Music Trackers: A Brief History

[@idadeerz]

*some additional notes about this video:* - i mentioned OpenMPT over Renoise because Renoise basically has no s3xmodit support from what i know. this video is all about the s3xmodit formats so it wouldn't make sense to recommend a tracker that can't do anything with them. as far as i know, it is able to open them but it just converts them to its own format, and you can't save any s3xmodit files with it. - i didn't mention FastTracker/MilkyTracker mostly because this video was made from my own experiences with trackers and i basically have never used either of them before, so i overlooked them. sorry! - yes, occ-san-geen has an artist. no, i'm not going to give credit to someone whose artist name is a racial slur. the module itself doesn't have an artist name embedded anywhere in it, so most people think it's uncredited, which i think is a much better angle to go with than having to credit this artist. - from what i remember from reading the page that i found it on, the song i used during the Shadow of the Beast II segment was made for the game's soundtrack, but it went unused. i really liked the vibe of it and how it utilizes guitar samples, so i decided to include it in the video, even though i don't think it was directly a part of the game. - this video was specifically made to bring across all this information in an incredibly bite-sized way. most of the information used in it just came from my own personal experience with using trackers for over a decade, and additionally i probably must have sourced Wikipedia and various tracker music resources on the internet such as The Mod Archive or Amiga Music Preservation. as such, i wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of things i didn't cover - FastTracker missing from the video being one of those things. there's Ahoy's video "Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit" which does a much better job at going in-depth about the history of trackers, but that video is also 40 minutes long and it has a completely different scope than my video. i mostly made this to quickly educate people on the history of trackers, using fancy visuals and graphics to bring across the general *idea* of how trackers came to be and how they are used. it wasn't really meant to be super in-depth; if you want that, i can highly recommend checking out Ahoy's video on the topic. :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/qKClnJpjnrWlmNk - i am not a guy, stop calling me a guy, thank you

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

I made an album between 1994 and 1998 when I was a teenager. I used a Mac IIsi and a mod tracker called 'Meditor'. I sent in a demo cd in 1997 to a national radio competition, I didn't win but they played my stuff and invited me on the radio for an interview (I was 17). I even sampled some good stuff with a tape recorder. The song 'Goats are very intelligent' contains samples recorded while shearing cashmere goats on my Grandma's farm! The album is called 'Weinermart', by Brendan Hoffmann, it's available everywhere now.

[@psychic_digit]

Definitely gonna check it out! Always love some goat content hehe

[@rainhat1]

when someone tells you that you're too old to be on KZbin, copy and paste this and tell them this

[@Rikaisan]

That's not an album, it's a musicdisk! c:

[@daniel_007]

​​@@Rikaisan not exactly: a musicdisk isn't a simple collection of music module files on a floppy disk, but a self-running software with a custom graphic interface that plays a fixed selection of music modules, usually stored into a floppy disk. I know that it seems the same thing but it isn't: in the last case, you just have to boot your computer from that floppy to hear the music, without doing pretty much else

Thank you for mentioning Polyend Tracker! We are developing the concept of hardware trackers even further, so definitely more to come.

[@realredirect]

Wow

[@AiOinc1]

Just for some clarification, almost no games used MIDI in the mid 80s, the only computers to have support for MIDI at all were the Atari ST and PCs with the MPU-401 card. The standard wasn't even finalized until like 1985. Most music was stored as "playlists" or "notelists" which were exactly what they sound like - Big lists of notes. In the case of some software, it was executable code which changed registers directly in the sound generator. Tracker music is just an abstraction of this originally designed for the Amiga.

[@kaitlyn__L]

This is why I usually bring up the direct table of music type programming first, then discuss how trackers assigned note names and human-readable tempos and everything to that big list methodology. Plus the scrolling interface to keep a better eye on where the current playback was from.

[@rogeriocrispim]

A Tracker video that doesn't mention Renoise?

[@flumbeedumbee2855]

Great job! Not only a great overview of trackers and their history, but those production values? Woooah.

