Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit

[Music] if you've ever pirated any software and i know you have then you might be familiar with keygens they are small applications designed with only two functions the first is to deliver a serial number for your ill-gotten program and the second is to play some fantastic music [Music] the question is why why does software piracy have such a great soundtrack where does this music come from and how is it made the answer is something called the tracker trackers are a way of creating music on a computer that dates to the early 16-bit era and there's a lot more to them than just key gen music let me take you back to around 1984. it is the dawn of 16-bit computing apple released the macintosh this year ibm the 286 based pc 18 by 1985 the atari st and commodore amiga were available as well these were all 16-bit machines and they all boasted superior capabilities to 8-bit micros like the commodore 64 and zx spectrum they were faster with higher resolution graphics more ram more storage overall a big step up but perhaps one area in which these new machines were lacking was sound ibms were designed for an office environment and the best they could manage at the time was the pc speaker harsh 1-bit tones the macintosh was great for desktop publishing with a superb graphical user interface and high-resolution monochrome display but its sound was underwhelming a single channel governed by the video signal and heavy on the cpu the atari st was better in that it had a dedicated sound chip the yamaha ym2140 it had three tone channels with a noise generator which was better than the mac or pc but still very much of the 8-bit era the msx and 128k zx spectrum had the same chip and the commodore 64 sid was far superior the st also came equipped with midi ports as standard which did mean it found a niche in music production cubase got its start here for instance but as far as native audio is concerned these machines didn't bring anything new sound was a bit of an afterthought there would be later upgrades and expansions ad-lib and sound blaster cards for the pc arrived by the end of the decade and later macintosh's and the atari ste brought comparable upgrades to these platforms sound but in 1985 there was only one exception i've said it before but the amiga was a bit of a multimedia powerhouse and unlike its rivals it had sound capability worthy of a new generation it had a custom chip called paula responsible for the ports audio uart and logic and it was capable of four channels of 8-bit pcm audio reading sound data direct from memory without taxing the cpu by modern standards this is unremarkable but for 1985 it was pretty revolutionary having such capabilities is one thing exploiting them is another entirely upon its release the amiga had a desperate need for audio software and commodore were ill-equipped to supply it they had planned a suite of productivity software for launch but only a text editor and art package made it to release text craft and graphic craft there was a music application planned predictably called musicraft but it wasn't finished and never saw the light of day [Music] a company called aegis bought the rights to musicraft however and developed the software further eventually releasing it as sonics in 1986 check out the box art how vaporwave is that [Music] anyway it was quite ambitious incorporating a software synthesizer with a sequencer everything is represented with full musical score keys and time signatures so if you know music it's a fairly natural environment to work with the synthesizer is neat perhaps not the easiest thing to use while it can generate some interesting sounds it's primitive it has quite a synthetic character sonics did see some use by early amiga musicians there are a few music discs that use the format but it was quickly replaced by better alternatives over the next couple of years [Music] also releasing in 1986 electronic arts ported will harvey's earlier music construction set to the macintosh and amiga and this new version was called deluxe music construction set it lacked a programmable synthesizer but offered a full midi compliant set of instruments and had a similar notation based interface to sonics driven by a window-based gui you could drag notes where you wanted them on the staves both sonic's and deluxe music construction set were welcome introductions for those wanting to make music with the amiga in 1986 but they were far from a perfect solution their interfaces were clumsy sacrificing speed and ease of use for traditional notation the sounds they produced weren't exactly spectacular either these early music packages had a critical flaw they were designed for musicians this doesn't seem like a bad thing on the face of it but making music on these early machines was a two-part problem first is creation which these programs covered but the second is playback to be useful you need to integrate closely with the sound hardware you need to expose the potential of the machine directly instead of trying to adapt it to a more conventional music format to accomplish this you need a different approach most early computer musicians were programmers first musicians second effectively they were directly instructing the sound hardware and developed custom tools and playback routines for that purpose one example from 1986 is chris hulsbeck's sound monitor for the commodore 64. it was released as a type in program in german magazine via unsexiga enter five full pages of hexadecimal data without making a mistake and a very capable piece of music