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The PC tracker scene 1995–98, as it saw itself conceptWhat traxweekly 's writers said about where tracking came from, how music moved around, who judged it and where it was going. This is the scene's own narrative, mostly written by teenagers in an afternoon; for checked …
Atlantic (Barry Freeman) personTracker of Neophyte and Aim Higher, a friend of master-of-darkness , and one of the four staff of traxweekly 's "Faces in the Crowd" (FITC) from October 1995 — its tips writer, song reviewer and occasional interviewer; …
Behemoth (David Menkes) persontraxweekly staff writer of 1996–97 (David Menkes in the 1997 staff sheet) whose articles started two of the newsletter's debates — "Realism in MODs" and "The Scene and the Commercial Market" — and who interviewed mikmak …
Blackwolf (Bobby Tamburrino) personAtlanta tracker and pit percussionist, member of epinicion (earlier Defiance and UNiON), interviewed twice by traxweekly — in #6 and, as "the last TW interview for 1995", by psibelius in #40 — and later the author of …
Defiance groupA small PC music and demo group of 1994–95, founded around Zer0 and run from spring 1995 by perisoft ; it had a "Defiance Column" in the first issues of traxweekly (TOC: #1, #2, #4, #11), and Zer0 wrote for the …
DennisC (Dennis Courtney) person"Faces in the Crowd" interviewer of traxweekly from October 1995 to January 1996 and the author of "Chiptunes Aren't Dead!" (#38), the reply to Szalemandre's "The Death of the Chiptune". The sources are his six …
Epinicion groupThe group psibelius founded so that newcomers would not be hazed (source: s-tw003-beginning-the-tracking-experience ) ; the IT manual thanks him as "the nice friendly Epinicion founder" (source: s-it-manual ) . Most of …
Kal Zakath (John Townsend) person"Aspiring musician" of Inferno Productions ('jtown' on #trax) who created and ran traxweekly 's "Faces in the Crowd" (FITC) column from issue #26 (14 September 1995): interviews with unknown composers so that they are …
NOISE (New Objectives In Sound Exploration) groupA small Quebec music group headed by shawnm , founded about early 1995, that ranged from techno and ambient to industrial, hard rock and "classical" and had a group column in traxweekly (#42, #50 in the TOC). Sources: …
Popcorn (Chris Campbell) personCanadian high-school tracker who edited traxweekly through most of 1995 — between its founder populus , who handed him the job, and psibelius , who succeeded him — conducted six of its early interviews, and was a member …
Populus (Nicolas Roberge) personCo-founder of traxweekly and its first interviewer; member of epinicion and defiance ; computer-science student. The main source for this page is his farewell interview of June 1995 (source: s-tw016-interview-populus ) .
Psibelius (Gene Wie) personEditor and publisher of traxweekly (the 1997 staff sheet lists "Editor: Psibelius (Gene Wie)"; issue #50's introduction is signed Gene Wie, TraxWeekly Publishing — sources: s-tw106-a-little-panning , …
The Modsquad groupBongo Jongo, Spessartini and Neon Hunter (modsquad@juno.com), authors of the four-part satirical chiptune "seminar" in traxweekly #77–#81 (November–December 1996) and of a musicdisk "Potato Chips" with "like 500k of …
Zinc (Justin Ray) personTracker from British Columbia and the most prolific interviewer and columnist of later traxweekly (listed as staff in the 1997 sheet; source: s-tw106-a-little-panning ). Wrote "IT Percussion Tips" (#75, 25 October 1996) …
TW #1 — Interview with Basehead (Populus) summaryTraxWeekly's very first interview (conducted 1995-03-05 on IRC). Populus introduces basehead as "one of the very best techno/trance/ambient trackers", a member of Imphobia, kosmic /KFMF and iCE, and lists the songs …
TW #1 — Interview with Phoenix (Populus) summaryIRC interview (1995-03-09/10) with phoenix (Andrew Voss) of the kosmic Free Music Foundation, credited by Populus with 107 songs; his own picks are The Red Horizon , Nervous Breakdown (extended mix) , Synaesthesia , …
TW #1 — Modal and Chord Theory (Leviathan) summaryThe very first TraxWeekly article, written because "a lot of the self-taught musicians out there were really only composing by ear" ( leviathan ).
TW #10 — Interview with Jugi (White Wizard) summaryWhite Wizard interviews jugi of Complex, the musician of Dope , the winning demo of The Gathering 1995 — "nobody knows anything about him", writes Populus, who edited both participants' English.