[@loopymind]

... this feels..familiar... something something AHOY

[@TheBeatfox]

5:25 Whoa... "Celestial Fantasia" is mine! Was not expecting to see that. I'd actually never looked at ModArchive's Top Favorites tab before, and had no idea it was so far up the list o.o Anyway, thanks for putting this together! Really well-produced summary & retrospective that does an awesome job introducing tracking and its place in computer music history to the uninitiated.

[@MaxTakeANap]

Absolutely adore that track so much You did an amazing job!

[@paulahaunt]

No mention of Renoise?! Surely it's more commonly used than OpenMPT.

[@Isopromptyl]

What about buzz modular synth? Why does no one care about that one?!

[@jumbledfox2098]

NO WAY you're that gay deer i listen to on spotify sometimes hahaha i can't speak anymore woof bark woof woof bark!

[@littlewoodg1]

someone probably mentioned Renoise, and SunVox already. Crucial omissions! These two are far and away the top two modern tracker softwares! And SunVox is free. Renoise is absurdly low priced.

[@vcaalnu34]

0:06 - A tracker is a sample sequencer that derives from 'Ultimate Soundtracker', the first of its type, written in 1987 by Karsten Obarski for the Commodore Amiga. Tracker is the generic term for a class of software music sequencers which, in their purest form, allow the user to arrange sound samples stepwise on a timeline across several monophonic channels. A tracker's interface is primarily numeric which adopted programmer‑style conventions for creating music sequences; notes are entered via the keyboard, whilst length, parameters, effects and so forth are entered in hexadecimal. A complete song consists of several small multi-channel patterns chained together via a master list.

[@k-leb4671]

It took me a while to figure out, but now I finally understand why they're called "trackers". The Ultimate Soundtracker was originally designed as a video game sound developer. So in other words, it was for creating a soundtrack to a game. Soundtrack...Soundtracker...Tracker.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@k-leb4671…I’ve been into this stuff for 15 years and didn’t put that together 😅 I’d come up with other ideas like it tracks the note table directly so if you jump on one track you jump on all of them. What you said makes waaaay more sense lmao

[@marnanel]

​@@k-leb4671TIL!!

[@persona83]

OpenMPT, what an elegant piece of software. I hope to be able to use it to full extent someday.

[@simonebernacchia5724]

I use Milkytracker that is a fastrtracker clone and has no VST support but is so darn lightweight and multithread, love it! I mostly use it for doing Amiga retrogame musics and the occasional indie

[@resofactor]

Love the FT2-clone available on Linux!

[@JuliusLC]

Who needs multithread for tracking in the actual CPUs???

[@TerraKing]

I’d like to recommend one of the demoscene artists that were in Future Crew, Skaven252. He composed for the Bejeweled series and some other PopCap classics such as Dynomite and Big Money. He still makes great music on his SoundCloud to this day.

[@radrolla3406]

Oh yeah he's frikin awesome!

[@KhAnTlol]

he's the god of trackers, (fun fact: he still uses tracker these days)

[@Marcotonio]

Hell yeah, no wonder Bejeweled 3 - Butterflies reminds me so much of EDM, despite being a "medieval" song. One of my favorite pieces of VGM.

[@HerneLiedel]

i've been a fan of his work ever since i heard his fantastic music in popcap games i played when i was a kid he even made one of the best tracks in ut99, razorback!

[@icebice]

I contacted him because I wanted to buy the Bejeweled album because I couldn't find it anywhere and signed by him. He ended up printing out an album cover that he made himself I believe for Bejeweled and signed it for me. I have it kept safe in my "black box" with some other signed albums by other music artists that has made game music! Really sweet guy and I love his tracks from Uplink!

[@Aqua_1014]

Love Renoise, it's just so fun!! :)

[@hitchhikr]

Side note: Occ-san-geen was done by a guy who called himself Uncle Tom.