software was your reward sound monitor was not particularly easy to use certainly not for beginners but behind its spreadsheet-like interface lay the power of the commodore 64 sid and with a little expertise you could make it do incredible things it was to music editing what vim is to text editors obtuse inscrutable but in the right hands extremely powerful [Music] not only could you arrange notes but you could shape their sound with envelopes filters pulse width modulation vibrato a far cry from simple beeps there was also an arpeggio feature with the sid's three voice limitation chords were quite challenging with an arpeggio you could play the chord notes in a very rapid succession giving an acoustic impression of the chord it wasn't a perfect rendition but only occupied a single channel and these arpeggiated chords have a very distinct sound one very typical of sid music hull specs music for the commodore 64 was used in a number of commercial games and his work remains very well regarded sound monitor served as a starting point for many other computer musicians and the program inspired clones such as rock monitor it would also prove influential on other platforms most notably in tandem with the new potential of the commodore amiga at some point in 1986 a german programmer and computer musician named carsten arbarski bought himself a new amiga 1000 a friend of his was working on a game and he asked carsten if he could help with the soundtrack having dabbled a little with the amiga sound hardware he obliged and by mid-1987 he had finished the first version of his music software it was called the ultimate soundtracker although really it was the first of its time the very first tracker a basket took much inspiration from the commodore 64 sound monitor it retained the bare bones spreadsheet like editor only instead of being tailored to the sid the ultimate soundtracker exposed the potential of the amiga's pawler ibarski used his new program to write the soundtrack for a number of games from reline software arkanoid cloned amma guests and its follow-up crystal hammer he also worked with publisher eas computer technic providing the music for rally master eas showed interest in marketing the ultimate soundtracker and it was released as a commercial product in december 1987. now at version 1.21 the ultimate soundtracker was ready to hit the mainstream the software shipped on two disks the first labeled st00 which contained the program and st01 which contain the samples you could use up to 15 sample instruments across four channels songs were divided into patterns which had 64 rows of note data each and these patterns could be arranged and repeated if necessary the bottom of the screen was occupied by the pattern editor split into the four separate channels headings at the top suggested the channel roll melody accompaniment bass percussion but these were just suggestions and samples could be triggered anywhere you liked [Music] the note data looks a little daunting at first it's an array of hexadecimal the first three columns indicate the note and octave and the other four are used for the instrument commands and parameters the first column was the sample id the next could specify commands arpeggio portamento modulation etc and the last two provide the parameters for that command program status was communicated through the colour of the cursor grey was ready blue for pattern editing purple was for editing text fields green for loading yellow for playback and red for errors its interface was idiosyncratic to say the least and its hardware demands quite specific it needed two drives used a german key map and would only work with kickstart 1.2 for example if you wanted to load a song you had to type the file name into the song name field press return click the load song button then press the l key to start loading your sample disk had to be in the second drive otherwise the program would hang in fact the program was plagued with bugs and if you weren't careful it was easy to lose your work there was clear potential in soundtracker but its temperamental nature made it frustrating to work with one of soundtracker's strengths was its sample disk st01 [Music] samples are key to the operation of a tracker without them there's no sound cast and sample disk contained a good selection of digitized sounds 126 in total which he recorded from his synthesizers [Music] they provided a great starting point for musicians and while you could use any samples you wanted this bank proved extremely popular for years afterwards some came from a roland d50 others from a yamaha dx and a casio cz these were contemporary synthesizers that were often used in music from the late 80s and early 90s and contribute to the synth poppy sound that many later amiga tracks had taking one example pizza is a pizzicato string sampled from a roland d50 and according to the amiga database mod sample master it was used in hundreds if not thousands of tracks the same is true for most of the sounds on the disk and ultimately by providing these samples karsten didn't just give soundtracker users a great style he defined the sound of the amiga as a commercial product the ultimate soundtracker was not a huge success the amiga market wasn't particularly big in 1987 and the software only saw release in germany i've never seen a copy for sale and the only evidence that ever existed are a few photographs so soundtracker didn't make its mark as a commercial product for a number of reasons but perhaps the most significant reason is software piracy in fact what happened to soundtracker goes