Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit

[@bobjones8838]

Dude makes a 40 minute video about computer sound interesting then disappears for another 6 months. Legend.

[@Robert-tj3jq]

> Bursts in to recommendations > Talks about 16 bit music > -Refuses to elaborate- Elaborates a lot > Leaves

[@ghoulbuster1]

@@Robert-tj3jq Based

[@kylegamer48]

Soviet Womble has a better upload schedule than Ahoy.

[@banzaiking187]

@@kylegamer48 ah yes but ahoy here does the research, refinement and review before upload.

[@zyriuz2]

That's ahoy for you, he is a very talented researcher and video maker that simply puts quality over quantity, making these nicely put videos (in this case it's more closely video-art tbh) takes time and well he just does what he wants and put the schedule and release date to "when it's done" state. Btw if you ask me one particular topic is Seattle as there's tons of great games and pc stuff that originates from there mortal Kombat, duke nukem, Bungie, halo, and just a very interesting history of individuals that simply together shaped the videogame industry and broke new grounds often in the 80s and 90s. It's a broad topic perfectly suited for a ahoy video

[@ModernVintageGamer]

I absolutely loved this video. Amazing work as always

[@BenPotts]

funny seeing you here

[@CompleteAnimation]

I didn't know MVG watched Ahoy! You're one of my favorite KZbinrs!

[@badasahog]

Glad to know you've discovered Ahoy! You two are brothers in art

[@TheTinnin]

why did you like this so much? Do you make music?

[@nrg753]

@@TheTinnin I believe MVG makes all the music for his channel

[@realkekz]

You're on a short list of S+ tier KZbinrs with high production value, interesting yet niche content, and a charming aesthetic, never change.

[@ZonicCeasor]

Agreed, Stu is a cut above a lot of KZbinrs. His content is always quality

[@marinellovragovic1207]

I hope Posy is on that list. He and Ahoy have way too much in common.

[@realkekz]

@@marinellovragovic1207 I was thinking "who is that that name is vaguely familiar" then I found out I was subscribed and remembered who he was, and yes he definitely is

[@marinellovragovic1207]

@@realkekz Superb based tastes, dude.

[@hmmburger8485]

I just wish there were more gaming videos, and less guns...

[@Felice_Enellen]

A LOT of the modern game industry's senior people started out in the demoscene. During my own industry tenure, it was crazy how many people I met & worked with who wrote the demos, cracks, or early games that I had downloaded for my C64, Amiga, then PC. It was basically the era when there was no major commercial competition and anyone with a home computer could be the first to write something and have it go viral on SneakerNet or later FidoNet. Amazing times.

[@AlexCBrandon]

This is an absolutely glorious history of MODs. Thank you so much for creating it.

[@Baegus]

We got a legend in the comment section! Jazz Jackrabbit 2 soundtrack is something I still listen to from time to time. ❤️

[@MarcSola7]

And THANK YOU Alexander for being part of this history with your contributions to the tracker scene, especially Unreal.

[@elblanco5]

Hey man! Nice to see you here! Glad to see you made it in the industry. The demoscene (particularly the DC/Baltimore area scene) was always too small for you. It's been a pleasure to watch you hit gaming hard with what you have.

[@Dann0r]

Great to see you here Mr Brandon! Huge fan of your music. Your work on the Unreal soundtrack in particular was incredible and helped make the game so atmospheric and memorable. I still go back and listen to it often, almost 25 years later. I learnt about trackers a few years later and was fascinated to see how you built those tracks!

[@commandhat]

*fangirl freaking out noises*

[@Full_Egoism]

Can't wait to get back into this gaming history after 6 months!

[@bluauber409]

Next up: RetroAhoy.

[@ikagura]

@UCWTgYlza_NGzR1UbMooxHdw what

[@momobobo5430]

The wait is worth it

[@kaptenalex421]

Yes ai like ahoy my opinion is pension but no!

[@MedicMain9]

@@bluauber409 famous last words

[@-Rook-]

I love that VLC still has tracker support, I have an old original collection of tracker music that I have moved from machine to machine over the decades and its nice to have the simple double click ability to play it.

[@vosce]

The vetaram foobar too

[@vosce]

Trackers are relatively easily file formats to decode. Rendered music files such as MP3 has comprehension, what usually need third party stuff. Trackers must be view like a script accomplished with resouces of a DJ at a given time, not really a audio file.

[@android584]

That's good to know, I used to use Winamp to play mod files.

[@BringMayFlowers]

I use Audacious, a continuation of xmms that's essentially Winamp for FOSS, even uses the same GUI and is skin compatible.

[@PEPSIMaxMusic]

​@gabriel.epsilon so it's sort of like a Midi

[@shableep]

Thank you for giving such love to such a niche topic. I kind of can’t believe there’s such an insanely high quality documentary like this on the subject of trackers. I was tracking music back in 1997 using Mod Plug Tracker on my PC and to this day I write game music. There’s so much history here I didn’t know about. Thanks for the VERY unexpected nostalgia trip and giving to anyone else with curiosity such a deep history and appreciation for this niche craft.

[@charliesnark6535]

Any tracks from games that you've made music for that you're particularly proud of?

[@MedlifeCrisis]

It is a great day when I find Ahoy has uploaded a new video. The wait in between only makes it sweeter, and the music selection to accompany this video is 👌

[@michaeltang6290]

Didn't expect you here medlife :)

[@terminator572]

Damn, didn't know you also liked Ahoy

[@EricHamm]

I was thinking the same. You have great tastes in YT creators. I see you in plenty of comments of videos I have seen. I appreciate your good attitude and helpful nature and just makes this video and comment section so much more wholesome. Cheers!

[@MedlifeCrisis]

@@terminator572 one of my videos (about ASMR) actually features a little Easter egg tribute to Ahoy ☺️

[@terminator572]

@@MedlifeCrisis neat, gonna be on the lookout for it

[@purplehaze2358]

Things I learned today: -Piracy has a pretty banger soundtrack.

[@MorbidMindedManiac]

Things I learned today: -Piracy is banger

[@chillhour6155]

Wouldn't mIned a Razor ost to be honest

[@nickfifteen]

Honestly it's a lot better than hearing "Yo ho ho ho the pirate's life for me" ad nauseam...

