Tracker
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Contents |
[edit] Trackers
[edit] Operation
All trackers work in basically the same way. The differences between products are largely superflous to the basic operation of the Tracker.
Here's how it works...
There are several elements common to any tracker program: samples, notes, effects, tracks (or channels), patterns, and orders.
All trackers work on a vertically scrolling basis, a bit like Cubase on its side. A tracker song is made up of patterns. Typically a pattern is 64 lines in length, but this can be changed inside the Tracker. A pattern is a group of simultaneously played tracks which trigger samples and effects.
Traditionally, Tracker music is stored in so-called module files where the song data and samples are encapsulated in a single file. Several module file formats are still supported by popular music player programs such as Winamp or XMMS. Well-known formats include MOD, S3M, XM and IT.
[edit] History
The term tracker derives from Ultimate Soundtracker; the first tracker software. Ultimate Soundtracker was written by Karsten Obarski and released in 1987 by Electronic Arts for the Commodore Amiga. Ultimate Soundtracker was a commercial product, but not much later shareware clones such as NoiseTracker appeared as well. The general concept of step-sequencing samples numerically, as used in trackers, is also found in the Fairlight CMI sampling workstation of the late 1970s.
The first computer game to feature tracker music was Amegas (1987), an Arkanoid clone for Amiga. The music, which was composed by Obarski, is these days frequently described as being the first MOD ever made and is well known by fans of "old school" computer music.
Most early tracker musicians were from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. This may be attributable to the close relationship of the tracker to the demoscene, which grew rapidly in Scandinavian countries, and the relative affordability in the UK of computers able to run tracker software. Tracker music became something of an underground phenomenon, especially as so much contemporary chart music was then sample-based dance music (a genre relatively simple to produce with step-based sequencing). In fact, several chart-topping 1989/1990-era dance singles strongly foreshadow compositional trends in tracker music which would remain popular for many years to come; in particular, 808 State's "Pacific" and Octave One's "I Believe". Both tracks rely heavily on muted, detuned saw-wave background pads which play four-tone augmented major seventh chords in chord patterns which fit the pentatonic scale; an unsyncopated 4/4 drum beat runs underneath. Though this particular musical arrangement was scarcely heard earlier, an overwhelming number of tracker compositions in following years used the exact same pattern.
The popularity of the tracker format may also be attributable to its inclusion of both score data and samples. In the early 90s, the price of wavetable sound cards for personal use was very high, and the expressive capabilities of the cheaper FM-synthesizer sound cards were rather limited. A tracker requires neither of these sound card features.
The first trackers supported only four channels of 8-bit PCM samples, a limitation derived from the Amiga's Paula audio chipset. However, since the notes were samples, the limitation was less important than those of synthesizing music chips. For example, a process which became a cliche in early pop-rave chart tunes was to sample chords and play them back on a single channel. Rapid chordal stabs, often of fifths, were the hallmark of Altern-8 and other transient techno phenomena. Later tracker software, most famously OctaMED, allowed for eight or more channels, whilst special hardware could allow for 16-bit playback.
Over time, 'tracker music' became something of a term of derision for stereotypically ravey, computer-game-style pop tunes, whilst the difficulty involved in adding 'swing' to a mechanistic sequencing style resulted in much 4/4 music based around strict four-bar sections, often using similar samples. For a tracker song to be instrumental and tuneful, it required distinctive lead voices, of which chimes, pitch-bent guitar tones and rave piano were overused.
PC ProTracker 5 alpha for PC. ProTracker 5 alpha for PC.
Over the 1990s, tracker musicians gravitated to the PC, although the platform initially lacked the hardware sound processing capabilities of the Amiga. However, with the advent of the Sound Blaster line from Creative, audio slowly began to approach CD Quality (44.1kHz/16-bit/Stereo, with the SoundBlaster 16).
Another soundcard popular on the PC tracker scene was the Gravis Ultrasound, which continued the hardware mixing tradition, with 32 internal channels and onboard memory for sample storage. For a time, it offered unparalleled sound quality and became the choice of discerning tracker musicians. Understanding that the support of the tracker/demo-scene would benefit sales, Gravis gave away some 6000 GUS cards to participants. Coupled with excellent developer documentation, this gesture quickly prompted the GUS to become an integral component of many tracking programs and demos. Inevitably, the balance was largely redressed with the introduction of the Sound Blaster AWE32 and its successors, which also featured on-board RAM and wavetable mixing.
The responsibility for audio mixing passed from hardware to software (the main CPU), which gradually enabled the use of more and more channels. From the typical 4 MOD channels of the Amiga, the limit had moved to 16 with ScreamTracker 3, then 32 with Fast Tracker 2 and on to 64 with Impulse Tracker 2.
As such, hardware mixing did not last. As processors got faster and acquired special multimedia processing abilities (e.g. MMX) and companies began to push Hardware Abstraction Layers, like DirectX, the AWE and GUS range became obsolete. DirectX, WDM and, now more commonly, ASIO, deliver high-quality sampled audio irrespective of hardware brand.
[edit] Modern Trackers
Tracker music lives today. It can be found in modern computer games such as the Unreal series and Deus Ex, as well as a considerable number of indie games. However, the easy availability of software samplers/synthesizers and sequencers, and the advent of the MP3 and later the OGG format has caused most professional musicians to adopt other music software. Nonetheless, tracker software continues to develop (as of 2006). The original Amiga tracker series (Sound/Noise/Pro Tracker) continues on the PC with ProTracker version 5, having resumed development in 2004. Buzz, ModPlug Tracker, MadTracker, Renoise, reViSiT, Skale, CheeseTracker, BeRoTracker, and others offer features undreamed-of back in the day (hi-quality output, automation, VST support, internal DSP's and multi-effects, multi I/O cards support etc.). Tracker files have also become popular in the Game Boy Advance community; unlike the original Game Boy, the Game Boy Advance has the processing power to support tracker music, and the quality is vastly superior to the built-in tone generators, while still taking up little space compared to MP3s or other forms of higher-quality audio.
The traditional tracker stigma of unwieldy, complicated programs (aimed at a predominantly technologically-minded audience) is slowly being cast off, as programs become more accessible and user friendly. As such, tracking has recently enjoyed a mild resurgence as people begin to appreciate the importance of laying down music as quickly as possible - the musical equivalent of touch typing. Indeed, a research project is currently studying Human-Computer Interaction in Music, and will investigate how methods like tracking might contain lessons for more mainstream computer music methods (like sequencing) on how to increase creativity in the program.