far beyond piracy it was outright pillaged it's at this point i should probably explain what the demo scene is it's an underground subculture that started within the context of early home computing it was largely driven by pirated software disk swapping and copying was quite common practice and everyone knew someone who could get them games for free any attempts at copy protection were stripped out by programmers who specialized in it crackers and cracked copies of games could spread far and wide via bbs snail mail car boot sales or in person this was a time before the world wide web and when internet access was uncommon but nevertheless there existed an extensive distribution network obviously much of this was quite illegal so most people involved with the scene chose pseudonyms everything sounds cool that way anyway coordination and affiliation led to the formation of scene groups like razer 1911 scoop x skid row fairlight many of these groups remain active today i should note that the demo scene isn't necessarily linked to software piracy or wares but earlier on there was a closer association cracking groups would often distinguish themselves with a short intro that played prior to the game loading these crack intros or crack throws could be quite ornate and often had fantastic music they are the precursor to contemporary key gems [Music] some groups put together longer standalone productions called demos hence demo scene they served as a showcase for coders artists and musicians and were often quite impressive on all fronts the scene was an outlet for creativity and it was software-like soundtracker that helped it flourish it must have been a mix of admiration of soundtrackers potential and frustration at its shortcomings that led to its reverse engineering shortly after its commercial release early in 1988 the software was disassembled by the exterminator a member of a dutch group called the jungle command he already had some experience with the amiga sound hardware having devised his own sound format called megatrex he took soundtrack as code and started to incorporate a number of improvements with a new unofficial version called soundtracker2 the overwhelmingly beige interface was presented in a much more respectable grey overall stability was improved and new volume commands were added but perhaps the biggest difference was that soundtracker was no longer a paid for commercial product it was now part of the scene spread from disk to disk via back channels the assembly source was shared along with the playback routines and other scene groups would work on their own versions collectively iterating and improving on the original soundtracker formula [Music] in march 1988 swedish coder il skuro of def jam released soundtracker 3 which was shortly followed by alpha flights version 4 in april the most prolific group was doc or dr mabuse orgasm crackings who developed their version of soundtrack during the middle of 1988 with a series of releases that year they added an equalizer display the ability to mute channels better file handling and improve play routine and the ability to save songs as modules modules were monolithic files that incorporated the sample data along with the song so sample discs and a second drive were no longer a necessity it also made it easier for musicians to use novel samples and still distribute their work and while the trusty st01 samples would still see heavy use tracker modules could now be far less reliant upon them towards the end of 1988 doc released soundtracker 2.2 which by now was quite a mature piece of software and one of the more dominant offerings amongst the nascent world of trackers caster nabarski was still developing the ultimate soundtrack however and in november 1988 he released version 2.0 of his original tracker it was much improved over the earlier versions but the collective effort of other groups had exceeded the pace of his own and the unofficial alternatives rather overshadowed the original version 2 was the last release of the ultimate soundtracker carson would play no further role in the development of the software he had conceived it's hard not to feel bad for him his hard work had been ripped off and any commercial potential evaporated i suppose there's some solace in the fact that his work his involuntary gift would go on to have massive influence both on the amiga and beyond in his absence the development of trackers continued in august 1989 a swedish duo named mahani and cactus released noise tracker another entry in a long line of soundtracker clones but there was one very important difference it was nice to use it's the little things really you could now control most functions with the keyboard so switching into edit mode changing samples laying down notes and playing the pattern to hear your changes could all be done with the keys you could now use up to 31 samples instead of 15 and the amiga's low pass filter which was designed to reduce sample aliasing but muffled the output slightly was automatically disabled it handled like a dream and it should be no surprise that noise tracker quickly became the standard by now there was a growing pool of talented musicians who worked with soundtracker and its derivatives and with its lightweight and accessible playback routine this led to the format's adoption in games there were many different music formats used on the amiga but from 1989 onwards the soundtracker format was quite dominant many musicians started out in the demo scene before finding work in commercial games such as dr awesome also known as bjorn linner and