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About tracker music and ERICADE Radio
Tracker music began in the mid-1980s on the Commodore Amiga, when Ultimate Soundtracker and its descendants let musicians compose directly with digitized instrument samples inside a piece of software, arranging notes in a scrolling grid of patterns rather than sheet music or a synthesizer patch. ProTracker became the definitive Amiga tool, and its four-channel .mod format spread through the demoscene — the international subculture of programmers, artists and musicians who competed to squeeze astonishing audiovisual effects out of ordinary home computers. As PCs took over in the 1990s, FastTracker and Impulse Tracker pushed the format further, adding channels, sample effects and the pattern-based workflow that still defines tracker music today. Alongside it grew chiptune, music written directly for the sound chips of machines like the Commodore 64 and Game Boy, prized for the same hands-on, byte-level craftsmanship as a good .mod file.
ERICADE Radio keeps that tradition on the air, twenty-four hours a day. The station plays classic Amiga four-channel modules, FastTracker and Impulse Tracker productions, chiptunes coaxed from vintage sound chips, and the synthwave and chipwave records that carry the same DIY spirit forward, alongside tunes lifted straight from demoscene productions and compos. It currently carries over 3,148 tracks and 182 hours of music, all catalogued with artist credits and links back to Demozoo, Pouet, the Mod Archive and the other places where the scene keeps its own history. Whether you grew up with a Commodore 64 in the living room or just discovered chiptune yesterday, tune in to ericade.radio to hear where a large part of electronic music actually came from.
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