If you are new to tracker music,
follow this guide.
Table of contents:
About me:
So I first started listening to tracker music specifically back in the 2000s, with my first solid listen and "love-at-first-sight" soundtrack being the freeware game Seiklus. This would be the first time I would listen to, for example, a cover of Sanxion from the Commodore 64. I extremely love the music Seiklus picked out and although I didn't really vibe with the game, it was one of my first real examples of "I'm listening to tracker music and it's taking the game I'm playing and cranking its atmosphere up to 11."
It would take me a bit longer to figure out these were just tracker music files and figure out how to find the right plugin for Winamp to start playing tracker music. This was before Modplug, though I would grab it pretty soon once I eventually learned of modarchive.org, got a primer on tracker music, and for the longest time lumped the term "tracker music" with "chiptune", when it's really not the same.
That got me a nice handful of music and introduced me to the Commodore 64, but it wouldn't be until later at around 2010 when I learn after watching some YouTube channels, that there's this thing called a demoscene. I mean I knew of cracktros for a while but I hadn't really found an impressionable one, save for exposure to Unreeeal Superhero 3. It took me listening to a YouTube channel that used the Keygen Jukebox cracktro music pack, for years, until I eventually figure out it's a site, with a pack I can download, and I can fall down the rabbit hole proper. My library didn't really start until then. I had like, maybe around one, two hundred songs as I tried to manually curate tracker music from databases. (Honest, but slow as heck.) Once I realized I like 80% of KeygenJukebox, I began my massive collection in earnest.
I must be a weirdo to people "in the know". I'm not in Europe, I only learned of Commodore 64 and Amiga off the internet. Didn't figure it out after listening to music from those systems until much later, but had a vague idea what they were and how I could download more and set up a music player to play them. I don't have a particular interest in finding and using an Amiga to play music from it, or even a Commodore 64. (So I'll never know what an authentic C64 sound chip sounds like.) Despite all that, I still hold demoscene music and all adjacent to it as one of my favorite music genres. Mainly because it accompanies and improves impressive visuals, and is composed specifically to invoke a high energy, attention-grabbing flyer about the people who made such a thing. Turns out that causes music to take a lot of interesting paths to satisfy that purpose, and I'm pretty sure I love all of them.
You'll hear me talk about an "'07 Music Collection" a fair bit. That refers to my original ~170 song library first put together in 2007 that properly kickstarted my tracker music collection. It had a lot of meaning to me, I only expanded it a little bit a couple times, and here and there when I find songs that somehow weren't in the collection.
What's covered here:
Here you'll find recommendations you can find on modarchive.org. There's a lot more sites and databases than mod archive and I'll include a list of other demoscene/tracker music sites you can find, but as I started my music collection from modarchive, so do I recommend you do the same. I mean it even has a whole guide on how to set up a modern tracker music player. It's still good to this day.
The limitation to just modarchive music is for my sanity more than anything. And yours as well. I want you to be done after reading that guide. Once you start going deeper and finding tracker music in formats not maintained for 20+ years requiring plugins and players long since antiquated in order to even play such a song, you start to sacrifice a lot just to listen to one song in a specific way you really liked. I'm speaking from firsthand experience. If you're new, don't do this.
There's also really good artists adjacent to tracker music that I could just sneak into this list but I do want to be restrictive on my scope, again, to have it be easy for you (and me) to go through the recommendations. I think HertzDevil and Rob Hubbard are two of the best artists of the greater chiptune field, but one does FamiTracker and the other was primarily active in Commodore 64. Both are out of scope since modarchive deals with mainly tracker music, starting from Amiga to here and now. So the most I can do is just casually mention these two really good artists you should also listen to if you have the time, among uhh, many others.
Artists will be recommended first, with multiple examples of their work being listed. This is because I made the mistake of not just looking for more from similar artists (To be fair they're not always easy to find.) and I want you to not make that same mistake.
List of Artist Recommendations:
4mat
: blank page | anarchy menu 2 | dna-dream | intro music | 4mat
So this guy is the cornerstone of my collection. Heard his music very early, absolutely loved it, got hype whenever I noticed it's 4mat, and he's been at it for so long he has a bandcamp page you can buy his albums from. Does a lot of genres: primarily demoscene of course, but also a lot of ambiant music.
4mat has made A LOT of music. A whole, whole lot. I don't think that much of it is good but you can see the mountain of works he did to arrive at top-tier tracker music like blank page. Heck he's even composed for video games.
Pretty sure the song 4mat by the artist 4mat was the first 4mat song I listened to. That was from Rocks'n'Diamonds.
Acumen
: Out of the Blue | One of a Kind | Satisfaction Overload
Out of the Blue was part of my initial '07 collection and it was a really good listen every single time, and I listened to it a lot of times. Speaks to a song's staying power. Lot of his music has a lot of variety to its melody. Songs don't get stale with this guy, and they last for minutes. I know him for his ambient/newage music, but he does other genres.
Skaven252
: Data Jack | War in the Middle Earth | Deep in her Eyes | The entire soundtrack of Hamster Ball Gold
I know Skaven252 for Data Jack mostly, which was part of my '07 collection. Data Jack was like Top 3 in what I had and then I learned he also did War in the Middle Earth, which I first heard from Keygen Jukebox, and then the entirely of a Marble Madness clone: Hamster Ball Gold. So yeah, good artist.
