Ok…hopefully you guys have enough energy to read what I’m about to type.
I’m a recent PE Tracker user. I’m rocking a flashy MK3, and I’m loving it. How well integrated and thought is the UX/UI to allow for fast edition and beat creation is just incredible when you couple it with the amount of feedback that the screen allows. I’m enjoying exploring ideas faster than I could ever do even in a DAW (considering only sequencing and not sampling).
But the main reason that pushed me to choose the tracker over other platforms was that it felt like an instrument…a timeless, very powerful instrument and ideas platform.
And that is very important, being an instrument. The difference for me between an instrument and a gadget is that if the instrument is good if it allows you to create whatever is in your head and enjoy the process, it is completely disconnected from time…is like an old 70’s Stratocaster…or a Stradivarius, fuck time and tech progress.
We live in a time when everything has to die. All objects have to expire to leave place for new objects with more/improved features. Is true that the tracker, being a digital electronic device running software, is somehow tied inherently to progress. But in any case, just looking at the amount of processing power, interactivity and connectivity that we carry in our pockets every day, I will venture that using current technology and the tracker form factor, an update of the platform, if done correctly could create the definitive instrument (in a tracker format).
If you don’t shrink it (like Apple loves to do with their laptops) you have enough room there to create a definitive digital instrument that will last…forever. How do you monetize it…that is a different story. But in a world where ecology has managed to disconnect itself from the huge problem of expiring technology, this kind of move and decision will speak volumes of Polyend.
I think that the original tracker was born at a time when dawless setups were starting to emerge and mature, and hardware and software were yet evolving…but today’s state-of-the-art is just enough to fulfil the craziest idea in tracker music workstations that you guys could come up with.
My proposal for the tracker+ is just to take a deep breath and put all the effort into creating that timeless infinite machine.
- Pump up the hardware specs to support real-time interaction with any step in the creative process..
- Keep all components that would require replacement over time external and detachable (storage, power supply, etc).
- Make improvements in the parts that the user smashes every day (bullet-proof encoders and keys, durable enclosure, beefier connectors) and/or make them easily replaceable.
- Focus on making performance mode an integral part of the flow, providing tools and UI adequate for it to happen (for instance run several projects at once, provide an A-B fader/encoder OT fashion, etc).
- Allow users to hack it via API. For instance, providing a Script FX that allows users to call scrips or link externally run processes that could alter a track or even create/arrange it on the fly. Think about the unlimited soundscape creation possibilities and how integration with other media like sensors or cameras could make the tracker the most incredible digital instrument on the market. In the end, the cracking/hacking is at the core of tracker culture from the very beginning, just use it for your benefit…and everyone else’s too :P.
- Add more generative tools like conditional triggers/calls that could be triggered by events or even specific frequencies/output volume, etc. The reason for this is that generative tools will allow for theoretically unlimited new structures, as complex as the user can imagine.
- And the most important one…don’t build tracker+ thinking on tracker++…just make tracker+ the last one that you will ever need to design and disconnect from the tech/consumerism craze. Build an instrument, not a gadget.
My idea of jumping dawless was the idea also of disconnecting from all the tech craze…to be able to freeze it in the form of a box with all the tools that I could need to create and perform music. If in 20 years my daughter keeps making beats with my tracker or tracker+ (in the same way that she could with any of my guitars)…it will make me very happy and I think that will be the sign marking that you made it right.
And jumping out of Wonderland, of course, you guys have to pay bills and make money…that’s probably one of the reasons why you started Polyend too…but I think that there are ways of keeping it alive and healthy without having to release a new device every year. Let the rest do that…you focus on creating an atemporal tracker machine that inherits from the beginning of electronic music through a long and well-rooted legacy. No one else is in a better position than you guys.
If you made it here sorry for the gibberish and the unapologetic butchering of the English language.
I hope that this helps.