Tracker is the generic term for a class of
music sequencerA music sequencer is software or hardware designed to create and manage computer-generated music....
software which, in its purest form, allow the user to arrange sound samples stepwise on a timeline across several
monophonicMonaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...
channelsChannel, in communications , refers to the medium used to convey information from a sender to a receiver.- Overview :...
. A tracker's interface is primarily numeric; notes are entered via the alphanumeric keys of the computer keyboard, while parameters, effects and so forth are entered in
hexadecimalIn mathematics and computer science, hexadecimal is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0–9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen.Its primary use is as a...
. A complete song consists of several small multi-channel patterns chained together via a master list.
How it works
There are several elements common to any tracker program: samples, notes, effects, tracks (or channels), patterns, and orders.
A
sampleIn music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. This is typically done with a sampler, which can be a piece of hardware or a computer program on a digital computer. Sampling is also...
is a small digital sound file of an instrument, voice, or other sound effect. Most trackers allow a part of the sample to be looped, simulating a
sustainIn music, sustain is a parameter of musical sound over time. As its name implies, it denotes the period of time during which the sound remains before it becomes inaudible, or silent.Additionally, sustain is the third of the four segments in an ADSR envelope...
of a note.
A
noteIn music, the term note has two primary meanings:#a sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#a pitched sound itself....
designates the frequency at which the sample is played back. By increasing or decreasing the playback speed of a digital sample, the pitch is raised or lowered, simulating instrumental notes (e.g. C, C#, D, etc.).
An
effect is a special function applied to a particular note. These effects are then applied during playback through either hardware or software. Common tracker effects include volume,
portamentoPortamento is a musical term originated from Italian primarily denoting a vocal slide between two pitches and its emulation by instruments such as the violin, and is sometimes used interchangeably with anticipation. It is also applied to one type of glissando as well as to the "slide" or "bend"...
,
vibratoVibrato is a musical effect, produced in singing and on musical instruments by a regular pulsating change of pitch, and is used to add expression and vocal-like qualities to instrumental music...
,
retriggerRetriggering is a tracker technique in which a sample is replayed a set number of times within a certain timeframe.-Basic theory of tracker time:...
, and
arpeggioIn music, an arpeggio is Italian for broken chord where the notes are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously. This word comes from the italian word "arpeggiare" , which means "to play on a harp"...
.
A
track (or
channel) is a space where one sample is played back at a time. Whereas the original
AmigaThe Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985...
trackers only provided four tracks, the hardware limit, modern trackers can mix a virtually unlimited number of channels into one sound stream through software mixing. Tracks have a fixed number of "rows" on which notes and effects can be placed (most trackers lay out tracks in a vertical fashion). Tracks typically contain 64 rows and 16 beats, although the beats and tempo can be increased or decreased to the composer's taste.
A basic drum set could thus be arranged by putting a bass drum at rows 0, 4, 8, 12 etc. of one track and putting some hihat at rows 2, 6, 10, 14 etc. of a second track. Of course bass and hats could be interleaved on the same track, if the samples are short enough. If not, the previous sample is usually stopped when the next one begins. Some modern trackers simulate
polyphonyPolyphony is the property of an electronic musical instrument which describes how many notes it can sound at one time. An instrument which can produce multiple notes at a time is said to be polyphonic. If an instrument is capable of playing 16 notes at once, for example, it is said to have 16-voice...
in a single track by setting the "new note action" of each instrument to cut, continue,
fadeIn audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for film cinematography or theatre lighting, in much the same way ....
out, or
releaseAn ADSR envelope is a component of many synthesizers, samplers, and other electronic musical instruments. Its function is to modulate some aspect of the instrument's sound — often its loudness — over time...
, opening new mixing channels as necessary.
A
pattern is a group of simultaneously played tracks that represents a full section of the song. A pattern usually represents an even number of
measuresIn musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration. The word measure is heard more frequently in the U.S., while bar is used in other English-speaking countries, although musicians generally understand both usages...
of music composition.