TW #100 — Tracking on Impulse (Pulse) summaryjeffrey-lim 's follow-up to #98, answering Steve Gilmore's letter in #99 and speaking up for triton .
TW #103 — Interview with Mikmak (Behemoth) summaryBehemoth's "first contribution to Trax-Weekly as a staffer": an IRC interview with mikmak , author of the MikMod and MikIT module players — chosen because "most people know only him by name, but not too many know about …
TW #105 — Interview With A Couple Of Newbies (Behemoth) summaryBehemoth interviews two beginners — Exokai (Dan Aley, 13, San Diego, a month in the scene) and Sonalore (Kevin Malin, 15, Marietta GA, listening for a year and a half, tracking for a year without a release) — "to give …
TW #106 — A Little Panning (Airon) summaryA conversion chart between Impulse Tracker's two ways of writing panning: the volume-column pan (0–64) and the Xyy effect ( 00 – FF ). Reading the chart, the relation is simply volume-column value = Xyy ÷ 4: X00 = 0, …
TW #107 — Layman's Music Theory, part one (Zinc) summaryzinc , who has "absolutely no formal music training", writes the theory primer he wished existed: how to spell a triad from interval qualities. No further parts followed in the archive's TOC.
TW #109 — Interview: Skaven (Zinc) summaryzinc 's first interview in months: skaven of future-crew , "a tracker who needs no introduction", back on #trax after a long absence.
TW #11 — How to enhance your music collection (Popcorn) summaryA short guide by TraxWeekly's then editor to building a module collection; its value today is as a map of the 1995 distribution channels.
TW #11 — Interview with Beaner (Popcorn) summaryPopcorn's second interview of the issue, with beaner — "a really cool dude, and a friend" — of ACiD and epinicion : a 16-year-old with two jobs, an ST3 loyalist who cannot write without new samples.
TW #11 — Interview with Perisoft (Popcorn) summaryPopcorn ("no time to write a long intro, must release TraxWeekly") interviews perisoft , the new president of defiance and the author of issue #8's "Samples And Rippers" piece that started the row over basehead 's NAID …
TW #111 — Interview with Khyron (again =) (Jeremy Rice) summaryJeremy Rice catches khyron of kosmic on #trax — "a respected name in the Demoscene" who, the introduction says, was there when "the #coders people wanted all the musicians to stop flooding the channel with music talk …
TW #113–#118 — The Scene and the Commercial Market: the commercial-tracking debate summaryBehemoth lectured on demos and tracking to 40–50 people at his college's electronics department (most over 30; one asked "how a computer was able to sound 'not like a computer'") and concluded with five reasons tracking …
TW #114 — Live Tracking (xiagox) summaryA reply to Behemoth's claim (#113) that "you cannot perform tracking live" (see s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate ).
TW #115 — Tracking Semantics (Exxon) summaryExxon's reply to Behemoth's five reasons ( s-tw114-commercial-tracking-debate ), from Vienna.
TW #118 — Reverb and Compression (Airon) summaryAn "info-for-trackers" tutorial on the two studio effects a tracker can only apply offline , in a sample editor (Cool Edit and Sound Forge are the examples): what the parameters mean, numbers for a small club, …
TW #118 — Tracking the Format (Jesper Pedersen) summaryBlayd Zro (#116, 18 December 1997) proposed distributing songs as MP3 so nobody could rip samples or patterns; Pedersen argues the module format itself is what makes the scene worth having.
TW #119 — Interview with Mental Floss (Zinc) summaryzinc interviews mental-floss of kosmic , "a long-time tracker we all know and love", in the last issue of the archive — his first TraxWeekly interview, "lovingly edited" by Zinc. The useful core is how he plays tracked …
TW #119 — Reverb and Audio Gear (Rimbo) summaryA short supplement to the two #118 articles — Airon's "Reverb and Compression" ( s-tw118-reverb-and-compression ) and Dilvish's "The Power of Headphones" (not ingested) — "well-written and right on target".
TW #12 — Advanced Tracking Tips (Necros) summarynecros 's first tips column, "for people who already have mastered the basics", written in scream-tracker-3 notation with a conversion chart for ProTracker/FastTracker: Axx / Txx → Fxx , Gxx → 3xx , Hxx → 4xx , Dxx → …
TW #13 — Interview with Big Jim (Popcorn) summaryPopcorn heard Foreign Skys and "just had to interview the next Purple Motion": big-jim of Valhalla and the five-musicians , a British computer-science student who writes on guitar and then tracks. The second half drifts …
TW #14 — Interview with Pinion (Flood) summaryFlood interviews pinion at 7 a.m. on a borrowed Mac keyboard. (The same issue's Trax Culture column that follows in the file is a flame at PeriSoft by Lord Pegasus and is not summarised.)
