PhD Thesis on tracking

Music in the MSX demo scene (and probably beyond the demo scene as well) really took off with the release of trackers, a concept quite different compared to the common 'tape editing' metaphor. Of course, there have been other means of creating music on MSX, like MML and the graphically oriented Synthsaurus, but it's been the trackers that caused creating MSX music to take flight - most notably FAC Soundtracker and Moonblaster.

There have been trackers on other platforms too; Amiga, Atari, C64, PC and others. Tracking is not a dated concept (trackers are still being made and updated today), although a slight underground/hacker image seems to persist around tracking. As a tracker user, you may find it troublesome to convince a classically trained musician to try a tracker, even when there's a fair chance that this person will actually understand the tracking method much quicker than you think.

Convinced that tracking truly holds some potential, British coder Chris Nash spent a number of years working on a doctoral thesis while studying at Cambridge University. A tracker he created in an earlier research project now served as fundamental tool for his new research project. Also, for a limited period of time the userbase which this tracker already generated served as a source of information on how these people were using his tracker. This user interface, and how it influences creativity and flow in the composition process, was the key subject of this thesis; the Human-Computer Interaction.

Long story short; in over 250 pages, Nash reports the findings of his research. The short edit-listening cycle, the keyboard interface, the fact you barely need a mouse, the hotkeys, they have all been researched empirically and are explained thoroughly. With this thesis, there is now scientific data in favour of tracking. Chapter six of the thesis features a certain Guinea MSX pig who volunteered as observable lab rat. The lab experiment being a new score for a Road Runner cartoon, the whole composing process was recorded on video and then studied by Nash. MSX gets mentioned multiple times in this chapter, not a bad thing, after all it is an academic article in 2012!

So, what's in it for MSX users? Well, for the moment the article is about research done with reViSiT, which is the actual tracker created by Nash. There's no immediate purpose for MSX users yet, but who knows what the future may bring. After all, Impulse Tracker (which reViSiT's user interface was based on) was used in Infinite's Montana John and the Templar's Treasure, Dr.Pill, Shift and Jailbreak. A possible future scenario could be one where reViSiT controls an MSX emulator running specific host software routing incoming MIDI signals to an instrument player. As reViSiT's file format is plain XML, it would be rather easy to convert the pattern data to a format an MSX can deal with.

For the moment, the thesis is an interesting (although extremely detailed and academic) read for people who are interested in how the tracking interface influences creativity and flow in computer music. The curious PC composers among you could have a look at Chris Nash' website, and perhaps give reViSiT (VST, currently for Windows) a swing - you're not alone!

Relevant link: Supporting Liveness and Flow in Computer Music (PhD thesis)