply no true successor to them. MPTM and XRNS aren't successors because they no longer act as standalone modules, they're just project/session files.

I like synth VSTs more than most people, but there's nothing interesting or cool about them. They're not suited to precise control offered by trackers, we can't even do perfect pitch slides like we do with samples! They're the same tools mainstream producers use. 4k synths have no problem with these limitations, because they don't adhere to crappy corporate standards. VST3 is also pretty hated by many devs. No one gives a crap about LV2 or LADSPA, since they're not multiplatform or just not important enough.

I like the 'tidiness' of a music module, where everything is self contained. I miss the whole scene of sharing mods, swapping samples. VST ruined this spirit and soul of mod music. Because it forced everyone to distribute in MP3. XRNS and MPTM files have no place in Modarchve. There's less than 1% available such files on the net vs what the MOD/XM scene has built. That says a lot about post-XM tracker communities.

The question then becomes, was it a mistake to release everyone's PT/FT2 source files?! Or are we being held back and alienated by our tools?

I use a DAW primarily, I never got into 'track editing' first. But I appreciate tracking for the precision it offers. But VST has no real precision. You are limited to the controls exposed by the plugin, and often don't have the range of pitch bend you want, or this or that.
I've used many 'synth trackers', 'chip trackers', that allow for incredible variation and dynamics of synth instruments. OctaMED, AHX, Musicline Editor, and modern niche things on Github - Klystrack, FMComposer, SunVox, Patatracker... you name it. but that's the problem, they're niche, experimental. There's no true successor to XM/IT. No 'one true format'.

IT had filters... Modplug added built in FX... all supported by libopenmpt. but where's the built in synths?! That's the obvious missing thing.

There's no reason why someone can't code minimalist clones of Albino, or Synth1, or this or that, really nicely optimized, and have it built into a tracker, playing nicely with FX inserts and all this - and making it work through libopenmpt in mediaplayers and browsers.

I am tired of the same old rendering to WAV, encoding to MP3... Obsessing over mixing and mastering, just for 10 views on SC/BC. I want to build my music, engineer it - carefully build instruments and drumsets around tiny Opus encoded samples, use real synth engines - and have a <100KB 'new mod' file, sounding just as good as any DAW, to share and collaborate around. I miss those days of 'sizecoding music', 4k chip files and such. I can already make my project files in my DAW quite tiny, and still sounding good, but no such thing exists in the tracker world.


Edit: Don't take this as some sort of feature request.. I'm only saying that in an alternate future, maybe if Renoise was designed a bit differently, like with real time in mind, maybe it would have its own 'plugin spec' or open source sound engine.. and we'd have Renoise support in Xmplay, foobar, see Renoise in demos with really impressive synth sounds... see renoise files being created and shared rapidly like in the old days, on sites like modarchive etc.

Quote from: zikey on November 18, 2020, 16:23:00
We should be using tracked music in games and demos. Especially demos. But you only find synths in 64k demos these days. I don't think soft synths should be a gimmick, it should be embraced as an intricate component of the software. So many good games and demos gain character by having dynamic real-time sound engines, etc. Not some MP3 player to include in your demo/game.

I'm not familiar with demos, and I don't understand what you're saying about them. How is it even possible to have streamed music in a demo? What about 4klang?

I was under the impression that most games already use real-time sound engines, and these are wildly distinct from trackers because the requirements are really different - sound localization, scene-dependent reverb, dynamic compression, the doppler effect, sounds triggered by game events, Shepard tones, playing nice with the rest of the game engine, and randomly multisampled sounds are the most important things that come to mind.

QuoteIT had filters... Modplug added built in FX... all supported by libopenmpt. but where's the built in synths?! That's the obvious missing thing.

There's no reason why someone can't code minimalist clones of Albino, or Synth1, or this or that, really nicely optimized, and have it built into a tracker, playing nicely with FX inserts and all this - and making it work through libopenmpt in mediaplayers and browsers.

Is the OPL emulator too minimalist? What would you do about producers who think the putative Synth1 clone is too minimalist?

Quote
I am tired of the same old rendering to WAV, encoding to MP3... Obsessing over mixing and mastering, just for 10 views on SC/BC.

Puzzled by this. If you could distribute loads of tracked music easily, wouldn't you still have to worry about mixing and mastering? Wouldn't it still be hard to have your music rise above the background noise?