An
order is part of a sequence of patterns which defines the layout of a song. Patterns can be repeated across multiple orders to save tracking time and file space.
There are also some tracker-like programs that utilize tracker-style sequencing schemes, while using real-time sound synthesis instead of samples. Many of these programs are designed for creating music for a particular synthesizer chip such as the OPL chips of the Adlib and SoundBlaster sound cards, or the sound chips of classic home computers. These programs are also often called "trackers" and are listed in this article.
Tracker music is typically stored in
module fileModule files are a family of music file formats related to the MOD file format on Amiga systems. Those who produce these files and listen to them form the worldwide "MOD scene", a part of the Demoscene...
s where the song data and samples are encapsulated in a single file. Several module file formats are supported by popular music player programs such as
WinampWinamp is a proprietary media player written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is skinnable, multi-format freeware/shareware.Winamp was first released by Justin Frankel in 1997. Current Winamp development is credited to Ben Allison and Maksim Tyrtyshny...
or
XMMSThe X Multimedia System is a free software audio player very similar to Winamp, that runs on many Unix-like operating systems.- History :...
. Well-known formats include
MODMOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...
,
MEDOctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement...
,
S3MThe S3M format is an advanced module format, and is the successor to the STM format used by the original Scream Tracker. Both formats are based on the original MOD format used on the Commodore Amiga computer....
,
XMXM, standing for "extended module", is an audio file type introduced by Triton's Fast Tracker 2. XM introduced multisampling-capable instruments with volume and panning envelopes, and basic pattern compression...
and
IT.IT is the module format used by Impulse Tracker, featuring support for more advanced features than MOD, S3M or XM before it. These include a larger limit for lines in a pattern, higher quality samples, and other effects....
.
History
The term tracker derives from
Ultimate SoundtrackerUltimate SoundTracker, or SoundTracker for short, is the grandfather of all tracker programs. It is the creation of Karsten Obarski, a German software developer who was part of a team called EAS. It started life as a commercial product for the Commodore Amiga in mid 1987...
; the first tracker software.
Ultimate Soundtracker was written by
Karsten ObarskiKarsten Obarski , handle "Obi", is considered a pioneer of the demoscene for the creation of the music creation program "Ultimate Soundtracker", the ancestor of all tracker programs.- Life :...
and released in 1987 by EAS Computer Technik for the Commodore Amiga.
Ultimate Soundtracker was a commercial product, but not much later shareware clones such as
NoiseTracker appeared as well. The general concept of step-sequencing samples numerically, as used in trackers, is also found in the
Fairlight CMIThe Fairlight CMI was the first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer. It was designed in 1979 by the founders of Fairlight, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, and based on a dual-6800 microprocessor computer designed by Tony Furse in Sydney, Australia...
sampling workstation of the late 1970s. Some early tracker-like programs appeared for the
Commodore 64The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January, 1982. Volume production started sometime in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$ 595...
, such as
Rock Monitor, but these did not feature sample playback, instead playing notes on the computer's internal synthesizer.
The first computer game to feature tracker music was
AmegasAmegas is a computer game by reLINE Software for the Amiga written by Guido Bartels and released in 1987.The game, a clone of Arkanoid, involves a wall of bricks and a moving ball. The player controls a paddle, situated at the bottom of the screen. The paddle can only be moved horizontally, and...
(1987), an
Arkanoidis an arcade game developed by Taito in 1986. It is based upon Atari's Breakout games of the 1970s. The title refers to a doomed "mothership" from which the Vaus, the player's ship, escapes.-Overview:...
clone for Amiga. The music, which was composed by Obarski, is generally considered the first MOD music ever made and is well known by fans of "old school" computer music.
Most early tracker musicians were from the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
and
ScandinaviaScandinavia is a geographical region in northern Europe that includes, and is named after, the Scanian Province. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark...