[@idadeerz]

I want to give some disclosure here, as this has been pointed out multiple times in the comments. While doing research for this video, i did come across this information while looking up which artists made all the modules used in the video, in order to credit them. I really wanted to use occ-san-geen in the video, as it is a classic module, and really showcases early ProTracker music very well. The module itself is uncredited, so i wasn't aware of the artist who made it. Upon doing some research, i found out that it was made by someone called Uncle Tom... which is a well-known ethnic slur against black people... and guessing from some of his other output, i doubt this is entirely unintentional: demozoo.org/music/206431/ At this point in the video's production, it felt a bit too late to go and change the song. I also couldn't really think of any early ProTracker modules that are just as iconic as occ-san-geen is in terms of quality and how widespread it is, so that made it a bit harder as well. I also considered crediting the module to Uncle Tom's real name instead of his scene handle, but that also raised the question of whether i even wanted to credit someone named after an ethnic slur in the first place, even under a different name. Since the original module does not list any artist names or handles, i ultimately decided to just credit just the module itself, without any of the additional information tied to it. Hope that explains this!

[@Vectif]

very nicely put together, awesome job with the design on the video! and very cool explanations. thanks for putting this out there!

[@gaydeerinc]

that was really good! great production value and really informative. would love to see more stuff in this style

[@deweyismyneighbor5917]

Nice video. How long have you used tracker software? I take it you use OpenMPT for the most part right?

[@idadeerz]

Thanks! I have been using OpenMPT since 2008, though i was 9 at the time so for the first years i used the software i mostly messed around with it without creating anything serious.

[@deweyismyneighbor5917]

@@idadeerz Cool. I've been using Schism Tracker which is a like Impulse Tracker on DOS. I've probably been tracking for about a year or so. I'm surprised you didn't bring up Renoise in the video.

[@The5thVolt]

This was a great and informative overview. Thanks a lot for the hard work you put into making this.

[@xavierhill5085]

I use renoise

[@Scalibq]

I would say that firstly, trackers are not necessarily sample-based. You will find such software on the C64 for example, such as Chris Huelsbeck's SoundMonitor. This software already used the pattern layout that was later adopted by The Ultimate SoundTracker on the Amiga. And secondly, it's not like trackers were some kind of alternative for MIDI. Trackers were developed on C64 and Amiga, where MIDI wasn't even an option, as the hardware was far too limited in polyphony. MIDI was mainly a thing on PCs, because the PC had no audio hardware whatsoever, but there were expensive third-party options available, which were often based on synthesizer hardware from Yamaha or Roland, and had far more polyphony than most home computers or game consoles. But even on PC, the trackers were adopted, because sample-based music could be made to sound much better than these MIDI synthesizers. Initially the PC got a few straight ports of Amiga trackers, so you'd get 4-channel 8-bit audio (via software mixing on the CPU). But as PCs and sound cards became more powerful, PC trackers could quickly move up to 32 channels and 16-bit stereo.

[@k-leb4671]

I feel like anything that precedes The Ultimate Soundtracker shouldn't be called a tracker.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@k-leb4671but when Famitracker and LSDJ are brought up, the lineage to both C64 _and_ Amiga becomes clearly important. Trackers are thus just a kind of sequencer at the end of the day, and merely happen to be connected to sample-based engines/chips a lot of the time (SNES and GBA developers used them too when they were new, precisely because it was pretty Amiga/Paula-like)

[@cuccomposer]

Why choosing a tracker over a DAW? Other than replicating old limitations

[@quadpad_music]

And why does it have to be one over the other? Why not go for both at the same time? Check out Renoise, it has the workflow and detail of tracker sequencing + the power of a modern DAW.

[@DocJade]

Very well put together and entertaining!!!!!! I gotta download a tracker now

[@blubombsjunk1911]

i read the notepad title on 3:29 an i agree with it

[@mynameusedtobelong]

4:48 sannes

[@cbw_live]

Nothing about Renoise?!

[@SHPjealousy]

Renoise ftw

[@jodyjohnson265]

is a music tracker is like communication for sound chips like the ym2612 and vrc7?

