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Forum ~ General ~ An open letter to Louigi Verona |
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Novus
  Artist
Topics: 43
Replies: 432
Registered: 05.Jan.03 |
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Hi Louigi!
You've gotten me thinking, and I think my response to your e-mail is worth sharing. So I'm also posting this up on www.novusmusic.org and on the forums over at CTG.
You've sent me an e-mail asking for advice on how to run a compo. But I'm far, far more interested in the secondary question posed in your e-mail, because I happen to think it should be your primary question. Basically, you and the fine and dedicated staff over at CTG are looking for ways to "make the post-tracking community fun again."
A compo ain't gonna do that.
There are PLENTY of web-based music competitions already out there in various forms. Just run "music competition" through Google and you'll get 732,000 hits right there. And even assuming that the vast majority of those hits are the usual deadwood that you'll find in any Google search, there's probably at least a couple hundred active and regular web-based music competitions out there. If a music competition was the only thing needed to make the post-tracking community fun again, it would've already been "fun again" quite some time ago. But that didn't happen, did it?
But back to your main question. You've asked me how to run a music competition. And here's the problem.
I've never run a music competition.
"Huh? But you ran CMC and MIC for almost 30 months," I'm sure you're saying right now. And that's true, I did. But CMC and MIC weren't music competitions.
They were TRACKING competitions.
I never ran a music compo. I ran a TRACKING compo. I had a very specific audience: the community of the tracking scene, a small subset of the overall music scene at-large. MIC contributed slightly to that community, but that community is what made MIC possible, not the other way around. The community was already there before MIC, and it continued on for some time after MIC shut down.
There was one thing that made the tracking scene possible, and which made the tracking scene stronger than any other subset of the overall music scene at-large: cooperation. And there were two things which made that cooperation possible.
The first one is that we were basically all using the same software. Sure, there were different programs with different interfaces and names and different features on the side. But for the most part you could fire up any piece of tracking software and get it to do the basics with relative ease. C-4 01 48 G05 pretty much meant the same thing in Impulse Tracker as it did in Fast Tracker 2. We all spoke a common language of sorts, just with different accents. An American, a Brit and an Australian may each speak slightly different forms of English, but it's still English, and that makes it easier for any of those three to communicate with each other than with, say, a Bulgarian.
The second thing was the open nature of tracked files. People could easily share works-in-progress with friends, who could crack the file open, see what you had done, tinker with it themselves and then e-mail it back to you with a note like, "Take a look at how I changed that effect command in Pattern 12." You could do the same thing with a masterwork from a complete stranger, just open their file, study what they did, and apply that to your own work, all without ever having to even send them an e-mail or take up even a second of their time. A skilled tracker could be an influential teacher simply by doing what they already wanted to do anyway with no additional effort at all: just write and release good music.
Those two factors combined to make cooperation absurdly easy. And from that cooperation, the tracking scene eventually emerged. Nobody started the scene or invented it; the scene just sort of "happened" as a natural consequence of how easy cooperation had become. And that community is what eventually provided the audience for MIC.
But that community is gone now. While there were a few people here and there who recognized the true value of the tracking community, the vast majority of people were in the scene for one thing: "It's the music, stupid!" Remember that rallying cry? Most people in the scene were chasing the goal of making better music, and didn't realize that a healthy and robust tracking scene was their best way to accomplish that goal. And despite the fact that a sizable and significant portion of that crowd was putting out some INCREDIBLE music using tracking software, a disturbing meme started to spread. "Tracked music doesn't sound professional enough," a few people started to say. "It's not clean enough. It's not powerful enough." There were some very skilled trackers proving every day that this was simply not true, but that meme continued to spread anyway. More and more people began to believe it, and more and more people began to switch away from tracking software to various sequencers and other types of music software. And some of them even continued to produce some incredible music with this new software. But far, far more people were left out in the cold.