[@JMDAmigaMusic]

@@nickfifteen Mirror hacker? ;)

[@IgnatRemizov]

Pirates always did have the best shanties :)

[@Neptune0404]

I love how for so many of these videos I have next to no previous interest, nor any previous knowledge, yet straight away I'm hooked, and at no point am I confused. They take full advantage of the niece nature of delving deep into a topic like this, which makes it such a fun learning experience. They are incredibly well made and are so incredibly fun to watch.

[@tedjohansen1634]

Ahoy is an absolute magician!

[@cide241]

Weird how nobody pointed out that the early PopCap games (Bejeweled, Dynomite, etc) OSTs were made by Skaven of Future Crew and there exist the dumped files of the musical suites of these games online if you know how to find them! Beyond The Network is Bejeweled's but I forgot the rest.

[@ivysvids]

Insaniquarium!

[@colinouille2786]

thats sick as hell

[@matthieucneude5761]

It explains why I played Dynomite so much... loved the music!

[@sodaodaoda]

Hamsterball's OST is also made by Skaven, great stuff! I have the dumped files on my phone

[@EpicTkoWko]

@@sodaodaoda to this day hamsterball has one of my absolute favorite soundtracks to anything, there’s just such a unique feel to it skaven’s work no matter what game it was for was incredible

[@TheOnjLouis]

I’m a blind musician that used to write bog-standard, 4-track mod files in Dos using ModEdit in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Still have everything I ever wrote. I loved it and have thought many a time of trying to get back into it. This video was not only nostalgic but also amazing, and absolutely top-notch as all your videos are. I’m grateful for the time you take with your work and appreciate your channel very much. Thank you.

[@glowinggrenade]

Do you find that trackers were more accessible than modern DAWS?

[@TheOnjLouis]

@@glowinggrenade Hmm. These days I’m a Logic Pro user, and I get around it fairly easily, but there was something to be said for what basically amounted to a step-based input method. Could lose your place if not paying proper attention, and some of the menus didn’t read very well with my screen-reader of the time, but stuff was doable for the most part. #GoodTimes.

[@KingLich451]

respect

[@doomerboomer9402]

how do you type and use the interface if you cant see?

[@SBImNotWritingMyNameHere]

Do you mean fully blind or partially/legally blind I imagine using software being ridiculously difficult if someone is fully blind

[@ML4202]

00:00 Kenet & Rez - Unreal Super Hero 3 00:49 Walkman - Let's Hear My Baby 01:28 Bill Williams - Alley Cat 02:00 David Whittaker - Speedball (Atari ST) 03:07 POW - Wonderful Life 04:19 Fred / La Marque Jaune - The Sign Of The Death 06:17 Deluxe Music Construction Set - Bach Fugue in G Minor 06:40 Chris Huelsbeck - Shades 08:41 Karsten Obarski - Amegas 10:28 Karsten Obarski - Crystal Hammer 12:08 Comrade J - Fairlight 12:46 Mahoney - Ghost 13:09 Horace Wimp - Running Water 13:24 Karsten Obarski - Telephone 14:02 Diz - Unit 5 14:53 Uncle Tom - Occ San Geen 16:00 Banana - Echoing 17:12 Luxor - Cousin's Song 18:14 Chip - Ghost of Parallax 19:20 Mahoney - Sleepwalk 20:13 Dr. Awesome - Moongazer 20:44 Jesper Kyd - Global Trash 3 v2 21:16 Jogeir Liljedahl - Overture 21:25 Jester - Stardust Memories 21:36 Lizardking - LK's Doskpop 21:56 Mel O Dee - Scales of Joy 22:20 4mat - L.F.F. 23:01 4mat - Anarchy Menu 1 23:15 Zap - Killing Denise 24:04 Brian Johnston - Hired Guns Main Theme 25:26 U4ia - Take a Trip From Me 26:44 Captain - Space Debris 27:49 Zak McKraken (PC Speaker Theme) 28:37 George Stone - CANYON.MID 29:34 Purple Motion - Future Brain 29:59 Necros - Point of Depature 30:54 Purple Motion - UnreaL ][ 32:01 Elwood - Dead Lock 32:44 Chris Jarvis/Analogue - Blue Flame 33:28 Robyn Miller - Myst Theme 34:26 Robert A. Allen - Epic Pinball (Title) 35:25 Alexander Brandon - Flight Castle 35:51 Michael van den Bos - Foregone Destruction 37:50 Fluidvolt - The Gusts of Aeolus 38:29 X-Ceed/Scope - Voyager 39:16 Hoffman - Eon

[@Bartnick81]

Thanks man!

[@leftysheppey]

I'm impressed you could find all these bar one

[@Lord_Revan]

YOU ARE THE HERO I NEEDED. THANK YOU.

[@dlvnmedia]

Necros is a good friend of mine - he still uses trackers even using them in the albums he did with synth pop band Iris - which he used to great effect.

[@blissfu_lee8522]

Nice Hina

[@StellariumSound]

Watching this and seeing the parallels to how modern DAWs are designed is fucking awesome.

[@Stereozentrum]

You would be suprised to find out that the first version of Cubase is actually from 1989 with a lot of the key features of a modern DAW and the kind of music presented in this video could be done much more easily and faster with a sequencer software such as Cubase. It's a shame (and an obvious flaw) that he didn't mention this at all.

[@zeddash]

I'm working on a game and it uses a tracker because I can make it adapt to the game perfectly, I can stretch and squeeze without distortion and branch the music when the scene changes. Levels have their own tempo and so when you go to the next level the tempo shifts and if the shift is too much for a particular song it will insert a bridge and move to another song with a closer tempo. Also there are a collection of songs for the menu which then get bridged into level songs when you enter a level. Everything is constructed in a huge Markov chain (everything seamlessly transitions, no hard starts or stops, and single songs can be played continuously while not being completely repetative) with links being dependent on scenes and triggers, it's so much easier to construct using trackers than audio files.

[@TimothyJesionowski]

Any info about the game? I'd love to see how that works, because as a programmer it's not quite obvious and sounds really bloody cool.

[@ihaveagoddamnplanarthur]

so something like IMUSE from the secret of monkey island?

[@demonindenim]

i'd love to see what you made!

[@juim1080]

Thats so cool, it makes me want to buy and play your game!

[@ChristianIce]

It's safe to say that soundtracker brought me where I am today. If my mom bought me a gaming console instead of an Amiga, my life would have been entirely different.