cold storage or tim wright yes the kid started in the demo scene as part of the silence but these days you might know him from his work on assassin's creed hitman or borderlands the demo scene was a crucible of talent many coders graphicians musicians started their career there and many still work in the industry today most tracking musicians cultivated their own style some of which are quite distinct for instance the airy fleeting melodies of yoga lil yadal paired with his type production make his work amongst the best on the amiga [Music] the progressive exciting techno works of jester fused with a jazz-like flair evoked strong memories of the demo scene some forged new genres entirely such as lizard king or gustav kwefberg who pioneered a style of music called doskpop the term comes from the swedish for disco and synth combined pop and it fuses disco with synth instruments for a very demo scene very amiga sound [Music] another distinct style is chip music today the term chiptune is applied to all early computer music including trackers but in the original sense chiptune is a far more specific term it refers to tracker modules that emulate the style of earlier 8-bit music particularly from the commodore 64 sid this was done by using small looped samples with simple waveforms and modulating those samples with effects [Music] this wasn't just done for nostalgia although that is a big part the tiny samples meant that the module's file size could be minuscule often just a few kilobytes [Music] this was useful for things like crackdrows where there might only be limited space on the disc one pioneer of this style was matthew simmons or format with his work adorning many intros although plenty of others composed in this style and the arpeggiated raw synths are a common sound you'll hear in tracker music efficient use of space has always been valued by the demo scene you wouldn't think you could do much with something like four kilobytes but there's an entire category of demos set out to prove you wrong [Music] as time ticked on and the 90s arrived soundtracker's bloodline continued of course and noise tracker reached version 2.0 in july 1990 this would be the final version although there were plenty of other offshoots most significant of those was pro tracker coded by zap of omega freelancers the first version released in october 1990 although by all accounts it was full of bugs later versions smoothed things over though and by the end of 1991 pro tracker was a more than worthy alternative to noise tracker eventually it would carry significant enhancements including a higher resolution display integrated sample editor and improved editing tools there do exist trackers that aren't direct descendants of soundtracker and amongst the most important is tayo kinnunen's med short for music editor its first release was in 1989. although early versions of the program didn't really offer much that other trackers couldn't and it used its own format that wasn't compatible with soundtracker version 2 was almost entirely rewritten and added midi support along with additional editing features med had a niche as a quirky soundtracker alternative with some neat features but it was the later octomet that really stood out the amiga was limited to four hardware channels but it is possible to mix sounds in software at a cost of cpu time on a basic amiga you only had a seven megahertz processor so software mixing wasn't often done a channels were feasible however splitting each hardware channel into two this did increase cpu usage soundtrack modules occupied about three percent of available cpu time whereas an eight channel optimed song could use twenty percent nevertheless the extra channels were useful for musicians the ability to form complex chords and incorporate more instruments along with midi support meant that optimed found favor with computer musicians by this time trackers were starting to become more mainstream my first exposure to them was on a cover disk of omega format so you no longer needed to be part of the scene to hear about them they were accessible to everyone for many people this was their introduction to electronic music production you no longer needed studio gear worth thousands you could get by with a cheap home computer and a copy of pro tracker most commercial music was still done in the studio the old-fashioned way but in the underground scenes like rave jungle and techno trackers were becoming quite significant the prodigy used pro tracker aphrodite busy b dj zinc apex twin and venetian snares all use trackers too darude made the first version of sandstorm in a tracker calvin harris produced the entirety of icreate disco using optiman today computers are an essential part of any music studio and the digital audio workstation is the central tool for most of the production process but in the 90s trackers offered a taste of this future later amigas had more powerful cpus so software mixing and more than 8 channels became a possibility a retargetable audio subsystem called hc permitted 14-bit stereo sound on the amigas hardware a neat trick that used two 8-bit channels with one at a lower volume to reproduce the least significant bits some later trackers used he to support a large number of channels automated sound studio supported up to 64. digibooster supported 254 you could use 16-bit samples and more of them you were really only limited by available ram the four-channel 15-sample limit of soundtracker was long gone but so too was the amiga's heyday by the mid-90s commodore was bankrupt and the amiga was in an inevitable decline