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Comment by pentaphobe | Hacker News Reader

Very cool to get a peek behind the curtain!

I've never been as productive and free as when I was mind-melded with FastTracker2 in the 90's

For a peak couple years I was generally writing 100s of (unrefined) 5-14 min tracks every month. Total unbound freedom to experiment at (close to) the speed of thought.

For anyone who's not had the pleasure, It's like when you first get good at touch typing and find you can suddenly put down thoughts dozens of times faster than ever before - it frees up your self-expression and gets The Censor out of the way.

Renoise is pretty cool, but I never fully glommed with it to the same level - might be time to try again! Recently started playing with a Polyend Tracker - pretty neat to feel those old synapses waking up. There's no way it can ever approach the speed of full keyboard-operated Tracker programs but the chance to revisit that beloved workflow in a solid and portable unit is so far really compelling.

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> I was generally writing 100s of (unrefined)

I was an ModEdit -> Scream Tracker 3 -> Impulse Tracker user myself, and that feeling of productivity that sample-based trackers create was astonishing. I almost always considered what I was doing was "sketching" out songs that I might somebody revisit to remaster or clean up with better instruments etc. (I never really did of course).

I found I could crank a song out I was happy with in just a few hours, but it took a long time to pull together a sample library that I was happy with and well organized, and learn enough techniques to make what I wanted. But yeah, there was a period of a few years where tons of music I still listen to today literally came together in a couple of hours.

I started slowing down as I tried to go for much more polish in my productions, writing out by hand effects that are done nowadays with VSTs (pitch stretches, digital multi-tap stuff, and lots of trying to make acoustic instruments sound like they were actually being played with volume and sample offsets).

Then technology and life changed, IT sort of stopped working and I didn't like my other options for a while. Finally forced myself to get into the FastTracker sort of workflow years later with MadTracker2 and now Renoise. It's not something I really have time to dedicate to anymore, but I keep almost getting setup to do it. There's a mental block for me with VST/VSTis that I can't quite get through. Sure they sound "better" but they lack lots of the expressiveness and flexibility working in all samples used to offer.

> was "sketching" out songs that I might somebody revisit to remaster or clean up with better instruments

Haha big time - I didn't really have the kit for such things, but I remember trying to "finish" a few tunes by rendering them out (not as stems) and then adding crap over the top in a non-real-time sample editor

Whole thing of course became a mess of reverb :)

> writing out by hand effects that are done nowadays with VSTs

Yeah, VSTs made it so appealing and flashy

Making manual flanges by copying a track and using sample offset on one was... not super convenient, but boy was it satisfying

"real" effects opened up so many powerful sound design options that it was easy to forget about actually composing things :)

And the amount of times I then wanted tracker level micro control you got with manual approach and just gave up after a bit..

> There's a mental block for me with VST/VSTis (... snip ...) they lack lots of the expressiveness and flexibility working in all samples used to offer.

It'd be neat to have the best of both worlds, ie. Give me VSTs but let me control time and playback as precisely as I can with sample based

Seems like it'd be technically feasible even with VST but it's just not done (emphasis is on realtime, with VSTs behaving as independent "pedals" rather than part of a whole)

You might have nerd sniped me.

nervous sideways glance at long neglected VST source code folder

What I do is just directly sample everything and then continue to work on the sample. It’s easy in modern DAW.

Yeah thing which has always irked me about that is you have to maintain the original sequence and setup if you want the freedom to change it later

Something which made that transparent would be ideal. Ableton and a few others have freeze options which make this a bit nicer but it's still a bit disconnected

Personally that sort of thing is a flow break

One of the great parts was downloading ft2 songs from your local bbs and instantly see how a jungle or trance song is made, and then get to work sequencing your own amen breaks.

If you havent tried udio yet, get on it. Mindblowing.

Yeah, the "open source" aspect of the old tracker scene is kind of on an entirely different level. Everything, and I mean everything, was there for you to look at, copy, remix, reuse, and repurpose.

Like a certain sample? Copy it into your project.

Wonder how a certain baseline looked? It's right there.

Different musicians had entirely different looks to their musical organization, how they used tracks, what samples they relied on, how they expressed things. And you could see all of it just as they had laid it down.

I'm not sure there are many other production environments where the published "document" has as much internal work product open for inspection as these old files offer.

The other interesting part of it was that it was very much governed by a set of behavioral conventions at the time. No manifesto or political movement, no rules, just concepts of good behavior (give credit to your sample sources, don't plagiarize etc.) Other than that it was just young people doing basically whatever the hell they wanted without anybody to get in their way (for better or worse!)