[@HiddenAsbestos]

Try deflemask

[@andrewphi4958]

Cool! I'd like to know more how trackers and MIDI split historically. Since both are somewhat similar. I always wondered why there's such low interoperability/compatibility between them. Trackers are awesome!!

[@keithkelly5692]

Old-school tracker here (SYRiNX of N.O.I.S.E. / Landslide / Nebula). MIDI was all about using a PC + expensive commercial MIDI software to control external sound-making devices (synthesizers, etc) that were typically too expensive or rare for most young hobbyists to get their hands on. Trackers were free /cheap software, written by passionate hobbyists (rather than industry corporations) for other passionate hobbyists, to enable anyone with an Amiga or a PC (with a sound card) to write similar-quality music without needing anything more than their computer. The other advantage to tracker modules is that the only thing anyone else needed to hear them exactly as the composer wrote them was a computer running that tracker or a player program -- whereas with MIDI, only someone with the same exact expensive synthesizers configured the exact same way could hear a MIDI file exactly as the composer intended.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Quite a lot of trackers, at least on the Amiga, would let you (step-)sequence notes via MIDI if you wanted. Since the Amiga supported MIDI on the OS level, programmers just needed to call those OS routines rather than write MIDI directly. It was often kind of convoluted to get working though, and the implementations were still pretty basic. MsMadLemon has some videos showing how she did it back in the day, which is also how she’s been making music again (after a while on ModPlug/OpenMPT).

[@AlexCBrandon]

Honored to be included as an example along with Jonne, Kenny, Tim, etc.. Great video!

[@jazzthief81]

0:42 occ san geen is from Uncle tom

[@vapor_neon]

where the fuck is renoise in this

[@GrazCore]

This was a great little dive into trackers. Always have a hard time explaining what trackers are and their importance in a bite sized way. I feel like a vid under 7 minutes is a good run time to get folks up to speed but not overloaded. Thanks for this.

[@efrandsen72]

Did I just learn from a deer?

[@theawesometeg219]

A gay furry

[@PauldeVries]

Great edited and thought out video. Also: your english is very good for a Dutch guy. Subbed!

[@AndreasRohdin-MrGamer]

Awesome job dude. Used to be a Fasttracker2-composer, now I mainly use Renoise, SunVox (so, so good) as well as FamiTracker (first vanilla, then 0cc and now Dn-version) I have a few reeeally old tracker-plays of my own stuff on my channel. :)

[@RedHeat]

6:01 occ-san-geen was by Uncle Tom

[@tarn_jihas]

awesome, thanks

[@alegamer_real]

I mostly use famitracker, openmpt, deflemask and furnace tracker

[@neonvoid]

great history summary! ty

[@machamba82]

Я нашел игру, которую искал 21 год - это Lotus lll !!!! Thank you!!!

[@Omanjisinkala]

Thanks bro

[@notation254]

Were the tracks Super Sharp Shooter and Renegade Snares really made on trackers?

[@lubbockleft]

Nicely made video, but weird software preference both by omission and callout. No mention of FT2, Renoise, or SunVox? And why the Deflemask diss?

[@roboticbaboon3125]

Nice video! But chip tunes are not tracker tunes, they are tunes made on computers incapable of playing samples or running usable tracker software. They had special chips that played notes in simple beeping sounds that you could distort in various ways. Commodore C64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 are two of the computers used to make chip tunes in the original sense of the expression.

[@ridylan]

How u no mention renoise?!

[@jaimdiojtar]

2:40 please dont break my heart knowing epic games will never make a new jazz jackrabbit game, i still have hope that one day epic games launch a new of that game in the series after the failed JJ3 release

[@sagecasalini]

If you guys like thos video you would probably like the video by ahoy about trackers!

[@agpxnet]

which software did you use to make this video?