Quote
I want to build my music, engineer it - carefully build instruments and drumsets around tiny Opus encoded samples, use real synth engines - and have a <100KB 'new mod' file, sounding just as good as any DAW, to share and collaborate around. I miss those days of 'sizecoding music', 4k chip files and such. I can already make my project files in my DAW quite tiny, and still sounding good, but no such thing exists in the tracker world.

Sizecoding is a self-imposed limitation and (I think) has little practical use these days.

Details aside, I totally agree with you, I would prefer it if things were that way. I just can't see how to get there from here. If you can think of two or three free plugins that give .mptm all the features you could want, I'll go download them and listen to/tinker with whatever you're willing to upload here.

QuoteWe should be using tracked music in games and demos.

Actually, no we shouldn't.

When your aim is to distribute something really small, yes, you should use the tracker format because it will give you small files for music.

But in 2020, when making games and demos, filesize is not an issue in most cases. There are demo competitions where filesize is still a choise, but then tracker music is one of the possibibilities.

But if its not, then quality becomes the thing you strife for. In a demo competition where filesize restrictions are not an issue, viewers will easily choose a demo with a well mixed/mastered song over a demo that uses a module.

When it comes to gaming, having a 150 gig game is not unheard of. (looking at MS FlightSim 2020). So if filesize is not an issue, and if you compare what a module can do with only samples, vs using plugins, then the choice is easy. Plugins will bring you more than just sound. VST effects can master the music too, giving a much richer experience.

If you were to allow the VST effects and modules to work in the game, then suddenly, you add a lot of CPU usage to a game that the gamer wants to be gone, as their system is not too powerful. So a .wav or .mp3 file is always going to be preferable.

The same applies with demos.

When it comes to the art, one just simply wants to get the best they can and not settle for less. Using modules is really settling for less or complicating the workflow so much that it simply isn't worth it.

And yes, I've used my OpenMPT to make commercial music, make music for games and for demos, so I know what I'm talking about. For small demo competitions, sound quality is a bonus, filesize is a must, so tracker modules all the way. For anything else, sound quality is the most important thing, so the end product is always a .ogg or .mp3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVddGSTjEd0

Alright, maybe I'm old fashioned and adverse to change. I don't know. All I can say is no one ever listens or buys your music these days unless you're Jeroen.Tel or Dubmood. I don't understand killing underground scenes for a music industry that can't even support everyone. Things seemed better, more productive, more innovative, more open, in the MOD/XM days. I just cope by telling myself I do music for myself, but I simply am not satisfied enough with proprietary DAWs always killing old obsolete features with each new version. I want full control. When commercialism goes out of the window, there's nothing to stop one from just making their own tools to suit their needs. I don't know why this niche isn't filled. I've been considering making such a tracker for myself, designing my own plugin API, so I can port and reverse engineer VST synth engines and optimize them and.. yeah.  It sounds crazy, but you only need to look around GitHub to see I'm not alone. Even BeRo is making his own DAW recently.

I'm really just saying that trackers are becoming the same thing as a traditional DAW. Will there ever be a new plugin API that makes full use of all Renoise and OpenMPT commands? Who knows, probably not. But sound engines are dead, that's for sure (and sad to me). Self-imposed limitations are dead, no one cares or finds it interesting. No one cares whether the soundtrack of your demo has moving parts under the hood, just that it looks nice.

But there's 38,149 XM files on Modland. 76,420 MOD files. HVSC has 52,884 SID files so far. You look at the KVR OSC (one synth challenge), and there's only 40 songs per synth that demonstrate a synth's capabilities. Despite the fact every single one is more capable than SID or XM.

Quote from: zikey on November 19, 2020, 20:42:07
Alright, maybe I'm old fashioned and adverse to change. I don't know. All I can say is no one ever listens or buys your music these days unless you're Jeroen.Tel or Dubmood. I don't understand killing underground scenes for a music industry that can't even support everyone.
Things seemed better, more productive, more innovative, more open, in the MOD/XM days. I just cope by telling myself I do music for myself, but I simply am not satisfied enough with proprietary DAWs always killing old obsolete features with each new version. I want full control. When commercialism goes out of the window, there's nothing to stop one from just making their own tools to suit their needs. I don't know why this niche isn't filled. I've been considering making such a tracker for myself, designing my own plugin API, so I can port and reverse engineer VST synth engines and optimize them and.. yeah.  It sounds crazy, but you only need to look around GitHub to see I'm not alone. Even BeRo is making his own DAW recently.

