Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions?

Re:Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? by bane on Saturday October 08, 2011 @09:08PM (#3089325)

Digital trackers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_(music_software)

I have yet to find a faster way from idea to music. It's clunky to get into until you spend some time to learn the idea and build up a collection of music and wrap your brain around the entire concept, but it's a few decades old a very mature concept with tens of thousands of works created with this method.

Here's a site that streams tracked music 24-7 http://www.scenemusic.net/demovibes/

Some of it is quite good (thought the quality obviously ranges quite a bit though both talent and technology).

If you want to see the music with a visual production try http://demoscene.tv/

I've been working with a piece of software called MadTracker 2 for a while, but I'm about to transition to Renoise (MadTracker 2 is long since a dead project) which is available for Windows, OS X and Linux and is about as professional as a piece of software has any right being.

http://www.renoise.com/

In a rush I can crank a reasonable tune out in a few hours. I've heard of at least one major artist cranking out an entire album (vocals and all) in less than a week.

http://hunz.com.au/

Most of the modern trackers will let you render individual tracks to file for final downmixing.

Note: These are most definitely not intended for live performance, though a few folks have used them for that purpose.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? by przemoc on Sunday October 09, 2011 @06:39AM (#3090203)

Thanks for your comment. I am aware of digital trackers (I mentioned modplug), was even using FastTracker 2 back in the old days (but not for a long time). I like scene music, especially old school chip tunes.

I heard about renoise before. I'll maybe try its trial version, but I doubt trackers are really what I am looking for as they lack proper recording feature (at least the ones I tried). Check also the comment in my new thread.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? by bane on Sunday October 09, 2011 @12:01PM (#3090660)

Yeah, it seems like you might have more of a desire for live performance tools. Maybe even something simple like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miMM8R1CSM8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25VGdNU3nrU

which can produce really great results.

And once you're happy with the results, "record" the individual parts with a midi tool so you have the notes down someplace for recall later.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? by przemoc on Sunday October 09, 2011 @02:20PM (#3090943)

Thanks for your comment. Maybe you're right. These YT examples are really nice. Even though I can hum or sign accurately (thus this has clear advantage over playing), I am more inclined in getting track of my melodies early (i.e. what I am actually crafting, is it F#, G or G# scale, etc.), so I don't think voice-way is the right solution (maybe I'm wrong, as it would be more efficient assuming good recording and looping devices, still it's not that good for every kind of music), but definitely interesting one.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? by eccp on Saturday October 08, 2011 @10:19PM (#3089462)

+1 for Renoise. I've heard some awesome compositions made on it, and it's the natural evolution of demoscene trackers. For a sample, see the following video with the track 'Leandi' by Mosaik (a fairly known demoscene musician): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N-f4sSU75I

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Re:Ask HN: What are your music prototyping solutions? by przemoc on Sunday October 09, 2011 @02:33PM (#3090968)

Thanks for comment. Tracker evolution is a good thing, but somehow recent works from trackers sounding like from DAWs/sequencers, with MBs of samples per instrument, etc. are not what I am looking in them. Back then you had .xm, several KBs total, with 4 tracks and listening experience could be ecstatic. Now you can have quality-wise perfect tune, more complex with dozen tracks, but the spirit is not there IMO. I am not saying that you cannot use trackers for some serious stuff, but for me they will be mostly only tools for old school projects.

Renoise is not a tracker, or pure-tracker-alone software, so it is kind of different beast.

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