Tracker music through the eyes of the developer
It seems that the topic of trackers is disclosed in articles more than once. The phenomenon is almost 27 years old, but to this day the hacker number-letter representation of music is shrouded in an aura of mystery, because turning the “noise” on the screen into a beautiful composition is nothing more than magic. What is the basis? And why are trackers popular to this day? I will try to answer these questions from the point of view of the developer of such programs.
The world's first tracker is considered to be the Ultimate SoundTracker program, written by German developer and composer Carsten Obarsky in 1987 for the Commodore Amiga computer . The program was created primarily for writing music for games. With her appearance she scared a lot of musicians with a classical education. She was called complex and devoid of logic. The first tracker looked like this:
')
Despite the criticism, the program subsequently had an army of fans, the most advanced of whom hacked into the original code and, on its basis, began to unofficially release improved clones. For example, this is a rather popular clone called NoiseTracker:
But where does such a strange interface come from? Where are the music staff and the characters familiar to musicians? Let's see.
Commodore Amiga had revolutionary hardware characteristics for the home computer of the time. In particular, the Paula sound chip, a true digital sampler, was installed on it. There were several fragments of recorded sounds (samples) in PCM 8-bit format in the computer’s RAM. Chip Paula could play four such samples simultaneously, dynamically changing their volume and speed - this gave four independent channels (or tracks), each of which could play a certain sequence of samples. But four channels are not so many, when writing complex music you need to use them very carefully. For example, taking a chord of three notes, we will have exactly one channel, on which we need to manage to arrange the drums and bass. Therefore, the interface of the first trackers is nothing more than a sound chip control panel, a representation of a computer musical composition at the lowest level. We see four hardware channels (columns), and a certain sequence of actions inside. All chip parameters are completely user controlled. This, by the way, explains the meaning of the popular Chiptune direction - music written for an audio chip (although today emulators of well-known chips are used most often, or some kind of stylization in general).
MOS8364 Paula - the sound heart of the Amiga computer
Since the trackers were written by programmers, their logic seems extremely simple. Music is a sequence of commands for a sound chip. That is, something resembling a program in assembler. The sequence is executed from top to bottom by the tracker. For clarity, teams are grouped by channels described above. One team can immediately perform several useful actions, as it consists of the following parts:
For example, C # 2 8 240 reports the tracker literally as follows: in the current channel, start playing sample 8 at a frequency corresponding to the note C # 2, while gradually lowering the tonality (indicated by the effect code 2) at a speed of 40. All numerical parameters were recorded in hexadecimal number system, since it is more compact and, again, familiar.
And since tracker music is an alphanumeric program, you can edit it, as in a text editor, using a standard computer keyboard. One important plus of trackers follows from here - notes and rhythmic patterns can be driven in very quickly, by analogy with high-speed text typing.
Another plus comes from the desire of programmers to simplify everything. Namely: often repeated pieces of code are ridiculous every time to rewrite from scratch - just select them into separate subroutines and then specify the addresses of these subroutines in the right places. Also in the music code. For example, the chorus is repeated twice. Simply duplicating it manually is inconvenient and uneconomical. Therefore, we single out the chorus into a separate subprogram, which is called a pattern (piece of musical score) in the environment of musical editors, and further along the composition set the number of this pattern in the right places. In addition, if in the future you want to change a couple of notes in the chorus, then it will need to be done only in one pattern, and not in the entire composition. In classic trackers there is a list of patterns. He says in which order the patterns play and looks like, for example, 01, 02, 03, 03, 01, 01. After pressing PLAY, the tracker starts reading this list and plays the patterns exactly in the order in which they are indicated. In Ultimate SoundTracker, the size of the pattern was fixed - 4 channels, 64 lines.
The scheme of the tracker. In the evolution processor, the load directly on the sound chip decreased, since the power of computers was enough for software synthesis and sound processing.
Well, the final feature of classic trackers is the file format for storing music. The most common of these is the MOD format, which came with Ultimate SoundTracker and rooted in the tracker space for a year, even after the PC removed Amiga from the scene. The beauty of such a file is that it stores all the necessary information for playing and editing: samples, patterns, and some additional parameters. After downloading MOD, you will hear the music in the form in which the author conceived it, with the smallest nuances. And if you like it, you can easily borrow samples or make a remix by changing the contents of the patterns. Today, a huge archive of MOD music can be found on the Mod Archive website.
A selection of MOD-songs from Jogeir Liljedahl
What happened next? The number of SoundTracker clones has grown. They overgrown with new functions, the interface was improved, the number of channels increased, the load shifted from hardware to software. Tracker music became part of the Demoscene computer subculture. Amiga was a thing of the past, and the trackers crawled onto other platforms, the most massive of which was of course the PC. There appeared new tracker formats of the 2nd generation: S3M (Scream Tracker), XM (FastTracker), IT (Impulse Tracker). And while home computers did not differ in high performance, and files were transferred over the network at a snail's speed - MOD-music became a kind of replacement for modern MP3, as files with good sound could weigh only a few kilobytes.