. This may be attributable to the close relationship of the tracker to the
demosceneThe demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
, which grew rapidly in Scandinavian countries, and the relative affordability in the UK of computers able to run tracker software. Tracker music became something of an underground phenomenon, especially as so much contemporary chart music was then sample-based dance music (a genre relatively simple to produce with step-based sequencing). In fact, several chart-topping 1989/1990-era dance singles strongly foreshadow compositional trends in tracker music which would remain popular for many years to come; in particular,
808 State808 State are a British electronic music outfit formed in 1988 in Manchester, taking their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine and the "state of mind" shared by the members...
's "Pacific" and
Octave OneOctave One is a group of American Techno musicians composed of siblings Lenny Burden and Lawrence Burden, sometimes associated with their three other brothers, Lorne Burden, Lynell Burden and Lance Burden. In 1989, The band debuted on Derrick May's Transmat record label with the single "I Believe"...
's "I Believe". Both tracks rely heavily on muted, detuned saw-wave background
padA synth pad is a sustained tone generated by a synthesizer, often employed for background harmony and atmosphere in much the same fashion that a string section is often used in acoustic music. Typically, a synth pad plays many whole or half notes, sometimes holding the same note while a lead voice...
s which play four-tone
augmented major seventh chordAn augmented major seventh chord comprises the root note, the note a major third above the root, the note an augmented fifth above the root, and the note a major seventh above the root...
s in chord patterns which fit the
pentatonic scaleA pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale. Pentatonic scales are very common and are found all over the world, including Celtic folk music, Hungarian folk music, West African music, African-American spirituals,...
; an
unsyncopatedIn music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be stressed...
4/4 drum beat runs underneath. Though this particular musical arrangement was scarcely heard earlier, an overwhelming number of tracker compositions in following years used the exact same pattern.
The popularity of the tracker format may also be attributable to its inclusion of both score data and samples. In the early 90s, the price of wavetable sound cards for personal use was very high, and the expressive capabilities of the cheaper FM-synthesizer sound cards were rather limited. A tracker requires neither of these sound card features.
The first trackers supported only four channels of 8-bit
PCMPulse-code modulation is a digital representation of an analog signal where the magnitude of the signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, then quantized to a series of symbols in a numeric code. PCM has been used in digital telephone systems and 1980s-era electronic musical keyboards...
samples, a limitation derived from the Amiga's Paula audio chipset and the commonplace
8SVX8SVX is a subformat of the Interchange File Format. The subformat is for 8-bit sampled sounds, supports both mono and stereo streams as well as loops; commonly used as a basic audio sample format on Amiga computers for many years...
format used to store sampled sound. However, since the notes were samples, the limitation was less important than those of synthesizing music chips. For example, a process which became a cliché in early pop-rave chart tunes was to sample chords and play them back on a single channel. Rapid chordal stabs, often of fifths, were the hallmark of
Altern-8Altern-8 is an Early UK Rave music duo band featuring Mark Archer and Chris Peat. They wereone of the UK rave bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s whose trademark was loud electronic tracks with a heavy bass line. Altern-8's members wore facemasks and chemical warfare suits...
and other transient techno phenomena. Later tracker software, most famously
OctaMEDOctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement...
, allowed for eight or more channels, whilst special hardware could allow for 16-bit playback.
Over time, 'tracker music' became something of a term of derision for stereotypically ravey, computer-game-style pop tunes, whilst the difficulty involved in adding 'swing' to a mechanistic sequencing style resulted in much
4/4The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
music based around strict four-bar sections, often using similar samples. In earliest days of tracker music people often did not bother or were not able to create their own instrument samples. Instead they used instruments from the first Sound Tracker instrument disk called ST-01. Those same samples are used over and over again in early MOD songs including many game soundtracks.