TW #15 — Advanced Tracking Tips II (Necros) summarynecros adapts Jim Aikin's "Demo Tape Workshop" (Keyboard, June 1995) to tracked music: six lessons on structure, dynamics, melody, drums, harmony and samples.
TW #15 — Interview with Claim (Gator) summaryGator's "Interview 'Wiff Claim": a 19-year-old coder-musician of defiance and Lithium who started tracking seriously the week fasttracker-2 came out. The first issue with a categorised contents list ("Interviews" as a …
TW #15 — Interview with SV (GraveDigger) summaryA joke piece, summarised only as a note. GraveDigger of hornet (gd@ftp.cdrom.com) "interviews" SV — Scarlet Vinson, "famous on #trax but has never been on the channel and has never composed any music" — during a …
TW #16 — Interview with Populus (Psibelius) summarypsibelius 's farewell interview with populus , one of traxweekly 's founders, on why he is leaving the newsletter and on the "dumb techno" he sees flooding the scene in mid-1995. The issue prints a disclaimer before and …
TW #17 — Interview with AmusiC (Popcorn) summaryPopcorn — signing as "TraxWeekly Editor" of "Hornet.TraxWeekly.MC3" — talks on IRC with amusic of Bass Productions in Athens, two months before AmusiC started the 20-minute-chip-compo . Half of the log is about the …
TW #18 — Advanced Tracking Tips III: voicings (Necros) summaryHow necros turns a flat C–F–Dm–G progression, tracked as three root-position triads per chord, into C9 | Fadd2/C | Dm7 | Gsus4–G.
TW #18 — Interview With Basehead (again) (Psibelius) summarypsibelius gives basehead a second interview "because he was bored"; it covers "vastly different ground" from #1 — mostly scene politics and ethics.
TW #18 — Interview with Lord Pegasus (Psibelius) summarypsibelius interviews "Sammich Man" lord-pegasus of kosmic and ACiD on IRC, with private messages from blackwolf printed in between; Psibelius's capture failed before the end. (Lord Pegasus's earlier flame at perisoft , …
TW #19 — Interview with Quarex (Maelcum) summarymaelcum 's "complete and UNEDITED" IRC log with quarex of kosmic — some 7,000 words, half of them pre-interview chatter in which Maelcum vents about Kosmic's lost FTP site, credit for samples and the "Necros is my …
TW #2 — Interview with Leinad (Populus) summaryPopulus met leinad "by coincidence" on IRC and interviewed him on 1995-03-15 (14:57–16:13): an Amiga-era Swedish composer, most active in 1990–91, who by 1995 made multimedia for a living and tracked on a PC with a GUS …
TW #21 — Tracking Tips (Dan Hartrell) summaryA 14-year-old Mazurka member's beginner lesson, built around a hypothetical newbie called Studly, on why melodies need scales and rhythm — with the scale formulas written as tracker keyboard steps.
TW #22 — Interview with Jase (Clef) summaryclef of epinicion interviews jase , the Australian winner of Music Contest 3 — "after NetSplits, capture problems, and time limits".
TW #24 — In Review: the ASM95 music entries (Necros) summaryThe first instalment of necros 's review column, "the best and not-so-best of the new music stuff out this week", devoted to the music released around Assembly '95 (ASM95). Ratings are on a ten-point scale drawn as …
TW #24, #25, #64, #65 — the sample-ripping debate (Mhoram, Psibelius, Kristian Eriksen, Beacon) summaryFour articles a year apart on "the dreaded 'R' word": taking samples out of other people's modules. The first two (1995) argue etiquette, the second pair (1996) argue copyright. Together they are the scene's own …
TW #25 — Loops and Extended Samples (The Zapper) summarythe-zapper defends long samples and loops ("texture, presence and some kind of feel") and explains how to make them sit in time.