I know I've been casting aspersions on this, saying there's no way it would work, but if you're actually going to make these tools then I would sincerely be really excited about helping you fulfill your nostalgic utopian vision. I'm talking 1000% support in making the tools, writing plugins in this new API, participating in a scene, and just generally getting stuff going (I'm a lousy developer but this sounds like a great way to get better).

Quote
I'm really just saying that trackers are becoming the same thing as a traditional DAW. Will there ever be a new plugin API that makes full use of all Renoise and OpenMPT commands? Who knows, probably not. But sound engines are dead, that's for sure (and sad to me). Self-imposed limitations are dead, no one cares or finds it interesting. No one cares whether the soundtrack of your demo has moving parts under the hood, just that it looks nice.

But there's 38,149 XM files on Modland. 76,420 MOD files. HVSC has 52,884 SID files so far. You look at the KVR OSC (one synth challenge), and there's only 40 songs per synth that demonstrate a synth's capabilities. Despite the fact every single one is more capable than SID or XM.

Again, have I totally misunderstood what 4klang is for?

Quote from: dem1 on November 19, 2020, 21:42:34
I know I've been casting aspersions on this, saying there's no way it would work, but if you're actually going to make these tools then I would sincerely be really excited about helping you fulfill your nostalgic utopian vision. I'm talking 1000% support in making the tools, writing plugins in this new API, participating in a scene, and just generally getting stuff going (I'm a lousy developer but this sounds like a great way to get better).

I appreciate the enthusiasm ;). It's definitely 'utopian', and a lot of work. I'm still just in the research/prior art phase. There are a lot of things to consider, including old abandon projects that simply need a new mantle. But something already exists with a similar scope: https://bintracker.org/. A "A hackable Chiptune Audio Workstation". It's focused on actual chiptune emulation, but should be pretty extensible for a lot of uses. There's also SOUL: https://soul.dev/. Which is a new audio language like csound. Can be used to implement all sorts of audio code.

Quote from: dem1 on November 19, 2020, 21:42:34
Again, have I totally misunderstood what 4klang is for?

4klang is a modular synth for 4k demos, there's also a more advanced 64klang version for 64k demos. It's just a VST plugin that spits out MIDI data for inclusion in a demo/app. Yes, it can play music. And it's pretty flexible (read: incredibly complicated). But it still relies on a separate sequencer, doesn't support samples, and it actually uses a ton of CPU due to it designed around being as small as possible. Optimized synth code can actually be quite fast though, and would need to be in a real-time format.

Something closer to what I mean is actually the predecessor to Renoise known as PreTrekker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rumqR9Refo. It has a built in synth (only one), effects and supports samples. But it's old and the concept can be taken further.

There's also Jeskola Buzz which also tries to solve this, but it's a bit problematic and not as well defined as VST, and still relies on external plugins that are hard to find.

SunVox (https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/) is also very close. Even has a JS library for playing music in browser. So probably foobar/xmplay plugins can be made too.

I'm gonna be very blunt for a second here. Not gonna address every single issue that had been tackled since the beginning of the thread, but for the most part the discussion reads like a pointless complaining along the lines of "back then everything was Z, today it's less Z, we should be doing Z exactly the same way it had been done before".

First of all, trackers definitely aren't dead, and while they aren't mainstream music tools i don't think they ever were to begin with (even though their presence seems to have decreased even more over years - although Saga's mentioned that OpenMPT alone has enjoyed an influx in recent times, and this is just one tracker among numerous other software projects like this!)

Game music written the way it's being written nowadays wasn't that uncommon even in the 90s, especially later into the decade - there were numerous titles utilising rendered, streamed music, coexisting with those utilising realtime sequencing.

Proportions also change, depending on the target system we take under consideration - realtime sequenced music was still a very common practice well into the late 2000s on handhelds like NDS beacuse of space efficiency.

But in the end, a question to ask yourself is... Does it really matter? No one is stopping you from using your favourite tools to do whatever you want in your own projects, but also no one should be requiring others to follow your idea of "ideal music production methods". Whatever tools get the job done for you, basically.

Also the fact we don't see raw source module files in the wild as often doesn't mean at all that the game/music album/insert whatever project here/ wasn't made with heavy usage of trackers - the music might just have been rendered or encoded into a proprietary container for example.

