Sounds amazing, doesn't it? Well, stop drooling, because excellent
music, done with expensive studio or tracker, takes a lot of work. I
don't wish to discourage, since CDs have been produced with tracked music,
but there are a lot of little things to learn before a composer can emulate
real instrumentation using tracked music.
Let us begin with the foundation of any piece: the samples, or the
instruments and sounds you plan to use in your work. Say you want a 12
string accoustic guitar solo in your song. What do you do? The easiest thing
to do is to sample an entire solo by attaching a pickup to a guitar and
plugging it right into your soundcard, breaking the solo up into pieces, and
pasting it into the song. With Impulse Tracker and Fast Tracker II (both
available on ftp.cdrom.com) this is possible, and the best way to get a
realistic sound. However, you do this and your song will be very large (if
your samples are 16 bit >22khz the song will be over 2 megs in size). A
better idea would be to sample single guitar strums. With 300k of different
samples from a guitar one could create a solo almost indistinguishable from
the real thing. This applies to nearly every instrument save for synthesized
sounds and organs. This is where tracking seriously lacks in ease of
production. What one could play on a guitar and record right into a piece
takes hours of offsetting, volumizing and fine tuning numerous samples of
that same guitar.
Samples can be obtained from audio CDs, data CDs, or even your
favorite albums if you don't play an instrument. 600 or more samples
professionally recorded will cost you up to 100 dollars though, so choose
wisely.
Using the samples is the next step, and the trickiest one, since
only delicate and careful control of your instruments can yield pro sounds.
This is covered in numerous articles found in the newsletter "TraxWeekly",
written by some of the best trackers out there: Necros, Basehead and Spyder
to name a few. To sum up, all it takes is your instruments, a tracker (such
as Impulse or Fast Tracker II), imagination, inspiration, and practice. Those
articles contain some real important tips... give 'em a read.
The point is, "can I make a REAL album with tracked songs?" This is
the ultimate question, since many are in production right now, but I am not
aware of one previously released that has sold in overwhelming numbers.
This is due to either lack of marketing funds, lack of talent and practice
(no offense intended), or lack of a big label altogether. Hopefully this will
change in the near future, because some of my favorite music has been tracked,
and I hope the audience for tracked music will one day be as many and varied
as those who listen to the Top 40. :)
Necros of FM is working on a commercial quality CD for a late summer /early autumn release this year, and Sirrus and myself are working on an album titled "Direction". Another notable tracked CD is "Nothing is True" by Maelcum of KFMF, available through his own label Area 51 records. More information will follow on the upcoming CDs in a full report sometime in June.