TW #26 — Faces in the Crowd: the column's manifesto (Kal Zakath) summaryThe announcement of "Faces in the Crowd" (FITC), "a new weekly feature of TraxWeekly" by kal-zakath (John Townsend, Inferno Productions), meant to help unknown composers "make a name for themselves". Nobody is …
TW #26–#33, #50 — the 20 MeEnUhTz Chip Compo column (AmusiC) summaryThe weekly column of the 20-minute-chip-compo (20mc): its origin story, the rules, the voting system and its changes, three result tables from autumn 1995, and — in #50 — why it stopped after Christmas 1995 and came …
TW #27 — Basehead on Lotus Position (Cyberdmon) summaryA short IRC interview about basehead 's solo musicdisk Lotus Position , released under five-musicians .
TW #27 — Faces in the Crowd #1: Master of Darkness (Kal Zakath) summaryThe first "Faces in the Crowd" interview (IRC, Friday 15 September 1995): kal-zakath talks with master-of-darkness , founder of the newcomer group AIM Higher, about starting out, techno and how #trax treats newbies; a …
TW #27 — Interview with Zapper (The Finn) summaryThe Finn interviews the-zapper of Force Ten at 4:45 in the morning, Montreal time.
TW #28 — Faces in the Crowd #2: Mesonyx (Kal Zakath) summaryThe second "Faces in the Crowd" interview, conducted over two days (16–17 September 1995): kal-zakath with mesonyx , a 15-year-old from Reykjavik who had just written the music for the game Xixit . Date note: the issue …
TW #29 — Faces in the Crowd #4: Smeghead (Master of Darkness) summary"Faces In The Crowd: The Publication — Interview #4", conducted on Saturday 30 September 1995 by master-of-darkness , now an FITC interviewer, with smeghead of Terraformer; an 18-title release listing follows. …
TW #29 — Faces in the Crowd #5: Esper Division (DennisC) summary"Faces In The Crowd: The Publication — Interview #5": DennisC (Dennis Courtney; the header prints master-of-darkness 's address maz@io.org next to his name, evidently a copy-and-paste slip) with Francois-Jean de …
TW #3 — Interview with Chuck Biscuits (Epeius) summaryEpeius's first assignment for TraxWeekly: an interview with Chuck Biscuits of the Australian demogroup Heretics (formerly iCE and the ANSI group DiE), contributor to the Australian musicdisk expOZe .
TW #3 — Interview with the Five Musicians (Populus) summaryGroup IRC interview (1995-03-26) with the newly formed five-musicians (FM): Big Jim, basehead , necros and Mellow-D; purple-motion missed the appointment. The editor frames it as the answer to "all the flames" the union …
TW #3 — Music: Beginning the Tracking Experience (Psibelius) summarypsibelius on how he started tracking and what a newcomer should avoid.
TW #30 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Ender (Master of Darkness) summaryMaster of Darkness ("Mdark", Aim Higher) talks to ender , the sole musician of the small Albany demo group Foundation, in the Faces in the Crowd interview printed as "#7" and conducted on 1995-10-07. Half of it is a …
TW #30 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Paganus (Atlantic) summaryAtlantic interviews paganus of epinicion and Aim Higher (also printed as "Interview #7"; conducted 1995-10-10): a piano-centred Toronto-area tracker who came in through a local BBS and has strong views on scene …
TW #31 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Fred (Dynamic Harmony) summaryDynamic Harmony's "quickie" Faces in the Crowd interview (printed as "#12", conducted 1995-10-17) with Fred of iNK, a Virginia tracker who had just gone "net-wide" with "Bawal". No real name is printed.
TW #31 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Luv Kohli (DennisC) summaryDennisC's Faces in the Crowd interview (printed as "#10") with luv-kohli , co-founder of the two-member Virginia group Empyrean — a newcomer's account of tracker lineage, BBS distribution and the AOL ban. A correction …
TW #31 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Vicious (Master of Darkness) summaryMaster of Darkness interviews vicious , founder of the Toronto dance group V.S.L. (FITC "Interview #11", conducted 1995-10-18). The centre of the piece is a house producer's case that sample ripping is simply how dance …
TW #32 — Faces in the Crowd: Complaints (Master of Darkness) summaryA short opinion column by Master of Darkness ("Mdark", maz@io.org ) in the Faces in the Crowd section of #32, between DennisC's Zinc interview ( s-tw032-interview-zinc ) and Atlantic's "Not So Advanced Tracking Tips" ( …
TW #32 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Zinc (DennisC) summaryDennisC's "Faces in the Crowd" interview with zinc , a week after he first joined #trax; printed as "Interview #10", which is the series' own (unreliable) count, not DennisC's — the same number is printed on his Luv …
TW #32 — Not So Advanced Tracking Tips (Atlantic) summaryAtlantic's "confession" of the habits that slowed his own progress, sorted into five tracker types.