[@hri7566]

i'm jealous

[@mattynek2]

@@hri7566 Who asked tho

[@shinren_]

mind asking you why? was it that you tried doing stuff on it instead of gaming or something?

[@Empirism]

@@shinren_ I think he meant more other things than gaming... These tools in this video including soundtracker was not in gaming consoles... atleast in the production like Amiga and C64. Doh well :) Im pretty sure he's life would have been entirely different, If I had had the same thing,my life too.

[@cdogthehedgehog6923]

@@shinren_ Why yo brain so smooth dude?

[@uros.u.novakovic]

The pure joy one feels when Ahoy uploads a clip

[@GraemeGunn]

I know, right???

[@yuyureishinoshojo]

LITERALLY

[@renatocfrancisco]

Yeeahhhhh

[@TemkaUwU]

Godly feeling

[@daviddavis1322]

All the feelings at once

[@PsylightFF]

If I hadn't found Scream Tracker 3 on a BBS when I was a lad, I would never have considered that music was something I'd ever create. For years I spent hours at a time making tunes on Impulse Tracker. I still have a huge collection of module files that I converted to MP3 and listen to regularly. Ahoy, you brought a tear to my eye with this video. Fantastic job!

[@nateb4630]

One more cool feature, which you aaaallllmost touched on at the end by likening mod playback to a "performance", is that the player software had a bit of control over the music too! In some players at least, the user can turn individual channels on and off, like a real-time "remix" that simply wouldn't be possible if the whole tune was pre-rendered to a monolithic stream. It's handy for stuff like picking out morse code hidden in the music, because you can just isolate that part so it's easier to pick out. And completely absent but I think very important, is pattern looping. You showed how a song can be pattern 1-2-3-2-3-4 for instance, but being able to seamlessly loop 1-2-3-2-3-2-3- for as long as you're in the menu, and then break the loop and let 3 transition to 4 which nicely wraps the menu song as the game loads, isn't possible with any other format that I'm aware of. And of course, better players give you this control too, so you can disable looping and just hear 1-2-3-4 once through, or turn it on for a while and turn it back off, or reveal "hidden patterns" that the author left in, knowing they'd only be heard by people with players (or trackers) capable of manipulating the patterns. So a given piece might go 1-2-3-7 if played normally, but if you turn off jumps while listening to 3, you can hear 4-5-6 as well, the little easter egg in the music. I think these are generally referred to as "hidden subsongs". Beyond that, a single module can include a bunch of subsongs but only store the sample data once, so for instance 1-2-3-2-3-4 might be the menu, 5-6-7-6-7 might be the main gameplay, and 8-2-9-3-2-9-3-10 might be the high score screen, reusing some of the riffs from earlier. This takes up very little disk space since the samples tend to be quite large compared to the note data in the patterns themselves.

[@pawahara]

This channel is a rare example where the months-long waiting for a new video is absolutely worth it.

[@AmericaLexicon]

Ahoy, Captain Dissolution, Tier-Zoo, Curious Droid are all great.

[@nnnnmhughuuhhjiijj9457]

@@AmericaLexicon All great names are here.

[@earthling_parth]

@@AmericaLexicon Adding Oversimplified, Lemmino, *Captain Disillusion, CGP Grey, Kurzgesagt, Technology Connections, SmarterEveryDay, Veritasium, Vsauce, Joe Scott, Climate Town, Mark Rober, Coldfusion, RealLifeLore, Ilyx, and Internet Historian to the list

[@chrisfratz]

Another example I can think of is accursed farms

[@guser436]

@@earthling_parth Mark Rober?

[@MarkusKaarlonenMusic]

A big thanks for featuring Space Debris in the video, I'm honored to be included! ☺️ A great history lesson, there was some stuff from the early days of trackers I didn't even know / remember. - Captain

[@stefansynths]

Space Debris has always stuck with me as an incredible piece! Just yesterday I was grabbing the Ares soundtrack off my old mac so I could use some drum samples on my modular synth. I copied Space Debris too while I was at it. What's the connection to the mac game by the same name? Was it written for the game? Did you develop it?

[@edstar83]

Amiga was ahead of its time. And so was your music. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qpnRia2Le6-hnLM

[@icestar65]

I listened to Space Debris for many hours when I was a kid when it was included (probably without license) in Macintosh game of the same name. The game wasn't much, but that sound kept me hooked for hours. Thanks for the amazing track and defining my current taste in music!

[@surject]

I LOVE YOU!

[@esaedvik]

Had my hands in the air when I heard the first notes :D One of the earliest MODs I recall digging a LOT (and do to this day).

[@wirehack7]

Thanks. I was part of the Demoscene long years ago. This video just gets it on point. Please keep making videos on the style of this. Awesome!

[@Q36BN]

Damn, this was extremely informative and done in such a professional way with good narration. This could easily air on TV as a professional documentary.... Ps. "You killed me" with that Jesper Kyd info. I first heard his music in a Hitman and immediately fell in love with it, and wanted to know who is the composer.. and now i know a little bit of history there.

[@CrimsonCrossFire88]

Good to see you back man!, looking forward to next year.

[@betr8]

How is this 2 days ago?

[@TsunamisKid]

@@betr8 he pre-ordered

[@betr8]

@@TsunamisKid lmao

[@heet6612]

@@betr8 I guess patreon

[@uamee]

Regular people pirate to spend less money, gopniks pirate to listen to keygen music

[@drone6675]

Ayyyyy your music is rad as hell bro! I play it at the shop all the time!

[@lobsermahn7262]

Ok

[@soulassassin0g]

This is some high quality nahui.

[@nikodimov]

Eventually they start using Sunvox to make their own keygen music

[@romefalls.]

un ko tu te dari, mister latvieti? :D

[@colinbrown7947]

fearofdark is certainly my favorite current tracker musician, absolutely incredible what they're making

[@RussellRRocke]

Motorway is one of my favs of his

[@labfire8964]

I’m pretty sure fearofdark is the one of the best because not only does he introduce a lot of people to tracker music but he’s usually the only tracker musician people listen to

[@georckbread3403]

@@labfire8964 fr. fod got me into using famitracker

[@labfire8964]

@@georckbread3403 Same never thought I’d be making music on a tracker that emulates famicon/nes music

[@mariokingplayer7497]

couldnt have said it better myself brother

[@ShizukanaEntertainment]

"Bergsmätaren lever" by Mattis has to be one of my all time favourite tracker tunes. So much good music came out from these tools, but this one stands out.

