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Tracking / Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
« on: December 11, 2008, 18:55:46 »
On the C64 you have the the SID chip, which is a synth providing noise, triangle, saw and variable width pulse waves plus you have the filters and ring modulation for that extra bit of sweetness. At first, people just straight up programmed the computer to produce tones, noises and ultimately, music. I gather the next step would be programming an actual editor for yourself to write music and finally coming up with something that would actually be usable enough for other people as well. C64 music editors have started to look more like Amiga trackers much later, after the UI style was popularized on other platforms. Before that, a typical SID editor screen would resemble (or BE) a hex editor even more.
I never had an Amiga as a kid nor did I use it back in the day, but knowing the Paula chip has its characteristics just like the SID does, and there being a butt load of these "custom format" Amiga tunes floating around the tubes, it's straightforward to assume the development progressing similarly. With a custom program and the Paula chip, you could create music from digital sounds sampled from external sources (all the rage back then, made possible by the new technology) or (probably to a greater extent) synthesize (rather than draw) your own. Trackers started from the Ultimate SoundTracker by programmer/musician Karsten Obarski and it (and the horde of hacked versions of it) then popularized the MOD format. But even then, custom players/editors could be preferred by musicians because of more comfortable UIs or improved functionality/features.
You're correct about one MIDI track sounding different on different setups. A tracker analogy would be exchanging the samples of your module on different sound cards (and that's one of the reasons why modules could compete with MIDI on the PC at all: the music sounded the same on different setups). MIDI music is created using a hardware or software sequencer, for nearly three decades already. You are correct for the last part. UnExoticA archives Amiga music, BaSS music on the Amiga is technically similar to trackers and the PC version uses MIDI tracks.
A modern tracker, while still usually capable of sample playback, is nowadays used more like a traditional sequencer (triggering and controlling external instruments and effects) or an audio package with its integrated synthesis and DSP features.
I never had an Amiga as a kid nor did I use it back in the day, but knowing the Paula chip has its characteristics just like the SID does, and there being a butt load of these "custom format" Amiga tunes floating around the tubes, it's straightforward to assume the development progressing similarly. With a custom program and the Paula chip, you could create music from digital sounds sampled from external sources (all the rage back then, made possible by the new technology) or (probably to a greater extent) synthesize (rather than draw) your own. Trackers started from the Ultimate SoundTracker by programmer/musician Karsten Obarski and it (and the horde of hacked versions of it) then popularized the MOD format. But even then, custom players/editors could be preferred by musicians because of more comfortable UIs or improved functionality/features.
You're correct about one MIDI track sounding different on different setups. A tracker analogy would be exchanging the samples of your module on different sound cards (and that's one of the reasons why modules could compete with MIDI on the PC at all: the music sounded the same on different setups). MIDI music is created using a hardware or software sequencer, for nearly three decades already. You are correct for the last part. UnExoticA archives Amiga music, BaSS music on the Amiga is technically similar to trackers and the PC version uses MIDI tracks.
A modern tracker, while still usually capable of sample playback, is nowadays used more like a traditional sequencer (triggering and controlling external instruments and effects) or an audio package with its integrated synthesis and DSP features.