TW #32–#34 — Tracker Survey / New Tracker (Psibelius, Jason Diamond) summaryNot a survey of which trackers people used: TraxWeekly's two "Tracker Survey" notices asked readers to send feature wishes to Jason Diamond (diamond@deltanet.com, IRC nick mofochckn), who was writing "a totally new …
TW #33 — 4Channel Lives On (Trixter) summarytrixter 's reply, printed in the "Amiga Debate" section, to a correspondent who said Amiga MODs are as obsolete as the Wright brothers' plane.
TW #34 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Deus Ex (Master of Darkness) summaryThe #34 Faces in the Crowd column — editorial by Kal Zakath , Master of Darkness 's interview with deus-ex (printed as "Interview #11"), three song reviews by Atlantic (not summarised) and closing words. Deus Ex, 30, …
TW #35 — Interview with Loki (Trifixion) summaryTrifixion's first real TraxWeekly article, an edited IRC interview with loki , a 17-year-old Oregon tracker who had just joined zinc 's group Radiance. Printed under General Articles, outside the Faces in the Crowd …
TW #37–38 — The Death of the Chiptune / Chiptunes Aren't Dead! summaryA two-part exchange from December 1995 that documents what "chiptune" meant in the PC tracker scene and the effect of the 20-minute-chip-compo .
TW #39–40 — Chord Theory? / Chord What? (Maelcum, Trixter, Basehead) summarySparked by Atlantic's review in #37 reporting a #trax argument (Aahz, basehead and necros vs. a tracker who said "chord theory is not required to write good music").
TW #4 — Interview with Nemesis (Populus) summaryPopulus interviews nemesis , one of the newest members of renaissance — "a really great composer" whose tunes are "very realistic and catchy" but who "hasn't got enough exposure and respect" — in a chat that ended on …
TW #4 — Interview with Stalker (Zer0) summaryZer0's first interview ("bare with me"), with stalker of OTM, who had joined Zer0's own group defiance two days earlier. Half banter; the facts are the tracker lineage and OTM's story.
TW #40 — Interview with Blackwolf (Psibelius) summarypsibelius revisits blackwolf — "last interviewed in TraxWeekly #6, back when Populus was still running the show" — for "the last TW interview for 1995", after what Psibelius calls "a very long time since we've had some …
TW #40 — Interview with Zalt (Psibelius) summarypsibelius interviews zalt , a 16-year-old Stockholm tracker who came from Atari NoiseTracker to FastTracker 2 and placed 2nd in the Icing'95 multichannel compo — a European counterweight to the North American voices of …
TW #41 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Mick Rippon (DennisC) summaryDennisC interviews mick-rippon , a music student from Newcastle, Australia, with three years of Amiga tracking behind him and three months on the internet — the interview traxweekly 's FITC editor had promised in #34 …
TW #41 — Interview with Shawn (shawnm / NOISE) summaryDennisC interviews Shawn (IRC nick shawnm ), head of the small group New Objectives In Sound Exploration ( NOISE ), an orchestral-percussion student who tracks in scream-tracker-3 . The same shawnm wrote "Serial …
TW #41 — Interview with Zinc on the Impromptu Compo (DennisC) summaryA short follow-up interview: zinc explains the ImpromptuCompo he started in #trax.
TW #42 — Impulse Tracker v1.01 (Pulse) summaryjeffrey-lim 's release note for IT 1.01 (January 1996): a bug when saving a song with an empty order list (pattern 0 is not decompressed on load — press Alt-Backspace to restore it), fixes for the retrig command on the …
TW #42 — Interview with Balrog (Kosmic) summaryzinc interviews balrog , a kosmic trance tracker from Quebec who had "never been interviewed" because he released little during a bad year; the piece records his tracker history (ST 2.23 → ModEdit → X-Tracker → FT2), a …
TW #43 — Interview with Pariah (V.S.L) summaryMaster of Darkness (Aim Higher; a Demonews reviewer) restarts "Faces In The Crowd" with a series on his local Toronto scene; the first guest is pariah of the dance-music group V.S.L (founded by vicious ), logged under …
TW #43–#45 — the Demonews ratings argument (Light, Trixter / Hornet) summaryLight of kosmic (an artist, "not a musician") watched two friends fall out on #trax over "the cdrom ratings" and wrote that the five-star system in Demonews and the 00index files makes lesser trackers give up; trixter …
TW #44 — Impulse Tracker Trivia (Random) summaryA coder's musing on a sentence in the impulse-tracker documentation about sound-card autodetection.
