Well said! Trackers definitely were only a nerd thing back in the day because, in the early nineties, no “ordinary” people even had a computer… Well, for gaming purposes maybe. But I think even those people were called nerds at that time 
Though, I’ve never felt that I was a “real” nerd.
Now when I look around, I have 5 computers in this room… 3 of them I use almost daily. Well, maybe I am a little bit of a nerd then 
Nice to hear that you found trackers 
I’d probably go with sonomancy or auramancy if we’re gonna get all mancy schmancy🔮
Although audio necromancy does have a nice kind of ring to it 
Well, you didn’t need to tell those ignorants what DAW you were using. 
In fact it doesn’t matter how you did it, as long as YOU did it YOURSELF (and not by using loops). But even that isn’t interesting for listeners, only for us creators. A listener gives a shit of how it was created as long as it sounds good. If one is listening to music one doesn’t think about the DAW or whatever.
Maybe. But not today anymore, at least as far as I know. I got into contact with some Electro producers and label owners, and there are quite a few who are using Renoise, and they don’t hesitate to tell if you’re asking.
Everyone having a computer in the early 90s was a nerd or a kid, 100% sure! In fact most people didn’t own a computer back then. Almost every adult considered a computer as a “videogame playing machine”. So yeah, computer stuff was niche stuff, and tracker stuff was a niche within niche stuff. So being a tracker guy was nerdy amongst nerds. We creators are a rare species, even today, despite all the different available modern DAWs, the ease of how to get samples/instruments and stuff online (and btw a lot for free), the YouTube wannabe producer channels that want to tell you how to produce the right way and so on.
That’s nice to hear. So there has been progress.
Yeah, it’s so easy nowadays to get everything you ever wanted from the net. And that’s a good thing.
The only negative issue is that when everything is downloadable online, you don’t have to make all the trouble than back in the day. And that’s affecting directly your creativity. Could be affecting positively too in some cases. So, it’s a double-edged sword though.
Speaking of creativity, I’ve gone back to basics and less and less using a MIDI keyboard. Early tracking years everything was just done with a computer keyboard, and I’m really enjoying that again.
It gives some limits of course, but you can still play big chords on it.
And all that feels just like the old days
Welcome to the real world of tracking. I’ve never used a MIDI keyboard, computer keyboard all the way ever since. Btw. professionals like Mitch Murder are also always using computer keyboards only. If you’re not playing live (or not recording your live playing), there’s absolutely no point of using a MIDI keyboard.
Well, you still have to compose and mix yourself…
I would have highly appreciated if there were the same possibilities than today when I started in 1991. Not only the fact that today there are no track limitations in a song anymore, just like those 4 tracks that you got in any common tracker back then. Furthermore: If you need informations just go online and you’ll get the answer, if you’re looking for samples just go online and you’ll get them (mostly for free), if you’re looking for instruments just go online and grab them (whether freeware or commercial). You can do simply everything just by a couple of mouse clicks. I’m pretty sure most young musicians of today wouldn’t create music if they would have been living in 1991. They wouldn’t even understand how to get there themselves…
There is though one huge benefit to using an external midi keyboard, you can enter full chords straight to a track. On a computer keyboard, you can’t do that. You must enter note by note. Correct me if I’m wrong
Haha yeah!
So many times have seen that young people need that direct link to go somewhere. Most of them really can’t even know how to use Google (or any search bar) anymore. Or is it just laziness, I don’t really know…
That negative issue what I meant, is that when you have everything at your fingertips available, It often becomes overwhelming because you have too many choices to choose from.
But totally agree, I have many times dreamed of if I just could travel in time back to 90’s with my laptop and all its sample libraries and vst’s…
You know you can hold shift while inputting chords on the keyboard, yes? Enters notes on the same line while expanding note columns to accommodate. Maybe not exactly the same, but functionally sufficient, no?
Hard to input extended voicings with both hands this way, but it does allowed chords to be “played” via the computer keyboard while in edit mode
Yes, but if not disabled by default you would have to remove the velocity values afterwards, which means more work for nothing. And like @slujr said, there’s a little trick to enter chords more easily through computer keyboard.
Honestly I would even be happy if a young person could focus for at least 10 minutes…
Ah, ok. Yes, too many options aren’t good for a proper decision. What I’ve meant is the fact that it’s so fucking easy to create music nowadays. You don’t even need to work for it anymore, because everything is online and there’s even a tool for anything. No effort is needed anymore, regardless in which matter in terms of music. Literally everything is shoved in people’s asses. I mean, for example back then I even had to create and edit every single echo MANUALLY. And today there are millions of delay plugins next to the native delays of any DAW. You make click and clack with your mouse within seconds and that’s it. You’ve got endless possibilities today for no money and no effort, it’s literally the opposite of back then.
No fucking way… how could it be possible that I had completely forgotten about that… 
What a senile 
Okay, I’m out of here, bye!
Well, they use TikTok and primarily watch shorts on YouTube. So what to expect 
Yes, that is so true. Like I’ve always thought who the hell is using those VPS Avengers and Nexus ready-made sequences? What is the point of those? They are totally useless. Just press C and voilà…
Oh I remember that, I was calculating with a calculator those delay times
Eh, renoise is deep! So many little tricks and shortcuts to the workflow… I feel like I’m continually discovering/rediscovering and remembering/forgetting aspects of it.
Oh wow! Nemesis is a true legend.
Nice!
