Octamed on the Amiga had very good midi support well before 1999… At least I Had no issues running a drum machine and an akai sampler when I was tracking with it.
:snip:
Sadly the trackers have allways been a bit behind when it comes to serious stuff with external gear and I had to switch to cubase in 1999 because it offered at least some sort of support for external hardware synths 
:snip:
I’ve been caining FL studio for years, I still use it for stuff with minimal beats, I’ve also used Reaktor, Cubase and Reason.
Renoise is the best for programming beats I can say that much, it would be near impossible to write a Soundmurderer type track in Fruityloops.
As for Cubase I dunno about that either, Renoise is much more intuitive when It comes to sequencing breaks IMHO.
Wisp does all his shit in fruity loops
but really who gives a f****
why does everything have to be…this is great so this is bad
are you bush or something?
all a yall…shut up…make music
p ri od
I browsed the latest Computer Music mag at the stand. An interview with Aaron Funk is in there. Lots of Renoise name dropping, which is good of course. Apparently, he uses 1.9, likes automating the built-in effects especially the EQ and bit reduction effect. There might as well be a dblue Glitch namedropping, can’t remember exactly. Check it out.
It’s discussed further in this thread.
Ignore the topic starter’s hate/shameful intentions, the further development is good ol’ venice drumlove
Repeat after me:
“WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!”
I’M NOT!
hahaha, classic Life of Brian quote 
And on that note, not to in any way open it up for discussion again, that was the point of the thread you linked to, BotB - “be yourself, you can be as good as anyone”. Sadly, the sentiment was presented through attack.
(i was really unsure if i should press add reply)
Despite all that… I would love to see Venetian Snares enter a BB compo,
I’d give my left testicle to snoop around in his xrns file 
I heard a rumor that he already did under a pseudonym… but that may just be a rumor 
Haha, who’s a winner of a BB that nobody has heard of?
So it’s a given that snares’d win a BB?
I think you can say that any DAW can produce any result with enough blood sweat and tears. For me, i’ve seen dudes work in Logic and Cubase, and it’d drive me crazy. I don’t even do anything complicated and i’d still be tearing my hair out.
On the flipside there’s stuff that’s an absolute nightmare to do in trackers, any “freehand” recording for instance. We’re using a “naturally” quantized package and there’s no way to adjust the quantizing. Maddening. In the same way, programming chords of 4+ notes is still, visually, a mess in trackers.
I’ve always seen trackers as drum computers first and foremost. They are simply the best way to program drums out there. But you wouldn’t be programming mozart on a drum computer. This is why, for me at least, my melodies become very ponderous, slow things that stretch on, because the intricate stuff is just a big fat hassle to do and it doesn’t feel natural for me as someone who actually play instruments and have a big love of acoustic music.
But to each their own. Cubase users have to “hack” to get intricate drums, we have to “hack” to get intricate melodies. Because believe me, we do.
Just saying that he’s got some skill, that’s all 
You look like young groupies of ricky martin…
I love this discussions about Venetian Snares and if somebody can create better music with this or with that tool - I agree, Renoise is just a tool for me. I tried everything from cubase to logic to reason to cakewalk, I even worked with dance-ejay or sonic foundry acid but IMHO a tracker is the easiest way for me to express what I want to do.
Concerning this community of great musicians we have a lot of variety in styles: Trance, house, breakcore, BRAKKACORE, brainkore and of course acid 
I tried another approach doing classic on renoise, guess what - it worked. classic with renoise (work in progress)
HELL YEAH 
I actually did some mastering for this guy who was producing very Snares/Squarepusher-inspired dnb/classical stuff in Logic, and, you know, all the elements were there, but everything sounded very contrived and predictable; and this guy had got himself a release on a fairly decent label anyway, but I still feel obliged to offer advice just because label guys often aren’t as critical as the people you’ve got to impress to actually shift any units these days, so I enquired about the drum programming… Anyway, turned out this guy had spent about 6 months programming the drums on this one track, using the arrange page, thousands of automation envelopes, Kontakt, piano rolls, everything, etc. (probably had RSI too)
His college music tech teacher had told him everyone uses Logic and he’d just stuck with it… Not only is that kind of intricate programming arduous using a mouse, it also forces you to compose really slowly and sucks all the spontinaity out of your work… So I tried to introduce this guy to trackers and he wasn’t having any of it… Induced some kind of nervous breakdown and I never heard from him again.
Actually though, as far as programming melodies goes, this is the main reason I use a tracker… I find seeing chords and melodies on a piano roll screws my head up completely… Sucks all appreciation out of music for me, makes things fiddly and warps my perspective.
For me, programming melodies in a tracker is like having a polyphonic 303… Chords are usually a case of holding Shift and step sequencing with the MIDI keyboard, but with melodies I feel like I’ve got much more creative freedom… I actually find I do my most musical stuff writing melodies with that drum machine approach - reducing everything to notes and durations.
I guess it depends if you’re used to musical notation or not really. I come from piano, violin and choir education, i guess i’m still kind of locked into that kind of horizontal thinking for some things.