Hi,
I was involved in the demoscene from the beginning: year 1986
It started with coding 1985 12years old then and did code waveforms on the c64, recorded on a casette using those double casette decks mixed with some sounds from synths or recorded drums but i did get hooked on the computer sounds i could generate and the SAM(speech ofcourse was cool) and well did those kind of thing since there was no music editing program that i could use.
C64 had 3 waveforms(triangle,pulse,saw) + whitenoise. Do some code and messing with those kind of things, creating mostly different fx sounds but some melodies also coded a game in 1986 so needed some sound which was coded waveform math things. most of the early sids songs on c64 were done all by musicians/coders if we go back to 1982-1986, most of them coded their own sound engines.
History:
1986 Christopher Huelsbeck released the SoundMonitor “TRACKER” for Commodore 64 computer.
*glitch in the chip allowed a 4th channel to play samples.
1987 Karsten Obarski released Ultimate Soundtracker for amiga.
My tracking:
1987 I started with tracker music using rockmonitor(c64). 3+1channel
1988 I did start with Soundtracker on amiga. 4 channels.
A lot of tricks like figuring out echo (tape echo) i did hear some songs that had echo, there was no plugins so volume tricks in one channel were you got like drums and base etc this was fun to explore and figure out how to get
some echo between those sounds within 1channel. In 1988 it was easy compared to the c64 you would need to write your own sound engine like those things i did in 1985. One letter i remember it was from some prince from saudi actually, back then it was exciting to say to your parent look i got a letter from saudi, some prinde who want my music.
made 70+ songs between 1988-1989. most of them are released in the Byterapers Muzzax collection
series in 1989(Amiga). Was connected with the elite groups and had some connections around the world +80 groups swapping disks snail mail and handwritten letters and stickers etc. Most songs were just made in order to get the demos done fast, not so music just some noise.
I did not do so much after 1990 but when i saw fruity loops version 1 and the first VST plugins I made some
tunes in 1998-1999.
About the scene anyway i think todays DAW only EDM root begun around 1988, i know swedish house mafia and others did listen to these 1988-1989 amiga songs, 1995 so much later axwell made some tune on amiga1200,back then the EDM scene was trackers but still it was considered a bit different but the early tracker music and c64 sidswere the start of todays EDM basically since it was digital and produced using a daw only. The early 90s edm was produced using drum machines synths etc but the first 80s trackers were the first daws. But the vst plugins and number of channels, sound cards for pc etc ofcourse moved the “sound” forward compared to c64 and amiga what is like called oldschool, chip or lofi today i would say.
Electronic music is old like “Popcorn” is from 1969 using a moog synth. kraftwerk, depeche mode but these did use hardware so its difference cpm to DAW only production.
Today i make modern pop using renoise, other DAWs i tried out all of them but Renoise (same thing like rockmonitor 1987) is for me only i can really understand since i want to write notes directly or make drums with high precision. Soundcloud check it out renoise songs all of them (my homepage in the profile)
Today i do game dev and music, have lately developed beat Synchronization and detection, AI piano players, spatial sound systems. Also a specific algos for renoise synched to beat ticks etc. Renoise or the nature of trackers is great since it is boxed ticks and pattern length, calculation is easier compared to other daws.
Speed-head of Byterapers