rareblacklobster
kiwifarms.net
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- 7 de Feb, 2021
Tracker Music
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- Registrado
- 22 de Nov, 2021
A useful site for this type of music would be The Mod Archive which hosts a lot of tracker music, especially famous pieces like Winds of Fjords.
Lithuophile
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 5 de Jul, 2022
- Registrado
- 8 de Feb, 2016
Anyone into Tracker stuff???
Nope?
Too bad, you're gonna listen to me ramble about it.
I've found myself getting hooked on it. big shoutout to https://netlabelarchive.org for giving me mp3 sources of old labels like Five Musicians and Monotonik, I was going through the archives for months before i realized i could play any tracker file like .xm in VLC media player.
Why the obsession? Well a couple reasons:
1) These files are SMALL
As a person who thinks about how youtube videos in the early 2010s onwards keep increasing in GB size of server space in youtube HQ, I'm fascinated that there's a pretty good quality file format that makes files smaller than a megabyte.
How is THAT possible?
It's like a MIDI format where every audio sample is also included in the file. I've seen several high profile tracker moosicians bemoan MIDI around the turn of the millenium because it didn't do the courtesy of containing the instruments intended to be used for the piece.
2) It's retro as PHUCK
And specifically in a way that i haven't seen be overly fetishized and commodified yet, and may NEVER be. Tracker music in the demoscene is and has always been anti-profit and pro collaboration as far as I'm concerned. And the tracker scene specifically was strong - people would get together in the HUNDREDS for demoscene parties, they'd compete in music and demo (freeform visual art under the limitations of 90's computers) contests, and they'd drink a lot.
I feel like most retro mediums have been thoroughly commodified in 2025. records, cassettes, outdated fashions, old genres... the difference is tracker music was never for-profit and it hasn't even been vintage-ified. The scene seems to consist of a decent handful of diehards by this point, but that's not nothing, y'know?
Also look at this interface... just look at it
3) You get to dissect any piece of music just by having the file.
This is freaking crazy I'll be real. I've been dipping my toes in opening .xm files in MilkyTracker the past two days but even now I've found such a wild insight into some of my new favorite pieces of music. In particular opening the module file for Banana Split by Dizzy had me in awe. If you're reading this far I urge you to download Banana Split and open it in MilkyTracker, it'll take up less than 10 MB on your computer to do that I promise.
Anyway Banana Split is frickin nuts, it's a pretty beloved piece of tracker music and you can hear how densely composed yet fun it is with your own two ears. But when you open it up in Milky, you get to isolate any one of the 4 (!!!) instrument tracks on its own. imagine if you could do that with any music you like. i know some classic rock songs are available in stem form (thanks to Rock Band iirc) but that's a drop in the ocean of all music. if i was able to just open the project file for like, Carn Marth by Aphex Twin i'd be listening to the solo'd instruments and picking apart intricacies all day. (although Vordhosbn was created in a tracker... not that we have access to the file... but I digress)
Hitting "solo" on any channel of Banana Split had me in awe. This effin lunatic Dizzy had 4 channels available to him in '93 and he thoroughly crammed every little squiggly nuance he could into them. And for some reason there's SO much bleed between channels - there are like little bass notes in the drum channel, synth guitar chugs in the bass channel, just unreal. that's all i'll say. PLEASE go do that. open Banana Split in Milky.
Unrelated point so not numbered, but it occurs to me that something of the demoscene lived on in the weirder corners of the Youtube Poop scene from when YTPs up until 2012 were relevant. Both were decentralized, democratized, abstract, anything-goes forms of video art that just kind of emerged from people wanting to do it. They made it weirder, as far as I can tell, but they laid the groundwork in some ways (although obviously Stan Brakhage and them got there first)
ANYWAY.
A couple of other select favorites. Anything from Andrew Sega/Necros is a must listen, as a general gateway into tracker music.
There are some looooong samples in these tracks from this other dude.
Basehead is another favorite. His discography is of particular note - all of his musicdisks came with a file documenting his whole discography, and it's interesting how a lot of the tunes marked as unreleased are MODs I literally have on my phone right now, and a lot of the released ones I can't seem to find. Even still, a lot of his stuff can be found on Demozoo and Mod Archive, and I'm wondering which other sites I can check on to find more.
Nope?
Too bad, you're gonna listen to me ramble about it.
I've found myself getting hooked on it. big shoutout to https://netlabelarchive.org for giving me mp3 sources of old labels like Five Musicians and Monotonik, I was going through the archives for months before i realized i could play any tracker file like .xm in VLC media player.
Why the obsession? Well a couple reasons:
1) These files are SMALL
As a person who thinks about how youtube videos in the early 2010s onwards keep increasing in GB size of server space in youtube HQ, I'm fascinated that there's a pretty good quality file format that makes files smaller than a megabyte.
How is THAT possible?
It's like a MIDI format where every audio sample is also included in the file. I've seen several high profile tracker moosicians bemoan MIDI around the turn of the millenium because it didn't do the courtesy of containing the instruments intended to be used for the piece.
