Tracker

[ateolf]

We went to see the Memphis Symphony Orchestra's full season opener in the afternoon (as opposed to the "unplugged" thing that was more like a soft open, and it ruled too but wasn't a full program and kinda an even somewhat apart from the season). Okay yeah, so as I just hinted, it ruled. It was two longer pieces: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's Second Symphony. Both were really good. The second movement of the Sibelius has at the core for a good bit of it this walking pizzicato bass alternating with the cellos. Because of the walking it feels very prescient of jazz. It specifically sounds like abstract bop (maybe late Mingus or something). Probably just a coincidence of history, but it feels pretty otherworldly (jazz-like or not). And later in the evening I worked some on my upcoming Louisville show. I finished one idea I had which was to take a goofy sample and sequence it as a certain song, both of which are stereotypically "Louisville" (I won't say what the sample and song are just yet as it's all too goofy, but it amuses me and I plan to chop it up with the Morphagene in such a way as the source wouldn't be identifiable anyway). I sequenced it all using Schism Tracker, a port/clone of Impulse Tracker to use on modern machines. Impulse Tracker is the one I was mainly using back in the day. I was trying to find something to make just a simple sequence of a sample and was weirdly having trouble then I figured I could do this in a tracker. Looking up ones to use, trying to decide on the best, I saw Schism Tracker and was like, I used to use Impulse Tracker a whole bunch! So I went with that. But damn, it's the same interface and it's totally a pain to use given how I'm used to using computers nowadays! No undo (the big one), heavy reliance on F-keys (which wouldn't be bad but slightly annoying on this laptop as I have to use an extra function key to make them work right), and just general weird behavior that I guess would have seemed natural on a dos system but I'm used to certain things nowadays. Anyway, what I was doing was pretty small and simple so I kept at it but I probably wouldn't want to keep using it for something more involved like I used to! So I finished it anyway and exported it to a wav file. And then I started in on patching my modular for the show. So it's finally on the way.