DAW vs Tracker

[Caine123]

hey guys, since amiga & pc dos times i was always interested in trackers but then i started with DAW cubase, then fl studio etc. i love the tracker music a lot! but when i see those videos with trackermusic where they show the tracker too while playing the music it looks so complicated , i wonder if anyone of you got experiences with it and knows if a Tracker (or to make music in it) has any advantages over a DAW?

afaik a TRACKER just uses samples which you could use in a DAW's sampler as well and compose the same way? only that in tracker it goes from top -> bottom and you need to type in the notes? which i totally prefer in a DAW as it is faster to copy/draw notes in a scale.

or what am i missing?

[antic604]

hey guys, since amiga & pc dos times i was always interested in trackers but then i started with DAW cubase, then fl studio etc. i love the tracker music a lot! but when i see those videos with trackermusic where they show the tracker too while playing the music it looks so complicated , i wonder if anyone of you got experiences with it and knows if a Tracker (or to make music in it) has any advantages over a DAW?

afaik a TRACKER just uses samples which you could use in a DAW's sampler as well and compose the same way? only that in tracker it goes from top -> bottom and you need to type in the notes? which i totally prefer in a DAW as it is faster to copy/draw notes in a scale.

or what am i missing?

I guess it's just a matter of getting used to creating music in pianoroll / sequencer vs. columns of numbers. I actually find it quicker to write a decent melody in tracker than in piano roll... And nowadays modern trackers - like Renoise - can also run VSTs, have super-powerful samplers, traditional mixer, pattern sequencer, automatable FX chains, etc. Check it out:

https://www.renoise.com/products/renoise

And I don't really think you're "missing" anything. Lots of us grew up and started their music making with trackers on 8- or 16-bit computers so it's natural for us, especially because trackers also developed adopting lots of contemporary features while still retaining their "spirit".

I also think it comes down to music - it's hard to imagine recording a band, acoustic performance or doing a classical composition in tracker (though it IS possible, definitely), whereas the workflow shines for all sorts of electronic music, especially glitchy stuff where all the "numeric" effects are very useful and often quicker to pull off than in traditional DAW.

[xbitz]

Renoise uses phrases(clips) which ones can be triggered from patterns
phrases can be played from any position, the playing can be reversed from any position etc. etc. so they can be handled far more flexible than the standard clips in standard DAWs, created a demo some time ago this is how it goes

the resampled pattern can be sliced u can assign different fx chains to the sliced parts etc. quite fun

[imrae]

I suggest you look into Renoise if you're interested: it's a hybrid between a traditional tracker and a modern DAW. You can use it to quickly trigger samples but can also use the messages to send notes to instrument plugins.

I've mostly used Renoise rather than traditional trackers and would say that entering notes is way faster than you would expect in practice. You can set a number of rows for the cursor to jump forward each time you enter a message, which is roughly equivalent to a MIDI "step input".

The main benefit of the tracker layout is the way automation is set in additional columns alongside the notes. I find it much easier to do per-note automation this way compared to typical piano roll views; this lends itself well to glitchy or information-dense music.

[AdvancedFollower]

I never really made anything with trackers myself, but I used to take apart and analyze tracker modules on my Amiga 1200 for fun.

Back in the Amiga and early PC days, it was just samples. Modern trackers like Renoise and Buzz support VST's, though. The typical crunchy sound of early tracker music comes from the limited number of samples and low sample rate/bit depth. To save on sample space, instruments would often consist of just one short sample that was pitched up or down and looped to create different notes. Complete chords were often sampled together (because a chord using individual samples would take up at least 3 of the 4 - 8 available audio channels).

The reason it looks so complicated is that all the parameters and effects are entered as hexadecimal data instead of the nice visual automation curves we have in DAWs today. It's a very fast and efficient system once you know the codes by heart, but if you're unfamiliar with them it looks like some alien hieroglyphs. I don't think there's any advantage to this method compared to modern DAWs, but some artists who started out making tracker music in the 90s still use them due to familiarity.

