What exactly is a tracker?

[rounser]

you just wrote 'if you're adding kicks'

There were a few words preceding that phrase which you seem to have skipped.

[pHz]

i wonder if its a leftbrain / rightbrain kind of thing to some extent ...

... i just cant get to grips with trackers ... i can see the power but grids of numbers (especially old-school hex stuff) REALLY dont click with me as far as making sounds goes ... on the other hand (and given my visual arts background) show me a left-right timeline with notes / events placed VISUALLY along it and positioned / scaled / coloured according to timing / length / velocity / etc and i can see immediately where and how things are ...

slainte rob

[jens]

yes, I can see how a tracker can be useful if you're doing strictly dance-music...

but I love e.g. mixing 4-to-the-floor beats with rock-guitars... I love to break conventions and to mess with genres - therefor trackers currently can't satisfy my needs...

I can't sing or play guitar, but I don't think you need to do either in order to break genre conventions. Sampling alone gives you all the scope in the world to turn genres inside out and create mutant genre hybrids if you want to, IMO.

you're right of course... - should have made clearer that I was just speaking about my personal approach

But for what it's worth, I'm really looking forward to audio in into Renoise (or failing that, rewire)...apparently they're both near the top of the dev's list, maybe we'll get it later this year...along with the piano roll (which will be the only one around which can be completely keyboard operated, apparently).

I read about it in the Renoise forum a while ago and I am very excited about this prospect - it's the one major thing that's holding Renoise back for me...

[cron]

i wonder if its a leftbrain / rightbrain kind of thing to some extent ...

... i just cant get to grips with trackers ... i can see the power but grids of numbers REALLY dont click with me as far as making sounds goes ... on the other hand (and given my visual arts background) show me a left-right timeline with notes / events placed VISUALLY along it and positioned / scaled / coloured according to timing / length / velocity / etc and i can see immediately where and how things are ...

slainte rob

Interestingly enough, I am left handed.

[rounser]

i wonder if its a leftbrain / rightbrain kind of thing to some extent ...

Interesting that you raised this, too. In the lack of visual aspect lies a hidden advantage - you listen rather than watch your music. One of the terrible things about sequencers is that it's possible to abandon something that sounds good because it looks too simple or "wrong" on the piano roll or arranger! Note names are at least a lot more anonymous than coloured event bars in a vacuum of white piano roll space, so you may end up listening more...or at least, I do.

Trackers look a lot scarier than they actually are...for me, apart from the odd velocity tweak and sample offset setting*, it's all drawing automation envelopes and sample envelopes with a mouse, just as you would with a sequencer and sampler.

As for the rest of it it's just note names like "C4" and "Note-Off" instead of coloured bars. And it scrolls top-to-bottom instead of left-to-right, so if anything it's more right-left brain neutral than a typical piano roll, I suppose you could argue.

*: Velocities for me are always either 10, 20, 30, 40 etc for simplicity, and for sample offset the audio editor tells me the hex number to use based on the bit of waveform I've selected, so I don't need to know hex at all...

[cron]

I didn't realise you had to use hex to input control data in FT2 and kept wondering why i got weird volume ramps whenever I did a fade in.

It was a bit of a bitch to key in smooth fades until FT2 got the highlight+shift+something-else-I-can't-remember shortcut to work out the numbers automatically.

It's a real shame that I can't seem to wrap my head around Renoise anew. Guess I'm just thrown by all the effects options, being able to use VST plugs, etc.

[odo]

ì am

[Buddah Buddy]

Trackers =

But I'm trying...

[papawillow]

it is the vertical aspect of trackers which feel more natural to me than the left - right paradigm of todays sequencers,, maybe someday some dev will be different enough to go all vertical.

[jouni]

One thing I love in trackers is the arpeggion effect. Yet to find sequencer which would allow the same sound (not by using any VSTis that is, Quadrasid knows that though).

[odo]

if you want something like a normal seq and a tracker you can try aodix it even has a pianoroll .I don`t know what to do with it but its nice and psycle is also good program but you must use ext for some plugs
Odo.