trekkers would live on however but it was time to hand over to the pc when soundtracker first came out and the amiga was starting to enjoy its potential it's fair to say that pc audio was in rather a sorry state in 1987 most pcs weren't equipped with sound cards instead users had to endure the one bit bleeps of the pc speaker this was originally designed to provide simple audio notifications for programs error beeps and the such like you could funnel game audio through the speaker but the results weren't pretty the addition of dedicated sound hardware soon became a necessity and so hardware like the creative music system the ad-lib music synthesizer card and the expensive gravis ultrasound started populating pc slots and providing the soundtracks for games these cards were essentially synthesizers geared towards the playback of midi music while they provided generous polyphony their instrument banks were effectively hard coded so they demanded a different approach than sample based music midi music could sound radically different depending on what sound card you had so it was more difficult for composers to control exactly what was heard they were essentially supplying sheet music instead of a recording this gives pc music of this era a distinct sound not unpleasant by any means but slightly reminiscent of a cheap keyboard in demo mode there are certain advantages to using samples and these become quite apparent within certain genres electronic styles such as techno really don't fare well with these standard midi instrument banks so you can see why someone might want to bring trackers to the pc [Music] in 1990 finnish coder sammy tamaletto a future crew did just that with screen tracker early versions were a bit rough even by tracker standards it runs in dos text mode and is entirely driven by the keyboard but it works mostly the important thing was that now pc owners had a tracker of their own one that matched or exceeded soundtrack as baseline in 1994 by the time screen tracker 3 came out things were much improved you could use up to 16 channels and there was enhanced support for different sound cards version 3 also introduced a new module format s3m which proved a popular format for multi-track songs on the pc the interface was still text-based an odd shade of beige and everything still driven by the keyboard but it was quite usable and a lot more stable it took a while for the demo scene to be taken seriously on the pc while a 486 equipped with a vga card and sound card was vastly more powerful than an amiga 500 the lack of a standard configuration meant that it was more difficult to hit the hardware directly and a sense of tradition meant there was considerable inertia when it came to switching platforms attitudes changed when future crew released second reality a demo for the pc with both impressive visuals and a fantastic soundtrack by purple motion and skaven the music was done in stream tracker of course the demo was very much inspired by work done on the amiga many of the effects were familiar but the performance differential between the amiga and pc at this time meant that things were just a little bit more the demo scene has always been about pushing the limits of hardware but second reality broke through anything the amiga had done before for me it marks a handover of the scene from the amiga 2 pc a new era with new limits to exceed of course the amiga demo scene continued although doomed and commercially extinct the platform still had plenty to offer and i'm pleased to say the amiga scene continues to this day but as more and more people bought pcs the platform became the primary choice and soon there would be a number of trackers to choose from a demo group called triton released fast tracker at the end of 1992 with support for eight channels a worthy alternative to screen tracker 2 at the time but it was the later fast tracker 2 that made the most impact released in november 1994 it introduced the xm module format which permitted up to 32 channels its interface was very much traditional tracker heavily inspired by protracker and unlike stream tracker it supported a mouse and was a little bit easier to use of course some preferred screen tracker decrying the single screen mouse driven interface so there was a certain rivalry another popular alternative was impulse tracker which released in 1995. its interface closely resembles screen tracker but it incorporates a number of improvements such as the envelopes and multi samples from fast tracker 2 and support for up to 64 channels impulse tracker modules have the dot it file extension and these along with xm and s3m modules comprise the majority of pc tracker modules you'll find so now pc users had three very capable trackers to choose from and there exists some very impressive work from this era far exceeding anything done with the 4-channel limitation on the amiga but there was a bit of a problem faced by tracker music in the mid-90s the increasing prevalence of cd-rom was rather eroding their advantages with cd audio you no longer needed to be constrained by number of channels samples or cpu-bound playback you could simply play recorded audio from the cd full quality digital audio with no cpu time required worse you no longer needed to employ adept users of weird tracker software to compose your soundtracks you could turn to actual musicians instead [Music] so just as soon as the limitations on tracked music were lifted the practical need for trackers almost entirely evaporated from an overhead perspective music and pc games shifted from midi to cd audio tracker