Trackers

What's a tracker? Really, the first question should be "What's a MOD?" A MOD is a type of music file that is not quite MIDI and not quite WAV, but more a combination of the two. MODs came out of the demo scene of many years ago. What's a demo? Back in the DOS days, very talented individuals formed groups all over the world. These groups usually consisted of a programmer, a musician, and an artist. Each group showed off its talents by producing computer programs that showed amazing 3D graphics, great techno music, and stunning artistic pictures and text. In fact, you might have seen some demos running at a local computer store in your area. The coding that went into making a demo was equally impressive ”getting the most out of a 10-MHz IBM PC/XT and later a 386.

MODs came around about the same time demos were becoming known. A MOD file is a file that contains audio samples of instruments and sequence information on when to play each sample. A pure audio file (WAV or AU file) is a file containing a digital representation of a song in wave form. A MP3 file is a highly compressed version of this. A MIDI file stores just the notes; a separate device is needed to make the sounds you hear. So how do you make a MOD file? You use a tracker, of course. Now we get back to our original question, "What's a tracker?"

A tracker is a program similar to a MIDI sequencer but that requires a much finer attention to detail. In fact, unless you like composing music note by note, event by event, and down to a level of detail that is almost the equivalent of programming in assembly language, a tracker is probably not for you. Music composition using a tracker is an art form. Many projects have come and gone that tried to implement a tracker. Some died due to lack of interest, while others died due to the complexities of the MOD file formats. Because MODs were created in the days before the Internet and high-speed connections, the file formats where kept extremely small. Some files are only 400K for a song that is three minutes long. An MP3 song encoded at 128 bits might require a few megabytes, while a WAV file would be somewhere between 20 and 30 megabytes. Of course, the more samples your MOD-based song has, the larger the file will be. What's a sample?

Samples are the files you employ to create the actual sound used in the tracker. Samples can be made via a software synthesizer or a drum machine, or they can be downloaded from the Internet or even captured from a synthesizer using an audio-capture program. Samples are the sound files a tracker uses to produce the music you hear. You lay out the sequence of when and how you want a sample played by the tracker or by a MOD player that plays only the resulting MOD files trackers create. Figure 20-5 shows the main sequencer screen of SoundTracker, lifted from their Web site. Most trackers will have a sequencer that looks similar. As you can see, the screen is a bit confusing. Not to worry, though ”once you understand what's going on with a tracker, you'll be creating very interesting songs. Visit The Mod Archive at www.modarchive.com for a huge collection of MOD songs. To create your own tracker-based songs using Linux, you first have to get a tracker and some samples. Here is a list of trackers found via www. freshmeat .net :

· SoundTracker

· tektracker

· Voodoo Tracker

Figure 20-5. SoundTracker main screen.

More information about trackers can be found at www.united-trackers.org . If you are dead set on creating music with a tracker, I suggest searching the Net for all the information you can get on trackers and sample archives. It can be frustrating, or it can be the most enjoyable music creation experience you have.