[@GYTCommnts]

You may like my enhanced version of that masterpiece, then: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWbEmqiEicplmLM Hope you enjoy. 😉

[@ShizukanaEntertainment]

@@GYTCommnts Thanks! I've listened to that one many times as well. It's great! However, nothing beats the original. :)

[@GYTCommnts]

@@ShizukanaEntertainment Of course! It's just an enhanced version, not even a Remix. The original is the work of art here. 😉

[@ModyPhantom]

This man's content is a masterpiece. He should have like 10 million subscribers at least!

[@Blank-js3zt]

ye

[@tito12star]

Let make it happen!

[@thaddeuscosse9527]

Hard to do when you have 2 uploads a year haha

[@miroslavzima8856]

@@thaddeuscosse9527 You are right, but the depth and enjoyment is top notch!

[@botplays6893]

100% 100 million

[@pedro.camacho]

My love for trackers is infinite. My father died shortly after hearing my first original song in Amiga with OctaMED Proaround 1990, when I was 11 or so. I often wonder what he would say now but, I am still glad he heard and loved my first one. I still have a small notebook, handcrafted in school, where I placed all tracker commands. I had around 20 disks filled with my own samples which I mostly ripped from the gamesusing Action Replay-like cartridges... I learned a lot with trackers before going into classical school.

[@arnislapsa1619]

Our hard drive failed and I lost my early FastTracker II works. Dad was really sad about that. I still punch some tunes here and there. Spinning Bitwig nowadays.

[@FrogFWK]

Thanks for sharing this - it's fun reading these stories today, as tracker music connects ppl over decades, it seems :)

[@pedro.camacho]

@@FrogFWK I just had to share it. It's been with me for so many years and this video deserved it.

[@FrogFWK]

@@pedro.camacho Absolutely. Did you do the Witcher 3 soundtrack? I lovit. Yes, production quality is great here. And it's worth reading the comments too, as sometimes there's more than warm memories to be found :) Well, none of my soundtracks did make it into this video, but one of our Demos did at 14:39 (it's called demons are forever from 1988). What made me smile was your keeping the sound-disks, as mine are still sitting here on the shelve (9 disks I think), although my amiga is long gone ;) Seems to me, this tracker era really changed some lifes for the better.

[@delta__s]

What a wonderful, wonderful documentary. I had totally forgotten the days where I composed my first tracks on pro tracker II on my Amiga, a million years ago. Thank you so much for the admirable quality of your work. It's the brilliance of quality of your work that kept me watching, enjoing the content became the side effect. Just joined as your patreon.

[@spaalonebabaguuscooties]

this is just by far the best channel on youtube by such a huge margin it's not even a competition. love this channel so much

[@deusexaethera]

As a software engineer and a fan of many genres of music including electronica, this is absolutely fascinating. By the time I started programming, Windows 3.0 already existed (we couldn't afford a computer before the 90s), so I never had to deal with direct hardware access except for the occasional fight to get a game to run in DOS with whatever video card our computer had. Even though I've written assembly code before, it's hard to imagine such primitive conditions being the _only_ option for getting anything done. It makes me strangely nostalgic for a time I never truly experienced firsthand, when it was amazing just to successfully use computer for any purpose at all. Things are so very different in 2021, 30 years after my family got our first computer.

[@a5cent]

You would have been a perfect fit! You have the spirit that drove the hyper creativity in the demo scene.

[@masterzen258]

"Why does pirate software has such amazing soundtrack" What a fantastic way to start

[@Edwin-ts4kj]

This video is a hidden gem on youtube for everybody with nostalgic feeling for retro pc gaming. I really enjoyed this high quality documentary and will definately watch it again!

[@MisterJell]

Oh damn. Point of Departure. Of all of Necros's (or any of the FM folks') classic tracks, that was the one that really left an impression on me. Happy to see so many share similar fond memories of different tracks they recognize here.

[@Chyrosran22]

Really awesome episode mate, thanks for making it :) .

[@SonicBoone56]

Oh hey

[@mungojerrie86]

Where review.jpg

[@amigaman2305]

Hey! who knew old keyboard mate was into such things.

[@kingacastus8915]

Holy heck it's Chyros! Thinking of it, makes sense that the music was so good, they had some great keyboards back then!

[@p_serdiuk]

That ZX Spectrum mention at the beginning was an instant reminder.

[@Zenzuke]

There's one very important thing trackers had that you didn't mention... The format the songs were in was open by design, so if you could play it, you could also see how it was done and pillage their samples and instruments. That was an incredible learning tool.

[@doom_cough]

Absolutely. It's how most us learned by digging deep into tracks to see how things were done. Still learning new tricks 20 years later.

[@AA-gl1dr]

Collaborative art is the best

[@zaadworks]

now with AI generative art, some people are following the same steps, generated image has metadata that you can dig in and learn how it was made

[@stein5838]

Dude I didn't know you are back! I love to see a full catalog of videos. Guess I know what I'll be binging next.

[@TheCrazyStudent]

The production quality of the videos on this channel is in my opinion far superior than the average KZbin video. Thank you for all the great effort in creating these documentaries.

[@cyrillemiller8798]

He’s back! Liked the video before listening to it, Ahoy never disappoints anyway. The quality is just insane

[@SkyFly19853]

Me too! I liked it before it started!

[@ErichZann13]

same here...same here...=)

[@madeintaiwon6533]

Me too, I shared it to friends before watching it

[@badermanone]

The quality is beyond insanity :)

[@Fanaticalight]

I've always loved 8-bit and 16-bit sounds and soundtracks in pretty much anything, as well as the amount of variety that exists in the world of trackers and demoscenes. Even though I don't know a whole lot of what goes on, seeing Ahoy make a video on this taught me a lot more than what I had previously thought went on in the scene. The best part is it still is a bit of a starting point that leaves a lot more room to discover should the person want to learn more about trackers as well! Beautiful representation as always Ahoy! Keep up the amazing work!

[@clankplusm]

Is this comment visually dimmer on mobile for anyone else or is it just me

[@leonardofranzinribeiro4220]

Yeah, in that part near the end, our guy pretty much handed us a roadmap to learn more about anything in the video.

[@BLiu1]

@@clankplusm might just be you

[@onyxwaltz8140]

This is an amazing documentary. I grew up during this time and the music still has a place in my brain. I never thought I would get a historical breakdown like this!

