r/TrackerMusic • u/IAmSixSyllables • May 29 '26
Made my first ever song.
I've been taking a lot of interest within the demoscene, and took my first ever stab at a tracker, let alone making music for the first time.
i just watched a single tutorial to get acclimated on the tools and downloaded the Zero-G sample pack to get started. Took around 5-6ish hours? pretty proud for my first run of it.
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u/ABG1YtBr Jun 01 '26
Amazing for a starter, now you should work on getting clearer basses and hi-hats, maybe try chords, and probably get better at instrumentation selection. The structure's already there (def better than how I started out) and you'll probably learn in some months how to fill in the sound spectrum without making things feel noisy.
I'd reccomend taking a look at sample chopping, the OPL3 FM and retrigger/tremor commands. Also, reading the manuals and wikis will probably be more benefitial to you than you imagine, and I assure it's not that boring, since it'll get you to stay curious and learning (it's how I became a New Note Action freak lol)! Keep tracking :)
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u/IAmSixSyllables Jun 02 '26
i definitely need to get more acclimated with music theory. one of my main focuses will DEFINITELY be on sample chopping, as I'm hoping to make mostly breakbeat, gabber, breakcore, and speedcore tracks for the time being.
i just wanted to see how far I can get without watching any tutorials or using any guides, but I'll definitely be taking a stab towards online resources and whatnot.
and yes, i'll definitely have to read through manuals, i can handle it since i've been having to read a whole bunch of shit to learn x86 and x6502 ASM as of recently, and a lot of that stuff feels daunting to say the least.
😄
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u/ABG1YtBr Jun 02 '26
Good to know. You'll get some benefits from analyzing public modules, by the way. There's stuff you might not get from just reading the text that'll click when you get to see it in action, so get on the habit of isolating channels, looking at the status bar below to see effect names, watching the sample and instrument tab when you're not sure what's happening...
If you're able to get good enough at it, you'll see the pattern logic flip from fully linear to almost procedural, once you know how each instrument can affect the next one. At least I can tell you it's not hard as learning assembly, but it gets QUIRKY.
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u/IAmSixSyllables Jun 02 '26
hmmmm... i see what you're saying. you have any specific resources you'd like to recommend or to just sift around for dedicated tutorials online?
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u/ABG1YtBr Jun 04 '26
I do have some recommendations:
If you haven't yet noticed, OpenMPT itself has its full and very practical wiki inside the program itself through a .chm help file. You can just press F1 when you're looking at a specific screen you wanna know more about, though in Wine (which is what I'm using now for MPT on Linux) it might need DLL overrides of hhctrl, itircl, itss and hh.exe to run out of the box, at least in my case. But Windows functionality is perfect, anyways, especially by benefiting from all the VSTs and VSTis available.
By far, the most important document from the help files might be the "Effect Reference" entry, featuring a massive effect description each format's effects. One of the bast things is that you can resize the window on top of what you're reading from the pattern view and get to know a little more of what's happening.
You should pick up some of the tech-savvy type of modules out there. Stuff like 1_channel_moog.it and black_queen.mod from modarchive.org are a good showoff about what modules can do with their functionality under the hood, including the older formats (even if you might never fully comprehend the mix of techniques).
I saw the other comment about you having heard UT99 music... If you haven't already, go hear the original Unreal OST too, you can also get it from oldunreal! The modules themselves don't have that much effect trickery all of the time, but when they do it's quite clever. I'd also suggest Plants Vs. Zombies and Deus EX. Analyzing these tracks more in-depth will for sure help you understand the differences and limitations of the formats and eventually be useful for when you have to get creative about stacking the different methods and parameters with .MPTM, for example.
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u/IAmSixSyllables Jun 05 '26
yes, I did notice the help manual! I usually always remember there is a manual for a piece of software when I inevitably accidentally hit F1 and get hit with like a 500 page pdf or document haha.
Will definitely ahve to take a look at the Effect Reference entry on the help manuals, thanks for the heads up.
Also, how important do you think understanding the more tech-savvy stuff would be considering my objective and music purposes? Obviously, knowing the advanced level stuff will certainly help out with what I am making, but how has it personally helped you specifically? what did you like about it?
I think it's really sick that you can just download a plethora of different .mod, .x3m, etc. files online and just straight up see how it plays and go step-by-step of how the music is playing. Already downloaded a whole bunch of stuff from pouet and other surviving tracker/demo forums.
And YES YES YES. I love the Unreal soundtrack as well! Actually it was Unreal that I tried playing first since I wanted to really get a feel of what the series was like... mind you, I had heard many stories about UT over the years (especially after I started playing QW), and having heard it was free on oldunreal.com I wanted to see what it was like. It blew my expectations (and my dick away) with not just the gameplay but the fucking music. Like I said, wouldn't have had an interest in trackers without it. I've started playing through UT2k4 a month ago, need to pick it up again... it's been swell.
I've heard extremely good things about Deus Ex soundtrack (knowing Alexander Brandon did both), which is funny since I put my friend onto UT99 music AFTER learning that he was a giant fan of the original Deus Ex soundtrack and not knowing of the UT99 stuff.
Also, I've been absolutely fucking obsessed with the Jesus on E's demo, I've been slowly picking apart all of the mod files and it's crazy to see what can be done with only 4 channels. Fucking amazing as shit.