Totally - the "I like this, how does it work?" Factor is such an amazing learning tool (and a hell of a fringe community builder)

Between mod files and small demoscene programs written in assembler there was so much incentive to improve your skills just in order to _understand_ how a thing worked. Then you're using that new understanding to make new things (rather than copying a set of rote "tricks")

Hope you managed to preserve these, I’d be keep to take a listen if they’re hosted online somewhere. I’ve been using renoise for 15 years on and off and while nowhere near 100s of tracks a month I fondly look back on the first year I used it similarly - that combination of youthful energy and tracker software is really something special. Renoise has come a long way and is a joy to use.

Alas most died on boxes of floppy discs which succumbed to a flood

I recently discovered some 50 odd floppies which survived, and a couple old 5" hard drives - so I'm hopeful! I assume most of the data will be pretty patchy by now (if not totally gone) but I'm gonna try some forensic recovery

If I manage I'll put the survivors somewhere for sure :)

Anywhere I can check out your renoise stuff? Always keen to find new stuff to boggle at

Not the person you were replying to but here’s someone who still uses Renoise for releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud

Oh cool, hadn't heard of this person - thanks!

I had more than a hundred 5.25" floppies from the 1980s and I successfully recovered all but two of them thirty years later. It's definitely worth a try.

That's super impressive, and very reassuring!

What sort of memories did you find? (if you don't mind sharing)

Also: any tips for recovery? I'm so far assuming I'll just get them nice and cool, then do multiple raw read passes so I can then choose the individual bits which are the same across most passes

Mostly it was loads of 6502 software I wrote when I was a kid, and also some high school projects I did. It was fun to look through it.

The disks that worked just worked! I did try multiple passes on the two that didn't, but that didn't help.

Oh that woulda been a neat bit of time travelling, glad it worked out!

I'm quietly hoping I end up finding a bunch of my old x86 assembler projects in these discs (well - excited and a little scared... perhaps better through the rosy glasses of nostalgia)

Same, I had several hundred 3.5" floppies from the 80s and they were all fine when I ripped them. I think double density might be more reliable than high density.

If you can get your hands on an Applesauce low level copier you may be able to recover them. https://applesaucefdc.com

Will keep an eye out! Hopefully they get their supply chain back - sucks when small (great) ventures like this get gutted by shortages

The greaseweazle is a very cost effective way of reading old floppies.

There's a community on FB, you can occasionally but pre made drives, even without that, a board and a floppy drive is enough.

Awesome, thanks - had no idea this existed (and great name)

Same except I later switched to impulse tracker 2 as it was more keyboad driven. I think there is an open source clone called schismtracker[1]. I should try it.

I made lots of tracks at the time, from the most mainstream to very experimental, those were good times.

I also purchased a renoise license but it didn't click. But maybe that was just me being a dad and having much less free time, patience and possibility to isolate myself in a man cave.

[1] https://schismtracker.org/

The free time aspect is probably a big one - easy for nostalgia to say it's the tools that changed, but as an adult (or close approximation of one) getting a few hours of free exploration time is downright miraculous - can't possibly compete with a teenager hyperfocusing and losing time while they create for 24hrs solid

The Polyend Tracker is a cool piece of hardware. I’ve made a few decent tracks with it but I do find it tricky to get a nice sounding foundation. I’ve been eyeing of the Tracker +

More recently I have been playing with the Dirtywave M8, but using the open source firmware on an RG351. Holy heck is it fun, and sounds absolutely amazing.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt95ZG6W8hM

This is mindblowingly cool

Here comes another rabbit hole

I agree, very cool. I still miss the fast productive workflow of Jeskola Buzz from back in the day. Modular software synth + tracker with pattern sequencing. https://youtu.be/8J8i72a11W4?si=IRic-Z_YMinudnhn

Buzz tracker was so awesome

I never got around to making full tunes in it, but I spent countless hours exploring the modular aspects

It actually was what opened my eyes to things like PureData, Max/MSP, etc.. highly underrated program

For a fast keyboard-bssed workflow but also the ability to divide time however you like (I'm a big fan of strange swing fractions like 3/5 instead of 2/3), keep audio and midi side by side, and use whatever plugins you like, what's the nearest modern equivalent? Reaper?

Heck, I'm all about polyrhythm and polymetre

Had no idea Reaper had this, thanks!

What actually switched me over from trackers as the primary tool was this (discontinued) DAW called Orion, it had a piano roll for which you could provide custom tick rates, divisions, and highlighting rules for those divisions (ie. You could specify an arbitrary number of columns, then have bar lines every 11 beats and more subtle lines every 7 beats)

You've made my day with this tidbit!

If you are curious about a hardware tracker, check out Synthstrom Deluge. Once you learn the shortcuts, you can simply fly in execution.

I've got a polyend and it's my favorite piece of gear in the last 10 years

It's so good (and sticky!)

When mine arrived I fiddled for a minute, then wasn't so sure it was going to be a winner

Then looked up and 6hrs had passed - absolute love

That why I love the Syntakt!

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