[@Jesse.Dangerously]

This was super nostalgic, thanks for making it! ST3 and IT were my entries into making sample-based hip-hop in the early 90s, pushing the limits of my soundblaster 16 and later my gravis ultrasound to loop, chop, and arrange samples from vinyl in extremely limited resources. I only know a small number of other people who worked this way - it was really hard to integrate into the demoscene because the files were huge by module standards, and everyone was using BBSes at 14.4K when we started and 56K when we stopped. Plus it wasn't as flashy as having dozens of individual notes triggering and modulating, except when we used offset interpolation to invent the earliest version of pitch-independent timestretching I know of. Just mentioning this here in case anyone who views this video finds it an interesting footnote. All of the music on my first four albums (1997-2004) was made in Impulse Tracker 2.15, with stems bounced out using MODplug and mixed in a friend's basement on more current software at the time. I still have dozens of modules of beats I started in the 90s and early 00s that I draw from and recreate in new software today.

[@smilespray]

This brought me back to my days as an Amiga tracker artist. You also mentioned several of my friends. Thanks!

[@coscorrodrift]

What do you do now? Are you still making music in some way or another or is that a hobby of the past?

[@ARTala88]

Nice too know

[@joshshrum2764]

It’s still going strong with beautiful custom made music like this kzbin.info/www/bejne/moGqc2aKpq57jKs

[@hackerx7329]

There are areas where tracker music still has a HUGE advantage over prerecorded music. You can have the music be reactive to the game in a variety of ways. Turning on and off channels, panning individual channels instead of an entire recording, have different patterns to be switched to for a more dramatic or calmer version of the exact same song, triggering different note effects depending on in game environments, the ability to change the tempo of the music without pitch shifting anything, and I'm sure there are more examples. And all of that with a single file instead of multiple prerecorded tracks or audio tracks on a disc that may have required a split second of buffering or loading time. The access times aren't a big deal now with SSDs but boy did that make a difference for a long time. Because of the relatively small file sizes it also meant you could have a LOT more music in a lot of games that had space constraints or compared to a CD where audio took up a whole lot more space than a tracker file.

[@vincelang3779]

Is that how the music for NO ONE LIVES FOREVER works? I'm still amazed how it morphs tempo as you play . . .

[@hackerx7329]

@@vincelang3779 No. It was actually split into several files. It was MIDI but with custom instrument sounds stored in a separate file.

[@jamesbulick1897]

Would doom 2016s soundtrack count as an example?

[@Alxasaurus]

Why this reminds me of Harmonix's "Chroma"? They made multiplayer FPS games whose background music reacts to gameplay, because they store music in MIDI format and lets the game engine play the MIDI files. Maybe with Tracker format they could make the background music more reactive than ever... alas Chroma was mothballed indefinitely.

[@defaultname25]

@@jamesbulick1897 mick Gordon came to mind straight away

[@onceonly1111]

I played so many apogee games on a PC with 1 bit sound, so it blew my mind years later to discover that they had MUSIC and that sometimes the characters would actually SPEAK.

[@mbh9566]

I just wanted to say that I hope that you’re working on another amazing video. Can’t wait to see what you cover next! You’re one of only a handful of KZbin content creators that I’m always interestedly anticipating what’s next. And whatever it ends up being, I know that it won’t disappoint.

[@AsteroidWrangler]

It's an absolute mindblow on my part to realize that I Created Disco is all tracker music. That album was an absolute JAM when I was a student DJ. Went back and damn is that sound unmistakable to me now. As always, an amazing video Ahoy.

[@pkaulf]

In this case OctaMED was only used to sequence an Akai sampler, but the tracker soul is in there.

[@AsteroidWrangler]

@@pkaulf Huh, ok. That's really interesting to know. Thanks for adding more context to this revelation on my part, I really appreciate it.

[@ANDSENS]

I'm amazed by the level of detail on the artwork for the faces of the coders (6:48) and by the sheer number of different screencaptures required to make this video happen! Also: "VLC has support for a wide range of tracker formats". I want to say I'm surprised... but at this point I would barely raise an eyebrow if astronomers dropped a file on it containing samples of the cosmic microwave background radiation only to be greeted with a video of the first few seconds of the big bang.

[@wellwell5483]

Goat of players

[@BrightSpark]

It's like the SFW equivalent of Rule 34: If it exists, VLC can play it.

[@matthewparker9276]

@@BrightSpark unless it's on bluray, because heaven forbid you be able to play this disk you bought

[@Iwantapplez109]

@@matthewparker9276 unless it's from the seas :)

[@roland_the_cursor]

I was so glad to see Follin on here.

[@bennysh]

I remember sitting for hours listening to demo music as a teenager, making my own mixes on octa-med. At the time I had no idea about the stories behind all this. It's fascinating to learn all this years later..

[@mikaeldk5700]

This is a real "Why did I first discover this fantastic channel now?"-channel. I am really impressed by all the footage, all the knowledge, how well it is presented... Instant subscribe.

[@BartechTV]

19:24 - The Silents, the group who released NoiseTracker, went on to become DICE, the developers of the Battlefront games and Mirror's Edge.

[@jackmio]

@@PieterPeter-ud7wf the one they shit on recently

[@hongkyang7107]

@@PieterPeter-ud7wf This joke became less funny as time when on, let me tell ya, or funnier depend on how you look at it.

[@gamechip06]

Ooooh yikes

[@alaeriia01]

Fun fact: DICE's past has been brought up before on RetroAhoy. Which episode was it?

[@override7486]

@@alaeriia01 Pinball Dreams obviously.

[@benjaminshields9421]

I love how Ahoy can take something I know nothing about and make me finish a 45 minute video on it

[@maiyusakiryu7498]

I KNOW!!I T WAS OVER SO QUICK AND IT DIDN'T REALLY FEEL LIKE NEARLY 50 MINUTES! THIS GAVE ME A NEW LOVE FOR TRACKER MUSIC AND HEIGHTENED LOVE FOR CHIPTUNE!! FAMITRACKER, MEGA DRIVE, (genesis) SC-55, (midi/MS-DOS/doom 1993) SID, (commodore 64) AND ALL OLD COMPUTING MUSIC IN GENERAL!!!

