- ~ + * # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # ______ ______ ______ # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # ,' ,--, ) ,' ,--,_) ,' ,--,_) # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # ( / / / ( / ( / # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # ,--` `-' / ,--`/ ,--` `---, # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # / __ ) / / / ______) # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # / / ) / / / ___ / / ___ # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # / / / / / /___/ / / /___/ / # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # ( / / / ( / ( / # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # `-' `-' `--------' `--------' # * + ~ -
- ~ + * # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # * + ~ -
+*Some random mutterings regarding ACEtracker*+
Since I was a little boy, I've been obsessed with computers and sound. What
started off as an innocent attempt to make some weird noises on my ZX Spectrum
has blossomed into something more poignant than words can describe. These
days, music pretty much rules my life.. It makes affects my mood, it makes my
limbs move uncontrollably, it pays my rent.
No doubt it was our beloved scene that really got me into making music - if I
hadn't become aware of trackers and such like, I'm pretty sure that I would
have continued through life enjoying music from the outside, probably spunking
even more money on vinyl and CDs. But that didn't happen. Instead I got into
making terrible hardcore .mods in tcb/audio sculpture/protracker, and that lead
onto Cubase (MCA crack of course ;-)).
A few years on and I got serious - I worked my ass off in a snidey petrol
station for a couple of years and blew some coin on a Falcon driven CubaseAudio
system.. Holy shit, I paid a thousand pounds for a fucking 1 gig harddrive!
To be honest that era in my 'music' making history is one I'd rather forget. I
suffered some nasty harddisk crashes and lost loads of work. It got so bad
that after a year of strife, I returned the falcon to the shop, and swapped it
for an Akai sampler and a little mixing desk. So I was back with my good old
ST and my wonky copy of Cubase.
For the best part of 4 years I worked away with my stfm/cubase/sampler combo.
Those were the days my friends, simple, effective, noisy! But with the new
century came a notable change in the way people were making music. Software
was becoming more and more powerful - things like non-linear editing, virtual
instruments and plug-in effects were allowing the home user creative
possibilities previously unheard of. I'd put up a good fight, staying true to
my trusty Atari, but eventually I admitted defeat. I sold nearly all my
outboard samplers/fx/compressors etc etc, took out a six grand bank-loan, and
bought a ridiculously overpriced, but undeniably sexy Powerbook. I've been
using this setup for a while now and must admit I've become accustomed to the
joys of piling on plug-in after plug-in onto individual tracks within my
'Logic' sequencer, I think I'll be happy with this set-up for the considerable
future.
But trends move quickly in electronic music circles, and recently we have seen
yet another shift in thinking with regards to music composition. People have
started to develop software with a much more 'hands on' approach. Some people
simply don't like the intricacies and complexities of ultra ultra-powerful
sequencers such as Cubase, Logic, and Digital Performer, and as a response, the
software houses have started to develop apps that offer the sonic potential of
such powerhouses, yet packaged in a more 'hands-on' simplified way. The effect
of these new-skool wares has been massive, Fruity Loops, Reason, Acid to name
but a few, have allowed more people than ever to start making music of a
reasonable production quality. Now I could talk for hours about this issue
alone and the effect it has had on the music industry, but yo! I'll keep those
thoughts for another time, I have another agenda here and don't want to slip
even further off-topic ;)
Of course, if you're an Atari kid, things aren't quite as rosey. We don't have
the same choice of software available to us that our PC owning mates do. Sure
we have a variety of classic music applications at our disposal, but maybe the
average scener doesn't want to dive head first into the intricacies of Cubase.
Maybe stuff like sysex dumps, the logical editor, and the interactive phrase
synthesiser leave them cold! Hmm I can't think why ;) Historically, if a
scener wanted to play about with making music on his or her Atari, chances are
they'd load up either protracker, octalyser (hi Stefan) , if they're feeling
adventurous, flextracker (easy Nils), or if they're KevH3, Graumpfhtracker, or
whatever it's called. Sadly, the atari scene hasn't really kept up with
software trends of other more mainstream platforms. But things have changed!
The mega-mighty Thomas Bergstrom of New Beat, creator of flextracker and
willie's adventures, has gone and smashed it, releasing in my humble opinion
one of the greatest scene applications EVER!
Look at the spec kids, dual occillator synthesis with a choice of waveforms and
mix techniques, sample playback (8 or 16 bits, wav and avr), fantastic
amplitude and envelope shaping sections, lfo with switchable waveforms and
destinations, analogue style step modulator, pan, reverb, delay, comprehensive
tracker editor, automation of a number of parameters within the mod... An
incredible spec, one that wouldn't really be out of place in a contemporary PC
audio application, and here it is, running more or less happily on a bog
standard Atari Falcon! Ok, that's the black and white facts, but what is it
like in practice?