TW #44 — Interview with Acidfrog (Radiance / Spice) summaryzinc interviews acidfrog , his Radiance co-founder and main influence: a DJ and radio presenter from the 604 area code (British Columbia) who tracks jungle in fasttracker-2 on a 386 with a GUS MAX and a sampling rig …
TW #46 — Serial Composition (shawnm / NOISE) summaryA short introduction to twelve-tone technique plus a 1994 music-history essay on Anton Webern, offered to the scene as "just another compositional technique to take into account". The author is shawnm , the Shawn of …
TW #5 — Interview with TheHacker (Popcorn) summaryPopcorn's first appearance in traxweekly ("I've been with TraxWeekly since the first issue, but this will be the first … something involving me appears"): thehacker of kosmic asked to be interviewed by IRC message, and …
TW #5 — What it's like to be a PC Musician (Necros) summarynecros on "fame" in the tracker scene, signed "Andy, aka. Necros / FM" (asega@ic.sunysb.edu).
TW #50 — Aesthetics of Composition and Music Groups (Spyder / NOISE) summaryAn opinion piece from #trax conversations about music groups and "the philosophy about composition practices", written after one year of tracking.
TW #50 — Interview with VadimVS (NOISE) summaryA short interview, cut off when zinc ran out of time, with vadimvs , a Russian scream-tracker-3 user who had just joined N.O.I.S.E. — one of the few voices from Russia in the archive, tracking on borrowed hardware with …
TW #51 — How to listen to tracked music (mrdata) summaryA joke article ("prepare yourself well, they may be costly") whose incidental facts are the useful part: which players people used in March 1996 and what a listener did with them.
TW #52 — Interview with Daedalus (Neophyte / Epinicion) summaryzinc interviews daedalus , a 28-year-old theatre student and Tangerine Dream devotee who came to tracking through ModEdit and scream-tracker-3 after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; conducted "very very late at night" in …
TW #52 — Interview with Ganja Man (LoK) summaryzinc interviews ganja-man , a 15-year-old from the UK who founded LoK to give Britain a music group and to spread jungle; four months later he would write the "Potted Tracking History" ( s-tw064-potted-tracking-history …
TW #54 — Interview with Injekted & Subhuman (Ultrabeat) summaryCerulean talks to the two founders of ultrabeat , injekted and subhuman , just after the group's first release Lucid : a music-only, five-member "tribe" for ravers and techno heads, structurally modelled on the …
TW #54 — Interview with Quantam Porcupine summaryzinc interviews quantam-porcupine (properly "Quantum Porcupine", as he points out at the end), a 17-year-old pianist-turned-tracker who came from Music Construction Set on the C64 through Whacker Tracker to …
TW #54 — Interview with Saxy (XX) summaryKal Zakath (jtown; Inferno and traxweekly ) interviews saxy , a saxophonist two months into tracking and a member of XX, "the scene's only all-female musicgroup", after her first tune Symphony in her Mind . His preface …
TW #54 — Interview with Scirocco summaryzinc interviews scirocco , a groupless fasttracker-2 user at 4 a.m. in Manhattan on his first real night in #trax — a self-taught "lurker on the sidelines" with a five-star XM on ftp.cdrom.com and advice about quality …
TW #55 — Interview with Clef (Catch 22, ex-Epinicion) summaryzinc interviews clef , a 17-year-old Australian pianist, coder and chiptune specialist — twice a 20-minute-chip-compo winner, author of the menu chips on the epinicion disks, winner of the 16k music compo at OZ'96 — who …
TW #55–56 — Panning (GBlues) / Panning? Hello? (Trixter) summaryThe correct mental model of tracker panning (a balance, not a switch) for stereo-panning ; the "opposite-side echo" survives as a stereo fake-echo idea.
TW #57 — Interview with Catspaw (Zinc) summaryzinc 's "conversational style" interview with catspaw of Rat, at quarter to one in the morning, Seattle time.
TW #58–59 — The Finishing Touches (Catspaw) summarycatspaw 's two-part guide to "the finer technical points of writing module-based music", in ST3/IT notation ( | C#5 16 48 H83 | = note, sample, volume, effect). Greg Heo later pointed readers here for frames and tempo.
TW #59 — Tracking Hints (Vivid) summaryTechnical tricks "using Protracker commands" from Vivid of kosmic .