You see, tracking software was inherently designed to make it easy for people to share, study and learn from other people's music. In stark contrast, sequencers and other such programs were written solely to make it possible for you -- and you alone -- to write great music and for other people to hear -- and only hear -- that music. If someone heard some awesome musical technique in another person's song, there was no way to open up the "source file" to see how they did it, the way they could've done with a piece of tracked music. The ability to learn from complete strangers without intruding on their time was gone.
Even worse, the ability to learn from your friends was gone too. There were only a handful of different tracking programs at any given time, and the similarities between them always far outweighed the differences. But now people were scattered across a much broader array of sequencers and programs, each one of which was starkly different from each other, with an even broader array of add-ons and plug-ins. So unless you were fortunate enough to use the exact same program as all of your friends, cooperating on a song with someone you knew was suddenly much more difficult.
It's like the difference between hearing a recording of someone playing a guitar versus being able to watch them play it. If all you have is the final recording, you can hear the final result, but you have no idea how they got the guitar to create those particular sounds. That can only come from watching them play, seeing how their left hand presses into the frets or bends the strings, watching how their right hand plucks the strings, and matching that with the resulting sounds so that you can learn how exactly they created that sound.
Tracking software made cooperation easy, and it was that ease of cooperation that made the tracking community so tight for so long. When cooperation became more difficult, it was only a matter of time before that spirit of community shriveled away. And that is precisely what has happened.
Of course, for those lucky few people who already have some innate musical talent combined with some innate comfort with music software, this doesn't present much of a problem. They don't need as much help, so they're not as hindered by the lack of people to learn from. But those lucky few are far outnumbered by those who don't have as much innate skill, those who need people to collaborate with and examples to study and learn from. When the tracking scene was still thriving, they had both of those in abundance, and it was far easier for someone who was new to computer music to get up and running in a relatively short time, eventually reaching their full potential. But now? Those same people have nowhere to go. What was once a thriving community of thousands of trackers has shrunk and atrophied to an elite few who write music with sequencers and don't even miss the old scene, with thousands of more people left on the outside who don't even fully realize what they're missing. And with each passing day, those elite few become more and more fully assimilated into the overall music scene at-large, becoming more and more indistinguishable from others who use the same sequencers but have never even heard of tracking.
So. Now you're wondering how to make the post-tracking community fun again. And you're still not even asking the right question, because you're assuming that there still IS a community at all! We've gone from using a small batch of remarkably similar programs with an open file format to using a much wider batch of strikingly different and incompatible programs with a closed file format, thus making cooperation extraordinarily more difficult. And because cooperation is more difficult, the post-tracking community has dwindled to a mere shell of its former self. At this point, it's all running on inertia, a few people holding onto personal friendships that will drift and fade over time, with absolutely no reason at all for any outsiders to join in and become a part of it.
You really think starting up a new compo is going to fix that?
What used to be the tracking scene has become almost entirely assimilated into the overall music scene at-large. There is no real "post-tracking community" to speak of. Any compo that tries to make that non-existent community its audience is doomed from day one. And no compo, no matter who runs it or how well-run it is, can create a community out of nothing to serve as its audience.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to "Fallen World" by Chris Jarvis, and then I'm going to bed.
Take care,
Vince "Novus" Young
But hey, I wrote the Novus Manifesto, so what the hell do I know? |
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roncli
 Administrator
Topics: 55
Replies: 761
Registered: 18.Dec.03 |
Novus wrote on 12 Dec. (16:05) :
At this point, it's all running on inertia, a few people holding onto personal friendships that will drift and fade over time, with absolutely no reason at all for any outsiders to join in and become a part of it. |
Well, I wouldn't go THAT far, but if there's a hyperbole specialist around here, it's you.  There's a lot of people at CTG I haven't ever spoken with. A lot of those "personal friendships" aren't there for me, and in rare cases there's a teeny bit of animosity. I consider CTG to be a post-tracking community. It's not the whole thing, but it's definitely a major player.
