OpenTube

Ancient Music Software

William Jacobs

28,251 views

Vintage music production programs from the 80s and 90s walked so that the modern DAW could run. So let's go on a quick tour through music software history, including some ZX Spectrum drum machines and classic trackers for the Commodore 64 and Amiga, through to Windows 95's state-of-the-art audio editor, Cool Edit 95.

Exclusive videos, early access, and also my eternal gratitude can all be found on my Patreon: Patreon: williamjacobs (there are loads of other perks too!)

0:00 - Introduction
0:35 - Drum Machine (ZX Spectrum, 1984)
3:11 - Cheetah SpecDrum (ZX Spectrum, 1985)
6:22 - Soundmonitor (Commodore 64, 1986)
8:22 - Ultimate Soundtracker (Commodore Amiga, 1987)
9:07 - Protracker 2.3 (Commodore Amiga, 1993)
17:31 - Cool Edit 95 (Windows 95, 1995)
21:44 - Back to Protracker!
22:38 - The Demoscene
25:08 - bye

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do you wish to CONSUME??? if so, then I have some affiliate links below, which help to support the channel:
thomann: https://thmn.to/thocf/dgg3ibegch
perfect circuit: https://link.perfectcircuit.com/t/v1/...
reverb: https://tinyurl.com/willjreverb

(maybe if this one goes well i'll make "y2k music software" and pick up where we left off? idk we'll see)

20 Comments

@william.jacobs Creator 8 months ago Pinned

OH NO! Turns out that, thanks to some framerate shenanigans, there are a couple lil visual mishaps on this one. Sorry about that and I hope you can enjoy anyway :(

As they say, though, "perfect is the enemy of good". This philosophy also happens to explain why my videos are bad

@stevebroad 8 months ago (edited)

The drum machine from 1984 was written when I still at school. There were many kids like me spending 24/7 in their bedrooms getting no sleep, aiming at becoming rich by writing games and applications on home computers. Drum machine used speeded up bleeps to make odd sounds. It was also written in BASIC language with the sounds being machine code. No hardware was required unlike the other drum machine in the video from 1985. It was part of a series of my Machine series software. There is also a UDG machine for creating graphics on the Sinclair. I started Synth Machine but never finished it. That was based on making sounds from waveforms. I will finish it one day 45 years later :).This is a well put together video and thank you for reminding me of the memory of programming this.

@zuur303 8 months ago

Ancient?! I just started with electronic music on the Amiga 500... SoundTracker... I mean, it was only 1987. Wait... Oh my god.

@g-starthefirst 8 months ago

9:41 single frame jumpscare

@dyscotopia 8 months ago

As a tracker kid from the late 80s to mid 90s currently an old man dying in bed this was exactly the heartwarming nostalgia I needed

@rob550 8 months ago

I was not expecting to see Chris Broad in a retro music software video.

@rolandpyle8914 8 months ago

Wow.... I've had a demoscene conversion.

@whostheradical 8 months ago

If this doesn't win you world champion geek award then nothing will.

@EdgeOfPanic 7 months ago

Soundtracker/Protracker + a sampler and an Amiga 500 with a whopping 1 MB of memory is what got me started too back in the day, fun memories!

@TreyKaai 8 months ago

Literally the only video on my feed that was worth watching! Thanks for what you do, love the videos.

@richsolent8111 8 months ago (edited)

Calvin Harris debut album 'I Created Disco' was made on his Amiga 1200, a copy of Octamed (another Amiga tracker) and a few other toys (Korg M1, Alesis compressors, a Focusrite VoiceMaster Pro and a couple of AKG C1000 mics). He also had an Amiga on stage with him at the Brit Awards last year running Octamed.

@HowLongCanAHandleEvenBe 8 months ago

If you haven't looked into it yet, Renoise is definitely a DAW for the tracker types. Great vid, btw

@raybot29 8 months ago

OctaMed on Amiga with a sound sampler, was great for remixing Prodigy.

@AudialDreams 8 months ago

many producers started with trackers :) Love trackers and Renoise is awesome.

@MatthewNorthMusic 8 months ago

1984 is 100% the best year in pop music. I ahum even made a 12 part series about it on my channel :) great vid

@kniferideaudio 8 months ago

I learned Fast Tracker 2 in 1996. Made a bunch of records using it as my drum machine/sampler. Whish I still had those hard drives. I paid $500 for half a gig!

@FregHams 8 months ago

I've gotta feed the algorithm, but I have nothing but gratitude to offer. Genuinely so well entertained and informed by your every production. May you never stop

@NJRoadfan 8 months ago

Studies have been done and have shown that putting limits on people with basic tools (computers, synths, etc.) results in greater creativity and expands problem solving.