I messed around with the Amiga trackers back in the day. When I look at the software available today, e.g. on my iPad, I have a hard time getting anything useful out of it. Which software are you using now?

My favorite tracker-like DAW is Renoise: https://www.renoise.com/

Cross-platform, can use VSTs and samples, lively community, lua scriptability. It's pretty awesome all the way around.

SunVox is a fantastic modern tracker that runs on pretty much anything.

True, but SunVox is so much more than just a tracker. In my experience with (PC) trackers they rely mostly on modifying pre-recorded samples. SV on the other hand allows you to chain together a crazy array of synth modules to produce sounds "from scratch".

Well there's Renoise, there's Jeskola's Buzz (the changelog starts at 2008 but I'm sure I used it well before that), Noise Trekker had a synth as early as 1999. Adlib Tracker? You're still right in that for the most part, for a long time, tracking on the PC meant FastTracker or ScreamTracker, and those just used samples. But we've come a long way since then in the early 2000s.

Buzz was around in 1999 (I think - I first used it in 2000/2001) but circa 2001 the coder had a hard disk crash and lost his code, and finally resumed work on it in 2008 from a much older codebase or possibly from scratch. I assume that's part of why the changelog starts in 2008.

I miss the 1998-era softsynth with built-in tracker Analogic, later called AXS (or was it the other way round?). http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11012&page=1

True. I think SunVox is a superset of what normal trackers can do: you're fully able to limit yourself to samples.

I personally have left trackers. They are fun but the learning curve! I use Waveform 9 from Tracktion. (Tracktion open sourced the engine and it works on Linux, Win and Mac.

This is the fastest DAW from nothing to something like a song, and for people just starting it has pretty much everything you need to make some kind of song. https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform

Post trackers, I've been using Cubase since it was delivered on a single Floppy disk. Had about 13 years of silence (sold my gear, had kids) and then got back to it a couple years ago (shameless plug: https://soundcloud.com/earlofwoffington).

I don't. Live is hard enough without you constantly pushing yourself and giving yourself a bad conscious for not reaching your goals. Relax, kick back and just do what you feel is fun.

Eh I once heard someone make a distinction that I like between 'what you enjoy' and 'what makes you happy'.

A somewhat boring example is it's unlikely you enjoy doing your university exams, however your state of happiness after completing your degree will be higher than if you had instead done something more enjoyable with your time (e.g. play video games).

There is a large middle ground between constantly pushing yourself and just doing what's fun.

Also, reaching a goal is great, but for many goals it's the process of getting there where the real personal growth comes from.

The times I look back on my life that bring me the most happiness are the times I pushed myself to my limits.

Floating is for boats.

I did that this weekend. It was also hard to kick back and relax when I wanted to work on my goals. That was very conflicting, but I'm starting to see the value of slowing down a little bit.

Sometimes what's really fulfilling in the long term isn't what's fun in short term. For example, practicing an instrument vs. playing a video game.

I'm the same, when I look at some of the comments here it sounds rather joyless.

Most people already do that.

If they did, mid-life crisis wouldn't be so common. I'd say many people have lofty yet rather undefined goals in life, which is why they crash hard when they realize they are far from achieving hem.

Hhahahahahahahah

So true!

Nothing of value is fun, easy, or simple.