[Jafo]

Trackers have tremendous power, especially for certain styles and textures, and they are a valuable tool. But they make it very difficult to program certain jazzy subtleties of timing, and I never could get cut+paste to work between different instruments. And the interface has always seemed strange and clumsy to me: note, velocity, and length all need to be explicitly programmed, unlike the smooth responsiveness of a midi controller. Still, its consistent interface, once mastered, makes advanced control very easy indeed -- in effect, you're using midi cc's for everything.

Hmmm, I just realized that what I've written about trackers applies also to CSound and its ilk...

[nool]

Trackers have alot of power for sure, for someone creating music with a pc with or without midi keyboard, its all good

you have alot of minute control, above was stated jazzy drumlines aren't possible, of course they are - just check out these two words - subdivision and note divide, get those 16ths, whatever else u wish ...

i use buzz, i've used it for over 6 years now, after switching from impulse tracker way back in the day ...

its great, suits me just fine, if you never used a tracker before there is a learning curve, but in the end, if you are a good musician, it doesn't matter what tool you use

i like buzz because its an all in one, synthesis, modular effects, tracking tricks, tracking input, supports almost all avaliable plugins (great vst support) and i've figured it out pretty well

me and several others have written many pages about it to answer the several misconceptions about it

BuzzManual.com
BuzzWiki - created by users
BuzzFat - frequently asked questions
BuzzMachineManuals - machine helpfiles
Reviews - buzzmachines.com examples
ForumLinks - buzzmachines.com forum links
BuzzMusic - Almost 3000 bmx, mp3, ogg files all created using buzz
BuzzRadio - 500 of the best buzz tracks ever

cheers

[djdorian]

WHAT IS A TRACKER?

Up until now, I have wanted to answer questions like this, but have lacked the poignancy of speech and technical vocabulary that would allow me to convey my point. In fact, I myself wasn't even completely sure that my responses would be correct, and so I stayed quiet on the subject. But seeing as for the past year or so I have been doing extensive research in all things music-related, I may now be (at-least somewhat) qualified to offer assistance!

--I should add at this point, however, that fellow KVR members have already been overwhelmingly helpful in this particular post!--

The question "What is a tracker?" is hard to answer definitively, as there are so many options available today, each having so many unique features and qualities. Many host platforms use features inherent to trackers, but are not what some call the traditional, "text-book definition" of a tracker.

Buzz for example, implements an extremely flexible signal routing method, which has been duplicated in a few more recent host apps; Some people have categorized it as a tracker... and others haven't.

For me personally, a program is a "tracker" if it utilizes a vertical or (far less often) horizontal scrolling series of letters and numbers in place of notational symbols. If it uses notational symbols, it's a "sheet-music," a.k.a. "notational" sequencer. If it uses a piano roll, it's a "piano-roll" sequencer. If it uses more than one of these, it is a "hybrid-interface" sequencer.

There are many variations on a theme and exotic interfaces; and of course, the step-sequencer method (which is now usually used for meoldic fragments, arpeggiation, or LFO, rather than "full-blown" composition.) All of these are beyond the scope of my labeling scheme.

And I know this "categorization via GUI" sounds a bit arbitrary, but it is certainly useful in describing apps and their differences/similarities to other people. So to recap, there are 4 types of Host GUIs in use today:


Tracker
Sheet-Music/Notational
Piano-Roll
Various Hybrids


2 other questions which are sometimes asked, and go hand-in-hand with the first are:

Q: What is the best tracker, as of the time of writing?
A: To the best of my knowledge, RENOISE!

Q: If Renoise is so good, why doesn't everyone use it, and only it?
A: There are a few caveats that prevent Renoise from attaining a state of perfection (though it comes close.) Read the posts below for a partial list of drawbacks.

Q: What are the advantages/disadvantages to trackers?
A: Read these posts, which should help somewhat:


http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... highlight=

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... c&start=15


...Please let me know if this verbose response was of any use!

[goldbaker]

yes, I can see how a tracker can be useful if you're doing strictly dance-music...

Or classical. When you need to see the notes side-by-side, it's very helpful. Also trackers are generally easier for entering the notes from a computer than a scoring program. (Assuming you don't care about having printed music.)