Someone mentioned that people don't care about limitations and the creative aspect that they're providing. Well, that's very far from true, because there still are entire communities of passionate people who are interested exactly in those qualities among other things, like Battle of the Bits, Chiptune Cafe or events like S3xmoditMania to name a few. Same goes for old Desktop MIDI modules with places like DTM MIDI Central Discord, and associated YT channels.

Interestingly, sample-based trackers also seem quite popular in YTPMV circles for some reason, and while I'm not really into YTPMV. i know about this because of few friends with YTPMV history.

Sure, it's not the mainstream approach, but it's never really been - back in the day people were working with limitations not necessarily out of their conscious choice, but because of the fact those limitations were a standard or even state of the art consumer grade technology at the time.

Quote from: Alex TEHb on August 15, 2020, 04:53:10
Traditionally tracker music is considered, so-called, Demo-Scene. And where other styles?
Why they so are not enough? Today in Tracker it is possible to make almost any style...

As for this one, you certainly must have remained in your own bubble, because i heard lots of very different styles of music made in trackers, be it sample-based or otherwise. You're almost implying that trackers are exclusive to the demoscene (which isn't true, despite many of them having demoscene roots).

Quote from: zikey on November 19, 2020, 20:42:07
But there's 38,149 XM files on Modland. 76,420 MOD files. HVSC has 52,884 SID files so far. You look at the KVR OSC (one synth challenge), and there's only 40 songs per synth that demonstrate a synth's capabilities. Despite the fact every single one is more capable than SID or XM.

There are thousands of songs using those plugins featured in KVR OSC as well. It's just that most people are not going to label their music as being made with those synths. I'm not sure what the point here is. It was fun to participate in KVR OSC but it also showed me very well that I would never want to rely on only having a single synthesizer available to write a piece of music, no matter how powerful it is. This is essentially what you suggested before, if I understood you correctly. A tracker with a built-in synthesizer will only be alive as long as people are happy to use that one synthesizer, and outside of an enthusiastic fan base, that won't be the case for very long. There's simply no one-size-fits-all synthesizer or even sampler engine.

QuoteMPTM and XRNS aren't successors because they no longer act as standalone modules, they're just project/session files.

Sorry but that's a gross misunderstanding of the features and capabilities of those formats. MPTM was not (just) made to support VST plugins. MPTM is a logical evolution of the IT format with features such as per-pattern time signatures, custom tunings and lately even OPL3 support - so there you have your built-in synthesizer, even if it's a very old and not exactly powerful one. If you don't use VST plugins, a MPTM file is just as independent as any IT file, but it can make use of features that IT can't.

Quote from: Saga Musix on November 20, 2020, 18:35:36
There are thousands of songs using those plugins featured in KVR OSC as well. It's just that most people are not going to label their music as being made with those synths. I'm not sure what the point here is.

The point is, I cannot use OpenMPT or Renoise the way I want (nor is there anything nice that does what I want). I want a rich, dynamic sound, keeping the size small. Lossy / compressed samples and real-time synthesis/effects. I want the source file to play by themselves, without extra setup for external dependencies.

I like MPTM for what it is, a conservative IT derivative, like how HVL relates to AHX. I'm not trying to downplay your work on it. It contains some of the best module players in any library. I understand the apprehension to do drastic or exotic things like OPL3 or MED instruments. However, those would at least be supported by libopenmpt. VST is out of sync with those ideals and is really just desperation to appeal to a changing industry. MadTracker, Sk@le and Renoise are also guilty. OpenMPT's bleeding edge is really just a mere sequencer that just sends MIDI data to plugins rather than something that can compete or blossom with its own sound engine. And it's held back in a lot of ways - relying on ImpulseTracker's dated 90s sampler. it can only import samples rather than store the original files. So I can't even keep my Opus or GSM files small in OpenMPT.

Renoise has a far more advanced internal sampler and built in FX, but it still is pressured by the music industry, and plays second fiddle to external plugins, external sampler libraries etc. Renoise doesn't even have built in synths. It's sampler engine could easily form the basis of a wavetable/granular synth. And there was nothing stopping Renoise from doing their own plugin format, doing a better job than Buzz did, etc.

