The Polyend Tracker Mini was designed to be a fun music production environment, a system that is easier to use than its bigger sibling, and a more mobile platform than the Tracker itself.  We interviewed Piotr Raczyński to see how Polyend went about creating the Tracker Mini and the approaches they took to meet their goals.  

Looking back, the concept of a "tracker" as a production tool and as a sequencer dates back to the 1980s, and became one of the preferred methods electronic musicians used to produce tracks and manipulate samples.  Tracker software that ran on Commodore and Atari computers, and other PCs, stood as the predecessors to today's modern digital audio workstations (DAWs).  Eschewed for the more horizontal workflow and layout of DAWs that changed the way musicians and studios produce music and sound art, the concept of the tracker disappeared from the mainstream.

When Polyend launched the Tracker just a couple of years ago, artists and producers rediscovered the vertical and spreadsheet-like production environment upon which much of early house, drum and bass, jungle, techno, trance-ambient, and other forms of electronic music was written.  This year, Polyend unveiled the new Tracker+, which added enhanced processor power, stereo sampling, built-in synthesizers, and other key features for an interface that is the first version's twin.  In between them, Polyend brought out the Tracker Mini, which took the tracker concept and placed it in a handheld system reminiscent of a portable video game system.

Piotr Raczynski and Mitch Lantz walk us through the story behind the Polyend Tracker Mini, and show us the steps they took to make the tracker music production ecosystem easier and more accessible.