Tracker First “Jam”

Jamming is not exactly the word I’d use to describe working with the Polyend Tracker, but for lack of a better word, it’ll do for now. Making music with it is a process.

It’s actually a fairly enjoyable process, though, once you start to get the hang of it … and embrace some of the aspects that are relatively challenging when compared to more traditional methods of making music. Each note is specifically placed into the sequence, along with parameters that determine certain characteristics of that individual step. As rigid as this sounds, it actually allows for a good bit of flexibility, and can help to get around the limits of trackers’ 8 mono audio tracks; in this case, monophonic means that the track is not stereo, and also that the track is capable of playing only one note at a time. If a new note sounds before the previous note has finished playing, the previous note will be cut off.

The little ditty below is no Grammy winner, but I still consider it worthy of a share. It was created in a relatively short time without ever cracking the manual for the Polyend Tracker — all I did was watch a few YouTube videos and have a couple of short, unproductive sessions messing around with one when I was at Knobcon.