Do you find it difficult to compose in trackers? (Page 1 of 2)

I generally hate piano rolls because I always turn my head sideways, but that's just me. I usually play something on the piano or guitar and then track it!

I tend to solidify tunes in my head, and I simply input them into the tracker. Sort if like how when I write for real instruments, I don't compose in my notation software. But my approach may be different from yours. I just tend to isolate then develop an idea in my head, then transcribe it then WHAM the song is done.

It can be difficult to start from scratch in a tracker and try to improvise your way into a tune. Like some others have responded, I usually have something prepared before I begin tracking it. I think the difficulty arises from the fact that the latency of many trackers is unacceptable for jamming parts out live.

One tracker without that limitation is Renoise. It will allow you to play in real time like any standard DAW. I have had much more success with improvising in Renoise than say, Milky Tracker or Famitracker.

Use whatever works for you though, no sense in forcing yourself to track when you could do it in FL Studio with much less effort.

do you find yourself commiting the hotkeys, effects commands, all the various screens to memory? part of learning a tracker and making it easy on yourself, i guess you could say, is rooted in this...if you dont know the effects commands, and part of that is knowing how these things function at different speeds and tempos, then suffice to say you arent going to get the most out of a tracker.

the big benefit there is you can articulate notes, phrases, passages, or conversely the samples and even manipulating them inside the tracker if youre using instruments. so id say unless you've written like 20-25 songs, and maybe even having em all suck in your opinion but really getting comfortable with everything that comes with it, shotcuts, hotkeys, whatever you have to do to keep your hand off the mouse really, then you're simply approaching it in the wrong way. of course theres no right way or wrong way, but thats what works for me and its the difference in coming up with nothing or getting an idea of a good song out there and having it be organic. concentrating on the programming to the point that theres really no gaps in thinking something up and getting it out into the tracker. hopefully that'll help, also use schismtracker!

It took me a good deal of time for me to get to the point where I understand trackers, or really just LSDJ. I started writing music with good old staff paper in addition to sitting at a piano and trying different things, being classically trained and all, so I understand trackers being difficult to write in. After a lot of experimentation and trial/error with the program itself, my skills have improved quite a bit. Practice makes perfect, after all

aye.

My writing process tends to go guitar/bass/keyboard -> fl studio -> tracker. I tend to find it easier to get stuff down in fl because of the piano roll, having a visual representation of the keys up, especially when it started out on keyboard really helps a lot. I do sometimes skip out fl if I'm already pretty sure of what I want to be doing. I also start with the tracker, then go to x instrument if I can't write the entire thing in tracker. I think its that whole visualizing of the notes and music and junk.