Most of my time with Tracker+eurorack so far has involved sampling the eurorack’s output, rather than using MIDI. Instead of using a drum machine, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of synthesizing one-hit drums with a complex oscillator (Furthrrrr Generator) going into an LPG (Make Noise LxD) with various filtering going on and other shaping/processing as needed. I find I can get most of the drum and percussion sounds I need this way, and as a bonus it forces me to develop proficiency with the Furthrrrr. Once these one-hits are sampled they’re added to Tracker’s SD card, becoming part of my sample library I can turn to, and I can do the rest of the shaping and sequencing onboard the Tracker. For ambient texture, pads, flutters, and glitches, I like sampling granular modules which are fed various internal and external sounds, Arbhar in particular has been fruitful here.
I’ve also done a bit of MIDI sequencing of the Furthrrrr + LxD combo and other eurorack stuff instead, and it’s been good, but for some reason doesn’t feel as intuitive or immediate as the above. I need to experiment with it more and I’m sure the more I do it, the more it will feel like second nature.
What I’m most interested in, but haven’t tried yet, is using a CV-to-MIDI module (Befaco CV Thing, which arrived recently) to bring CV into the Tracker, and modulating performance mode CCs using my eurorack modulation sources. Using eurorack clock sources as master clock in for the Tracker as well. I can see this as an exciting way to break out of the Tracker’s “grid”.
