The Tracker "VS" Regular Daw thread

[NystagmusE]

FL Studio's step editor used to be a lot like a tracker, but lately it's been more integrated into the piano roll editor. As soon as you edit the pitch of a step editor beat, it turns into a piano roll part, which isn't the same as being like a tracker. The older versions of FL Studio let you edit the pitch of each step with a dropdown menu on the step editor. I kind of miss that for adding nuances to percussion. But the piano roll editor lets you make chords and have more control over the data. You can control note endings instead of having everything be triggered as a one-shot.

[Tronam]

I started writing music from the very beginning on a tracker and continued doing so for 5+ impressionable years throughout my teens. There's probably some deep muscle memory for that way of working because I still prefer it for certain types of sequencing, especially for linear drum track programming and quick sample triggering/manipulation. It's polyphonic writing which I find more difficult in trackers because it's harder to visually see the chord note relationships and lengths. In the old days this didn't matter because most chord sounds were single samples. I think it would be a great way to go for retro-80s music making though.

[basslinemaster]

I started off using Buzz and then Renoise, but moved to FL Studio a few years ago, as I like to be able to see the notes represented on a piano roll, and also because Renoise's step sequencer is pretty rubbish, really hard to see what's going on. Since using FL Studio I've never looked back, and can't imagine using a tracker. Try changing the lengths of notes in a tracker, a real pain, or transposing notes, it's all so much more difficult in a tracker, without remembering obscure keyboard shortcuts.

[ls1xxx]

How does one do Hi hat and Snare Rolls in Renoise? Anyone?

[Mivo]

"LPB" which stands for "Lines Per Beat". [...] If you ever need notes in between the lines, you can trigger them with delay settings to have them play after the grid line... giving you that extra granularity.

In addition, in Renoise you can use the ZLxx command, which allows you to dynamically change the LPB value, if for example you want or need a higher resolution only in specific parts of a song.

There is an example of this that ships with Renoise, located in Resources\Library\Songs and named Tutorial - Lines Per Beat.xrns.

[fischkopf]

The older versions of FL Studio let you edit the pitch of each step with a dropdown menu on the step editor. I kind of miss that for adding nuances to percussion. .

But you can still do EXACTLY that in FL12.2...

[ls1xxx]

Can you change the Lines Per Beat in a single channel or will it always effect the entire track?

[endlessdog]

It always affects the whole sequence. But you can change it in a phrase and it will only affect that particular phrase. All phrases can have unique LPB settings

[original flipper]

Hi

I really enjoyed using trackers on my Amiga 500, I think I primarily used an 8 track (channel) program called 'Octalyser', I then progressed onto Music X, midi and hardware - then back to PC/Logic...

What I liked about trackers was that you could have a very small set of samples (on a disk, so we are talking 1.4 Megs each) and you became very creative with them - there was an absolute absence of distractions from countless synths/fx and such.

I had a few disks with small samples of voices/fx and suchlike - tracks would often become a collage/tapestry of all these different sounds.

Much fun.

[aeoluslaude]

Trackers are better for step sequencing, rapidly switching between samples in a single track, or creating syncopated patterns by switching between samples. Adjusting fields of data like velocity is much easier when working with a large group of samples. Creating drum and bass tracks for electronic music comes more naturally than when using a traditional DAW. However, I would never use a tracker for recording a band. Tracking a vocalist with a tracker would be painful. Although, it can be done.

[Monsieur_FyP]

OK so things work in a fundamentally different way in a tracker.

Basically, everything is quantised because all the note data is placed on a grid. Have you ever used a hardware sequencer or hardware drum machine before? Think of it like that... in the case of a Roland TR box, you have 16 slots to put notes into (for a 4/4 pattern), and you basically choose when to trigger the notes on that grid. Trackers work exactly the same way. You set your grid resolution, and then place notes into the grid where you want them to trigger.

Now, Renoise can also record your live playing. You might be wondering then, if everything is confined to a grid, how it captures the granular timing of your playing. It does this by assigning "delay" offsets to each note, so that each note can be before or after the strict grid. If you don't want this, you can enable the "Q" setting, which forces your note input into the lines, with strict adherence to the grid structure. The number then represents whether you want your input forced to 1 line, 2 lines, etc.

OK, so you're probably thinking "Wow it must be restrictive to have everything always on a grid!"... indeed it is restrictive. That's where the inherent strengths and weaknesses of a tracker interface become more relevant. At the top of the pattern editor you'll see a setting for "LPB" which stands for "Lines Per Beat". Using this, you can make the grid (for the whole song) either more or less granular. If you really need ultra fine resolution, you can set this to something high... and then you'll find that the "slots" you have for triggering notes within a measure become very granular, and as a result when you press play the pattern data will fly by extremely fast as it goes through the notes. If that's not practical, you can set it to something like 8 or 16, and get decent resolution without having to do a whole lot of scrolling around. If you ever need notes in between the lines, you can trigger them with delay settings to have them play after the grid line... giving you that extra granularity.

Yes, it is restrictive, but if you think of it like a hardware sequencer, you start to see the benefits too. If you're mostly writing strictly sequenced music, then it becomes incredibly efficient because there is no quantisation... you just enter things on the grid and you're good to go. If you like to play in your parts from a MIDI controller and really need that "human feel" in your music, that's certainly possible in a tracker, but you might find a traditional DAW is more efficient for your needs.

Very interesting explanations, thank you
BTW, it's actually surprising that this thread died down so quickly. Trackers, with their frustrating yet alluring mystery, haven’t gone away since 2015.

[bungle]

Tracker view should be in every DAW just like a piano roll.

[legendCNCD]

Starting with trackers, it was a hard school to change from Octamed to Reason/Cubase with their pianorolls... but it just took time to adjust in the end.

Trackers are still very very fast way to compose - especially if you are doing only sample based stuff. In Protracker (Amiga), load bassdrum.sample, press ctrl+4 and hit c-3 few times, load hihat.sample, go two steps down from the bassdrum position and hit c-3 few times. Now you have bd+hihat beat already done

[mcbpete]

I found out this week that someone's been working a FastTracker II VST3. Only given it a quick play but hopefully it'll develop into something really useful for us folks that never really got on with our piano-rolls in our DAWs:

https://github.com/juho/ft2-plugin

It has MIDI-OUT and I've managed to get it to spit out notes into Ableton, however I can't seem to get any [midi] notes out whilst editing a pattern, only once I've finished and play back the pattern/sequence do I hear anything - so I'm composing a little 'blindly'! I've put in a feature request in the 'issues' section

[shatteredmindofbob]

There's also the ease of 'sample swapping,' (like, every note of the bass line is a different bass sample), which I think sounds pretty cool.

Sure, there's automation, but something about sample swapping just hits different.