Oldschool anyone?

[Exhale]

How long have you guys been tracking? I'm just interested to know if anyone here would have ever tracked a .mod file when that was the best you were going to get (music wise) out of a PC - ie. before CDs became the norm and people were running around with stiffies and floppies.
Then again, I suppose the Americans would have had the net earlier then us here in South Africa.

[Sam_Zen]

Welcome Exhale.

Tracker making started even before the PC, and the Inet, on an Amiga, and later the Atari.
I guess quite a lot of members here started with making MOD files with e.g. FastTracker II.

[g]

I started with MED on the Amiga. Does that count as old-school?

[Saga Musix]

I started with ModPlug. Am I newskewl? Seriously speaking though, I've used some old adlib trackers for DOS before ModPlug, though. That was in ~2002/2003.

[LPChip]

Somewhat 14 years ago, I started out using Scream Tracker 3, then Impulse Tracker, then MODPlug Tracker, and now OpenMPT.

I've also seen the older trackers. I remember playing DASBOOT.mod in delitracker (or how was that tracker called) I didn't understanded anything of it. Later in Fast Tracker 1 which was already a bit better. My brother tracked in it, but I found it too much to hastle with it. I then got introduced to Scream Tracker, and that program actually made sense to me.

[cubaxd]

My first tracker was OctaMED 4. I found it in the 90s (can't remember the exact year) on the cover disk of an amiga magazine. I don't think I've made more than 10 .mods, maybe even less. The .med format was much more advanced. When I switched to PC and ModPlug, i started making .xm, because I believed, it would be better than .it Well, I was wrong.

Does that count as old-school?

I would say yes

@LPChip: As far as I know, delitracker was only a mod player (but a very good one) for the Amiga.

[Rakib]

My first tracker was Fasttracker, jumped quickly to Modplug Tracker when it was released.

[TheEagle]

I started to 'track' around 1989 with Soundtracker on an Amiga 500 and after a while I went to a commercial tracker called "Oktalyzer". This was an eight-channel-tracker that sounded much better than (e.g.) octaMED.

Then from one day to another (around 1993), I gave up 'tracking' for almost twelve years and started again in 2005, after I discovered MPT.  

[uncloned]

for me it was 91, 92 - I started out with something called "modedit" I think it was - it was a terminate stay resident DOS program - so you edited the mod, saved it, and then shelled to DOS to play it. I started out playing through the PC speaker and then "graduate" to the Disney Sound source - the Adlib card I had didn't have any way to output a wav file - only FM synthesis....

Here is my first MOD.

http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/dickens.zip

I originally had a quote from the string part for I am The Walrus - but I messed it up to avoid worries of copyright infringement. Of course - 200 years ago it would have been understood to be a music homage to John Lennon...

[Exhale]

Here is my first MOD.

http://clones.soonlabel.com/mods/dickens.zip

I originally had a quote from the string part for I am The Walrus - but I messed it up to avoid worries of copyright infringement. Of course - 200 years ago it would have been understood to be a music homage to John Lennon...

cool that you were making mods back then, took a listen, but I am sorry to say that it was terrible. (I'm at work and I think my boss would think I'm playing 8bit 2d platform games if I played it again)
lol jk..
you should hear my first song (can't send it now) it's an IT made with impulse tracker. I'll get it for you guys from home.
Before impulse tracker I personally had a fleeting experiance with scream tracker because I remember thinking how similar they looked and that they both looked complicated and that I would never get into this tracking thing...
look at me now  

http://www.traxinspace.com/profile/exhale

[Harbinger]

Officially started composing in 1986, pencil and paper with a piano (whatever i could find). Then went to college in 1990 and started using Master Tracks Pro-4 on a Macintosh SE, which back then was top of the line and my first exposure to Apple computers. I took classes in electronic music on sequencing using MIDI keyboards and rack modules.

A lot of down time in the late 90's as i was living in abject poverty -- no computer, no piano, only an acoustic guitar. Then in 2005 or so, while looking for ways to compose music for my favorite game, Unreal Tournament, i found ModPlug Tracker. Hated the fact that it was all text, but i was used to event editing from my sequencing days. Just had to learn about .wav files. After learning all about samples and how to edit them, i then discovered VSTi's, which were basically software synthesizers, and many of them were free. Do a lot of Technorock, dabble in EDM, but still consider myself a classical composer first.

Never did .mods, but used .mids when sequencing. MPT has trouble converting them properly, so i generally hafta convert or enter the notes manually. So even though i'm old-school, i came around late to tracking, long after better tracking software had come around. :wink:

[PPH]

A friend of mine had an Amiga computer and we played around with Octamed. But I started to track seriously when I got FastTracker II in my PC. SO, I wouldn't consider my self "old school". I did know mods, though.