I've used very few trackers. I think I was turned off that the default is for all notes to be the same length, and that changing the number of beats in any measure seemed kind of involved. If you've never written music, and you don't own any instruments, and you open a program for the first time that shows you 8 divisions per measure with a steady beat, you'll probably make a lot of music before you discover what other options are available. Multiply this by a million users, and you've got the makings of a long-term association with RDM (retarded dance music). Try entering Debussy into a tracker and see how intuitive it is; and yet the music itself is very easy to listen to. I bet people's music would be far more beautiful if they would sing freely and often and then transcribe what they were singing, instead of transcribing before the music even exists. Or maybe it's just a case where the number of people who write good music is less than the number of people who write bad music in general? -Chuckk On 2/28/07, Dave Phillips <dlphillips@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Greetings: I have no idea if anyone's ever used a tracker to create a hit song, but it is unfortunate that trackers are usually associated with a particular style of music. I have heard some very cool stuff in module formats, though I'll agree that most of the music-made-with-trackers that I've heard tends towards rather uninteresting dance beat music. I don't believe that trackers necessarily impose any kind of style restriction, you can bend them into doing non-beat oriented stuff. Kuno's "Substantia Grisea" is an excellent example. Developers are often surprised at what users wind up doing with their tools. Trackers seem to have come along at a time just before cheap samplers hit the market, which might have drawn attention away from the developing tracker communities. Nevertheless, those communities remain strong, a lot of people like to make music with trackers, and I don't think they're overly concerned with their lack of popular success. ;) Best, dp
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