Thanks for reminding me. Makes things a lot easier
Yeah, feels familiar…
Interesting story and I basically agree with you, even if I can understand those who want a piano roll because being younger that’s how I started (FL Studio 6, maybe 7, I don’t remember), in my opinion there would be nothing wrong with 'having a double working solution, it would be just great in any daw, right? For me it would be great to open FL Studio / Reason / Reaper, Renoise, and say “Today I’m using you as a tracker”, or “today I’m using you as a piano roll”, probably those who can’t understand piano roll are simply not used to using it , exactly like a kid who sees a tracker for the first time and thinks “what is this delirium?”, in terms of comfort/speed, everything is subjective there too, there are those who have become so skilled with the piano roll that they are much faster than me on a tracker (which I certainly still don’t know how to use well)…so I think this talk about “this is better than that” is just hot air. But I agree with you when you say that there are plenty of piano rolls out there and you just need to use one, there are also piano rolls in VST version which can therefore be used in any DAW = you could use a piano roll on Renoise even if no one had created piano rolls for Renoise…So I don’t understand the complaints of those who want one…Install it and use it! The important thing is to continue making music that we like, by any means, hardware, software, tracker, piano roll, virtual eurorack… It’s all wonderful out there, we just need to understand what we like.
I’m so used to the tracker interface that I don’t understand the benefit of a piano roll at all.
It just does not make any sense in my opinion.
And if there must be a piano roll on the tracker for some reason, it must be vertical definitely. Horizontal piano lol makes no sense at all for a tracker interface.
If I were young and starting music-making in this millennium, I would probably choose Cubase, Logic, Ableton, Reaper, or something like that. Not dissing Renoise by any means with this. But I think that is the assumed truth honestly.
When we boomers started back in the day, there was really no other alternative out there, than a tracker. Cubase was though, but you needed a hardware synth or sampler to get sound out of it. Couldn’t afford that kind of thing as a kid.
But it’s very nice and cool that you younger people find Renoise as an alternative these days and are interested in the tracker interface
Not sure about that. If I didn’t know any tracker I would have chosen Ableton I think, but most likely I wouldn’t even have started creating music. Not knowing a tracker doesn’t improve how to handle a piano roll. And today internet is common, so there are also a lot of other opportunities than music. No need to say more. 
We’re not boomers, especially not just because some whiny young Generation Z people were and probably still are calling us boomers due to the fact that they can’t stand other opinions and are unable to communicate properly. Our parents are boomers, but we’re Generation X! 
Could be true.
Oh damn, maybe I’m just in the middle of a midlife crisis or something. I just don’t feel so young anymore.
My parents are over 80 yo now. I think they are mummies.
If they’re mummies they’re silent, and if they’re over 80 they’re indeed part of the “silent generation”.
Btw, a part of my parents is dead already, but I don’t feel too old. I’m Generation X. Generation X is the best generation there is. If you’re Generation X you’re capable of everything. You can work hard and you understand digital stuff as well. No other generation can claim that, and indeed that’s the reality. We’re the bridge from old to new, we know and we can do everything. 
Yes, could. But it could also be different than that. 
Wel I am gen x (1977 ) and I’m lazy as fuck .
The point of a piano roll is the same as a tracker, in the sense: they do the same thing in two different ways. On the one hand you enter “textual” inputs, on the other you enter visual inputs with nice colored rectangles… but it’s always a matter of entering gate/trig. Today computers have a graphical response for each command and it takes just one click to send the command, whereas before it was just a black screen on which you had to type text commands to do anything, and you had to know the computer’s language, while today it is the computer that almost knows ours… it’s the same kind of evolution, it probably served to bring certain products to mass use by making them more easily understandable by anyone, a child who sees a piano roll immediately understands that it is “something to do music”, a child who sees a tracker is traumatized or might even confuse it with Excel… Many people today have the opportunity to do something that was previously reserved for a “sect” of “chosen ones” with specific skills. Personally, if I have to write a classical piano piece or “acoustic” music, I do it on FL Studio, not on Renoise (not because it can’t be done, but because I’m more at ease on FL in these cases) instead if I have to work with the synths, the modulations, the effects, faster and more articulated rhythms, then I move to Renoise because in these cases I am more at ease here, although it can also be done on FL. The question is precisely that in my opinion no DAW should envy anything to another DAW, there are splendid songs created within Renoise, within FL, within Reaper, within Logic, within Reason, Ableton Live, Digital Performer, Studio One, Bitwig… now they are all very good software that potentially allow you to become rich with music, if you have the right ideas and skills, because they all do the same thing: sequencer/timeline and mixer, it just changes the way things are displayed, just as the modular synth is another way of doing the same things. They all make sense to someone, none of them make sense to anyone else. For example, a boy, Colugo, has recently developed Blockhead, a very strange DAW that has nothing to do with any DAW we have known up to now, he did it precisely because he has an even different way of seeing musical production and there was no daw that satisfied his imagination, so he created it, but basically the results you achieve in Blockhead you can achieve in FL or Renoise and vice versa… the pitch is universal, the envelopes are universal, the oscillators they are universal, filters are universal… Sequencers and inputs are also universal, all that changes is seeing C4-01 written or seeing a small rectangle drawn on the corresponding note or seeing 8 knobs that emit a different amount of volts that is then converted into intonation… but the task performed is identical and the possible results are the same, so if one makes sense…They all make sense. The usual question remains of “I like this” or “I don’t like this”… I don’t like Ableton Live, I don’t like Pro Tools, I don’t like Digital Performer and I only like Grid from Bitwig… But it’s pure question of visualizing the elements because I know that I could make the same music anywhere.