[@SamplrOfMoonshine]

183 subs, why? quality is cool

[@battlefeild6106]

I think i heard something similar to death rally music, Crusader: No Remore

[@liuzzistephane2327]

There also trackers on Pc like "Arkos Tracker" to create music for "Amstrad Cpc" by example. Same for Commodore 64. 8bits scene is still active ;)

[@Catswhiskerdetector]

Dat 60Hz goodness. 0:45 . Ha, deze video ook voorbij zien komen op reddit :P

[@idadeerz]

Ha inderdaad ja, daar heb ik die video ook voor het eerst gevonden.

[@kingacastus8915]

Wow, your video is exactly 6 minutes and 21 seconds long! This bears absolutely no meaning of course, just wanted to point it out :P Gotcha! uwu

[@SeSmokki]

There's OwO at 0:30 as well lol

[@erzindeagua]

This was the best video about Tracker I've ever seen, your channel having few subscribers is a crime, seriously! you deserved more recognition

[@JuliusLC]

I think this one is the best: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qKClnJpjnrWlmNk But of course, it's One of the best ones available.

[@kromer3797]

i know this video is old but this video (and some of your modules) are the reason I started playing around with editing game OST modules to make meme edits

[@marisakirisame867]

The reason why i love using trackers is im was specially adapted for command line text things than other composer that using GUI ( and i love monophonic chips! )

[@logickeeper]

love how begrudging you are about deflemask

[@cruelshy]

THIS VIDEO IS SO AWESOME THANK YOU THE ESTROGEN TRANSITION WAS PURRFECT

[@petrihaikonen2528]

I personally prefer Schism Tracker over OpenMPT. There's just something in the good old Scream Tracker / Impulse Tracker interface

[@craig_mo]

same

[@Rompler_Rocco]

Antlers.

[@kaneel]

trackers! what are they?

[@DenisSTALKER15]

tracker music will never die🎧🤟

[@luketheduke420]

This is a fantastic video, but I am worried as Ahoy's video on trackers is eerily similar to this, almost exactly following the same format, just longer. I wouldn't be surprised if he plaigarised from you 😣

[@idadeerz]

I honestly take that as a compliment! I doubt the video is plagiarized, i was curious about it too so i looked on his Twitter, where he mentioned having worked on the video since February this year (i only started scripting/producing this video in May). The videos obviously have similar themes, but i guess that's just because they describe the exact same piece of history in a factual way, so i guess they just naturally end up having the same type of content. Even down to using some of the same music (occ san geen) and other references and information. I do wonder if Ahoy has seen this video while producing his, though!

[@luketheduke420]

@@idadeerz regardless this video is amazing, really good work

[@Linkale_]

@@idadeerz also I'd be surprised if Ahoy plagiarises, given that he releases videos months apart

[@Sb129]

I liked tracker music before I even knew what it was~

[@HarmonicVector]

"piracy is based" Until it basically demolished the original creator's work. The Ultimate Soundtracker was ultimately pirated to no end, resulting in the original creator abandoning it.

[@k-leb4671]

There's a spectrum of morality when it comes to pirating. Unfortunately, since it's open seas out there, pirating happens to both entities that can handle it or don't even deserve the money and entities that may go broke from it.

[@Null-Red-Blue]

More people got access to it in the end than would have otherwise, so that mattered more.

[@weapea]

You forgot mention fasttracker! But i love the sound of tracker chip music!

[@gbraadnl]

Plus, you have Renoise and tools like Fruity Loops even integrate a tracker in one of the plugins.

[@sandwich2473]

Ooooohhhhh!!! This video lived up to my hype! Thank you so much for making it, it was both very interesting, and visually interesting. Very appealing all round I need to share this around 👀 3:51 gosh dang that is a C H O O N, as is the others afterwards, and everything in this video

[@danielpose3340]

Fantastic!, great video! 😊

[@DMARrecords]

Anyone got any info how to do portamento without making the portamento baked in a sample? I'm on OpenMPT using the .IT Impulse Tracker format.

[@m1m1c_]

Ahoy’s video is better, go watch that classic piece of media.

