SketchMan3 wrote:

Personally, I had trouble transitioning from 5-lined staff sheet music composing to piano roll. Transitioning to LSDJ was pretty easy, and that as a result made transitioning to other trackers much easier for me.

I don't know what you mean by "off the grid" (seems kind of a weird phrase because piano rolls are pretty heavily gridded, though you can zoom in and all that) but most trackers have some kind of note-trigger-delay effect which I'm thinking accomplishes the "off the grid" result if i'm interpreting that correctly.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Maybe a better way to put it would be more flexible note lengths and starting positions, no note quantization if you would like. I know you can do this stuff with commands, but that can be a finicky way of doing things, esp. triplets. Not really needed, but I enjoy the flexibility and it is probably a personal preference type of thing.

Another thing that bothers me is the inability to easily create chords/harmony, but that is understandable as things like gameboys, NES, etc. weren't made for that.

I guess it depends on what tracker you are actually using. There are plenty of trackers and formats that are perfectly good at producing all of those things. Includng NES.

Personally, I had trouble transitioning from 5-lined staff sheet music composing to piano roll. Transitioning to LSDJ was pretty easy, and that as a result made transitioning to other trackers much easier for me.

r4c7 wrote:

I honestly think of trackers as vertical drum sequencers in a way. I don't mind them, but I definitely prefer a more timelined-based way of organizing patterns than what most trackers use. I also like piano rolls because you can move the notes off the grid, something you can't do on a tracker. I primarily use Sunvox, if that shows anything.

I don't know what you mean by "off the grid" (seems kind of a weird phrase because piano rolls are pretty heavily gridded, though you can zoom in and all that) but most trackers have some kind of note-trigger-delay effect which I'm thinking accomplishes the "off the grid" result if i'm interpreting that correctly.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Maybe a better way to put it would be more flexible note lengths and starting positions, no note quantization if you would like. I know you can do this stuff with commands, but that can be a finicky way of doing things, esp. triplets. Not really needed, but I enjoy the flexibility and it is probably a personal preference type of thing.

Another thing that bothers me is the inability to easily create chords/harmony, but that is understandable as things like gameboys, NES, etc. weren't made for that.

I don't know what you mean by "off the grid" (seems kind of a weird phrase because piano rolls are pretty heavily gridded, though you can zoom in and all that) but most trackers have some kind of note-trigger-delay effect which I'm thinking accomplishes the "off the grid" result if i'm interpreting that correctly.

I definitely don't really like trackers at all. I'm most comfortable in a piano roll. But if I need to use a tracker in order to play on the real chips, I will first compose in a DAW to choose my note selection and phrasing, and then I transfer it to whatever medium that will allow me to run it on the real hardware. For example, I use ppMCK to make nsfs, but before I go punching notes into an MML text editor, I will have already composed it in ableton using Midines.

haha, this is exactly my workflow.

but with FL.

I basically have a whole EP from last year I haven't released because, to my shame, I've not bothered to go and make the hi-hats less repetitive.

the latency of goattracker is stupid but im used to it now.

At first I wasn't into trackers at all but now I can't deal without these !

aye.