Any interest in a new project of mine?

[Novus]

(Posting this in a few different places...)

If I were to put together a list of the top 100 tracker-musicians of all time, do write-ups for each of them one at a time, and posted them to my website, would anyone be interested? Would anyone care? Or would I just risk pissing off what's left of the tracking scene Novus-Revolution-style?

Reason I ask is that about a year ago, I started up a pretty ambitious personal project... I put together a list of every tracker who had at least 1 song in my playlist, augmented that list with a whole bunch of other trackers whose music I'd always been curious to hear but I'd just never gotten around to, and then started downloading *ALL* of their songs from the Modland FTP site. I'm about halfway through my artist list, I've listened to at least part of tens of thousands of tracks, and I've kept over a thousand new tracks for my collection.

It got me wondering about if there was any way to share some of the songs I've found with a wider audience, the way I used to do more regularly with my website, and that's when I came up with the top-100 trackers idea. But I could also see it coming across as more of my trademark Novus arrogance, so I figured I'd bounce it off of you guys first.

If I do it, it'll be my list for sure (hey, my time, my work, my website, so it's my list!), but I'd certainly solicit feedback from other fans of tracker music first to make sure I'm not missing anyone good.

So, what do you guys think?

[Saga Musix]

Welcome back! (whatever the hell "back" means)....

Problem: Who defines what the top-100 trackers are? Why are they the top-100 trackers? Because they got the best votes on TMA or Nectarine? Personal preferences? etc etc...

[Novus]

Welcome back! (whatever the hell "back" means)....

Problem: Who defines what the top-100 trackers are? Why are they the top-100 trackers? Because they got the best votes on TMA or Nectarine? Personal preferences? etc etc...

Hey Saga!

To be perfectly honest, a large chunk of it would be personal preference. (Like I said, my time, my work, my website, so it's my list.) But I definitely want to make sure I take "scene opinion" into account. There are multiple artists high up on my preliminary list that, while I personally only like maybe a couple of their songs, I recognize their impact on and popularity within the scene. And I've also pushed some artists down on my preliminary list that, while I may have liked their work enough to be in my own top 10, maybe me and 5 other people liked them, so it's not fair to have them above trackers who had a MUCH bigger impact.

Hence, why I posted here.

I was originally just going to do a big announcement and start posting write-ups on my website in the near future, but the more I thought about it (and the more I re-read the announcement I wrote), the more worried I got that I'd just come off as an egotistical prick -- again. And I've done more than enough of that, haven't I?

[Saga Musix]

Well... Go for it then!

[LPChip]

For me its pretty simple. Its your thing, its your opinion, and its your right to express yourself in any way as you please, as long as you don't insult people.

I would be honoured to be on your list, but I wouldn't be insulted if I weren't. Would you look like an egotistical prick? Maybe, but not to me.

[Novus]

Well... Go for it then!

Thanks! I think I will.

[Novus]

For me its pretty simple. Its your thing, its your opinion, and its your right to express yourself in any way as you please, as long as you don't insult people.

I would be honoured to be on your list, but I wouldn't be insulted if I weren't. Would you look like an egotistical prick? Maybe, but not to me.

Well, I was more worried that the reaction would be, "There goes Novus again, telling us what our opinions are supposed to be." And from the response so far, it seems that that fear was un-needed.

I was never really worried about people being insulted by not being on there... it's only a top 100 list, so there will be a LOT of people who don't make the list, of course. There are 376 trackers alone who have songs in my playlist right now, and I KNOW there's way more people than that who released a track at some point. Just on my preliminary list, I'm amazed at some of the names I had to cut just to narrow it down to 100, and that's nowhere NEAR being a final list yet, so I know I'll have some more I need to swap in and out before I'm done.

[Harbinger]

By "write-up" do you mean a brief bio on your favorite trackers?

I would be interested so far as finding my own favorites on the list. For example, i'm interested in Michael van den Bos (one of the original trackers for UT99) and a couple of others that visit or frequent our own site.

As a suggestion, besides the bio, see if you can find out HOW they put their music together -- inspiration, education, studio setup, the assembly routine, etc. Many young trackers should know how the "classical" trackers got so good, and why some of their names/music endures.

Finally, leave an open thread for others to post their own favorites if they don't see yours up there. It would be great to have a repository for all the current or classic names in tracking...