[@BurleyBoar]

Thank you for this. As a teen growing up in rural remote Oregon USA I was downloading these things on 1200 baud modem waiting for a local BBS to swap in a compilation CD with mods, trackers, and demos on certain nights on my family's 386. At points it was fun to shout out what was coming next in your video. The filling in of my gaps of knowledge with your great video was very entertaining. My and my few friends watching second reality were floored by it. We could not communicate this with others. It's nice to know we were not alone all these years later.

[@p3k1n0]

I used trackers (expecially Fast Tracker 2 and Impulse Tracker) from 1994 to 2000. I still look back to the great creative flow they allowed me to have. Thank you for making new generations aware of these wonderful tools. And yes, keygen were a great source of inspiration. Expecially, for me, H2O stuff.

[@saxxonpike]

Yooo I wrote music for the Reloaded cracktro at 0:34, thanks for featuring it hahaha Edit: now that I've watched through the rest of it, excellent presentation! It's good to see something so graphically exciting also this well researched. The world of trackers is so much more varied than covered here, but I think you've given folks a good starting point if they want to know more.

[@mars1683]

very talented lol

[@NeroWolf42]

this dude is the bomb when it comes to retry game documentary's your music is pretty good btw

[@l4dfanatic11]

haha ive heard that song various times before!!! its really nice :D

[@parttime6506]

Incredibly nostalgic for me, thank you

[@VarenvelDarakus]

Nice:) I heard this track few times before , good work:)

[@bassbusterx]

16-bit is such a timeless and nostalgic style for us. A testament of this is how even today, almost 40 years later, we still widely enjoy 16-bit and even 8-bit music

[@ikagura]

What about 32/64 bits?

[@KingLich451]

@@ikagura not old enough yet.

[@ikagura]

@@KingLich451 How? Even the 128-bits era is 20 years old already. Actually I'd take more indie game taking cues from 32/64 or even early 128 bits instead of rehashing 8-bits nostalgia again.

[@KingLich451]

@@ikagura i dont know honestly, i wouldnt mind those

[@netdoll]

An interesting usage of tracker music which didn't get mentioned in the video was when IGS (a Taiwanese company specializing in arcade hardware) decided to release a Neo Geo competitor called the PolyGame Master, and for the soundchip they decided to use the ICS2115 (pretty much a dead ringer for the chip used in the Gravis Ultrasound). IGS themselves used this hardware of course, and they also licensed it out to Cave (one of the big 2D shooting game developers) for use in a few of their games as well, which resulted in some of the best and most unique soundtracks to ever grace the world of Japanese arcade games. Also when it comes to contemporary trackers, Furnace is another option which has come out recently and it is -very- good for just about any kind of chip music imaginable, to the point of pretty much obsoleting most standalone trackers for chip music excepting ones like LSDJ which run natively on the hardware they're tracking for.

[@jolyonmyers]

Great doc! I used Noise Tracker to write a bunch of game music I did while I worked at Domark Software as a Graphic artist directly for the Amiga but also used Pro Tracker on the Amiga to write Midi orchestral music that was recorded to CD Audio for Agent Armstrong on PS1. Love the fact that the tracker was capable for writing music beyond the machine it was written for.

[@RaptureMusicOfficial]

Hi, great video and documentary! I'm a tracker musician from the PC-Demoscene. I've started with Fasttracker 2 in mid 90s, and then Milkytracker on the PC. I made game music which is based on Milky XM tracker files, like Mission in Snowdriftland by Nintendo. The game gets an update and re-release on Kickstarter at the moment! Musical greetings, Rapture

[@UltimatePerfection]

:)

[@agitat0r]

26:45 hearing Space Debris again after almost 30 years playing it on repeat in Digitrakker hit me like a nostalgia bomb. I ripped that tune apart, it was basically my intro to making music with computers. I'm almost in tears. Lovely video!

[@axelvandy2523]

😳 WOWWWWW!!!! Every time I start one of your videos I'm always Impressed with the knowledge, research and illustration of your work. It's something really to keep audience captivated for a whole 41 minutes....and when it finishes you could have watched more! Here's your Crown 👑 You deserve it!

[@cmf1402]

Deadlock has always been one of the most magical tracks I've heard.

[@ludoviajante]

Your work is simply amazing and unique. You are an inspiration to anyone who creates videos on the internet. Much love from Brazil!

[@johnsmith-ir1ne]

Huehuehuehue Gibe moni plox

[@Handicaptain]

Hello random man I have decided I love you

[@luancarlosoliveira5128]

É sempre bom encontrar um criador nos comentários de outro criador

[@DerAua]

Also he put a list of all the music used in the description...!! 😍

[@Sorrelhas]

Sudden Brasileiro out of nowhere Sempre adorei seu conteúdo, nunca pare por favor

[@U4iaF8]

Literally just told my son to be quiet for 40 minutes whilst I am walked through a wonderful history of my past musical adventures and computer crashes. Great piece of documentary work. And thanks for featuring my work "U4ia - Take A Trip From Me". Makes me feel all fuzzy and warm to know I was part of history. Cheers.

[@commandhat]

Looks like your track was miscredited - It's listed in the video description as "U4ia - Take a Trip From Me". Edit: Commenter updated his comment to change the song name. S'all good now.

[@robertraymond762]

Mind your son, fella.

[@fuzion_mixer]

hey man, i actually wanted to inform u about ur song being featured in this video...but seems u got here before i do so heheh

[@goddessesstartrekonlinefle3061]

Oh, rewatched this... Compelling reason to use trackers today: Dynamic Music. It's perfect, fixed CD audio can't adapt to game play, a tracker completely can easily. Thanks again for AWESOME productions on topic we all love!

[@poggazoo2792]

As many others in the comment, I was there when it happened and I got to meet and/or collaborate with some of the people you are talking about, at demoparties. Nice trip down memory lane!

[@ulti-mantis]

One area where trackers continued used in a more "mainstream" context well beyond the 90s were the Nintendo handhelds. The DS still used it for most soundtracks. Even the earlier disc-based home consoles still used a lot of tracker music with pretty high quality samples

[@j.a.8224]

Which makes sense, the SNES used tracker style music (the only limitation being the tiny RAM profile for the DSP contained all the sounds and samples, thus they were rather compressed), and that continued to the N64 due to storage and memory size limitations. The GBA and DS used the same, because a lot of it was ports and they had small memory profiles so streaming audio while doable was trickier in the 4mb of ram for a DS (and limited often to say videos). Trackers have always been compact files and kept their use on systems with tiny profiles and some sound processing but no MIDI synth chip.