Anyway, a nice read overall. The problem is very clearly stated, but no real solution is presented. Therefore, I'd like to ask you a question, one that is purely for a philosophical discussion. If a compo won't fix things (and I agree with that, compos are a dime a dozen), what will?
-roncli |
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Analysis
Artist
Topics: 69
Replies: 6182
Registered: 16.Mar.03 |
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I strongly disagree with pretty much every statement that you've made. I see things completely different.
When you are into reason(the sequencer), then you can post your rps on www.reasonstation.com. The site has exactly that what a tracker site used to have: You can see what others did with their music, you can learn from persons without emailing them.. You can chat online about your music and cooperation is extremely easy between two reason users.
However, when you go to that site, there isn't that same community as we had back in the tracking days. When you take a look at the site, you dont see an elwood or a purple motion making music. Most of the music at the site is very shitty, and persons who use reason on CTG, dont even care enough to post it over there. Besides, what ever happend to the reason-based demo scene?
Basically, the aspect of trading source-files and a lot of cooperation doesn't make a community a good community. I think that the community got great because of a number of things that got together. Ofcourse, the software had something to do with it, but also that the tracker scene used to be a part of the demoscene. What to think the the scene parties such as remedy? When was the last time that a compo was so good, that the winner is still known?
Music theory is quite universal anyway. I've got quite some handy advice on how to use buzz, from persons that made music in cubase, simply because the music is still the same. I dont use a different equalizer in buzz, then some other person would have done in cubase, fl or logic. If I really want to learn from other persons, then I simply need to ask them in my chat-system, wether that is IRC or MSN or ICQ, or you could even try the forum. Learning from other musicians might be a little more difficult then in the tracker scene, but it sure is more rewarding too. I mean, when I ask about a certain thing, then I'm sure to get an answer. I'd have to find out if I can have that same answer just by looking at other people's work.
I dont think that the community is dead. Slammy is still around and as long as he's here, we aren't going anywhere. I mean, the persons make the community, not the site or the equipement. I've always been into music and I've always been into the scene, coz I'd have something to read while I'm bored, and because I've got something to listen to that differs from my usual radio-station. I'm not as black as you are novus, I think there is still light in the darkness. All we need to do is get it a little more brighter. Compo's are a start for sure.
Let us celebrate music.
Sometimes you've just got to try bizarre combinations. It could turn out to be quite decent. (464 hits) |
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Cdnalsi
Artist
Topics: 238
Replies: 2271
Registered: 17.Jan.03 |
Your gayness is starting to dim in my view, Analysis! 
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xTr1m
 Member
Topics: 104
Replies: 4388
Registered: 11.Oct.03 |
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Analysis, unfortunately I have to agree with Novus. 100%ly. It's just not the same. And it's so hard for me to explain.. it's just a feeling that got lost. The spirit of the tracking scene was alive and one got addicted into knowing every damn bit of it. And of course it was closely linked to the demoscene, and still is! The tracking scene still lives, as a little part inside the demoscene. You have to live it to be able to understand how one could go crazy about some c64 making some weird chip noises, and then see an Amiga playing back a 4-channel mod that sounds like a hi quality mp3... People who know about the subject know how to appreciate skill first, not sound quality.
Tracking was and still is easy, for beginners and pros. Tracked files play back everywhere, even in demos. No need to export to another format. And you can read while you hear...
And let's not forget, that trackers were very popupar back then, which encouraged lots of newcomers to join the scene.
There are just so many elements that together made that great spirit alive. I agree that it's highly improbable that such a situation will occurr again.
For people who can't understand Novus and me, it's because you haven't lived it.
A proud member of CTGMusic Community!
A new release!
From Morningstar to Midnight (Reason Remake) (758 hits) Score:   (7.5) |
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m0d
Staff / Moderator
Topics: 28
Replies: 317
Registered: 13.Mar.04 |
I think if you take a look at the tracker community of today, it might not be in as such big dimensions as it was, say, in the 90's, but it is still there and compos still do rally a lot of people together for the fun. Check the frequencies and partipant numbers in OHC's in #mod_shrine on espernet!
