About
WTF is TRACKERCORPS?
In short, TRACKERCORPS is a nonprofit community focused on music trackers.
Initially named 'Renoise Breakcore', it was created in 2021 by producer amane:og (Poland), who was joined shortly after by Cubeinthebox (USA). In 2022 untilde (BR) joined the crew alongside sousândrade (BR) - aka Amen, Buroda! or croay.
Since we were facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea was to have a chill and safe place for tracker+breakcore quarantined nerds. Naturally, as the community grew (and specially with the release of the Vol. 1 compilation) we decided to take on the TRACKERCORPS name, while essentially remaining the same.
For safety reasons, the Discord server is currently invite only. Please ask a member for an invite or reach us at trackercorps@gmail.com.
Trackers? What?
Music trackers are compact, grid-based and linear digital audio applications. To put it simple, their main purpose is to sequence samples or/and synthesizers. They allow composers to manually input, arrange, and manipulate sounds using MIDI sequencing, pattern commands or audio recordings with precision - all this without having to take their hands off the computer keyboard. In other words, a mouse is optional in most trackers.
They provide a very different approach to music production in comparison to modern Digital Audio Workstations (DAW), such as Reaper, Bitwig, Logic and Ableton Live. Unlike these modern DAWs, trackers have a 'computer keyboard-centered' design and utilize hexadecimal notation.
The first trackers emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They subsequently played an extremely important role in the emergence of electronic music made with computers (remember that synthesizers were already popular when the first trackers were released), helping to shape many different subcultures - notably demoscene and Drum and Bass. Some notable early examples include Ultimate SoundTracker (UST), OctaMED, ProTracker, Scream Tracker and FastTracker. For the modern trackers, some examples are Renoise, SunVox, Jeskola Buzz, MilkyTracker and OpenMPT.
If you're interested, check the documentary below (not afilliated)