I'm not sure what more I can say to explain myself. I don't want to choose between highly restrained chiptune formats or squeaky clean DAW recordings. I want the middle ground that doesn't exist, I want fancy synths in music formats that play in the browser via WebAssembly and xmplay/foobar2k. Something like OpenMPT, but with a more fancy sampler (timestretching, granular) and extensible built-in synthesizer engines. An API/modular system for doing custom synths/effects that get bundled in the module like samples, stuff like that.

Is it really hard to imagine? Look at how good 4klang can sound (https://soundcloud.com/virgill/sets/4klang-chiptunes). libopenmpt can't achieve that fidelity without tons of samples or external plugin installations. Look at PreTracker, AmigaKlang and Cinter. Synths that pre-generate samples, hardly real-time, but still saves a lot of space, and offers a lot of sonic possibilities. Combine that with highly optimized Opus drum samples and CD quality music can be represented under 60kb fingerprints easily.

Basically modern chiptune.  Speaking of chiptune, there's a lot of things you can't quite do, like combine different sound chips. 4mat's FMX combines SID with FM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbeoLqEpb9s. But it's a combination that no tracker can handle. I'd love a tracker that mixes and matches whatever chip you desire, and still produces small files. VGM format has incredible untapped potential in that regard. But actual soundchips aren't as good as real synths and samplers.

Quote from: zikey on November 22, 2020, 00:08:08

I want the source file to play by themselves, without extra setup for external dependencies.

I don't understand your point here at all. All formats created with OpenMPT play without any external dependencies other than libopenmpt (or any other compatible playback engine/tracker. Save for MPTM of course, which is only supported by libopenmpt) as long as they're not using VST plugins, which is a feature exclusive to OpenMPT.

Quote from: zikey on November 22, 2020, 00:08:08
VST is out of sync with those ideals and is really just desperation to appeal to a changing industry. MadTracker, Sk@le and Renoise are also guilty. OpenMPT's bleeding edge is really just a mere sequencer that just sends MIDI data to plugins rather than something that can compete or blossom with its own sound engine.

What's your actual issue here exactly? OpenMPT's aim had always been to implement a few popular legacy sample-based tracker formats and it succeded at it very much. VSTs are just a nice afterthought feature, many people enjoy having access to them in OpenMPT. You're not forced to use them if you don't like them and i don't think OpenMPT is or had ever been striving to "appeal to any kind of industry". It's an open source project made out of love and passion for tracker music, rather than something trying to "sell itself". I feel like your thinking is too fixated on mainstream music industry in this context.

Quote from: zikey on November 22, 2020, 00:08:08
I don't want to choose between highly restrained chiptune formats or squeaky clean DAW recordings. I want the middle ground that doesn't exist, I want fancy synths in music formats that play in the browser via WebAssembly and xmplay/foobar2k.

MPTM is too restrained for you? Well then you don't have other choice than use other software. And who said that music made with DAWs must sound "squeaky clean"? You can process it whatever way you want, even pass it through analogue gear. Or if you want something yet more different, you could buy an old MIDI synth like Yamaha's MU2000 which supports XG MIDI and has a built-in sampler if that's your thing. There's lots of possibilities and ways to create digital music and making it sound the way you want. What you're imagining, regarding modern tracked formats played in realtime and utilising fancy internal synths isn't very likely to happen, and even if there was some kind of project matching your description i don't think it would gain lots of traction. Be the change you want to see i guess, instead of complaining about what OpenMPT isn't.

EDIT: On the second thought. there already are things that could become that, like KlysTrack. except as of now it doesn't have any external playback engine implenentations. Or, as you mentioned, VGM format which supports emulating various old gaming systems, including arcade sound hardware incorporating PCM and FM synths for example - there's DefleMask which can make use of some of those systems, even though it's a generally very clunky tracker.

Maybe this middle ground you want doesn't exist for a good reason. Because this middle ground will look completely different for everyone else and thus there is not a single solution: There simply is no one-size-fits-all synthesizer for everyone. The closest to a completely self-contained, high-quality music production system (until they added VST support) was probably software like Reason, and for that very reason it also wasn't exactly portable. Quite frankly, I'm tired of people who propose gigantic dream worlds like what you describe here and asking for attention for their ideas without ever trying to implement that idea themselves. Synthesizers come and go. 4klang can sound great but it's a lot of work and difficult to use, it's not a tool I would want to force people to use for all their music. And many people already grow tired of its "standard" sound and use different 4k synths instead. Similarly, any of the other synthesizers you mentioned are all there to fulfil a specific niche, and they will be superseded by the next, better tool. Synthesizers come and go, but trackers/DAWs that do not enforce a specific type of synthesis are here to stay, if OpenMPT's age of more than 23 years is any indication. Similarly, synthesizers that can be used in any tracker/DAW the user chooses are here to stay, because that allows them to be used by anyone, and not just those that are willing to study a specific music creation paradigm.

