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[mjau]

I love modules and chiptunes and such.  Been trying to get into tracking, but gotta agree with the others here, it's so ridiculously unintuitive.  pxtone is nice and visual but a bit limited.  If you want something to repeat you have to copy it etc.

[Bad Sector]

it doesnt have module suppporrt cant believe your one of them one of those purists. there's nothing remotely intuitive about scantrons and i dont have acess to midi keyboard to write song on so its like zero fun trying to do that.

In the classic vertical tracker view you basically set up the computer to play a tune. You make the tune by saying when a note will play, for how long, etc. Basically you make a musical timeline.

I'm not sure about the "other" method you suggested. I thought it was some sort of replace the letters with keyboard keys or something. I haven't tried Pxtone, but from what i've seen the way you make notes isn't really different: the major difference is that notes are written from left to right in a 'chart' way and you edit a single instrument a time with an order list for each instrument, where in a tracker the notes are written from up to down using letters and you use channels to say when an instrument is used in time. Also in trackers time is relative to the pattern instead of to the song and you use a separate one dimensional order list for the patters (this is done to save space for repeating patterns probably).

I'm not purist, there are things i would like to change in a tracker (like getting rid of the order list and using a "grand pattern" screen where you put single or multi-column patterns in it), but i would keep the method you use to enter notes since i'm used to it.

Basically i think that's the trick: what you're used to.

Note that the fruity loops comment was because earlier versions of fruity loops worked similar to a tracker but instead of using vertical columns with letters they used horizontal rows with piano keyboards.

[FishyBoy]

But in trackers, at least the ones I've used, you don't use the mouse. You use the arrow keys to move a cursor about, and when you place a note it's position on the chart just adjusts it's time. You need to press certain keys to adjust the pitch. If you screw up, you need to scroll on back and readjust it. It's just an unintuitive method overall.

[Bad Sector]

Depends on how to look at it. If you look at it as playing music, yes it is unintuitive. However if you think about it, you're not playing music but instructing your computer to play music. In other words, you're editing the music score, much like how you would edit a text in your word processor for an article by adding bold, italic, underline, changing fonts, etc so the printer will know how to produce what you want (basically "instructing the word processor how to show your text").

Also not every tracker is keyboard based. In fact, the most known tracker, Fast Tracker II, and it's multiplatform remake, MilkyTracker, use the mouse for almost everything (except adding notes - for this you do use the typing keyboard or a MIDI keyboard).

[Tanner]

and we're saying, yes, that's nice and all, but why can't we enter notes without learning a hex system or whatever and use a piano roll?
it shouldn't be that hard to add. is it just because the tracker community is too "hardcore" and xenophobic to have an option for it? cause that's the vibe i've been getting.
i know this sounds inflammatory, and i'm not really directing this at you bad sector.

[Bad Sector]

But they are notes, not hex values.

In traditional music theory pitch classes are represented by the first seven letters of the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F and G) (some countries use other names as in the table below).

(Full article with more details)

There are hex values, but those are the instrument numbers and effects. Some trackers (like ModPlug Tracker i think) provide combo boxes and more "nice looking" interfaces to edit these values, so this isn't an issue either. Using a piano roll is possible and in fact easy to implement i think (it'll eat more space in screen though). I believe that the fact that trackers don't use it is that its not asked much and most people who use trackers are familiar with using the letters.

[FishyBoy]

Depends on how to look at it. If you look at it as playing music, yes it is unintuitive. However if you think about it, you're not playing music but instructing your computer to play music.

I understand how it works.

What I don't understand is why the interface must be so very clumsy.

It's like if there was a version of Tetris which you controlled by hula hooping constantly. The problem is not my not understanding of how to win at Tetris, but that doing well takes way more effort than is truly neccesary.

[Bad Sector]

Well, trackers are still being made and updated. Currently the most advanced one is probably Renoise, which adds a bunch of features to the tracker music. It is not free though. From the freeland, MilkyTracker is constantly updated, although their current goal is to produce a FastTracker II clone as close to the original as possible and once this is reached (according to a die-hard FT2 user i know, they seem to be already there or at least close enough so differences not being really noticable) they'll think about adding new features (ok this is not 100% because they already have some new features in place like generating waves).

[Nate Kling]

Atuun, Im glad you said something.  I too feel that piano rolls are clumsy.  I use milky tracker and I learned it very quickly its very easy to read and straight forward.  The only thing i could see as being a bit tricky is the codes for effects but the help guide provides an explanation and examples.  Another thing about tracking is that I believe its easier to line things up on beat especially when you are a beginner. When i first started messing with music in a piano roll i found it hard to line up the notes and keep everything on beat but trackers force you to place them into a system.  It seems much easier not to accidentally have things off beat.  I agree with Atunn though its really just comes down to preference and what you first learned.