I liked the article overall, i just wanted to add this.
Also to say tracking is dead in any form is wrong. We still get plenty of new uploads to The Mod Archive, still, the majority of people who have moved on to make "better" music outweigh those who have stuck around for the fun.
Oh well.
Serious stuff (519 hits) - Stupid stuff (619 hits)
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Join us in the official #modarchive chat channel on irc.esper.net |
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drumstick
Administrator
Topics: 11
Replies: 340
Registered: 12.Sep.04 |
Analysis wrote on 12 Dec. (21:30) :
Compo's are a start for sure.
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This could not be any more correct. Yes, the old tracking scene may be almost dead, but if you throw a compo in there, you bring together everyone that is left.
We've been have compos in #mod_shrine on irc.esper.net for years. For a while it was just a group of 8-10 of us compoing almost everyday. That was fun because we got so used to each others style, that we could mimick it well and LEARN from their techniques.
But now, thanks to m0d/redheat's wonderful ircbot, #mod_shrine regulars have grown from 8-10 to 50-60 in a matter of months. We've have the people range from n00bs who just started tracking, to scene legends like beek, mickrip, xerxes, mv, and reduz.
Now novus: How DARE you say that "A compo ain't gonna do that." |
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Analysis
Artist
Topics: 69
Replies: 6182
Registered: 16.Mar.03 |
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xTr1m wrote on 12 Dec. (22:01) :
Analysis, unfortunately I have to agree with Novus. 100%ly. It's just not the same. And it's so hard for me to explain.. it's just a feeling that got lost. |
Are you trying to say that you've lost a feeling and that this is because the 'scene' has changed? Wouldn't it be much more logical to say that you are the one that changed? It's your feeling isn't it?
I myself have the same thing with trance music. When I listen to the old-trance music, then I seem to remember things, and I tend to like the music more then the music that they produce nowadays. For me, the feeling in progressive is just lost, compared the old uplifting trance. I used to say that the music was better some time ago, untill I realized that everyone says that. Your mom will tell you that the Beatles are better then the sugababes(and she's right), and your grandfather will tell you that classical music is better then what the youth is playing now. Somehow we tend to think that everything that once was, was better then what we have now.... I dont believe that. We should stop idializing what we had, and start making something out of what we have now. What's the point in saying that it once was all better, if that makes us sit here and feel sorry for ourselves?
When I listen to trance now, then I'm not thinking about what once was, instead I'm trying to appriciate the new idea's of what we have now. It's no good to live in the past, coz its not going to make you happier.
Sometimes you've just got to try bizarre combinations. It could turn out to be quite decent. (464 hits) |
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Meltic
Artist
Topics: 5
Replies: 195
Registered: 01.Jan.03 |
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roncli wrote on 12 Dec. (16:27)
Anyway, a nice read overall. The problem is very clearly stated, but no real solution is presented. Therefore, I'd like to ask you a question, one that is purely for a philosophical discussion. If a compo won't fix things (and I agree with that, compos are a dime a dozen), what will?
-roncli |
But is it really a "problem" which needs a solution. Don't fix something that isn't broken, or what is the saying. I think it's just part of music evolution. The open-source tracking did something huge for the bedroom producers all over the net alot like what The Beatles did for garage bands during that time period. But it would be silly to try and "solve" The Beatles in present day if you get my meaning.
Don't get me wrong, I miss it. That time was by far the enjoy-peak when producing music for me but I just can't see it come back again. Ok my cent: The open source sceen died because of too many changes in the way you make you music. By now I learnt to accept that producing music might be alot more lonley these days but again there is alot more possebilities which is both good and bad. We live in another world that's all and no compo can fix that.
probably should emphasise that I'm talking about open source and not tracking as a production technique. cause that is what I thought this topic was all about, in my eyes open source=the scene. |
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Meltic
Artist
Topics: 5
Replies: 195
Registered: 01.Jan.03 |
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