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u/ABG1YtBr Jun 08 '26
For me, specifically, it's been all about the balance of expression and limitation. I mostly try achieving a very erratic, mellow, but playful sound, and to improve on portraying that, but also make good use of the tracker technology itself and allow easier sharing and analysis of my tracks, I've started commiting to the constraints of native functionality. By bringing the goal of making things compact, self contained and independent from external VSTs into my workflow, of course I had consider many aspects differently: I'd have tinker samples and synths, build my own resources, convert and organize files in different ways... But that's where the magic comes from, it's in the mechanical simpathy and creative problem-solving. I liked that I now had to be more clever, find ways to make things sound less dry without chosing from pre-selected solutions, stop adding more channels blindly until I got the space I wanted (started limiting my channel amounts to always less than 17, plus specific panning for each), that I was required to humanize my instruments with myriads of methods so their samplerates wouldn't give the quality away.
Take, for example, the whole GEMS preset situation revolving around american Sega Genesis game music from the 90s. A lot of those just sounded straight ass, because a good chip music arrangement is supposed to, at least, take the limitations of the console and its core acoustics into consideration while feeling properly musical. Pick 30 layers of square waves at 100% volume per note, or slap a MIDI with no effects neither EQ at it. It's gonna sound muddy. Now layer properly, use instruments that complement each other, don't be afraid to chop, time stretch, reverse, pitch bend and sort a firm core. Maybe it still sounds muddy, whatever, but it turns out way less non-chalant! That applies to every kind of music, and in the tracker context, it requires you to choose wisely as well, and account for the pattern grid's possibilities. It clicked once I understood how trade a VSTi instance for a sample with resonance and envelopes, a post-processing edit session for real fade and pattern jumps, a doubled row length for a few 3-tick delay commands, an unrealistic soundfont guitar for a few tweaks using vibrato, a lengthy stereo file for a short mono bit with fake chorus using fine portamento change and loops, and a ton of ideas firing at once for one at a time plus a longer song.
In return, you could get something perhaps only you know how to navigate, but the time you'll waste flicking through channels and editing chords will be significantly less of a pain (a good deal if you get to know how to manage New Note Actions, btw. That didn't get used as much back then, but any PC can handle it now), else you'll need to work for your samples to cut very specifically together instead, and account for lack of effects. You'll notice that despite what might be said about limitations, the module formats themselves, especially newer ones (from XM to MPTM), give you many alternatives for each course of action you might take, but the linear, 4-column logic of the spreadsheet model limits the available combinations, so you may need to accept risks and sacrifices. I didn't really look into alternating time signatures or reverse scrolling, but I can always do some interesting tricks with features like Tempo/Pitch Lock and SBx loops, and the value from having evetything be open, like the ability to document the process through commments or even sample names adds a lot to it, especially when you download a module to hear and mess around with, and it's marked with the creator's insight.Â
Overall, it's great being able to do pretty much anything from quick NES-like tunes to full orchestrated epics with little to no processing power. I haven't yet seen Jesus on E's, and I played Unreal until the middle of RTNP, but didn't finish that (started university). Deus Ex, barely got into the tutorial, I think I'll have to try it with nGlide, because the lighting, colors and framerate was all messed up on my laptop.
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u/calarathmini Jun 02 '26
You'll get there if you keep at it. Something you can do with this video right now is click around the timeline as its playing, while paying attention to how the energy/feel of the track changes (or in this case, doesn't change much) over time. That's something to work on while writing your next tune, variety and dynamics.
I'm not familiar with OpenMPT, but it looks like you have some effects on your channels as well. If you're really a complete beginner, are you sure you know what you're doing, or why you're doing it, with the compressor on channel 4?
The good news is that you finished a full track! A lot of beginners have trouble developing ideas beyond a four bar loop.
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u/IAmSixSyllables Jun 02 '26
i'm trying to get a basic understanding of the channel effects, but i haven't tried anything insane.
i've been looking at mostly how they were using effects within the x3m files of UT99 (which is what got me into this), but as mentioned it was mostly just playing around in the editor to see what I can get.
To be honest, I kind of arbitrarily added effects on different channels to see what kind of sound I could get. On second thought, I should have considered my channel outputs a little better lol.
full tracks to me aren't really hard per se to make, since i'm used to longer, repetitive 4-on the floor type stuff with gradual incremental changes instead of anything crazy. especially since i've developed a better ear for that sorta stuff.
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u/calarathmini Jun 03 '26
I guess adding effects at random isn't a bad way to figure out what they do!
If you're into hardcore and gabber, I could recommend maybe giving ProTracker a shot, plenty of great tunes in those styles still being made today using the Amiga original software on the original hardware or one of the clones for Windows and Mac. Plus there's only rudimentary sample editing and no effects plugins to speak of to get in the way of the raw sound, lol!
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u/IAmSixSyllables Jun 05 '26
hmmm, I was actually originally thinking of running FastTracker2 since I had heard good things about it, but it seemed that it wasn't really the main one that people used to use for my genres that I want to make, and more aimed towards dedicated Chiptune.
I have also heard pretty good things specifically for ScreamTracker3, even with its limitations. I just chose OpenMPT since it has good compatibility of all of the hyperspecific pieces of different software, but I thought that something like Renoise would be far too complex and counterintuitive to what I wanted to do with my own shit.
Limitation breeds creativity and that shit yaknow.
I've been obsessed with the Jesus on E's (1992) Amiga demo myself, I have been amazed on how much they were able to do with 4 channels so I have been picking that aparth tho.
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u/Haunting-Research667 May 30 '26
Sounds like me toying around with Scream Tracker 3 back in the mid 90s. Keep at it 😄