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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

My only quibble is he left out how trackers are what basically led to the invention of jungle, trance, and hardcore

Citation needed for trance?

Trance has long pads, the supersaw, not sure how you do those on a tracker.

I don't know if the supersaw was built in trackers or not, but you can use it in tracker music by pre-recording the sample and playing it back at various pitches.

A real supersaw uses free-running oscillators, so the phase between them varies with each note. This means the constructive and destructive interference between them is different each time, subtly varying the timbre, which you lose if you play the same sample each time.

1st we have to establish what we mean by "trance". I'm referring to an era between about 1991-1994.

2nd we need to establish what tracker music sounds like - especially how it's limited.

Here's a 1991 trance track, Komakino - Frogs In Space (Trance Mix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjFBs_30uKU

Or a 1992 track, Cosmic Baby - Magic Cubes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMCl9tIfje8

I wasn't in the studio and I don't personally know the artists, but it really sounds like tracker music to me.

Now I know that's probably not convincing enough so let's get into demo disks, such as Breathtaker (1994) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-QUFFcxVjc or Day of Reckoning (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfxDTgK3grg - go to 1:45 to hear those long pads you claim are impossible (they aren't). Or what about Wildfire's demos in 1992? (https://youtube.com/watch?v=0bk-qbbsgog)

And here's what's termed "Tiesto-Style" trance showing the actual tracker. https://youtu.be/6tNizdyx-DE?t=231

Different people used different tools, that's absolutely true. My claim is that trackers played a major role as an instrument in the development of that contemporary style.

On your first link, the 1991 one, you can hear the very distinctive TB-303.

Could those be samples? Sure, but it's much easier to use the real thing than try to record those modulations.

Maybe they also used a tracker on that song.

many musicians use a stack - I sure do. It's a bunch of tools I somehow make work together.

Unless we can track down interviews with the people, I think all we have are educated guesses. It is true to say however, that these days, Amigas sell for thousands of dollars (such as https://ebay.com/itm/224602338650) because modern musicians want to use vintage tracker software in music production.

People are still putting out hardware on it. Here's something from 2020 https://cdm.link/2020/08/amiga-just-got-a-new-open-8-bit-har...

He absolutely did mention that in the video.

I'll listen again. Thanks i must have missed it

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