Recent Posts

21

Help and Questions / Re: Questions regarding starting music/tracking

« Last post by Saga Musix on November 11, 2019, 16:36:40 »

Also - don't expect to become a master in music making anytime soon - just go through the releases on my website from bottom to top and you will notice that I have a long journey behind (that is far from finished). There are multiple dimensions to master and you won't get better at all of them at the same time or at the same speed. Music can be bad in many ways - terrible melodies, repetitive song structure, bad rhythms - and if you have no prior experience, it's almost guaranteed that your first tries will fulfill at least one of those categories. Maybe you will be able to write some great melodies and harmonies from the start, but maybe at the same time the song will be terribly repetitive. We've seen everything. Just try, and don't give up. And most importantly, listen to and copy other artists. It's one of the most important tools for improving yourself.

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Help and Questions / Re: Questions regarding starting music/tracking

« Last post by Exhale on November 11, 2019, 16:16:05 »

When it comes to tracking, I started out - at the old age of 13 - by downloading and collecting as many .IT songs I could get my hands on and observing the code... I admit my first songs were made by stealing their samples too, but hey, one has to learn somehow. I also observed the kinds of progressions from one part of a song to the other the composer was using and contemplating how to work something like what they were doing into my own tunes... well I only did like one or two tunes that year, but I was very proud of them.
Dont worry about what other ppl think about your tunes, just make your music for yourself at the start, watch your progress and take as much joy as you can with the periodic improvements to your way of composing that will inevitably happen as you make more and more tunes.
good tracking dude, and I hope you find the confidence to have the fun you deserve in observing your own personal journey.

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Help and Questions / Re: Questions regarding starting music/tracking

« Last post by JamesC01 on November 11, 2019, 12:45:53 »

Thanks Saga Musix and Rakib!

I suppose what I've got to remember is that there's lots of different approaches. I sometimes get held up on things. I hear that one artist doesn't use music theory, and I hear another was classically taught, I hear others that played in a band before tracking etc., and it makes me feel like I have to learn the exact way that those people learned, but in reality, everyone who makes great music have completely different backgrounds, learned in completely different ways etc., so I guess going with the flow is the best, and learning my own way, instead of getting caught up on the exact way a single artist learned, and trying to copy that.

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Help and Questions / Re: Questions regarding starting music/tracking

« Last post by Rakib on November 11, 2019, 10:58:11 »

My way of learning was downloading other tracks and seeing how it was built, stealing samples and try to emulate the songs.
There are some demo songs included openMPT, open them and see how they are built.

I dont know and you dont need to know anything about music theory to make songs.

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Help and Questions / Re: Questions regarding starting music/tracking

« Last post by Saga Musix on November 11, 2019, 10:43:56 »

What is the exact process of learning to track? Should you already know how to produce music? Should you know how to play an instrument, music theory etc.? What are the prereqs?

Obviously there are many ways to get started. Trackers are used by people with many different backgrounds and different levels of professionalism. Historically, it can be said that trackers have been used by people with no background knowledge in music, because in the late 80s and early 90s they allowed you to make music exclusively with a computer without the requirement of additional expensive hardware. These days this is of course no longer exclusively true for trackers these days, but a large part of the user base are still amateurs in that sense.

Many people have absolutely no background in music theory and just learn by doing, but it's definitely beneficial. Knowing how to play an instrument also helps, in particular if you can play something that you can connect to your PC via MIDI and thus directly use the instrument in OpenMPT. It's not a prerequisite, but every extra bit of knowledge obviously helps you in producing better music, because it's not the tools that matter.

For example, the getting started tutorial on the openmpt wiki, it mentions it's for beginner trackers, but what does that mean? Beginner to tracking and music production, or just tracking but with experience with music production or playing an instrument?

The tutorial doesn't teach you anything about composition, it is just to make you familiar with how the application works. Arguably that's the more important part because trackers tend to be quirky especially for non-technical people.

If there was someone who knew absolutely nothing about music or tracking, what should they learn from nothing to comfortable?

I think it's definitely useful to pick up at least some sort of music theory - it doesn't need to be the "low-level" stuff but getting familiar with scales, how to use them, etc., in particular in the genre you intend to write in, would be useful. There are many resources in different formats depending on what you prefer - websites, videos, etc... but I have no specific recommendations since most of my knowledge comes from school and learning by doing. A very useful thing about modules is that you can download other people's modules (e.g. from ModArchive) and look at how they made their song. So if you find something that sounds cool, you just look at it and adapt it.

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Help and Questions / Questions regarding starting music/tracking

« Last post by JamesC01 on November 11, 2019, 08:33:10 »

This is going to be quite a lot of questions, so bear with me.

So, I've been into music production for a few years, but haven't improved much. I've been interested in tracking for a while, and I want to properly get into it, but I just don't understand how.

What is the exact process of learning to track? Should you already know how to produce music? Should you know how to play an instrument, music theory etc.? What are the prereqs? For example, the getting started tutorial on the openmpt wiki, it mentions it's for beginner trackers, but what does that mean? Beginner to tracking and music production, or just tracking but with experience with music production or playing an instrument?

If there was someone who knew absolutely nothing about music or tracking, what should they learn from nothing to comfortable?

I know it's probably a terrible habit I have, but I have this thing with music, where no matter what, I feel like I'm not learning the correct way, and I just can't get out of that mindset and just enjoy myself. Has anyone been like this before? What is your advice?

Preferably I'd like some of the pro's to answer, LPChip and SagaMusix seem like some frequent ones that I've seen, but I don't really mind.

Thanks!

27

Help and Questions / Re: Is support for OPL3's percussion mode planned in the future?

« Last post by ASIKWUSpulse on November 04, 2019, 21:54:20 »

Here Have some Yamaha-style drums that I recently just threw together - the key in the name also tells which note to use them at (obviously )

28

General Chatter / Re: Colour scheme exchange

« Last post by .^o on November 03, 2019, 18:58:12 »

I forgot to share mine. With my system colors.

29

Technical Documents / Re: Running Impulse Tracker 2.14 v5 under Windows

« Last post by onetimedealio on November 03, 2019, 17:45:59 »

Really sorry to necro; the absence of a response was mildly irksome.

Playing around with some settings in DosBox personally, it seems that a big issue is generally the cycles you allow it
The default is 3000 which with enough channels for I.T. will really bog the os down.
I've tested a few different cycle speeds, and the max just seems to be the least buggy.

In the commandline for DosBox if you type cycles = 20000, that should hopefully fix it.

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General Chatter / Re: Colour scheme exchange

« Last post by herodotas on November 03, 2019, 15:30:35 »

Hi,
enjoy, or not, my almost all themes pack.