TW #6 — The NAID Music Compo: Opinion Interviews (Psibelius) summarypsibelius , signing as "TraxWeekly Columnist", collects two views of the music competition at NAID 1995 (the North American International Demo competition): island-of-reil of epinicion , who attended, and mosaic of …
TW #60 — Faces in the Crowd: fisherman (Zinc) summaryzinc interviews fisherman, "who I hadn't heard of before", and closes with the column's charter: "The scene is full of faces, and unless we are as famous as [enter famous person here], we can get lost in the crowd. FITC …
TW #60 — Interview with Rage (Kal Zakath and Kleitus) summaryKal Zakath (jtown) and Kleitus interview rage of Jade and Night55, the Finn who took 2nd place in the Assembly '95 multichannel music competition with "Guild of Sounds" — an IRC capture "with a bit of editing for the …
TW #62 — Interview with Vegas (Kal Zakath and Kleitus) summaryKal Zakath (jtown) and Kleitus interview vegas of Mystique, an IRC capture from "several weeks" before NAID '96; the preface adds that his NAID entry "The Path Taken" was selected by the jury and finished 15th, and that …
TW #63 — Interview with Ryan (Kleitus) summaryKleitus (Seth Katzman) interviews Ryan of Grey — a 4,600-word IRC log, edited by Ryan himself, that is mostly jokes; Kleitus disclaims "the lameness that follows". This Ryan is Ryan Sprott of Grey, not Ryan Cramer …
TW #64 — Potted Tracking History (Ganja Man) summaryA scener's oral history by ganja-man of lok , written in an afternoon; useful as the scene's own account of where trackers and "chip tunes" came from, not as a checked chronology.
TW #65–#66 — Tracking as an Olympic Sport, parts I–II (Blackwolf) summaryWritten from Atlanta during the 1996 Games: a mock letter to the organising committee proposing tracking as an exhibition sport, and a mock refusal. The joke describes, quite precisely, the compo format the scene took …
TW #66 — Interview with Liam the Lemming (Kal Zakath) summaryKal Zakath interviews liam-the-lemming , "a very accomplished musician and one of the most popular #trax personalities", in an IRC log with the interviewer's own remarks cut and "some rearrangement ... for clarity".
TW #66 — Sound Recording (Cowboy) summaryAn engineering student's (NDSU, mechanical engineering with EE and CS; built his own speakers and sub) answer to "what is the best method of recording" for a tracker: the signal chain from source to sample, measured …
TW #67 — Interview with U4IA (Mage) summaryMage (Glen Dwayne Warner) interviewed u4ia by e-mail over "a month and a half or so" — "a well-known Amiga musician" whose name, the preface says, is "known throughout the internet by trackers everywhere, despite his …
TW #7 — Interview with Ryan Cramer (Popcorn) summaryPopcorn, now signing "TraxWeekly Co-Editor", interviews ryan-cramer of Iguana and renaissance , "one of my favorite composers", a week later than planned. The extract file inbox/tw-extracts/tw007-5-interviews.txt holds …
TW #7 — The Importance of Music Theory (Future Assassin) summaryA personal essay by an 18-year-old tracker who plays by ear and never had a lesson — the earliest traxweekly piece in the theory-versus-ear argument that flared up again in #37–#40 ( s-tw039-chord-theory-debate ).
TW #70–73 — the realism debate (#trax log, Behemoth, GBlues, Alan Robinson, Raphael, Sturm, brn, It-Alien, Purple Haze, Necros) summaryA #trax argument about a tracked saxophone, printed as TraxWeekly's second survey question ("is 'realism' something viable for tracked music?", replies to Psibelius), followed by three issues of answers; Behemoth's …
TW #72 — Composing Whole Modules (Sir Nick / Deck Blasters) summaryA tracker of six years (Scream Tracker 2.25, several scream-tracker-3 versions, then impulse-tracker ) argues that editing music "in blocks of only few bars" makes tracked tunes monotonous.
TW #74 — Motherboard Sampling (Spieg) summaryA found-sound trick: an onboard SB16 Vibra picks up the computer's own electrical noise; with the input gain cranked, keystrokes, mouse movement and program loads each produce distinct noises ("the mouse would always …
TW #74–86 — Introduction to Musical Theory, vols 1–5 (Greg Heo) summaryA beginner's theory course written for trackers by greg-heo , who admits "I'm not an experienced tracker" but had a music teacher's vocabulary. Every example is given in tracker terms.
TW #75 — IT Percussion Tips (Zinc) summaryzinc 's techno-oriented advice for Impulse Tracker 2.06 ("most of them will probably be useful with earlier versions, and even in other trackers").