Pretty damn good. For starters, the user interface is very very good. The
various knobs are easy tweakable, slidey things slide well, buttons click
responsively. It feels good, and given the sheer number of knobs, buttons and
information on screen, that is no mean feat. I was tweaking up ridiculous
sounds in a matter of seconds. I found the synth section so intuitive that I
didn't touch the manual. Try it for yourself, load it up, select a blank
instrument and start pressing letters on your keyboard. Now, while doing this
start twiddling any knob you so which. For immediate thrills I suggest you
crank up the VCF resonance and start tweaking the VCF cutoff. See, making
electronic music is easy!
I was really impressed by the sounds that the ace engine is capable of, going
through the various banks I'd downloaded, there was a whole variety of
interesting sounds, ranging from sharp leads thru fat dirty basses to
ridiculous sfx. The modulation possibilities are quite diverse, and
particularly with the step modulator, you can create some bugged out noise!
(an English expression, read as 'crazy sounds';)) You can loose an hour
easily in the creation of mad sounds, which I guess is a good sign! Sound
wise, it's more than a match for many PC/Mac softsynths out there.
But of course you're not only limited to the oscillators to make sounds. You
can use your own samples as the base waveforms, and then proceed to twist out
your sounds using all of the sound shaping, filtering and modulation knobs that
you've been using with the dsp oscillators. Fantastic implementation, top
marks for this.
It would have been really easy for Thomas to have implemented the sample
playback in a standard kind of tracker way, but the fact that he's tied it in
to the main engine and allowed it to be controlled in the same way as the
oscillators is excellent. Ok it may require a little bit of effort to get to
grips with what the envelopes and modulation are doing to your sound, but it's
not too tough, and is a great way to get your head round synthesis and shaping
methods.
Don't be afraid of all those knobs, just twist em out and experiment! And
remember Damo's number one tip for sound design, if it sounds crap, just drench
it in delay and reverb and you'll be OK. By the way, the ace effects section
consists of two global settings of reverb and delay, with an individual send
level for each patch.
If you're a bit of a sound freak like myself, you can click on the 'patch'
button, and the bottom third of the screen will display a nice graphical
representation of the waveform you're currently editing. It's good to see what
Thomas's somewhat unorthodox(!) waveform combination methods are actually
doing, and if you're working on a sample based patch, this section offers a
nice and intuitive way of setting loop points. I'd have liked to have a simple
cut tool to maybe do away with unwanted audio either side of the loop points,
but otherwise I found once again some serious thought had gone in to this part
of the user interface. As a wannabe 'coder', I am full of admiration for
people with the patience to code this sort of shit. It's hard enough coding a
bare-bones synth engine, but the GUI side of things gives me a headache just
thinking about it.
Ok so you've made a few sounds, now you want to sequence these babies into an
aurally pleasing combination of harmonies, harmonics, and rhythm. So you hit
the 'track' button, and..
Initially, confusion.
But don't stress it, take a deep breath and have a look at whats on offer. The
most striking thing about the tracking section of ace is it's deviation from
the normal 'multiple rows of tracks' thing. Instead, we get one window
containing a solitary 'track', and a window next to it with a 'pattern
overview'. You can tab through which track is shown in detail while the
pattern overview gives you a kind of minature picture of the whole pattern.
Unconventional, but I think it's a cool idea.
You soon get used to navigating across tracks with the keyboard shortcuts, and
I've got to say that the pattern overview RULES! Imho the combination of one
detailed window and one overview screen defeats the traditional multitrack view
approach. Purists, bring it on!!! The overview window allows you to get a
good picture of the -entire- pattern, and its much easier on the eye than
trying to ram 12 tracks onto one screen. When you start playing about with the
block copying functions, the overview window becomes even more useful, visually
highlighting the block within the pattern. It works a treat, and you can rock
a funky beat. I'm a poet and I didn't know it. I'm so lame, I should go to
bed in shame :)
Bloody hell, I never realised how tough writing an article would be! I'm
gradually loosing my mind.. Oh well, on with the show....
Hmm other things about the tracker, well I love the fact that when you create a
pattern, you can specify it's length. A nice touch, and good for kids who want
to maybe do alternative timings etc etc. Similarly you can alter the the step
jump for each keypress. Thumbs up for that also. My only wish for this
section is to be able to adjust the frequency of the emphasised 'bold' step
numbers. It's fixed at one every four, I'd like to be able to change that if
I'm working in triplets for example, to one every six steps.. I don't know if
I explained that very well, maybe someone out there knows what I mean. Another
minor gripe, once you've created a pattern of a certain length, you are
committed to that length. You can't change it. That's a bit of a shame, but I
won't shed any tears over it.