[@Tehstroyer]

Yup, earlier phone games as well. Multiple demoscene musicians found their paycheck niche there. For example, Alexander Brandon and Peter Hajba composed for the Bejeweled games.

[@seronymus]

@@CerealKiller your comment makes me want a midi keyboard

[@milk_bath]

Modern hardware trackers are very fun. Check out the Polyend Tracker, Dirtywave M8 Tracker, and all of Elektron’s instruments are tracker based.

[@rvnx]

I wouldn't really call things like SF2/USF tracker music. It's more akin to MIDI with a custom soundfont in the way it allows to have a central file for samples and then have small file for the actual composition.

[@Meganaut]

You are doing the Tracker scene a HUGE justice, my dude. Here I thought I knew almost everything about the Tracker scene but boy was I wrong. Really informative video and an awesome tribute to one of the most under-appreciated scenes in computer history. Keep it up!

[@meanstoandend]

The quality of free content now a days is astounding. Not to say your content hasn’t always been incredible, but man. It’s so good.

[@MN12BIRD]

Back in ~1994 when I still had my 286 with only a PC speaker my classmate in grade school gave me a disk. On this disk was a tracker program for DOS and a selection of MOD files. I didn't know anything about what a tracker or a MOD file was really. I doubt I even knew what an Amiga was living in Canada I knew no one that had one. But I knew I liked the music! Even on a PC speaker this program was able to playback the 4ch sample based electronic music. I don't know how. I'm sure the bit rate was terribly low and the CPU usage MAXED out but it worked! I can't remember the name of the program BUT it did have that vintage beige color like the original tracker program on the Amiga. I do also remember it had visualizations inc colored circled that light up to the beat based on the channel or maybe Bass/Treble etc. One of the included song files (on the disc he gave me at least) was the theme from Beverly Hills Cop. I played it over and over amazed this sound came from the PC speaker. IIRC Pinball Dreams could also play the music on PC speaker? Maybe?

[@exploitedmind]

As someone who spent countless hours tinkering with more "modern" trackers in my high school days, this video is easily my favorite ever posted by this channel. Getting a comprehensive background into the history and scene is quite a treat. Absolutely ace content, man.

[@MauLerYT]

Always a good day when you upload, sir.

[@gueton5200]

oh hey look it's the longman

[@YumiCakes]

The thought of the longman himself fangirling over Ahoy like the rest of us makes me giggle.

[@hathaway.1166]

Always a good YEAR when the man uploads.

[@batmangovno]

He covered a whole topic in 40 minutes, so I hope you came here to learn

[@Critical_Hit]

Oh hey it’s you. The objective reviewer. Will you do a 5 hour response stream to the video?

[@Tech-Tempest]

I had chills throughout this entire video. Thank you for researching and creating this. The Unreal Soundtracks have such a special place in my childhood heart.

[@sluxi]

Coming from the PC world tracker music seemed magical, not just the wider range of instruments but that you could even have vocals in a module unlike what midis afforded you.

[@OmarFW]

Tracker music arguably is what made me fall in love with gaming and PCs in general. Unreal Tournament's soundtrack was all tracker based and it immediately sucked me into another world. I had never heard anything like it.

[@robcall4551]

Fuck yeah, I used to load them up in fast tracker and borrow the instruments.

[@Domarius64]

I still listen to that soundtrack, and all the unreal series. The composer has a distinct style, I can only describe as atmospheric and fantasy Sci-fi. It does take you to another fantasy place.

[@pseudonayme7717]

'Excellent!'😄

[@pseudonayme7717]

@@Domarius64 Agree. The soundtrack from Speedball 2 was similar in style and also excellent

[@GuilhermeSouza-tm4ud]

@@Domarius64 Not only that, but theres a reason Foregone Destruction is so memorable, it really fits so well on the Facing Worlds map that its crazy. The unsettling calm vibe from the start while you watch the earth from a distance is a experience I still waiting to be replicated, it fits too well, only to the track pick up in intensity while you battle for the flags that most of the time replicated the game motion so well. That map brings me memories. UT99 dont get a fraction of the recognition it deserves for that OST.

[@metfan4l]

*HE'S BACK*

[@grlt23]

He is alive?!!

[@Aletheides01]

Is it the same person though? The voice sounds not at all like in the earlier videos on this channel? Is it a voice actor/narrator? Or is it just me :D

[@davinhunt7558]

Some of the best sounds I've heard are when I opened up a hacked gamed installer and the custom retro music would play. I had never heard sounds like that before then, they were simply amazing and I envied the creators of the software!

[@Lightstep9]

Amazing, thank you for your efforts in covering the Tracker scene, huge nostalgia vibes, brings tears to the eyes thinking back of days gone by. Very grateful we have what we have today and how we have all come a long way to present days. Thank you again for the research and producing this documentary. o7

[@TERPormf]

Can I just say that this is one of my favorite videos you’ve done so far. I’m actually blown away by all the new things I’ve learned from it and have an even greater appreciation for the Amiga now.

[@arctic215]

1 day?

[@betr8]

1 day ago in nov19 ?

[@IngoPagels]

@@arctic215 yehr. lol. was 50 seconds live and got 99 comments. I guess he uploaded it, set it on private and has a small review by a core audience.

[@mauz791]

@@arctic215 patreon supporter

[@Indigo_Gaming]

Inspirational as always! I remember the first time I popped open a .MOD file to see how one game dev managed to make their music files so small and without the use of .MID files, I was stunned at the sheer creativity and complexity of the medium. This just puts all of that into context!

[@AverageAlien]

boring checkmark comment pushed to the top by rigged comment section again

[@Ttegegg]

The bottom comment section will not be suppressed

[@thewiirocks]

A friend gave me three MOD files and the trackers to run them. AxelF, AllThatSheWants, and GirlFromIpenema. I remember opening AxelF first and jamming out to the sounds of Beverly Hills Cop. Sounded WAY better than any MIDI file I'd ever heard. Then I opened up AllThatSheWants and heard... vocals? As in, actual voice samples?!? I killed the program and checked. The file was small. Small enough to fit on the floppy along with the other two songs and the trackers. Absolutely *blew my mind* that a song that sounded like it came off the radio was playing on my computer.