And this is my last word on this discussion, because there simply is not anything more to say.

One addition, there currently is no DAW at all that is this feature rich. Not even amongst sequencers. Sure, if you look at big DAW's such as ableton, bitwig, fl studio, they do come with plugins out of the box, but even then they are limited, where people quickly want to add their own plugins, and then the same problem exists again.

But if we go back in time and look at trackers when they fluorished, you only had samples, and the sound quality was bad. We settled for that, because there simply wasn't anything better other than actual recordings, but that was far out of reach. People have created music tools with a very fixed soundset, that was heavily used, and support for addition was possible too. For example Rebirth was a very popular software package emulating various hardware synths and string it together to create music with it. It got to the point that if you wanted to play a song, you almost always had to also install a specific module pack/skin pack too, which basically is the same as using a module with free VST instruments, and ask people to install those before your song works.

Its possible, but in 2020, people don't want to go through the hassle anymore to install something so they can maybe once listen to a tune. So instead, people want the mp3 version to listen to the tune, which is why people stopped sharing the source and just go for the mp3 version only.

One last issue that is also resolved here is the fact of song theft. In the past, with the source being available. More often than not, people downloaded the source, made a few tweaks then claimed it their own. Some people got famous using this opposed to the original creators.

One famous example is Timbaland who stole part of a module made by Tempest.

Hey everyone!

Interesting discussion. I remember wanting to make a YouTube video about trackers as music tools and also talking about the future of tracked music. Should I do this eventually?

In my personal opinion, trackers are unique tools in many ways and writing music with them is fun. Just like any tool that offers a new angle at writing music, it makes certain things easier, thus shaping the kind of music that is being done with it. I talked about this when I was interviewed for a podcast. If you are interested, give it a spin: The challenges and the rewards of writing electronic music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u3FDUI03Ck).

However, at the same time, I would challenge the notion that trackers offer the same set of features as regular DAWs. Unfortunately, there are very serious issues that make certain relatively basic things pretty much impossible.

For instance, it is generally impossible to zoom in. In a DAW I can get to any level of granularity. This is very difficult to do in a tracker. You can try to do workarounds, like blowing up a pattern, so that it is twice as long or four times as long, while increasing the speed, but this has it's own problems and makes it very difficult to edit. For someone like me who makes minimal house, where you want various forms of swing (like, swing on only the third note) - this is a real problem.

There is a limit as to the amount of commands you can apply to a given note, which makes it difficult to do several basic things at once. If I want to apply a note offset, a sample offset, panning and volume to a note, I should either hope that there exists a special command - or it's simply impossible. In a DAW there is generally no limit of commands one can apply to a note.

There are also many UI complications that, on the one hand, allow to do some things in a tracker easier, but for the most part make very basic things harder. Looking at what is basically a spreadsheet is geeky and fun and I personally love it, but I also recognize that a piano roll allows me to understand what's going on much faster and makes it trivial to move notes around.

Moving things around in a tracker is a chore. If I want to change a note in a piano roll, all I do is move it - it takes me a second and virtually no mental cycles. In a tracker I would need to make sure that I first find the note I need to move, make sure that the number of the instrument is the one I need, then make sure that when I'm moving it, I am not changing the position of the notes after it, then find a track to copy it into, making sure I'm not blocking any other long note. It's fine and doable, but complicated.

The fact that modern trackers treat a track as a mixer track is kind of problematic, because it doesn't actually limit which kinds of instruments you can play in a track, while frequently requiring you to use up more than one track for some instruments. So, it might require me to duplicate my plugins as opposed to simply assigning several instruments to a single set of effects.

You can use NNAs to go around this, but NNAs don't give you the amount of control over notes that you would have if you could just set them up individually. I don't want to have a single fade out curve for each note, I want to be able to have an instrument per track. So, the whole plugin addition thing to tracker's tracks is awkward: you can see that this was an afterthought, original trackers were not designed for this.

