chunter
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Brunswick, GA USA

Holy wars rule! [/sarcasm]

I can't speak for total newcomers but I know they are "out there," every now and again someone will wander into #mod_shrine, BotB, or SDCompo and try a compo round, but few of these people stick with it, so if it doesn't twist the question around too much, how do we keep these people interested?

When I want the MOD/XM sound I use an IT clone like Schism because I prefer its hotkeys, otherwise Renoise remains my instrument of choice for just about everything. I suspect most tracker users "graduate" to either Renoise or MPT (or abandon tracking.)

If you want to play an instrument with limitations there is always harmonica and kazoo. The "limits" in chip are an artistic decision like any other.

akira^8GB
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New York City
irrlichtproject wrote:

tiny .xm tracking rulez. but i think there's a difference between fighting against limitations that are externally defined (ie hardware limitations, compo rules), and setting those limitations internally (ie limit yourself).

Size constrain can be one of the variants. You can also limit the channels, or limit yourself to using only one sample. Like the Hexawe compos. This sort of limitation is way more fun I think, because of many reasons.

The problem with externally defined limitations is that it gets exponentially hard to break them once you start breaking them. The C64 scene is a fine example of breaking limitations all the time, but the Game Boy scene is not particularly notorious for pushing any sort of limitations. So I don't see, for most cases, why limitation breaking would be an ethos to choose that platform.

irrlichtproject
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Nomad's Land

KAZOO FTW!!!! it's the best instrument ever. and it even sounds a bit like chiptune wink

@akira well... that's one of the reasons why i don't like gameboy

Last edited by irrlichtproject (Jul 12, 2011 4:33 pm)

herr_prof
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akira^8GB wrote:

]The C64 scene is a fine example of breaking limitations all the time, but the Game Boy scene is not particularly notorious for pushing any sort of limitations. So I don't see, for most cases, why limitation breaking would be an ethos to choose that platform.

The hvsc has its fair share of formulaic cookie cutter c64 toons. The lens of history should distort how we feel about gb tunes the same way in the next 6-7 years.

I dont like mods as an artists because sample based stuff has never really hooked me, plus im really at home using my dpad to whip shit up quickly. Ive always meant to give softsynth trackers more of a chance though.

PULSELOOPER
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São Paulo, Brazil

The main reason I don't do music at home on my laptop is because I get so tired sitting in front of it while working. That's when handhelds become so refreshing.

egr
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Abandoned on Fire
PULSELOOPER wrote:

The main reason I don't do music at home on my laptop is because I get so tired sitting in front of it while working. That's when handhelds become so refreshing.

That's really the only thing that keeps me away from AdlibTracker.  I should look into re-getting a cheapo laptop.

bryface
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vancouver, canada
Lazerbeat wrote:

But it would seem the number of people new to the scene (by new I mean within the last few years or so), at least in our neck of the woods, who choose MOD/XM to compose / perform live seems vanishingly small.

Anyone have any thoughts as to why? The only thing I can think of is there aren't THAT many exciting options of things to do live with mods.

I started composing in module formats (.S3M/.IT) and while i still love the artform, one of my major gripes has always been that i don't have full control over the sound.  whether it's making my own samples, or ripping good samples from other mods, there's no easy way to tweak and shape towards the sound that you want. 

The trackers that do let you hand-draw samples aren't that intuitive either, unless you have an intimate understanding of how to draw the waveform for a sound that you want.  LSDJ on the other hand, for example, gives you at least some measure of shaping the sound, at least to the point where you feel you've done all you can do to get the sound that you want because of the limited synthesis options.

plus i'm sure that whatever is considered the "mod" sound is something that is more stylistic/compositional rather than technical - the fact that MODs can sound like anything actually detracts from its uniqueness.  the only thing you can say about what gives a MOD its sonic character is the sound artifacts you get when you play samples at different pitches.. but that's not something that's immediately recognizable and appreciated except to people who have composed in module formats. 

also, playing mods in live setting is frankly kinda boring to watch - you hit Play and try to dance.  BUT i think playing modules in a live setting would be a lot more exciting, if the software was adapted to accommodate live manipulation, like queueing up chains of patterns and more intelligent launching/muting of parts, instead of just clumsily soloing/muting channels during playback.  that kind of live tweaking is what the other chip artists have the benefit of through their software.

PULSELOOPER
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São Paulo, Brazil
bryface wrote:

BUT i think playing modules in a live setting would be a lot more exciting, if the software was adapted to accommodate live manipulation, like queueing up chains of patterns and more intelligent launching/muting of parts, instead of just clumsily soloing/muting channels during playback.  that kind of live tweaking is what the other chip artists have the benefit of through their software.

yeah, it would be good if the old module trackers could be "up to date" and have more live features. Like gwen does with his maxYMiser.

akira^8GB
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New York City
herr_prof wrote:

The hvsc has its fair share of formulaic cookie cutter c64 toons. The lens of history should distort how we feel about gb tunes the same way in the next 6-7 years.

