"Tales of the Trackers"

[Matt Hartman]

?Measurement of a  Tracker?

You?re a ?tracker?. And you often wonder how you measure up into the musical scheme of the universe?

Sometimes you feel inadequate because you may notice there?s a musician that masterfully plays an instrument. You catch the vibe, you see the strain and emotion being squeezed into a piano, a guitar, maybe a drum. And you wonder if your art form will ever measure up to that kind of raw physical energy. You wonder ?how will I ever create expression through a non-physical object?, note envy sets in.

You wonder if simply opening up the program and pushing it to it?s limits trying to emulate that raw passion you hear from the ?real dealers?  is your way of giving in to the fact that it takes too many years of hard work to masterfully accomplish an instrument, way too much time and effort that your willing to sacrifice because the instant gratification of 64 tracks is just too tempting, too respondent.

Then other times you feel superior. You are the pioneer of the many new and exciting waves that music will take well into the future. Not only have you taken mental knowledge and meshed it with technology, why damn it, you?ve mastered technology itself and somehow welded it to be your bitch.  

You refuse to be 63, suffering from arthritis, penniless and smoking a black cigarette butte in a sleazy blues bar in the wrong side of the tracks. You, roll with the punches to see which back alley your next virtual K.O. comes to.

The measurement of a tracker depends on which ruler you use.

?The Tracking Odd Couple?

Gary writes awesome chip tunes, pushing the art of minimalism to the max. Captivating the newcomers and making himself a legend in his own right. He prides himself on capturing vast, 8 bit lustrous arrangements and pulsating panoramics. Naming his instruments as shout outs to his legion of followers. Compressing it all down to the context of 0kb. He?s in the scene. After all, his first high school crush was actually DOS which automatically inducts you into the underground.

Bob writes unbelievable high quality tracks, using only high quality, stereo 16 bit, and 1gig samples. His music sounds so real even accomplished players would have a hard time picking it apart. He?s constantly in pursuit of more available tracks and pattern lengths, more quality samples and more vst plug-ins. He barters and trades for precious system resources and keeps a constant governing eye on his CPU usage. He?s no stranger to buffer settings or ASIO sound drivers. Or mixing it all down to a 10meg MP3.

Seems these two are opposite extremes. But whenever they need to get along they simply remember they share a couple things in common. They both love music and they both love MPT!  Cheers Gary and Bob!

[LPChip]

Amen!  

[cyperkid]

i feel much encouraged now to regard myself as a useful part of society
(or did the text actually want to point on another neurosis?)

[rewbs]

[Matt Hartman]

i feel much encouraged now to regard myself as a useful part of society
(or did the text actually want to point on another neurosis?)

Try to think of it like this as a word problem:

A paints impressionistic. B paints realism.
Both use oils and stretched canvas. Which painter is better?

A.) A
B.) B
C.) Depends who you ask.

[Sam_Zen]

Sometimes you feel inadequate because you may notice there?s a musician that masterfully plays an instrument.

Very nice thread by the way. I started my musical interest with jazz, where the musicians have indeed a great control over their instruments, and I envied them. But I think it's just another category of realtime sound.

That's why I wonder, why on this forum still many trackers call themselves 'musicians'. This leads to confusion.

A tracker is a 'composer' in my view.
I suppose I'm a Gary here. I started in DOS with FT II (I'm 61, so no arthritis yet), so my goal is still to make the module as small as possible. In all those years I never made a module over 3 Mb.

I won't talk about superiority or better, but I know that a musician has to deal with the same physical instrument the whole score through with all its restrictions, while in MPT every sample has a range of 8 octaves, or it can consist of three different instruments together, or a complete riff.

[Matt Hartman]

Sometimes you feel inadequate because you may notice there?s a musician that masterfully plays an instrument.

Very nice thread by the way. I started my musical interest with jazz, where the musicians have indeed a great control over their instruments, and I envied them. But I think it's just another category of real time sound.

That's why I wonder, why on this forum still many trackers call themselves 'musicians'. This leads to confusion.

A tracker is a 'composer' in my view.
I suppose I'm a Gary here. I started in DOS with FT II (I'm 61, so no arthritis yet), so my goal is still to make the module as small as possible. In all those years I never made a module over 3 Mb.

I won't talk about superiority or better, but I know that a musician has to deal with the same physical instrument the whole score through with all its restrictions, while in MPT every sample has a range of 8 octaves, or it can consist of three different instruments together, or a complete riff.

1.) Sam, I respect the Bekesy's out of you. Not because you're old or because you wear your hair long, but because I can see you really dig your heels into this music stuff. I respect others who focus on their own musical path and I always will.

2.) A lot of trackers do confuse the term musician and composer. A musician is a person who plays a physical instrument at all skills levels. A composer is a person that creates music so that a musician has something to play if he or she doesn't write their own music. (not uncommon) However, it is not impossible for a tracker to be considered a musician if he/she inputs the music from a physical source like a midi controller. I think it's safe to say that most trackers don't have this setup so therefore these trackers are to be considered composers.

I am a musician and a composer. I play a handful of physical instruments as well as compose music via MPT. In fact, my reasoning for originally tracking was to build accompaniments for practicing melody structure with my physical instruments.

I'm a Gary/Bob hybrid. Except, I could care less about the demo scene, DOS or IRC. I could care less about always having to sound real.  

My mission is to compose great music, period. If that means a chip tune or a 500 gig song then so be it. I just don't look at the small insignificant details.  

Even though I've grown very kindred to MPT over the years, I still use it like a sugar daddy, and I am just not ashamed of that, neither is my music. We have a love/hate/love relationship.  :wink:

[LPChip]

I guess I'm a really mixture of A and B, and can be called a composer and a mucisian too.

I make chiptunes with all the aspects of making it as small as possible etc... etc..., But on the other hand, I also track other styles where quality is my biggest obsession.

This allows me to get a wide spectrum of what is possible and why it is possible like that. Ofcource, its really hard to combine the two, but sometimes I share my knowledge about both subjects for the 2 different aspects.

[Matt Hartman]

I guess I'm a really mixture of A and B, and can be called a composer and a musician too.

I make chiptunes with all the aspects of making it as small as possible etc... etc..., But on the other hand, I also track other styles where quality is my biggest obsession.

This allows me to get a wide spectrum of what is possible and why it is possible like that. Of course, its really hard to combine the two, but sometimes I share my knowledge about both subjects for the 2 different aspects.

And yet I want to take another chance to pimp out MPT again. What an extremely powerful piece of software that would allow you to create a complete song within the framework of possibly 100kb or 100 megs.

I can think of other music software with a big commercial price tag that limits you to a certain way of composing. MPT isn't like this, it's powerful enough to be there for Gary and Bob and everything in-between.

There MPT, I've used you so, but now my karmic dept is paid, so shut the hell up.  :x

[Sam_Zen]

MPT isn't like this, it's powerful enough to be there for Gary and Bob and everything in-between.

Right on. I've even used it just to create, with a temporary pattern of different sources, a new sample-file.