Tracker (program)

Common elements for all trackers are samples, notes, effects, channels (tracks), patterns and their order. ^[one]

A sample is a small fragment of a digitized instrument, voice or other sound effect. Most trackers allow you to loop back part of the sample, simulating notes of extended sound.

A note determines the frequency at which a sample is played. By increasing or decreasing the playback speed of the digitized sample, the pitch (pitch) of the note rises or falls, simulating instrumental notes (e.g. C, C #, D, etc.)

An effect is a special function applied to certain notes. Common to all trackers are effects such as volume change, glissando , portamento , vibrato , retrigger , arpeggio and pan .

Channel (or track) - a space in which only 1 sample can be played at a time. The trackers for the classic Amiga made it possible to create 4-channel 8-14-bit stereo compositions on 4 channels (while the IBM PC was dominated by a 1-bit monaural speaker and only the AdLib FM synthesis card appeared ). Modern trackers can mix an unlimited number of virtual channels in a single audio stream thanks to software mixing. Channels have a fixed number of lines on which notes and effects can be placed (most trackers arrange tracks vertically). Typically, a channel contains 64 lines, which is 4 measures 4/4 (or 16 beats, i.e. 16 quarters).

A pattern is a group of simultaneously reproduced channels representing a full-fledged part of a musical composition.

Order - a sequence of patterns that determines the structure of a musical composition. Within the sequence, patterns can be repeated, so that a relatively quick creation of the overall structure of the work is possible.

There are also trackers that use real-time sound synthesis instead of samples. Many of these programs are designed to create music using sound generator chips, such as the OPL chip in Adlib ^[2] and SoundBlaster sound cards , or the sound chips of classic household computers . Most modern trackers can use VST-instruments (VSTi) as sound sources ^[3] .

Tracker music is usually stored in files called " modules ", where information about the structure of the composition and samples are contained within the same file. The playback of most of the “classic” formats of tracker modules is supported by such popular music players as Winamp , XMMS , foobar2000 , as well as ModPlug Player (used as a library in XMMS), which is separately adapted for playing modules of the main part of ever existing formats and their variations. The most common module formats are: MOD, S3M, XM and IT.

The term "tracker" comes from the name of the first tracker program Ultimate Soundtracker ^[4] . Ultimate Soundtracker was developed by Karsten Obarski and released in 1987 by Electronic Arts for the Commodore Amiga computer . Ultimate Soundtracker was a commercial product, but few of the subsequent clones, such as NoiseTracer, looked like it. The basic concept of incrementally arranging samples using numbers, as is done in trackers, was used by Fairlight CMI, a workstation for recording samples in the late 1970s. Some early music editors with an interface similar to trackers were released for Commodore 64 , for example Rock Monitor, but they couldn’t play samples instead of notes on the computer’s built-in synthesizer (some versions made it possible to use 4-bit samples when programming Commodore 64 sound controller with non-standard way).

The first computer game to use tracker music was Amegas (1987), an Arkanoid clone for Amiga. The music composed by Karsten Obarski is usually considered the first tracker module ever created, and is well known to fans of old-school computer music.

Most of the early music trackers were from the UK and Scandinavia. ^[5] This can be explained by the close relationship of trackers and the demoscene , which developed rapidly in the Scandinavian countries, and the relative availability in the UK of computers capable of running tracker programs. Tracker music has become a bit of an underground phenomenon ^[6] , especially when a large amount of modern popular music was dance music created on the basis of samples (the genre is relatively simple for production by stepwise ordering). In fact, several top places in the dance charts of the singles of 1989-1990 directly portended the direction in composing tracker music, which remained popular for many years. In particular, the song “Pacific” from 808 State and “I believe” from Octave One .

The popularity of tracker music formats can also be explained by the fact that they included both data and samples. In the early 1990s, the price of sound cards with a wave tabular synthesizer for personal use was very high, and the expressive capabilities of cheap sound cards with FM synthesizers were very limited. Trackers did not need these features.

The first Amiga trackers only supported 4 channels for 8-bit samples. This limitation was caused by the hardware capabilities of the Paula chip ^[7] , which implements the sound reproduction function in Amiga computers. However, from the moment the notes were samples, the limitation was less important than the limitation of synthesizing music circuits. Later tracker programs, of which the most famous is OctaMED, allowed the use of 8 or more channels, while special hardware allowed 16-bit playback.

Track music is still alive today ^{[ when? ]} . It can be heard in computer games such as the Unreal and Deus Ex series, as well as in a significant number of indie games . Despite the easy availability of software samplers, synthesizers, and sequencers , the advent of the MP3 and later Ogg formats caused most professional musicians to switch to other music software. But tracker programs continue to evolve. The original series of trackers for Amiga (Sound / Noise / Pro Tracker / OctaMED) was continued on the PC with the ProTracker 5 tracker, the development of which was resumed in 2004 . Buzz, Buzztrax (a free analogue of Buzz), ModPlug Tracker, MadTracker, Renoise, reViSiT, Skale, CheeseTracker, BeRoTracker, SunVox , SVArTracker and other programs offering unimaginable features have returned today with improved signal to noise ratio, automation , VST support , internal DSP and multi-effects, support for multiple I / O cards. Tracker file formats are popular in the Game Boy Advance community , which, unlike the original Game Boy , has sufficient processing power to support tracker music, which takes up little space compared to MP3 and other audio storage formats.

The traditional reproaches of trackers for the clumsiness and complexity of programs (designed primarily for the public with a technical mindset) are gradually being overcome, and programs are becoming more accessible and understandable to the user. As such, tracking has recently gained a second wind with the advent of people who have begun to understand the importance of writing music as quickly as possible - the musical equivalent of blind typing. Indeed, a research project is currently studying the interaction of a computer and a person when writing music and will try to understand how methods such as tracking can serve as a lesson related to the process of composing music. ^{[ significance of fact? ]} .

• MOD
• Track music
• Demoscene
• Schism tracker

• MOD Software in the Open Directory Project Link Directory (dmoz)
• Ultimate Music Tracker Base: A catalog of trackers with detailed descriptions and screenshots
• Official Renoise Tracker Page
• Official Mad Tracker Page
• The official page of the cross-platform tracker Sunvox
• Impulse Tracker: how to compose music without knowing notes
• FamiTracker: tracker, NES sound chip emulator - Ricoh 2A03
• Impulse Tracker 2.14, 1997 Guide
• SVArTracker - Tracker with Impulse Tracker interface, with VST support, modular construction of sound scheme