Data Jack is a very high energy techno song, but Skaven252 I wouldn't say does a particular genre. Though there's a lot of songs with buildup, and progression.
radix
: emelie | yoghurt factory | mushroom colored | santzia's shoes | rainy summerdays
So this artist did several songs that Seiklus used so of course I just find myself naturally attracted to the rest of their library. I think this was unconscious; I didn't explicitly seek out radix music but here we are now. Does a lot of soft/low energy music but can put out energetic demoscene music as well.
Fun fact: radix did the first Unreeeal Superhero, but not the third one that everyone thinks of when they think cracktro music.
Aureate
Donkey Kong Country has ruined me. I say this because my favorite song from that soundtrack has always been Northern Hemispheres, and seeing as how that's the part of Donkey Kong Country that starts getting really mean and difficult of course I'll listen to it a whole bunch, love it, and acquire a taste for ambient music as a result. From a video game from the 90s, in a time where you won't usually hear top tier ambient music that defines your musical tastes for the future.
What does that have to do with Aureate? Well Aureate is an expermental ambient musician that has one of my favorite tracks from the '07 collection of mine and it's 10 minutes and it doesn't get stale and it reminds me, exactly, of being caught in a snowstorm. Heck I have a list of music I play in my head specifically when it's snowing. What can I say? I like snowpunk.
All of Aureate's tracks are LONG so keep that in mind.
Mempheria
: My Litle Moongirl | mpn-cbn.xm | .Angeldreams
I am a sucker for soft, emotional piano music and well that's My Litle Moongirl so it was part of my '07 collection. Mempheria does a lot of, not ambient, but trance music. Very moody and I like to keep the soft emotional music around as a chaser.
Stamen
: storm rider | fantasy | phenomenon
When I think "the cracktro song that got me into demoscene" I don't think of an actual cracktro I watched. No, storm rider by this fella was part of my '07 Music Collection and even though I had 4mat right next door, and way more 4mat music than Stamen, I always thought cracktro listening to storm rider over, most things by 4mat. It's a very good demoscene song with energy and sectioned variety, if that makes sense. A song with a main section that will transition into a new, unique part of the song before returning to the main section. It actually works well because the main section is very catchy.
As for other music by Stamen, I would say they do mostly demoscene. Most of it is going to sound like music off the Amiga because it is made on an Amiga. I believe most of these songs are but this artist explicitly says so.
Turkanen
: Ice Peak | Journey Through The Dark | Lunar Base
These aren't just ambient music. They're music that develops into reaaaally catchy songs that never really leaves the ambient genre, so I guess that makes them atmospheric? To best describe what Turkanen does that makes this list, their music sounds like the music I would hear playing a computer RPG, maybe something like Shadowrun?
Jakim
: Underworld | Laughing Matter | Valium candies | Chemical Laboratory
Underworld's a really good video game jam that is ranked rather high in my '07 Collection, so I was happy to have an excuse to look at more of this artist's music for this list, because somehow this entire time I haven't really bumped into Jakim beyond Underworld. (Okay so I found Valium candies through KeyGenJukebox but that's one whole 'nother song.) They do several genres quite well from demoscene to funk, to taking a sound effect from Half-Life and making it techno song. So, there is a high chance you'll find something you like from them.
Lizardking
: World of Unicorns | Quest | Elimination
So this artist did Elimination but that's not how they got into my '07 Music Collection. It was through World of Unicorns. I didn't learn of Elimination until much later. So we have an extremely good dreamcore piano song and, a very iconic demoscene song. They've done a lot of music, a lot of it good, and they are absolutely worth a listen.
List of Individual Recommendations:
Fear Factory #1
By Shylock the Brain
I do not listen to a lot of techno or dance club music. It's because of repetition really. I consider music that develops to be top tier and the opposite of that does not catch my attention, especially when I notice a lot of songs like modarchive are, "Bass line, into some extra instruments, into drum line, into some minor variations? And that's the song. The end. No melody."
Anyway here's Fear Factory #1, which has enough variety in the song that I can listen to it anytime and not get sick of it. Considering how hard that seems to accomplish with a song that doesn't have a melody, that's impressive.
hard red
By Bee Hunter
How does demoscene music sound like bossa nova music? Well I mean if you want to be boring it's by using specific instruments, but this is a really good example of demo music: music that lasts throughout an entire demo. It's not like super popular, but I would point to this as what to expect looking at the demoscene: really catchy music that has enough variance it lasts the entire time you're watching hardware being bent as the artists wish.
Hybrid Song (Funky Stars)
By Quazard
Oh, you don't know this song already? Here. Does this help?
I heard this long before it got remixed and started an entire subgenre of music. It was part of the '07 collection and Barkley's Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden was '08. I think there's plenty of reasons why Funky Stars of all songs got mashed up with Space Jam: It's a very good tracker song and now that it's mashed up with an iconic film it's now an iconic song of the tracker music genre.
I can definitely name songs higher tier than this but it's still very catchy, very funky.
The entirety of the Jet Set Willy PC remake soundtrack
By 4mat
Oh I recommended 4mat already? Too bad, I'm pointing this out specifically because it has very specific value to me. Jet Set Willy PC was back when I was trying to learn more about european PCs, their games, and the demoscene as a whole. I eventually bumped into this, I got strangely interested in a very crusty platformer that was an iconic game of the computer it was for, and thus my exposure to 4mat only grew. It's an entire soundtrack of soft, moody at times, music, and the file itself has a lot of music that went unused in the game it's for.
There will always be more recommendations.
Seeing as how I have hundreds of thousands of unsorted music I've yet to listen to, yeah, I will never stop recommending artists. But, hopefully this should get you on your way to enjoying tracker music.