[Core Xii]

I like Purple Motion.

[agj]

yeah im not saying its IMPOSSIBLE.. but i would LOVE to see anyone just add a piano roll it coulnt be hard, its just that SCENERS dont like the idea of it becuase they love filling out a SCANTRON form to make music.. when its really hard to do for all of the rest of us. haha...\:

I found the tracking paradigm to be pretty approachable, but that's maybe because Nitrotracker uses an interface with piano keys, which is awesome. I even got used to the CDEFGAB notation (we use do re mi fa sol la si here). If you have a homebrew-capable DS, Nitrotracker comes highly recommended.

[soundofjw]

Tracking is silly. It's best when used in combination with MIDI to create ridiculous rock-chiptune-mashups. Any questions?

[GregWS]

yeah im not saying its IMPOSSIBLE.. but i would LOVE to see anyone just add a piano roll it coulnt be hard, its just that SCENERS dont like the idea of it becuase they love filling out a SCANTRON form to make music.. when its really hard to do for all of the rest of us. haha...\:

I found the tracking paradigm to be pretty approachable, but that's maybe because Nitrotracker uses an interface with piano keys, which is awesome. I even got used to the CDEFGAB notation (we use do re mi fa sol la si here). If you have a homebrew-capable DS, Nitrotracker comes highly recommended.

Funny you mention it, after my friend got back from his trip to Hong Kong, my DS became homebrew compatible, and I bookmarked Nitrotracker to check out over the holidays when I'm not so busy.  I guess I'll really have to check it out now. 

[Jad]

Just to break the pattern of people either loving or loathing/not getting tracker/piano roll, I just feel the need to say that I think both are intuitive and good alternatives.

There is one system of writing music that just fudges up my brain, and that's goddamn Musical Notes. Shit, a system not even dealing with chromatic notes without having to add special marks and shit? Wow, I don't even wanna touch that ):

But yeah. I'm a cakewalk and reason-user and have been playing around with piano rolls since I was like 12 years old, so my workflow there is good.

Instantly writing music into a tracker is kinda awkward for me, but I have once written out a song 'sketch' in cakewalk to get the harmonies and melody down, and then fleshed it out with milkytracker, and that worked really well.

So yeah, I think both ways are plausible, it's just that I have a workflow going on with piano roll style composing, and not at all with tracker.

But getting over hurdles is awesome. The thing I can't stand about trackers is the loading of samples and how to get them, especially with simple waveforms, to set loop-points in less-than-milliseconds-increments makes my head asplode. But the rest is easy I think, especially when the tracker has a preview-tone-interface where you can play your keyboard as a  ... keyboard and hear the notes you're putting down. If you've made some of the song with a sequencer, then you already know where to go.

So let's overcome our own hurdles, people, and start making some awesome music in all formats we like (this includes me and my tracker aspirations )

[soundofjw]

I respect all forms of music writing. For me, something different comes out depending on what I do - when I track I can get a very oldschool sound and the melodies tend to be more catchy and complex (typically because they are the melodies I cannot play on the keyboard in one sitting). I track extremely fast because you don't have to spend too much time fooling with mixing and plugins and stuff (although arguably, good trackers create their own samples which involves a pre-mixing stage... I tried some of this in Bonesaw).

Then, when I sit down with my MIDI Keyboard and Cakewalk something entirely different is unleashed. I tend to write fuller more sophisticated music with a DAW then I do a tracker, and I really love to toy with audio processing.

Now, when I sit down with Finale open, I create an entirely different monster. This is the music that is most closely associated with neo-classical music and it's something else entirely - I have a lot more control and sophistication with harmonies, progressions (or lack-thereof), and the music can be extremely playful. Plus, sheet music is just fun to write (although it can get tedious).

Now, the reason I purchased Renoise is simple. How could I -NOT- want to marry the idea of tracking with classical VST programming?! The results have never let me down (and some of my favorite TSE2 tracks were created in Renoise entirely).  However, it is not my goto environment for writing music because the tick-based system makes it very difficult to create detailed MIDI-Controller envelopes. Now, that said, I COULD just turn up the resolution, but I hate seeing the notes fly by that fast, and it's just not my style...

I avoid keyboard rolls to input notes because I think they are evil. Music already has a grid system, and that's sheet music - the note durations are just shorthanded - I don't like scrolling years away to see how long my notes are going on for. Of course, it does have a certain usefulness and I can see the appeal to musicians who can't read sheet music or that don't have MIDI Controllers to input their music. So it's just a personal preference with me. I do however use the keyboard roll to manipulate MIDI data, but I'd never start there. (:

That's my two cents, gents.