Tutorial: The Basics of OpenMPT and Trackers (in 6 minutes!)

[Grid]

Hello! After sharing my unreleased music in a few servers and getting asked about OpenMPT and Trackers as soon as people find out that's what I use, I thought I might aswell take the time and make a video explaining all of the very basics to get started in OpenMPT or to at least know the concepts for all Trackers in general! I'd like more people to get into the program and not be so scared off by it's first sight and to actually delve in and realise it's a super powerful tool and a fun program to use. It's what I've been exclusively using for making all of my electronic music for over a year. So yeah, hope it'll be useful to someone! To skip the explanation/introduction head straight to 1:00!

https://youtu.be/6IxSL1zrLDo

[Saga Musix]

Nice. I'm sure it will be helpful to some people.
By the way, you mention something in the video I would like to discourage from - namely assigning VST effects to channels. I know it's rather prominent in the UI but it's much more sensible to assign them to instruments directly (although you mentioned also that you don't use instruments a lot - this is exactly what they should be used for). Maybe sometime in the (far) future effect to channel assignment might even be completely removed (for newly made songs at least), because it's problematic and counter-intuitive when you mix it with VSTis or generally plugins assigned to an instrument.

[Grid]

Hey! Thanks a lot for watching through it and thanks for the reply! I just poked around in OpenMPT and just figured out what you mentioned. That sounds super useful and I had never noticed that before, that I could run VST effects thru VST instruments / plugins like that instead of into a whole channel.

I personally like being able to put effects on a whole channel for whenever I'm working with a lot of samples in one channel (which is a lot since I tend to work towards a breakcore sound, e.g. a combination of chopped up drums and/or other samples) so I can easily just run that effect thru all of them - unless there's another way of doing that thing whole at once aswell. But what you mention is super interesting and I'll try to implement that into my workflow for whenever I use VST instruments with VST effects! Thanks! Learning something new everyday

P.s: Thanks for working on OpenMPT!

[Harbinger]

Ummm....actually I use it quite a bit (channel-based plugins), mostly for instruments that use multiple samples that I dont want using the same effects.
For example, I make one Instrument that has an array of single-use samples. But one sample I want on a delay and another a reverb and another on a heavier reverb and a flanger. Channel-based plugins allow me to assign a plugin (or the first of a plugin chain) to different channels for use with one sample in a given Instrument.
So why dont I just make all the samples their own Instruments? Because it's extra steps and there is no point-and-click Instrument list for editing individual samples at the Instrument level. (This workaround disappears when the Instrument tab allows me to choose the desired Instrument with one mouseclick.)

Until the Instrument tab is made more efficient, please dont take away channel-based plugin assignment...

[Saga Musix]

If OpenMPT development in the last 10 years has shown anything, I hope it's not that we randomly remove editing features without providing a suitable alternative. There are a lot of things to be done in this field and they won't happen anytime soon, including the move away from channel plugins.  So don't worry.