On which years? Certainly the latest stuff pushes and pushes the hardware because otherwise people would just not pay attention. However the number of amazing tunes is indeed always limited. On the other hand, with Game Boy generated  music, I don't see much limitation breaking since the times of Lo-Bat. Of course there are exceptions (like A.M.U.), but the number of breakthrough achievements in sound is very small. Let's also have in mind we have only two tools on the Game Boy that are being used to create the music. If you go all the way to break the limit, you go like what Goto80 did with defMon.

I keep reading all this about "live features". Most of the biggest chipmusic live acts I know do not mess with song structure in live mode and there are great reasons for that, so I don't know why you keep using it as an argument where most everyone does is hit play and maybe mute some channels. I'm not saying this is bad or anything like that, as I progressed with GB music making I touched less and less the GB while playing live myself, I'm just saying that for the argument at hand, talking about " live possibilities"  makes no sense, since you can do already what most people do live with a Game Boy using an old tool like ProTracker.

Last edited by akira^8GB (Jul 12, 2011 6:49 pm)

Subway Sonicbeat
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Brazil

You can do, but I think it's more fun to press start and select than to press enter and let it scroll.

Also, I know you can change patterns on the fly, I know about those possibilities, I just don't like them. And I see why people prefer LSDJ live style, is easier to see and mess with.

Last edited by Subway Sonicbeat (Jul 12, 2011 7:06 pm)

boomlinde
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Sweden

Everybody should try a at a few OHCs on #botb at espernet before making a negative point out of the "limitlessness" of xm/mod. OHCing with a bunch of crude samples is the rawest and most fun music making experience I know, besides maybe IRL jamming with friends. I didn't think I had it in me, but the stress can really put you on a creative spree, and I find myself making pretty good stuff with a fire-and-forget attitude towards ideas that is necessary to be able to churn out a few patterns within the time limit.

Thinking strictly "horizontally" or technically about limitations is weird IMO. Almost all the limitations you are imagining are self-imposed. No one makes gameboy music out of necessity.

Last edited by boomlinde (Jul 12, 2011 7:32 pm)

herr_prof
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akira^8GB wrote:

I keep reading all this about "live features". Most of the biggest chipmusic live acts I know do not mess with song structure in live mode and there are great reasons for that, so I don't know why you keep using it as an argument where most everyone does is hit play and maybe mute some channels. I'm not saying this is bad or anything like that, as I progressed with GB music making I touched less and less the GB while playing live myself, I'm just saying that for the argument at hand, talking about " live possibilities"  makes no sense, since you can do already what most people do live with a Game Boy using an old tool like ProTracker.

The only live features i use in lsdj is midi out. big_smile


Go listen to the entire hvsc in one sitting, then the entire 8bc, and when you check out of the assume, let me know which is worse on a total scale. As far as artists/platforms i actually listen to for pleasure, its probaly a toss up between c64 atary and dmg, but i almost never listen to mod music. Maybe it's less "timeless" than the other platforms?

PULSELOOPER
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São Paulo, Brazil

I miss Rico Zerone on this discussion.

an0va
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Threads like these make me realize how large the amount of distributed incorrect information is.

Cartoon Bomb
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VA

My two cents, considering I am one of those newbs from the last few years:

I don't make .mod/xm because I suck at it, simple as that.  Compared to LGPT/LSDJ, the pc trackers just seem clunky and scattered, it's too much for by spongey brain. 

Kind of like what ant1 was saying, if I discovered trackers first, I would not necessarily have made my way to these forums.  To come to think of it, I probably would have been like "wtf is this?" and turned back. 

For some reason or another, I associate a certain style with tracker music (...Joule perhaps), though I am well aware of the wide variability.  I feel that some of the best composers use pc sample trackers, but it almost never has the sound I'm looking for. 

LSDJ is super streamlined and easy to understand, it takes like 10 minutes to learn.  Jumping to piggy tracker is just as easy, and it has some very distinctive sounds that you won't likely hear anywhere else.  Pretty much every command is self-explanatory (not hex digits), and I really like song->chain->phrase->table setup.

boomlinde
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Sweden

"Scattered" -- compared to an editor where you have to switch back and forth between screens to change column? smile

Say what you want about either type of interface (I think that they both have their advantages), but I just don't think that scattered and clunky are the right words for PC trackers compared to LSDJ-type trackers. I'll agree that they might seem unintuitive to a beginner and that the learning curve is quite steep, but when you get into them, PC module trackers are usually very fast to work with. It still largely depends on what you want to do, though, and both interfaces lend to different approaches to composition.