[Caine123]

thx a lot guys, im a more audio/visual guy not writing music (notes) e.g. c5, e5 etc. i guess using trackers needs more music (harmony) knowledge? than a DAW where you can highlight scales etc.

later in the studio i will try to reproduce the lofi sounds

[xbitz]

^^^ this is why worth to using some plugin https://www.renoise.com/tools/noodletrap in Renoise which

Noodletrap is a tool that allows easy and precise recording of PC/MIDI keyboards without having to "make room" for a recording - recordings are instead stored within the instrument itself, using instrument phrases.

which create instrument related clips for u automagically using some MIDI keyboard, btw. if u need PR
>> https://forum.renoise.com/t/new-tool-3- ... 2019/49722

[THE INTRANCER]

If you watched the Tron inspired film I did recently as a retro promo project, you might have seen my very own Amiga 1200 working away... My first Amiga 500 was that of one which replaced my Atari Mega ST and the Amiga 1200 I got a year later...

The first real piece of music I created was entirely on the qwerty keyboard, it was something like a 3 and half minute song, made in March of 1995 with I believe, Octamed Sound Studio... I still have it and many other trackers and music programs available that I had safe in a box. I could say that it was my first proper piece of music I had created / recorded and put onto tape, because the Mega ST kinda sucked surprisingly and what I had recorded with digital keyboards prior I don't really count...even if I did record stuff to tape as well.

Trackers were initially strange at first and it wasn't until I anylised existing demo songs and read magazines that I began to understand how the codes were constructed and what they actually referred to, but first of all, I needed to understand what blocks were and what patterns were. Right now, I'm recalling what I learned 24 years ago... but each block referenced or contained a set of patterns which could be arranged and duplicated to form a sequence that would entail the basic formation of a song ..from intro, verse chorus ect... 64 steps was enough for pattern purposes and of course could be shortened.

Jungle music was born from tracker programs, it was the first time I had heard any music like it I think or at least see a computer generated production with it... it even found it's way into the funniest comedy of the 1990's, Father Ted....

I think the best way to approach Trackers is from a programming perspective more than that of a musical one, even though it's piece of music you are ultimately creating. Creating complex music in the most optimal and effient way is all part of the challenge when using trackers as the bigger the track you create the more of a challenge it is to manage.

Initially i started out using the qwerty keyboard, but I then moved onto using a general midi keyboard which was a Yamaha PSR330 to program the 16 track midi songs I did.

[reusenoise]

DAW are for boys
Trackers are for men

[Caine123]

If you watched the Tron inspired film I did recently as a retro promo project, you might have seen my very own Amiga 1200 working away... My first Amiga 500 was that of one which replaced my Atari Mega ST and the Amiga 1200 I got a year later...

The first real piece of music I created was entirely on the qwerty keyboard, it was something like a 3 and half minute song, made in March of 1995 with I believe, Octamed Sound Studio... I still have it and many other trackers and music programs available that I had safe in a box. I could say that it was my first proper piece of music I had created / recorded and put onto tape, because the Mega ST kinda sucked surprisingly and what I had recorded with digital keyboards prior I don't really count...even if I did record stuff to tape as well.

Trackers were initially strange at first and it wasn't until I anylised existing demo songs and read magazines that I began to understand how the codes were constructed and what they actually referred to, but first of all, I needed to understand what blocks were and what patterns were. Right now, I'm recalling what I learned 24 years ago... but each block referenced or contained a set of patterns which could be arranged and duplicated to form a sequence that would entail the basic formation of a song ..from intro, verse chorus ect... 64 steps was enough for pattern purposes and of course could be shortened.

Jungle music was born from tracker programs, it was the first time I had heard any music like it I think or at least see a computer generated production with it... it even found it's way into the funniest comedy of the 1990's, Father Ted....

