Hey, I was wondering... Does anybody compose with trackers. and if you do, do you mind sharing tips and maybe even let us sample some of your work? I love to listen to the works of many great composers...but I''m stuck with you guys. Just kidding. Live in my world, Play in yours!!!

www.modarchive.com


Composer/Sound Designer
www.GroovyAudio.com

[edited by - yjbrown on June 8, 2004 1:48:03 AM]

I compose with trackers for some pieces. I also compose music for live musicians, so obviously that isnt done with a tracker (I use Sibelius 2 for producing sheet music, and highly recommend it to anyone else who wants to do so). Otherwise, my choices are Fruityloops or Modplug Tracker, which is an old freeware favorite of mine. Generally I''ll already have an idea of what I want in my mind, so I produce the first few bars of it in each program, and whichever one feels better for that particular piece is the one I''ll end up using. (Note that Modplug has inferior encoders if you dont want to use .mod, .it, etc, so for .Mp3, or .ogg (which it isnt even capable of), I export a .wav, then up the volume to match the output if I''d made it using Fruityloops by means of Soundforge, and then encode from there into the desired format).

Some advice for producing tracked music... Lemme see...
-Its still good to have some standard (ie. traditional) music theory training, especially to play one or more instruments.
-Reuse patterns, but dont allow your music to become too repetative; even slight variences can make a good difference,
-Know your chosen software well, dont use an option unless you know exactly what its doing and why you want to do that.
-Make sure it sounds good - a piece can be theoretically sound and still suck.

Hrm, and a demo of my work...
Here is one of my older pieces composed using Modplug Tracker, designed as the themesong for a roleplaying guild in which I''m a member.

Kazgoroth, cool! You know standard notation. I compose music for my school bands and ensambles, but I use Finale. Is there anybody else who knows notation?

Live in my world, Play in yours!!!