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Comment by EamonnMR | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to get into trackers for sequencing for a while, but the learning curve is very steep. Has anyone got resources to learn how to sequence one of these beasts with a keyboard? They seem to be the key to making lots and lots of intricate breakbeats.

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With "keyboard" you mean, a musicians keyboard, right? I assume you need a midi interface to the software but I don't know of any tracker that supports midi.

My personal favourite tracker is Fast Tracker II, but it also don't support midi. However, it has some really good documentation that might help you get into working with trackers:

https://milkytracker.titandemo.org/docs/FT2.pdf

Actually my understanding is that you can use a computer keyboard to very rapidly enter lots of notes quickly and precisely without relying on your own human limitations as you would with a musical keyboard. I've seen it billed as sort of like Vi for music.

Yes, I'm pretty sure you can set FT2 in a record mode and then "play" notes on your computer keyboard, but I don't think that's what OP is asking.

How I understand OP's question is; you make a drum pattern in FT2 which you can trigger to play by pressing a key on a musical keyboard. I think the context of OP's question is for during a live/real-time performance.

Not sure if you're already aware, but tracker keyboard shortcuts for note entry typically mimic a piano keyboard:

  2 3   5 6 7 
 q w e r t y u, etc.

I thought this was pretty slick when I first encountered it.

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