I think the best way to approach Trackers is from a programming perspective more than that of a musical one, even though it's piece of music you are ultimately creating. Creating complex music in the most optimal and effient way is all part of the challenge when using trackers as the bigger the track you create the more of a challenge it is to manage.

Initially i started out using the qwerty keyboard, but I then moved onto using a general midi keyboard which was a Yamaha PSR330 to program the 16 track midi songs I did.

awesome post thx, i gave up programming some years ago, i just cannot see the big picture ;D

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

^^^ this is why worth to using some plugin https://www.renoise.com/tools/noodletrap in Renoise

Looks interesting, and probably very useful for those who use Renoise as their only music software and want certain features from others. However, for me, the main reason for wanting to learn Renoise is to completely break away from paradigms that I’ve known for years e.g the piano-roll, and to take the application on it’s own terms.

[sjm]

IMO, trackers are really, really great for creating the outlines of a track in a very, very short time period. You can create the skeleton of an entire song in a few minutes (genre permitting). This is because of the keyboard-driven interface. If you want a kick drum every beat, that's a couple of key presses; add a snare every second beat another couple of key presses; add hihats everyth eighth note another couple. It's much quicker to enter a basic drum beat this way than with a mouse, because no mouse movement is required, which is primarily what slows you down. In the time it takes to move the mouse cursor to where the first hit goes, you'd already have all the hits in the pattern entered in a tracker. Arpeggios are also ridiculously quick to create.

Where it tends to fall down is in the second stage, where you take your hastily thrown together patterns created in a few seconds, and try and polish them. This is where the keyboard interface is far from ideal. The main issue is that navigating to an individual note to edit it is not as quick and easy as simply clicking in the appropriate spot in the piano roll. A mouse is a much better tool for making selective edits, e.g. setting the velocity of the 17th not in the melodic sequence.

So what you gain at the start - the ability to essentially have a full track up and running in ~5 minutes, you lose as you polish the track.

I also find it more more intuitive to draw automation with a mouse or record it with a knob in real time. It's much easier to edit velocities that are represented visually too.

I'm guessing trackers have probably evolved over the last 2 decades, so maybe some of this is out of date. I've always hoped for a simple tracker interface in addition to the tried and tested piano roll and step sequencer in my DAW. This would allow me to leverage the advantages of the tracker interface to set up some quick and dirty patterns, and then use the piano roll to make those edits that are easier with a mouse, resulting in the best of both worlds.

The downsides are why I personally haven't used trackers for years and years. But they are great for provided instant results and knocking up quick ideas. Also, the less "electronic" your music is, the less the paradigm will work for you. It's not that you couldn't compose classical music in a tracker, it's that it's quite simply not the best tool for the job. But minimal techno? Hell yeah!

[EnGee]

Nice post sjm

Maybe it is a good workflow to start with a tracker to lay some beats (with bass) in general and then continue in a normal host till the end. Or maybe inserting the tracker as a plugin or ReWire with that host.

I might give a Renoise a go especially it works in linux

[Benutzername]

If you want to create music in the spirit of the old demo scene then I would recommend to add tight constrains to the song that you are creating. Maybe force yourself to keep the size of the project file under 64k without using VSTs, only use 8 tracks, only use 8 (sliced) samples or something like that.

A lot of the tracker signature sound was a result of the limitation of the hardware back in the day. This means that all samples and patterns were reduced to the max and they were used over and over again throughout the entire song. Variation was done by changing the parameters of the sampler on the fly and by playing with the effect commands (reverse, sample start, arps etc).

Limitation can be very inspiring, especially in this day and age where we usually have a gazillion of sounds available at our fingertips anywhere and at any time. You don't have to emulate a specific piece of old hardware one to one (although it's fun), just draw a line somewhere.

[EnGee]

Yes, I agree that Limitation can be very inspiring

I'm demoing Renoise right now and the demo songs are really great! Especially "Access Pwd" by Medievil Music and "The Path" by It-Alien.

I don't know if I will be productive with a tracker but I like to learn how to make some noise with it first