[@KidKaimera]

My ADHD led me down a tracker-laden hole after I searched for synths and found the M8 tracker. I had no idea what a tracker was until I watched this video then I realized that my old 30+ year old ass was very familiar with trackers the whole time! Thanks man!

[@Train115]

I love trackers

[@Newtined]

ya should've mentioned octamed and breakcore

[@CC-fi3pp]

Hacky Tracky in Reaper is God like!

[@MidlifeSynthesist]

This was awesome! Thank you!👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@flozon5240]

he mentioned every tracker except fasttracker ii

[@Triggs-Music]

no mention of Renoise?

[@idadeerz]

This video mostly focuses on the history of S3XMODIT trackers. While Renoise is capable of importing a handful of those formats, from what i remember it's not extremely compatible with them, nor can it save to those formats. Because of that, i didn't really think to add it to the script of the video as there were more relevant trackers to talk about - and this is after all a *brief* history of trackers, not the most comprehensive video ever :)

[@kunobiarchive]

excellent visuals dude

[@DJFiBa]

Thanks, but I still don't understand how to read or write trackers compared to common music programming in a piano roll view...

[@barnabasfuto5529]

thank you so much for this video!!

[@Roocky]

3:16 🎉🎉PURPLE MOTION MENTIONED🎉🎉

[@Gaven7r]

I discovered them first thanks to Fearofdark, and then I started discovering cool channels and the Mod Archive which has lot of cool music trackers! Nice video, definitely a good introduction to the topic

[@Sundaiiz]

It's my pleasure to give the 1k like on such a well done video ~

[@daniel_007]

Really good explanation on how tracker music worked. Even if there's a little thing that was overlooked: the size of the floppy disks was 720 kb (or 840 kb in the AMIGA filesystem) as before the 90s they were 2DD (double side double density). The 1,44 MB was the size of the 2HD (double sided high density) floppy disks, which became standard in the early 90s (even if AMIGA still used 2DD floppies)

[@trvshbxvt3146]

absolute banger

[@waterSuja]

beep, beep, beep, bob bob baab bub bob- BAHB

[@Lemerksiscool]

0:42 cosmic rift moment

[@V1RU5Zuk]

I cant find the song at 2:25 way of the beast 2! Can anyone help please? :D

[@Gingpoop]

bro I watched the first few minutes of the video vibing to the modules, then I went to search about the author and found more modules, and I was like "damn this guy is really good so lucky the creator of that video linked the original songs" and then just after I finished the video I realized that you were the one that created those modules lmfao nice video and nice songs

[@danielprieto9977]

Wow! You are amazing, I like how you edit your videos and your script writing skills. I would like you to talk a little about music visualizers too pls

[@endrevarga5111]

Oh, the nostalgia! 😊 😁 Back when I had my high school studies, I also made some songs in some trackers, finally I used Fast Tracker 2, on a 386 DX computer. Here's my two favourite songs. Never published (they don't worth a publication, never did), uploaded now just for this comment. • In Your Eyes: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHXUnX6XbsZklZI • Diary of a Love: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fV7GiWOueZipl7M Inspired by (a denial) childhood love. Writing these and some other songs was literally my psychotherapy. :D I hope someone enjoys them.

[@gospelofdeus]

Nice job! Thank you, sir.

[@nogodfortomorrow]

My first instrumental album back in 1999 wss interely composed with Fasttracker, at the time I was more a classical musician, at the beginning the hexadecimal sustem was such a pain but creating songs that way seemed so powerful.. nothing but good memories. Thanks Toru, thanks to Sixty-seven, and thanks to the authors of this video! What a time it was to be alive.. 🏆👀🔥❤️💚🩵🧡💜

[@RTMonitor]

owo

[@idadeerz]

uwu

[@RTMonitor]

@@idadeerz uwu

[@Phol]

That 6:21 video lenght was on purpose right?

[@Sylvysprit]

Absolutely amazing video editing