[@roygalaasen]

My first experience with trackers was the ultimate sound tracker itself. I remember it crashing for no reason at all and it was an incredibly steep learning curve before I finally found out how to load a song because it was so finicky to use. It did not save mods at all. When I got a tracker that could save mods, I kept saving as songs still, because of space issues. I eventually started to save as mods so that is the only songs that I made that I can actually faithfully listen to. The other songs I don’t have the instrument disks any more, so it is a bit more challenging to recreate those songs, but I did some research on them once. I think the songs have the exact same structure as mods, except the sample part at the end is cut off. They are also compressed, but it is not hard to find the algorithm in any of the tracker source codes.

[@roygalaasen]

@@AverageAlien just out of curiosity, could you explain why this is a problem. I see comments from modern vintage gamer and medlife crisis in here as well. Please inform an ignorant me. Edit: I noticed the next comment indicating that it suppressed other people’s viewpoints. I have personally not found that to be a problem. Maybe if you only read the first 5 comments.

[@redlead6144]

Ahoy plz come back i can't sleep soundly without that voice

[@rensomeoneelse1241]

Tysm for making this!!! Ive always been missing the context of "how" and "why" for tracker music and this was such a thorough explination. What an amazing part of electronic music history ❤️

[@TheChromieHomie]

It's so wild to see the extreme evolution of ahoys content. I remember watching the MW2 guides and now we're here 11 years later with documentary level production

[@KC-bg1th]

About 9 years ago I begged LHS Chiptunes (guy that makes Reloaded crack themes) to remix one of my songs, and he did. I thought it was as simple as providing him a .midi, and he'd be able to quickly make it sound chiptune. I was obviously ignorant, but he still did it for me. To this day I respect him and love his music more than any other artist. I hope he gets more recognition through this video; I strongly suggest everybody to give LHS Chiptunes Palace Walls a listen. It's quite possibly one of the best chiptune songs in existence.

[@cannedbeverage7687]

"makes Reloaded crack themes" as in present tense? Pretty sure there haven't been any new games with RLD's name slapped on them in years

[@KC-bg1th]

@@cannedbeverage7687 Hahaha, yeah I'm not too sure. I haven't torrented since my last computer, so 5+ years ago? Even then the game I torrented might have been older. But yeah, he isn't very active and even 9 years ago he wasn't. If you look up LHS Chiptunes Reloaded installer, you'll see whenever his last Reloaded crack theme was.

[@stevesartandcacti]

I dig it! I admire how people figure out how to explore every inch of tech hardware, extracting out all that's physically possible, until new tech arrives. Then imprinting their own unique style into each format. Then the cycle repeats again. Absolutely fascinating stuff!

[@azraelle6232]

As if I needed an excuse to go back and listen to all my old tracker files again... here I go. Been listening and creating since the early 90's on my PC. Had no idea of the deep history of this format, thank you!

[@VideoGameAnimationStudy]

1:29 - ALLEY CAT! My god that took me back before I even realised what I was listening to.

[@MR-vj8dn]

Took me a few seconds but I recognised it too 😃

[@omengaming9391]

@@MR-vj8dn Same, took me a little at first to recognize the music, and I used to love playing Alley Cat, bit later though, late 80's, 89/90'ish

OMG! My brain triggered on that too! That brought me back to 1990s when playing on mom's work PC :)

[@karakenio]

took me zero seconds, haha

[@MR-vj8dn]

@@karakenio Awesome 😊

[@Drozerix]

39:03 "In essence, trackers are a performance -- it's the sound of 16-bit." very well put! I agree :)

[@RobFarley74]

And one of the most significant features you got in protracker was that you could terminate a pattern without running the full 32 beats, this meant you could effectively do different time signatures which was fantastic so no longer stuck on 4/4. Also creating really shorter patterns and then having double time patterns for 64th note sections for complex fills at the end of a bar. It was all very cool! I'm tempted to download one of the pc trackers you mentioned at the end now!

[@flonkplonk1649]

What a great documentary! 👍🏻 the tracker sound is just so indistinguishable ! one of my favorites are the tracks from the Second Reality demo.

[@Audiojack_]

Seeing and hearing "Second Reality" still makes me shiver. Greetings from Finland.

[@bearmatic]

As an user of Noisetracker 1 and 2 on the Amiga, and later Fasttracker II for DOS, this was an incredible history lesson. Back then, we just used whatever version we could get from a friend of a friend. This comprehensive overview was extremely interesting. Thank you for your incredible works on all your videos. Far apart, but damn the quality is worth the wait to put it mildly. No other KZbin channel can comprise all my interests with such immaculate quality.

[@Daemonarch2k6]

Sweet memories. From about 1988 until 1991 i made some songs on the soundtracker. Don't remember which version it was. Still have the songs until today. Thanks for the memories! And thanks to the contructors of the amiga for the thought "hey, let's build a superior soundchip in this thing, if we need it or not". Sad that the Atari ST don't had an build in solution like that

[@RakeGrayFox]

Thanks Ahoy for this high level contents, thanks for this jump back in the 80's/90's, an era in which I was too young to understand but totally attracted to it. Love the video, and the OST too. Congrats.

[@OverCoat]

I may have known almost everything in the video already, but I still watched the whole thing with a big smile on my face :). I still listen to those old mod files almost every day, and I use Renoise exclusively these days to make my own music. The demoscene and modscene are an important part of computer history to me that I want to help share and keep alive, and this video is a well-made introduction to what that's all about.

[@solwogan5356]

Sup, SOC :)

[@OverCoat]

haha omg hi Sol

[@seronymus]

I feel sad that I'm only 23 and never got to get into all this beautiful scene, or really experience too much of the old internet/old computers. :c

[@KingLich451]

@@seronymus me too, at least we have these great videos to show us tje way

[@OverCoat]

It's never too late! There are still demoparties out there, even if a lot of the big ones mostly converted to LAN parties. Any compo category can always use more entries!

[@andyjohnson4907]

Not in a million years would I think that I'd want to watch a video about the music from the demos before my pirated Amiga games when I was eight. But here we are. Great job as usual.

[@MrStatutoryGrape]

Everytime I come around this page and find a video I havent seen yet, its a good day. Always love the typography and seamless design paired with excellent recording and attention to detail. Didnt even know I would be interested in this topic.

[@jurematoh]

As a part of the demo scene in the mid-to-late nineties and an avid user of FT2, I enjoyed this video very much. I later bought Renoise and still continue to create on it. Donovan's Moonbike by Radix is one of my favorite tracks from that era.