PC
Over the 1990s, tracker musicians gravitated to the PC. Although the IBM and compatibles initially lacked the hardware sound processing capabilities of the Amiga, with the advent of the
Sound BlasterThe Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming-interface at application-level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...
line from
CreativeCreative Technology Limited is a listed manufacturer of computer multimedia products based in Singapore, where the firm was founded and now under the executive direction of Sim Wong Hoo on July 1, 1981. It has more than 5,000 employees worldwide...
, PC audio slowly began to approach CD Quality (44.1kHz/16-bit/Stereo) with the release of the SoundBlaster 16.
Another soundcard popular on the PC tracker scene was the
Gravis UltrasoundGravis Ultrasound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd...
, which continued the hardware mixing tradition, with 32 internal channels and onboard memory for sample storage. For a time, it offered unparalleled sound quality and became the choice of discerning tracker musicians. Understanding that the support of the tracker/
demo-sceneThe demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
would benefit sales, Gravis gave away some 6000 GUS cards to participants. Coupled with excellent developer documentation, this gesture quickly prompted the GUS to become an integral component of many tracking programs and demos. Inevitably, the balance was largely redressed with the introduction of the
Sound Blaster AWE32Sound Blaster AWE32 is an ISA sound card from Creative Technology. It is an add-on board for PCs. The AWE32, introduced in March 1994, was a nearly full-length ISA card, measuring 14 inches in length. It needed to be this large because of the number of features included...
and its successors, which also featured on-board RAM and wavetable mixing.
The responsibility for
audio mixingAudio mixing is the process by which a multitude of recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics and panoramic position are commonly being manipulated and effects such as reverb might...
passed from hardware to software (the main CPU), which gradually enabled the use of more and more channels. From the typical 4 MOD channels of the Amiga, the limit had moved to 6 with TFMX players and 8 with
OctaMEDOctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement...
(both Amiga), 16 with ScreamTracker 3 on the PC, then 32 with FastTracker 2 and on to 64 with
Impulse TrackerImpulse Tracker is a multi-track digital sound tracker . It was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform. It was authored by Jeffrey "Pulse" Lim, and example music was provided by Jeffrey Lim and Chris Jarvis...
.
As such, hardware mixing did not last. As processors got faster and acquired special multimedia processing abilities (e.g. MMX) and companies began to push
Hardware Abstraction LayerA hardware abstraction layer is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code...
s, like DirectX, the AWE and GUS range became obsolete.
DirectXMicrosoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
,
WDMWDM is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below:* Warm Dark Matter* Warm Dense Matter* Wavelength Division Multiplexing* wdm, the WINGs Display Manager* West Des Moines, Iowa* Western Development Museum of Saskatchewan...
and, now more commonly, ASIO, deliver high-quality sampled audio irrespective of hardware brand.
Current state
Tracker music lives on today. It can be found in modern computer games such as the Unreal series,
Deus ExDeus Ex is a cyberpunk-themed action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in the year 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role playing games...
and
Hitman: Codename 47Hitman: Codename 47 is the first canonical entry in the Hitman series of video games. Developed by the Danish IO Interactive in Denmark and released by Eidos Interactive, in 2000 for Microsoft Windows, it remains the only PC-exclusive Hitman game...
as well as a considerable number of indie games, like Need For Madness by Radical Play. However, the easy availability of software samplers/synthesizers and sequencers has caused some professional musicians to adopt other music software. Nonetheless, tracker software continues to develop. Some of the early Amiga trackers such as
ProTrackerProTracker is a computer program for creating music. Because of the particular method of entering notes and organizing them into patterns, it falls under the category of trackers. The edited music is saved as MOD-files. It was initially developed for the Amiga line of computers, but versions for...
,
OctaMEDOctaMED is a popular sound tracker for the Commodore Amiga, written by Teijo Kinnunen. The first version, 1.12, was released in 1989 under the name MED, which stands for Music EDitor. In April 1990, version 2.00 was released with MIDI support as the main improvement...
have received various updates, mostly for porting to other platforms.