music was just some offbeat fringe but there are a few notable exceptions back in 1993 there was a man named tim sweeney founder of a company called epic mega games who was particularly enamored with the work future crew were doing with their pc demos tim wanted to hire them to work on games epic sponsored assembly 93 a demo party and courted the team behind future crew they weren't interested the scene is anti-commercial not really motivated by profit but they did show them an unfinished pinball game they'd been working on epic persuaded them to finish it so it could be released but their other commitments meant they weren't able to instead a canadian developer named james schmaltz made his own pinball game for epic called epic pinball its soundtrack was made in stream tracker james schmaltz went on to found digital extremes and bolstered by the success of epic pinball started work on a new game a first person tutor this game was unreal which released in 1998 a spectacular looking game but also noteworthy on account of its music its entire soundtrack was tracker music good stuff too a collaboration between alexander brandon also known as siren michael van den boss or mca andrew sega known as nekros and dan gardipay or base head unreal tournament was the same deus ex too and honestly this music holds up really well it's an evolutionary spur that can trace its roots back to the amiga right back to casting a basket's soundtracker these days there's no compelling reason to use tracker music directly in games even if you compose in a tracker converting to a digital recording makes much more sense it's easier to master and play back [Music] the few that do do so out of a desire for authenticity the only contemporary example i can think of is retro revival shooter ion fury which features music by finnish tracker jaco roxton that's not to say trackers are extinct of course there exist quite a few contemporary trackers for musicians who desire the old-school cachet or who simply prefer the direct mode of editing one of the earliest trackers for windows was mod plug tracker the first version of which came out in 1997 today it's an open source project known as openmpt it's a free capable tracker with a standard windows interface mad tracker is another alternative for windows that first emerged around the same time although it's no longer in active development for those who want to preserve the old-school feel of dos there's milky tracker a modern option in the fast tracker 2 mould some later trackers take a modular approach allowing you to chain instruments and effects while sequencing them with the tracker yes killer buzz was the first although other trackers take a similar approach such as cycle and sun vox if you're after a heavy weight tracker for more serious production then renoise is worth considering it's not free but it's a capable digital audio workstation centered on its tracker interface if you're interested in making chip tunes there are options designed around emulating specific sound hardware famitracker for instance lets you compose music for the nes there are native options too little sound dj is a tracker that runs on the game boy for an authentic chiptune sound that fits in your pocket there's even hardware implementations of trackers the poly end tracker and xor nerdsyn are two examples so clearly trackers have a certain amount of admiration within the music community they represent the old school an important part of early computer music trackers exist in a narrow slice of its history wedged between the synthetic sounds of psg's and the age of cd-rom they gave computer musicians the ability to express themselves in an entirely novel way and were both affordable and accessible allowing a new wave of talent to flourish there's something intangibly different about music made this way perhaps it's because instead of a digital recording played back the music is assembled in real time notes and instruments modulation effects in essence trackers are a performance [Music] it's the sound of 16-bit there's nothing quite like it so the next time you pirate any software not that you should as the key gen does its thing maybe pause it and listen there's a lot of history there if you're interested in hearing more tracking music youtube isn't a terrible place to start there are plenty of recordings and compilations there if you want the original modules then the mod archive is a good repository vlc has playback support for a wide range of tracker formats most modern trackers should be able to import the common module formats and with those you'll be able to play around with the instruments and patterns of the songs and see how they're constructed modern ports of both protracker and fast tracker 2 exist if you like to keep it old-school if you'd like to know more about the demo scene again there are plenty of demo recordings on youtube or you could download the original demos and run them either on hardware or through an emulator win uae for the amiga dosbox for pc there exists some comprehensive databases of scene productions poet.net is a fantastic resort covers multiple platforms and if you're interested in the amiga scene then kestrel bit world has detailed listings of demos including the music if nothing else give the unreal tournament soundtrack a listen it's brilliant [Music] thank you very much for watching and until next time farewell you

Channel: Ahoy

Views: 1,393,890

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Id: roBkg-iPrbw

Length: 41min 11sec (2471 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021