In general, modern DAWs have workflow versatility that trackers lack: there are many ways you can make a track in a DAW, whereas a tracker generally forces a single workflow.

It's been a while since I thought about that, so I am definitely missing other important things, but that's what I remember at the moment.

Now, obviously, various concepts of trackers exist, various quality of life solutions exist, even those with automation lines. But at that point I would say that those are no longer trackers, but DAWs with a weird vertical layout.

So, trackers are probably not going to go away completely, just like Amiga games are not going away completely. There are always geeks out there or people to whom the tracker interface simply speaks. But in terms of actual versatility, I think trackers are definitely very limited tools. Super fun - and I love them - but I don't see them being more than a very niche geeky thing.

QuoteI would challenge the notion that trackers offer the same set of features as regular DAWs

QuoteBut at that point I would say that those are no longer trackers, but DAWs with a weird vertical layout.

It kinda sounds like you are confused with what DAWs are supposed to be. DAWs are for audio work, period. They're not just sequencers, not just MIDI editors, etc. They have to serve multiple purposes. A non-musician may use a DAW for editing sound effects for games, or editing audiobooks, or they might be purely a mastering engineer. Are trackers DAWs? At what point does a sequencer become a DAW? Asking the real philosophical questions here  ;)

Renoise calls itself a DAW, but I wouldn't call it one, because by design it's not as versatile as Pro Tools, Cubase, Reaper or Ardour. It's important to understand their capabilities. ProTools and Cubase are optimized for working with audio stems/clips. Ableton is optimized for live performances, FL Studio is optimized for sequencing/automations. Renoise is optimized for precise editing and sample work, but not ideal for mastering or downmix-heavy work.

DAW sequencing does allows for very fine granularity, but music is typically highly structured and based around specific note lengths anyway. Even music where the tempo is not constant can be done by controlling the speed primarily, not the density of notes. Fine granularity is mostly good for capturing a performance at a constant speed, or to facilitate humanization, random errors in timing that make the note placements seem less perfect. And you do run into inelegance in trackers, but clever use of effects such as speed and note delay etc can mitigate it. Some tracker music changse tempo in specific parts of patterns JUST to increase granularity and make room for extra notes, while ultimately keeping the overall tempo in tact. It's confusing but magical and ingenious at the same time.

Of course, not all trackers have the same limitations. Some trackers allow you to add additional command columns as needed. Some trackers allow for polyphonic 'note release tails' per channel, some trackers allow polyphonic chords instead of arpeggios. OpenMPT doesn't have any of this. Basically there are a lot of innovations that can be applied to the typical tracker workflow that we aren't seeing because it's a niche area.

QuoteIn a DAW there is generally no limit of commands one can apply to a note.

Yes in the sense of being able to use unlimited automation tracks, but there isn't any standard list of 'note commands' in MIDI aside from velocity, panning, pitch etc. And if you're using a VST plugin (and I imagine other plugin specs too), you are at the mercy of whatever controls that plugin exposes. A lot of tracker commands have no equivalent in most plugins. The DAW typically gives most control to its native built-in instruments.

QuoteThere are also many UI complications that, on the one hand, allow to do some things in a tracker easier, but for the most part make very basic things harder. Looking at what is basically a spreadsheet is geeky and fun and I personally love it, but I also recognize that a piano roll allows me to understand what's going on much faster and makes it trivial to move notes around.

This is a legitimate concern, the more powerful and involved a tracker is, the harder it is to learn. Trackers are really optimized for efficiency and not convenience. For example, the actual sequence data for iconic SMB overworld tune is a mere 339 bytes, and that's for almost 2 minutes of music. Some trackers adopt the mindset of extreme efficiency - which is why older trackers only had 15 or 31 instruments, or why you type in raw hex (00-FF or 0-255) instead of 64-bit decimal points (0.69793734).

Personally, I believe a tracker interface can be married with a piano roll, and certain adjustments in the piano roll can be interpreted as certain effect commands. The software Buzz tried this, but kept the piano roll vertical for some reason.

QuoteThe fact that modern trackers treat a track as a mixer track is kind of problematic

How many trackers can you call modern? I wouldn't call OpenMPT modern, as it's firmly based on Impulse Tracker, which is circa 1995 technology. Yes it has some forward-thinking extensions but nothing truly radical. Renoise does have a dedicated mixer and is flexible in how tracks are routed. And that's the only one I can think of.

