I was an ModEdit -> Scream Tracker 3 -> Impulse Tracker user myself, and that feeling of productivity that sample-based trackers create was astonishing. I almost always considered what I was doing was "sketching" out songs that I might somebody revisit to remaster or clean up with better instruments etc. (I never really did of course).
I found I could crank a song out I was happy with in just a few hours, but it took a long time to pull together a sample library that I was happy with and well organized, and learn enough techniques to make what I wanted. But yeah, there was a period of a few years where tons of music I still listen to today literally came together in a couple of hours.
I started slowing down as I tried to go for much more polish in my productions, writing out by hand effects that are done nowadays with VSTs (pitch stretches, digital multi-tap stuff, and lots of trying to make acoustic instruments sound like they were actually being played with volume and sample offsets).
Then technology and life changed, IT sort of stopped working and I didn't like my other options for a while. Finally forced myself to get into the FastTracker sort of workflow years later with MadTracker2 and now Renoise. It's not something I really have time to dedicate to anymore, but I keep almost getting setup to do it. There's a mental block for me with VST/VSTis that I can't quite get through. Sure they sound "better" but they lack lots of the expressiveness and flexibility working in all samples used to offer.
> There's a mental block for me with VST/VSTis (... snip ...) they lack lots of the expressiveness and flexibility working in all samples used to offer.
It'd be neat to have the best of both worlds, ie. Give me VSTs but let me control time and playback as precisely as I can with sample based
Seems like it'd be technically feasible even with VST but it's just not done (emphasis is on realtime, with VSTs behaving as independent "pedals" rather than part of a whole)
You might have nerd sniped me.
nervous sideways glance at long neglected VST source code folder
Yeah thing which has always irked me about that is you have to maintain the original sequence and setup if you want the freedom to change it later
Something which made that transparent would be ideal. Ableton and a few others have freeze options which make this a bit nicer but it's still a bit disconnected
> was "sketching" out songs that I might somebody revisit to remaster or clean up with better instruments
Haha big time - I didn't really have the kit for such things, but I remember trying to "finish" a few tunes by rendering them out (not as stems) and then adding crap over the top in a non-real-time sample editor
Whole thing of course became a mess of reverb :)
> writing out by hand effects that are done nowadays with VSTs
Yeah, VSTs made it so appealing and flashy
Making manual flanges by copying a track and using sample offset on one was... not super convenient, but boy was it satisfying
"real" effects opened up so many powerful sound design options that it was easy to forget about actually composing things :)
And the amount of times I then wanted tracker level micro control you got with manual approach and just gave up after a bit..
I was an ModEdit -> Scream Tracker 3 -> Impulse Tracker user myself, and that feeling of productivity that sample-based trackers create was astonishing. I almost always considered what I was doing was "sketching" out songs that I might somebody revisit to remaster or clean up with better instruments etc. (I never really did of course).
I found I could crank a song out I was happy with in just a few hours, but it took a long time to pull together a sample library that I was happy with and well organized, and learn enough techniques to make what I wanted. But yeah, there was a period of a few years where tons of music I still listen to today literally came together in a couple of hours.
I started slowing down as I tried to go for much more polish in my productions, writing out by hand effects that are done nowadays with VSTs (pitch stretches, digital multi-tap stuff, and lots of trying to make acoustic instruments sound like they were actually being played with volume and sample offsets).
Then technology and life changed, IT sort of stopped working and I didn't like my other options for a while. Finally forced myself to get into the FastTracker sort of workflow years later with MadTracker2 and now Renoise. It's not something I really have time to dedicate to anymore, but I keep almost getting setup to do it. There's a mental block for me with VST/VSTis that I can't quite get through. Sure they sound "better" but they lack lots of the expressiveness and flexibility working in all samples used to offer.