TW #76 — Realism in MODs (Behemoth) summaryA reply to a #70 argument (Necros, in_tense and others) about "realism" in tracked music. Behemoth samples his own instruments from a Korg X5 rather than reusing "three or four Purple Motion samples"; reproducing a …
TW #77 — General Tracking Tips (Generic Blues) summaryTen tips for a beginning tracker.
TW #77–81 — A Chip Off the Block / Chiptune Seminar, parts 1–4 (The Modsquad) summaryA four-part, mostly satirical "seminar" on making chiptunes by the-modsquad ; the editor noted he was "not that enthused". Parts 3 and 4 are almost entirely nonsense (paper boats, Elvis, nail collections, "encryption"); …
TW #8 — Interview with Blaze Runner (Populus) summaryPopulus 's "last minute" live interview with blaze-runner , music coordinator of PURE, about "subjects that don't get around much": copyright registration and going commercial, plus an AWE32 workflow in a GUS-dominated …
TW #80 — #trax Mass Interview (Zinc) summaryzinc interviewed "every non-idler in #trax at once", collecting answers by private message so nobody saw the others'. Mostly banter; a few questions produce usable scene data.
TW #81–89 — Impulse Tracker Tip of the Week #1–8 (Pinion) and More Impulse Tracker Tips (Pulse) summarypinion 's series, started because "Impulse Tracker has too many features that are not utilized to their full potential", with a correction and extra tips from IT's author jeffrey-lim (Pulse).
TW #84 — Perfect Samples: The Piano (Sklathill) summaryA do-it-yourself guide to sampling a piano (and, by extension, any sustained instrument).
TW #86 — Hexadecimal 101 (chinaski) summaryA newcomer's explanation of hex for trackers: base 16 with digits 0–9 and A–F, a 0 prefix or h suffix marks a hex value, and a two-digit value is the second digit × 16 plus the first ( 02Eh = 2×16 + 14 = 46 — the …
TW #86 — Wrecking Samples with Impulse Tracker (Graham the Happy Scum) summaryThree tricks in IT's sample window (F3): smoothing — Alt-E (resize with interpolation) to length +1, then −1, damps high frequencies; a crude noise gate — Alt-A to unsign, Alt-M amplify to ~103–104 %, Alt-A again, which …
TW #87 — Interview with Perisoft (Pizza Head) summaryPizza Head's first interview for TraxWeekly, an unformatted IRC log that psibelius printed uncorrected; the subject is perisoft , interviewed before in #11 (May 1995) and known in the wiki from necros 's 1995 reply to …
TW #87–#97 — Music Theory: A Modern Approach (The Modsquad, seven parts) summaryThis is satire , the sequel to the chiptune "seminar" of #77–#81 ( s-tw077-chip-off-the-block ): fake gear lists ("$450 TB-202", a Speak & Spell), "musical DNA", Elvis, juggling raves, a prison inmate given …
TW #9 — Interview with Maelcum (k8to) summaryk8to interviews maelcum , founder of the kosmic Free Music Foundation — "a little more 'maelcum' oriented as opposed to 'trax' oriented".
TW #9 — Samples, Lameness, Preconceptions, and Fluffy Bunnies (Necros) summaryA reply to Perisoft's piece in #8: why necros , once a "siner-synth" purist, became "a loop junkie".
TW #90 — Interview with Cosmic/RR (Pizza Head) summaryPizza Head interviews cosmic of Radical Rhythms, "one of the reasons that I got me into tracking" — his songs "were all over the bbs's i called". A short IRC log.
TW #94 — Stereo Samples with Impulse Tracker (Zinc) summaryWhy and how zinc uses stereo samples instead of panned mono ones.
TW #96 — Studio Tracking Tips (Zinc) summaryzinc adapts Future Music's "50 Top Studio Tips" (issue 50) to tracking — some forty short rules on sampling, mixing, arrangement and habits.
TW #98 — Impulse Tracker Investment (Pulse) summaryjeffrey-lim on why he wrote and released impulse-tracker , and on being abused for asking US$30 for the stereo WAV writer.
TW #98 — Impulse Tracker MIDI (Airon) summaryAiron's guide to IT's MIDI output: what the tracker sends, which controllers matter, and how to write them as Zxx / SFx macros.
TW #99 — Why Tracking Is The Perfect Artform (anonymous) summaryAn enthusiast's "top reasons for tracking like crazy", with one concrete story about how compo feedback improved a song.