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Depending on where I'm tracking, I generally use either FastTracker 2.08 or SoundTracker - not the original, but a new program that is basically an XM editor for Linux.

Tracker module? hard? Are you joking or what?

The first that comes in my mind is CheeseTracker .

Take a quick look up in wikipedia and you'll find others too.

Have you looked at SoundTracker http://www.soundtracker.org/ ?

So why use Windows tools any more?

This is not a troll, I use Linux and Free software to make music myself, for example Audacity, Ecasound and Soundtracker . These are definitely not the most advanced examples, but they suffice for me for now.

If you like good old music trackers, I can recommend Soundtracker.

It uses a Fasttracker 2 like interface, it plays XM and MOD, and it's GPL'd.

Coding: Hisoft Devpac Assembler, Aztec C, SAS/C, Storm C, Hisoft C, Hisoft pascal, AMOS and Microsoft Amiga Basic(!).

Creating art/gfx: Digital Creation's Brilliance, Deluxe paint, Real 3D, Imagine 3D and Lightwave.

Creating Music: Soundtracker, Noisetracker, Startrekker, Protracker, MED, OctaMED, Bars and Pipes, Super Jam, etc.

Desktop Publishing: Pagestream, Professional page.

Text editing / Word processing: Cygnus ED, Wordsworth, Final writer and Pro Write.

At that time most of the applications mentioned (with the the OS/HW combo) were much superior to anything you could find on "professional" PCs and Macs at the time, in some ways some of them still are. But sadly, most of the applications mentioned are now dead or only available for Windows/Linux/Mac.

Funny thing is, as far I can remeber it was not superior or cheap PC hardware that killed Amiga. It was not even the mistreatment it was subjected to by Commodore. It was iD software's "Doom" that put the final nail in the coffin. As no acceptable Doom clone appered for the Amiga in reasonable time, every kid around begged their parents to buy PCs instead of Amigas, which in turn led to the decline of the mass market for Amiga hardware and following that, the loss of most software houses.

I like to play with SoundTracker, mostly just because it works nicely with Linux.

* MIDI workstation: logic audio | cubase | or even (puke) cakewalk

I've heard that MusE and Rosegarden are pretty decent, though I haven't really used either.

* Powerful trackers: buzz | FT2 | IT

Have you tried SoundTracker? I don't know much about tracking so I wasn't able to evaluate how good it is.

* Advanced outboard softsynths: reaktor | absynth | Q1 | grainlab

What about Spiral Synth Modular?

* Powerful sample editing tools: cool edit/96/pro | soundforge

I think Audacity is pretty capable. There's also WaveSurfer, and Sweep.

Btw, I'd be glad to be wrong, if someone would only point out the links to *stable* and *feature-filled* tools.

I see I've been conned into doing your homework for you. :)

...it's not that hard if you really want to.

While programs out there like Acid, Rebirth (ugh), Fruityloops etc. aren't that bad, they are usually too "make 31337 music really easily even if you have no musical talent whatsoever". Even worse, they don't give you as much control over your music.

So, if you want to make music on your computer without spending any money on big commercial software packages or sound hardware, I suggest you look into tracking. Tracking is basically a way to arrange sound samples (wav, raw, etc) into channels which are played simulataneously. These arrangements form patterns, which you can sequence together to make songs (of course, it can get more complex than this if you want it to). If you've ever listened to a MOD, S3M, XM, or IT file, you've listened to the work of a tracker.

I've been tracking for about three years now on and off and it's really quite enjoyable. Definately a nice (creative) break whenever I need one. There are quite a few free trackers out there, though unfortunately some of the best ones are for DOS -- Impulse tracker, Fast Tracker, etc. The Windows ones are alright but for people like me who are used to Impulse Tracker it's a pain in the ass to get used to. If you really need a windows tracker, I suggest checking out Modplug Tracker. For those of you in Linux, there's a great new tracker under development called SoundTracker. Besides being free, programs like these give you quite a bit of flexibility as far as the style of your music goes. You can make techno, trance, ambient, rock, whatever -- you're only limited by the samples you download (which you can find anywhere on the internet).

Why hasn't anybody said anything about trackers ? (another, another, another). I couldn't create a beat without one.

Also, if you don't know about Ardour, I don't care 'bout ya.

Learn from the Amiga. Use mods. See this.
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

Linux.com happens to be running this article on music creation software under Linux. It mentions projects such as gAlan, a project to create an application for electronic music generation, FreeBirth, an attempt at a ReBirth clone, SoundTracker, Brahms, a MIDI sequencer, and aRts, a analog synthesizer application.
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"I am 99% ready to completely wipe all Windows software from my machines, but the last 1% I need ..."

Umm, if you've got more than one computer, leave Windows into one of them if only for the sake of running Cubase or Logic Audio or whatever in it. Linux audio software isn't yet up to those of Windows, but they're slowly getting there.

Most of the audio software I've tried are in their very early stages of development. There are a couple of relatively decent MIDI packages around (such as Brahms, aka. "ex-koobase"), but for those of us dealing with samples, the situation does not seem so bright. Crashes and unexpected weirdness is not uncommon. But that's acceptable for software still in development!

However, there are a couple of real jewels (for the bedroom music enthusiast) emerging, mainly terminatorX and soundtracker. IMO they both need no-compromise stereo sample support (mono as of 3.55 and 0.3.10 respectively), and Soundtracker should get rid of that horrible "pitchbender" gizmo. and improve the sound quality instead... I like terminatorX because the user interface is very intuitive. You can just blast away and make music without having to conduct The Ceremony of Ye Olde Premeditated Scripting Of Obscure Syntax. I'm not a person who can spend one week thinking about some strange way to make the program put my inspiration into audio form. So the interface has to be wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

What Linux needs is a Gimp for audio. That would really be a killer app. Still, things are looking bright. Bump around the Sound and MIDI Software for Linux site and you'll not only see glimpses of the future but might come across some pleasant surprises to adopt as well!

Visit these sites, and try those progams out (at least view some screenshots). You'll probably be surprized. These programs may not all be as complete as the windows/dos 'original', but they are all free and under development, which means: better to come soon, and all remaining free.

www.soundtracker.org SoundTracker is a music tracking tool for Unix / X11 with a design similar to the DOS program FastTracker and the Amiga legend ProTracker.

Brahms/KooBase Brahms intends to be for Linux, what CuBase is for MacOS/Windows.

WaveForge WaveForge is a free Sound Editor. It is aimed to be a free Sound Forge Clone for Linux. All the capabilitied of the Sound forge will be (hopefully) implemented in this version.

(how did I find them? Freshmeat)

What keyboard shortcuts does windows have to lower or raise a window besided the painfully slow alt-tab? Both Windowmaker and Enlightenment have Alt-arrowdown and Alt-arrowup.

What keyboard shortcuts does windows have to move around on virtual desktops? Oh wait. windows doesn't even have that most basic GUI feature

Do you really have to click on the titlebar to move a window or aim for the four-pixel wide window borders to resize? Both WindowMaker and Enlightenment have alt-mousedrag and alt-mousedrag-leftkey to do that without needing the surgeon's aim.

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