Another great feature of the tracker is it's control codes, or as it is known
in this day and age, 'automation'. A number of the knobs can be tweaked from
within the track, although sadly for me, not the most important ones, lfo depth
and lfo frequency! As well as these control codes which are embedded in note
information in a traditional tracker way, each channel has a column devoted to
automation of velocity and filter cutoff. A great touch, seperating the most
used control codes from the rest of the crowd...
Other things of note, well if you're the lucky owner of some kind of digital
interface, you can play your creations out through that and even steal a couple
more voices while you're at it. I don't own one of these any more, but if the
opportunity arises, I'll be sure to pick one up. More power for ace, and
greater sound quality overall.
There's a few minor issues that I'm slightly uncomfortable with, but these are
mainly a matter of personal taste, stuff like the pattern length and the lfo
automation above. Also, It took me a while to get my head around the myriad of
different ways to load/save patches/banks/whatever. Also, I'd really like to
see at a glance a list of the samples loaded into memory, currently you have to
actually audition a sample space to see if it is occupied, and it's a bit of a
pain trying to remember what sample number is what sample. Oh yeah and before
I forget, may as well use this space to outline two issues, you've probably
sussed these out yourself, but just incase, you need to be aware of the
following:
1) Be aware that saving a 'mod' saves out an optimised version of your
track, removing any unused samples (maybe patterns as well, can't remember off
hand). This is an excellent touch for finalising your masterpiece, but can be
a bit of a shock if you're in the early stages of a tune and loose half of your
instruments you spent hours making! Use the save 'work' to save every last bit
of your work in progress.
2) In the early weeks of ace's release, a few people were saying that they
found the sample playback to be somewhat muffled and clicky, and indeed I
initially encountered this problem. The 'problem' lies with the default patch
settings. The filter envelope section defaults to maximum env depth, this
means by default the filter is not fully open, and also the amp envelope
defaults to a fairly quick decay, which results in shaping a percussive click
over your sample. All perfectly normal, but if you're wondering why your
sounds don't sound right, it's because of these default settings. It's no big
deal, in fact it forces you to pay attention to, and to realise the huge
potential of these different sound sculpting options.
So to clarify, if you want your sample to playback as it was recorded, wind
down the filter envelope depth, and wind up the sustain. But of course, you
don't want to do that, you want to get creative with your sound design, don't
you? ;) Incidentally, my little entry to the EIL tracked music compo sufferes
from these problems. I hadn't considered the amp or env envelopes in any of my
sample based instruments, and yet I was wondering why my samples sounded so
snappy and muffled! Oops!
3) Be wary of doing stuff like dialing up the resonance of an instrument to the
max and then rapidly triggering samples on the same tracks. You're gonna get
clicks buddy. Sadly the 16mhz of processing brawn the Falcon offers can't
quite stretch to the huge polyphony and intelligent note-stealing that can
prevent these sort of clicks. With some clever planning, and a bit of bouncing
around between tracks, clicks can generally be avoided, so once again, I'm not
gonna get moody about this.
Ok wrapping this lamo excuse for a review up, well I can honestly say that I
was blown away by this release. Thomas has come to the table with one of the
most stunning pieces of Atari software ever. Pretty much everything about it
is impressive. If you were using this on your PC or your Mac, you'd be
impressed. It's slick, it's user friendly, and it sounds PROPER! And you know
what's the most amazing thing of all? It's the realisation that all this hard
work and effort has been done for us, this small community known as the scene.
Fucking hell it's free for gods sake. I don't know what we've done to deserve
it, but I think we should all let New Beat know how grateful we are for this
release.
So I beg you sceners, put protracker down for 5 minutes and get stuck into ace,
the greatest ever scene music tool, period! As far as I'm concerned, with a
bit of patience, a digital interface, and some serious talent, you could easily
create commercially releasable compositions with this program. And as for
demos, as soon as we get our hands on the replay source, I think we're in for
some sonic feasts within the next generation of Falcon prods! And of course,
if we leave the samples out, we can get the song file size down to as small as
a traditional chip track!
Thomas, you are the fucking daddy mate! I take my baseball cap off to you.
I'm really sorry for this pathetic attempt at a 'review', i've missed out loads
of details, hopefully you've got the general idea folks, I'm really really into
this piece of software :) Right, I'm off for some acetracker action! Later!
Damo/rg
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