2) It's retro as PHUCK
And specifically in a way that i haven't seen be overly fetishized and commodified yet, and may NEVER be. Tracker music in the demoscene is and has always been anti-profit and pro collaboration as far as I'm concerned. And the tracker scene specifically was strong - people would get together in the HUNDREDS for demoscene parties, they'd compete in music and demo (freeform visual art under the limitations of 90's computers) contests, and they'd drink a lot.
I feel like most retro mediums have been thoroughly commodified in 2025. records, cassettes, outdated fashions, old genres... the difference is tracker music was never for-profit and it hasn't even been vintage-ified. The scene seems to consist of a decent handful of diehards by this point, but that's not nothing, y'know?
Also look at this interface... just look at it
3) You get to dissect any piece of music just by having the file.
This is freaking crazy I'll be real. I've been dipping my toes in opening .xm files in MilkyTracker the past two days but even now I've found such a wild insight into some of my new favorite pieces of music. In particular opening the module file for Banana Split by Dizzy had me in awe. If you're reading this far I urge you to download Banana Split and open it in MilkyTracker, it'll take up less than 10 MB on your computer to do that I promise.
Anyway Banana Split is frickin nuts, it's a pretty beloved piece of tracker music and you can hear how densely composed yet fun it is with your own two ears. But when you open it up in Milky, you get to isolate any one of the 4 (!!!) instrument tracks on its own. imagine if you could do that with any music you like. i know some classic rock songs are available in stem form (thanks to Rock Band iirc) but that's a drop in the ocean of all music. if i was able to just open the project file for like, Carn Marth by Aphex Twin i'd be listening to the solo'd instruments and picking apart intricacies all day. (although Vordhosbn was created in a tracker... not that we have access to the file... but I digress)
Hitting "solo" on any channel of Banana Split had me in awe. This effin lunatic Dizzy had 4 channels available to him in '93 and he thoroughly crammed every little squiggly nuance he could into them. And for some reason there's SO much bleed between channels - there are like little bass notes in the drum channel, synth guitar chugs in the bass channel, just unreal. that's all i'll say. PLEASE go do that. open Banana Split in Milky.
Unrelated point so not numbered, but it occurs to me that something of the demoscene lived on in the weirder corners of the Youtube Poop scene from when YTPs up until 2012 were relevant. Both were decentralized, democratized, abstract, anything-goes forms of video art that just kind of emerged from people wanting to do it. They made it weirder, as far as I can tell, but they laid the groundwork in some ways (although obviously Stan Brakhage and them got there first)
ANYWAY.
A couple of other select favorites. Anything from Andrew Sega/Necros is a must listen, as a general gateway into tracker music.
There are some looooong samples in these tracks from this other dude.
Basehead is another favorite. His discography is of particular note - all of his musicdisks came with a file documenting his whole discography, and it's interesting how a lot of the tunes marked as unreleased are MODs I literally have on my phone right now, and a lot of the released ones I can't seem to find. Even still, a lot of his stuff can be found on Demozoo and Mod Archive, and I'm wondering which other sites I can check on to find more.
- Registrado
- 25 de Jul, 2024
Scene.org is gooder than netlabel archive, but netlabel archive is more accessible for people that aren't as obsessed as I, is well written, and it links to where it got its music from, so I can't really hate it.
Also, can one of you oldfags explain what #trax is and all of the autistic drama that is going to be lost to time otherwise?
Also, can one of you oldfags explain what #trax is and all of the autistic drama that is going to be lost to time otherwise?
Última edición:
- Registrado
- 13 de Dic, 2022
Due to it's niche within 'vintage tech', I assume that the scene is crawling with troons.
Adlib Tracker 2 is pretty nice if you like FM/Adlib/soundblaster sounds.
I've still got my first laptop with an ESS AudioDrive so I run it under DOS sometimes.
Adlib Tracker 2 is pretty nice if you like FM/Adlib/soundblaster sounds.
I've still got my first laptop with an ESS AudioDrive so I run it under DOS sometimes.
- Registrado
- 13 de Dic, 2022
More places to find modules and recordings - warning, many of these sites have very autistic layouts & search functions, it's just the nature of the beast...
There's a decent amount of stuff that's been uploaded to (((archive.org))) over the years, too.
There's a decent amount of stuff that's been uploaded to (((archive.org))) over the years, too.
It's completely infested.
- Registrado
- 25 de Jul, 2024
A few more good tracker sites:
https://bemod.net (a few dozen rare Japanese mods)
(hosted by scene.org, but is a different site)
https://artscene.textfiles.com/music/mods (I think that all of these mods are also on modland.com, but I am not sure)
https://bemod.net (a few dozen rare Japanese mods)
(hosted by scene.org, but is a different site)
https://artscene.textfiles.com/music/mods (I think that all of these mods are also on modland.com, but I am not sure)
- Registrado
- 8 de Feb, 2016
fearofdark is so good. need to listen to more of his stuff tbh
Halo Cipher
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 10 de Abr, 2024
Thanks for this rabbit hole. This is so fucking cool.