Impulse Tracker (DOS) - the most powerful 2nd generation tracker
FastTracker is the second most popular after Impulse Tracker. The battles "who is cooler" between them were serious
MilkyTracker - for nostalgic DOS and FastTracker. Cross-platform open source tracker
At the end of the 90s, the power of the computers reached a level suitable for generating CD quality sound (16-bit, 44100 Hz) in real time. A wave of various software synthesizers has gone, the format of VST plug-ins has appeared. Of course, this was reflected in the trackers. One of the first representatives of the 3rd generation of trackers was the revolutionary Jeskola Buzz , which made it possible to use instead of samples complex combinations of synthesizers and effects. Behind him came the equally cool Psycle, Renoise, SunVox, etc. In terms of quality, they were no longer inferior to expensive studio software, although the interface still recognized the native Ultimate SoundTracker. For some it is a comfortable environment, for someone it is not. Only a matter of taste and habit, no more. But when it comes to the characteristic tracker sound, this refers either to the old programs or to a certain stylization for them, because in practice, the 3rd calendars trackers may sound no different from any Cubase with a set of VST-nis.
Jeskola Buzz - the first tracker, combined with a modular synthesizer
Renoise is one of the most actively developing trackers today.
ModPlug Tracker at one time showed that the transition of trackers to Windows is inevitable
My development is SunVox. Something similar to Jeskola Buzz, but there are serious differences: support for a large number of platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS, Android, etc.), a unique system for arranging patterns and etc. I will not go into details here, so as not to use the hub "I am promoting" :)
Personally, I seriously got acquainted with the trackers somewhere in 1995, when my brother installed FastTracker2 on our not the fastest computer. Before that, I had already seen some primitive 4-channel MOD trackers in text mode, but from the last program they simply demolished the tower ... Graphic mode with a mouse, 32 channels, 16-bit, volume envelopes! And all this on the 486SX without a sound card (we used the Covox assembled on the knee)! Not having a musical education, not being able to play any instrument, not knowing notes, from that day (to this day) it became for me the most convenient and logical way to enter music into a computer. I think many readers will be able to remember a very similar story :)
EdLib Tracker for OPL2 Soundcards.
The world's first tracker is considered to be the Ultimate SoundTracker program, written by German developer and composer Carsten Obarsky in 1987 for the Commodore Amiga computer . The program was created primarily for writing music for games. With her appearance she scared a lot of musicians with a classical education. She was called complex and devoid of logic. The first tracker looked like this:
')
Despite the criticism, the program subsequently had an army of fans, the most advanced of whom hacked into the original code and, on its basis, began to unofficially release improved clones. For example, this is a rather popular clone called NoiseTracker:
But where does such a strange interface come from? Where are the music staff and the characters familiar to musicians? Let's see.
Commodore Amiga had revolutionary hardware characteristics for the home computer of the time. In particular, the Paula sound chip, a true digital sampler, was installed on it. There were several fragments of recorded sounds (samples) in PCM 8-bit format in the computer’s RAM. Chip Paula could play four such samples simultaneously, dynamically changing their volume and speed - this gave four independent channels (or tracks), each of which could play a certain sequence of samples. But four channels are not so many, when writing complex music you need to use them very carefully. For example, taking a chord of three notes, we will have exactly one channel, on which we need to manage to arrange the drums and bass. Therefore, the interface of the first trackers is nothing more than a sound chip control panel, a representation of a computer musical composition at the lowest level. We see four hardware channels (columns), and a certain sequence of actions inside. All chip parameters are completely user controlled. This, by the way, explains the meaning of the popular Chiptune direction - music written for an audio chip (although today emulators of well-known chips are used most often, or some kind of stylization in general).
MOS8364 Paula - the sound heart of the Amiga computer
Since the trackers were written by programmers, their logic seems extremely simple. Music is a sequence of commands for a sound chip. That is, something resembling a program in assembler. The sequence is executed from top to bottom by the tracker. For clarity, teams are grouped by channels described above. One team can immediately perform several useful actions, as it consists of the following parts:
- note (three characters); for example: A # 3;
- sample number (one character);
- effect number (one character); for example, the effect of F changed the playback speed, and the effect of 3 provided a smooth transition from one note to another;
- effect parameter (two characters; range from 00 to FF).
For example, C # 2 8 240 reports the tracker literally as follows: in the current channel, start playing sample 8 at a frequency corresponding to the note C # 2, while gradually lowering the tonality (indicated by the effect code 2) at a speed of 40. All numerical parameters were recorded in hexadecimal number system, since it is more compact and, again, familiar.
And since tracker music is an alphanumeric program, you can edit it, as in a text editor, using a standard computer keyboard. One important plus of trackers follows from here - notes and rhythmic patterns can be driven in very quickly, by analogy with high-speed text typing.