[Saga Musix]

Speaking of favourite trackers... Chris Hülsbeck, the person who wrote the first tracker on the C64 and some of the best soundtracks on the Amiga (Turrican 2 <3) was at the Evoke Demoparty last weekend to give an interview... I also was there and had a brief chat with him.



Who knows where we would be today without this talented man!

[Novus]

By "write-up" do you mean a brief bio on your favorite trackers?

It'll probably vary from tracker to tracker. Might be a bio, might be personal anecdotes of my interactions with some of them, might just be my thoughts on their music or their contributions to the scene. Would probably also depend on how many people actually respond to an interview request from me.

I would be interested so far as finding my own favorites on the list. For example, i'm interested in Michael van den Bos (one of the original trackers for UT99) and a couple of others that visit or frequent our own site.

Michiel Van Den Bos is on my download list... just haven't gotten to him yet, but I will. Anyone else you'd want me to check out?

Finally, leave an open thread for others to post their own favorites if they don't see yours up there. It would be great to have a repository for all the current or classic names in tracking...

That'll probably be the most fun part of this, actually... I don't have any sort of comment system set up on my own site, though, so for that I'd probably just rely on having running threads on several tracking related websites, including MODPlug Central, and then link to the threads from my site.

Thanks, Harbinger!

[Novus]

Speaking of favourite trackers... Chris Hülsbeck, the person who wrote the first tracker on the C64 and some of the best soundtracks on the Amiga (Turrican 2 <3) was at the Evoke Demoparty last weekend to give an interview... I also was there and had a brief chat with him.

Who knows where we would be today without this talented man!

Indeed, there's a big name there. He only had a handful of tunes in the actual MOD format though, from what I saw on Modland. I assume the rest of his stuff were SID-tunes, since he worked on the c64?

(And man, for the 8,432nd time, I'm wishing my parents hadn't sold off our old c64 years ago. That was a pretty sweet box for its time.)

[Saga Musix]

Chris has always used his own tools to write music. Especially with TFMX on the Amiga, he created loads of tunes of course. Also a lot of tunes on the C64, yes, as well as some music on the SNES and N64.

[Harbinger]

Speaking of favourite trackers... Chris Hülsbeck, the person who wrote the first tracker on the C64...

Really?!    The Commodore-64 was my my second computer...no, actually my Dad did buy the VIC-20 before the Commodore-64 came out. But back then, making music meant PEEKing and POKeing for all the sounds and then when you did get them, they were not very "convincing" -- especially using a SID chip. And i never heard about the C64 tracker, which might have changed my life early had i known.

I did not even get into composing until i went to college a few years later, and by 1990 i was using a Macintosh SE to do sequencing. So it's weird to hear that tracking had already been invented when i started sequencing, which i thought at the time was cutting-edge. And tracking was done on the very computer i learned BASIC programming.

It's like going to school with somebody now famous, but you never met them even though they were in your grade.

And for all you kids, this was a Commodore-64 in all its glory. Monitor, speakers, printer, and data recorder sold separately!
No mouse, USB, or internet -- and only 20 KB of ROM (that's not a typo!).

[Saga Musix]

Well, don't imagine OpenMPT for the C64, it was still a very programming-centric systems full of hex codes, but it was certainly better than programming your music in pure assembler or whatever... Here's a video where you can see how it worked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAeL6ywW9YE - This is basically the mother of all trackers!

[Novus]

DAT KEYBOARD!

Man, can you imagine how useful a keyboard would be today with a key just for @ all by itself?

Man, I loved that c64... I never did get the hang of music or fancy graphics on it (never could get my brain wrapped around PEEK and POKE commands), but it's how I learned BASIC, and that basic knowledge of computer programming has been surprisingly helpful for me over time. Sure made HTML easy, but it's also helped me with putting together complicated formulas and such in Microsoft Excel at my job.

I don't specifically remember when my Dad bought it, but I remember first being aware of it when I was 5 or 6, which would've been right around 1985 or 1986 or so. I even remember Dad whipping up his own program that drew a set of piano keys on the screen, assigned each piano key to a key on the keyboard, and you could play the piano just by hitting the right keys on the keyboard. Just one note at a time though... no chords. But when I first started using Scream Tracker 3 and discovered that's how the interface worked, my first thought was, "Oh, just like my Dad's piano program on the Commodore 64!"

He also had a disk with strip poker on it, but I don't think I was supposed to know about that. I was only brave enough to play it once. I also remember how pissed Mom was when she found the disc.