ProTrackerProTracker is a computer program for creating music. Because of the particular method of entering notes and organizing them into patterns, it falls under the category of trackers. The edited music is saved as MOD-files. It was initially developed for the Amiga line of computers, but versions for...
having resumed development in 2004, with plans for releasing version 5 to Windows and
AmigaOSAmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
, but only version 4.0 beta 2 for AmigaOS has been released. Other cross-platform trackers include
RenoiseRenoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using samples , VST/AU/LADSPA plug-ins, and MIDI sequencing of VSTi/AU soft synths...
,
MilkyTrackerMilkyTracker is a free software multi-platform tracker for composing music in the MOD and XM module file formats. It attempts to recreate the module replay and user experience of the popular DOS program FastTracker, with special playback modes available for improved Amiga ProTracker 2/3...
, Schism Tracker,
GoatTrackerGoatTracker is a cross-platform tracker written by Lasse Öörni, producing SID chiptune music for the Commodore 64, and released with source code under the GPL. It is notable for being possibly the only SID chiptune-composer NOT native to the C64, as many alternative composers only execute on the...
, and Skale.
Buzz,
ModPlug TrackerModPlug Tracker is an audio module tracker for Windows developed by Olivier Lapicque. ModPlug is considered to be one of the top five free music trackers.-History:...
,
RenoiseRenoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using samples , VST/AU/LADSPA plug-ins, and MIDI sequencing of VSTi/AU soft synths...
,
PsyclePsycle is a modular music production application to make music on PC computers. Based on the tracker interface but featuring up-to-date features like VST compatibility and 96 kHz / 32bit wav rendering, Psycle is a complete music production solution...
, and others offer features undreamed-of back in the day (improved signal-to-noise ratios, automation,
VSTSteinberg's Virtual Studio Technology is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use Digital Signal Processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with software...
support, internal
DSPDigital signal processing is concerned with the representation of the signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
s and multi-effects, multi I/O cards support etc.).
During 2007, Schism Tracker,
RenoiseRenoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using samples , VST/AU/LADSPA plug-ins, and MIDI sequencing of VSTi/AU soft synths...
, and
Modplug TrackerModPlug Tracker is an audio module tracker for Windows developed by Olivier Lapicque. ModPlug is considered to be one of the top five free music trackers.-History:...
(OpenMPT) were the most active in development. Development is resuming on Skale and reViSiT, which is technically a Tracker VST plugin in the spirit of
Impulse TrackerImpulse Tracker is a multi-track digital sound tracker . It was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform. It was authored by Jeffrey "Pulse" Lim, and example music was provided by Jeffrey Lim and Chris Jarvis...
, not a stand alone program.
Trackers are also becoming increasingly popular with professional musicians, particularly in genres such as
IDMIntelligent dance music is a term that describes an electronic music genre that emerged in the early 1990s at the end of the British rave era. The genre is influenced by a wide range of musical styles particularly electronic dance music such as Detroit Techno...
, where fine control over sample playback is needed.
Venetian SnaresVenetian Snares is the main performing alias of Canadian electronic musician Aaron Funk .From Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Funk is known for making electronic music often in odd numbered time signatures...
, for instance, has released a video on
YoutubeYouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Three former PayPal employees created YouTube in February 2005. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google...
of his track Vache playing in
RenoiseRenoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using samples , VST/AU/LADSPA plug-ins, and MIDI sequencing of VSTi/AU soft synths...
.
See also
:Category:Tracker musicians
- Computer game music
- Module file
Module files are a family of music file formats related to the MOD file format on Amiga systems. Those who produce these files and listen to them form the worldwide "MOD scene", a part of the Demoscene...
- Modular software music studio
A modular software music studio consists of a plugin architecture that allows the audio to be routed from one plugin to another in many ways, similar to how cables carry an audio signal between physical pieces of hardware....
- Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole. This is the most common method of recording popular music...
External links