Tracker: old fire rekindled

Just found out that the wonderfully talented laptop artist Jeremy Flower has his own Web site. In one of his posts he talks about the Chicago high school visits of a few weeks ago, as a part of the “Ainadamar” curriculum. He has also uploaded the student-created beats.

I very briefly talked to Jeremy at one of the high school visits. In my heydays I used to be a fervent tracker (quite different from the infamous Trekkies) and now that fire has been rekindled (thank you, Jeremy Flower and Osvaldo Golijov). Although I still have my very own self-produced CD with a dozen or so embarrassing drum and bass and dance tracks, I don’t have any of the files anymore. And when I was creating those tracks, computers were still comfortable with Microsoft DOS. The program I used, Impulse Tracker, hasn’t been updated in years and running DOS is a little much to ask.

A quick Google search led me to MadTracker, a Windows-based program similar to Impulse Tracker. It looks great for a free product and it comes with some samples to start. I’m very excited. The main challenge now is building up a sample library, so I can start cranking out some old school beats.

Another Google search for samples led me to a vast library of orchestral sounds, called “The Sound Exchange” from England’s Philharmonia Orchestra. They have recorded every single note on every orchestral instrument with various volumes and durations. But best of all, it’s entirely free. In fact, here’s the policy on usage of the samples:

“This means that the samples are free to use for creative musical purposes. Even if you use them to create a No.1 selling CD (in fact we hope you do), we will not make any charges or any claim for royalties. As long as you have made creative musical use of the samples you can do as you wish: we only insist that the original samples must not be sold to anyone.”

I can’t wait to get started. And if I’m not too embarrassed by the results, I might post a track or two in the future. Cello concerto anyone?

27 February 2008 | Across the board, Classical Music, New Media and Blogosphere | Comments