QuoteSo, trackers are probably not going to go away completely, just like Amiga games are not going away completely. There are always geeks out there or people to whom the tracker interface simply speaks. But in terms of actual versatility, I think trackers are definitely very limited tools. Super fun - and I love them - but I don't see them being more than a very niche geeky thing.

Trackers are tightly related to 'chiptune' music. Originally music editing was done in a text editor in hex and had to be pretty compact. For example, the 1.5 minute Overworld theme in SMB for NES is a just 339 bytes. Amiga music wasn't as tiny, but still needed to be quite small. Trackers came about as a natural way to quickly preview music as you write it. Horizontal editing still existed back then, Aegis Sonix used musical notation, and Cubase on Atari ST had a piano roll.  But now Renoise and OpenMPT and even the original FT2/IT trackers allow for more serious/modern sounding music. So it was an obvious transition. Many composers have outright abandoned trackers for fully fleshed out DAWs like Cubase where they have no limitations.

But I feel like every new innovation 'moves the goal post further' so to speak. A game composer moving from the NES to SNES would feel quite liberated to be able to use 'realistic instruments' despite the low memory available. Even the Megadrive's FM synth would've seemed exciting if all you ever knew was a pulse and triangle wave. Now we have a limitless supply of VST synths, so being limited to just one would feel oppressive, despite the fact that any synth like Surge today, is incredibly more capable than older systems.

As for me, I started with a DAW, and prefer to go backwards; I basically yearn for a tailor made tracker with only the features I'd ever use. I like trying new obscure trackers and synths because they often bring something new to the table, and help me brainstorm what essential features would be good for a future tracker.  I find personal satisfaction with working with weird hardware/software, or making my own custom tools. The technicality of trackers allow for expression beyond that of just music. Many creative tracker users have used them in unexpected ways, animating things, or going in reverse in patterns, navigating patterns in odd and creative ways. So it can facilitate what could be characterized as Music Engineering, where the final song is merely the cherry on top to the intricate crafting of the song and instruments, which can be only be experienced fully by studying the source file directly.

Generally speaking, trackers don't have to be limited in the ways you describe - there's just very little pressure to explore solutions and innovations.

Happy Holidays!

DAW is an all-encompassing term these days. But, not to get too bogged down in semantics, you can see that in my previous message I was comparing tracker features to the corresponding sequencing features of modern DAWs. I wouldn't focus on things that trackers definitely don't have or weren't designed to do, like audio.

And all of my analysis is precisely about that - sequencing. At the end of the day, all of us would have wanted a proper sequencer with a piano roll, even in the 80s. We just couldn't afford it and trackers became the first tools to democratize the production of music. And because they were a very particular tool with very particular limitations, this shaped the kind of music you could do with a tracker. Which is why trackers are an important example of how instruments shape the music.

But apart from that outcome and an important step in the development of computer music, which is ubiquitous today, I don't think that trackers are capable of securing more than a niche following.

One thing I wanted to comment on:

Quotethe more powerful and involved a tracker is, the harder it is to learn.

I am saying that trackers are not harder to learn per se, but that they are harder to operate. The difference might seem subtle, but it's of paramount importance: learning something is a singular event. It might be hard, but it's a cost exerted once.

But if something is difficult to operate, even once you have learned it, the cost is exerted every single time you are using a tool. And I claim that trackers are harder to operate that a typical DAW - while the result is at best the same.

One apect that was not mentioned here is using trackers in combination with modular synths of any kind, like Eurorack (Nerdseq as example for an Eurorack module), orPolyend Tracker, LSDJ, Dirtywave M8 and others.

I added microtonal capabilities to Goattracker because I find that making microtonal music using a piano roll is pretty absurd (e.g. the Bohlen-Pierce tuning has 13 notes in a tritave - no octave here). And OpenMPT has microtonal capabiliies already built in.

Lots of words are said about distributing music as modules or as wav/mp3. My 2 cents here: A wav/mp3 file is as it is. It will always sound the same. Some DJs take recordings and do lots of crazy stuff with that. But a module on the other hand, I can change how it sounds, it's like open-source music. It's like kinda sharing VCV Racks that contain fancy sequencers making generative music. But for me, trackers force more to compose music rather than nooding around with generative tools.Yes, and some trackes have random effects that let a module never sound the same.

I'm about writing a small tracker for the VCV Rack because I think that's one aspect of the future of tracker music.