Another plus comes from the desire of programmers to simplify everything. Namely: often repeated pieces of code are ridiculous every time to rewrite from scratch - just select them into separate subroutines and then specify the addresses of these subroutines in the right places. Also in the music code. For example, the chorus is repeated twice. Simply duplicating it manually is inconvenient and uneconomical. Therefore, we single out the chorus into a separate subprogram, which is called a pattern (piece of musical score) in the environment of musical editors, and further along the composition set the number of this pattern in the right places. In addition, if in the future you want to change a couple of notes in the chorus, then it will need to be done only in one pattern, and not in the entire composition. In classic trackers there is a list of patterns. He says in which order the patterns play and looks like, for example, 01, 02, 03, 03, 01, 01. After pressing PLAY, the tracker starts reading this list and plays the patterns exactly in the order in which they are indicated. In Ultimate SoundTracker, the size of the pattern was fixed - 4 channels, 64 lines.
The scheme of the tracker. In the evolution processor, the load directly on the sound chip decreased, since the power of computers was enough for software synthesis and sound processing.
Well, the final feature of classic trackers is the file format for storing music. The most common of these is the MOD format, which came with Ultimate SoundTracker and rooted in the tracker space for a year, even after the PC removed Amiga from the scene. The beauty of such a file is that it stores all the necessary information for playing and editing: samples, patterns, and some additional parameters. After downloading MOD, you will hear the music in the form in which the author conceived it, with the smallest nuances. And if you like it, you can easily borrow samples or make a remix by changing the contents of the patterns. Today, a huge archive of MOD music can be found on the Mod Archive website.
A selection of MOD-songs from Jogeir Liljedahl
What happened next? The number of SoundTracker clones has grown. They overgrown with new functions, the interface was improved, the number of channels increased, the load shifted from hardware to software. Tracker music became part of the Demoscene computer subculture. Amiga was a thing of the past, and the trackers crawled onto other platforms, the most massive of which was of course the PC. There appeared new tracker formats of the 2nd generation: S3M (Scream Tracker), XM (FastTracker), IT (Impulse Tracker). And while home computers did not differ in high performance, and files were transferred over the network at a snail's speed - MOD-music became a kind of replacement for modern MP3, as files with good sound could weigh only a few kilobytes.
Impulse Tracker (DOS) - the most powerful 2nd generation tracker
FastTracker is the second most popular after Impulse Tracker. The battles "who is cooler" between them were serious
MilkyTracker - for nostalgic DOS and FastTracker. Cross-platform open source tracker
At the end of the 90s, the power of the computers reached a level suitable for generating CD quality sound (16-bit, 44100 Hz) in real time. A wave of various software synthesizers has gone, the format of VST plug-ins has appeared. Of course, this was reflected in the trackers. One of the first representatives of the 3rd generation of trackers was the revolutionary Jeskola Buzz , which made it possible to use instead of samples complex combinations of synthesizers and effects. Behind him came the equally cool Psycle, Renoise, SunVox, etc. In terms of quality, they were no longer inferior to expensive studio software, although the interface still recognized the native Ultimate SoundTracker. For some it is a comfortable environment, for someone it is not. Only a matter of taste and habit, no more. But when it comes to the characteristic tracker sound, this refers either to the old programs or to a certain stylization for them, because in practice, the 3rd calendars trackers may sound no different from any Cubase with a set of VST-nis.
Jeskola Buzz - the first tracker, combined with a modular synthesizer
Renoise is one of the most actively developing trackers today.
ModPlug Tracker at one time showed that the transition of trackers to Windows is inevitable
My development is SunVox. Something similar to Jeskola Buzz, but there are serious differences: support for a large number of platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS, Android, etc.), a unique system for arranging patterns and etc. I will not go into details here, so as not to use the hub "I am promoting" :)
Personally, I seriously got acquainted with the trackers somewhere in 1995, when my brother installed FastTracker2 on our not the fastest computer. Before that, I had already seen some primitive 4-channel MOD trackers in text mode, but from the last program they simply demolished the tower ... Graphic mode with a mouse, 32 channels, 16-bit, volume envelopes! And all this on the 486SX without a sound card (we used the Covox assembled on the knee)! Not having a musical education, not being able to play any instrument, not knowing notes, from that day (to this day) it became for me the most convenient and logical way to enter music into a computer. I think many readers will be able to remember a very similar story :)
Interesting Facts
- For those who are familiar with the MIDI standard, it is worth remembering one important difference between the channel in the tracker and the channel in MIDI. The MIDI channel is most often assigned to one instrument. The tracker channel is not tied to anything - it is just a repository for any information, any instruments can play in it in any order, but (and this is very important) not at the same time. For example, on one channel the piano can first play, and immediately after it the samples of drums.
- The classic tracker controlled the Amiga computer's Paula sound chip. There are trackers for other chips, more simple, unable to play samples. Speech on such chips as AY-3-8910 (familiar to us from the ZX Spectrum 128), SID (for computers Commodore 64), Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2, FM-synthesizer in old sound cards).
EdLib Tracker for OPL2 Soundcards.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/240101/
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