{"id":2497,"date":"2021-09-22T22:40:22","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T20:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xavier.borderie.net\/blog\/?p=2497"},"modified":"2025-07-26T23:31:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T21:31:20","slug":"soundtracker-origins-part-1-where-in-the-world-is-karsten-obarski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xavier.borderie.net\/blog\/2021\/09\/22\/soundtracker-origins-part-1-where-in-the-world-is-karsten-obarski\/","title":{"rendered":"Soundtracker origins, part 1: Where in the World is Karsten Obarski?"},"content":{"rendered":"Temps de lecture \/ Reading time\u00a0: <\/span> 10<\/span> minutes.<\/span><\/span>\n

Note: Cet article (et les suivants de cette s\u00e9rie) sont \u00e9crits en anglais, pour la simple raison que mes sources, tant directes qu’en ligne, sont anglophones. <\/em>
Par ailleurs, dans certains de ces articles, il me semble<\/em> que j’ajoute du contenu original\/rarement vu au corpus de connaissances, donc autant faire en sorte que cela profite au plus grand monde \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My previous article on Soundtracking<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup>In French in ze texte.<\/span> was all about passion and nostalgia: presenting a couple of great Amiga demos, playing a handful of notable Amiga modules, and explaining my understanding of how soundtracking worked — you know, the whole \u00ab\u00a0notes as a sequence of letters instead of solfege symbols\u00a0\u00bb thing2<\/a><\/sup> Or, \u00ab\u00a0A#3 > \ud83c\udfb6\u00a0\u00bb, which incidentally is<\/em> the name of Elon Musk & Grimes’ next child<\/span>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
SoundTracker: it’s like writing music with Excel!
This is a Unix version<\/a> of Soundtracker, from February 2006.
(to hear this specific song, click here<\/a> and press the Return key)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today I’m starting a series of articles which is no less about passion and nostalgia, but tries to go further behind the curtains, and talks about the ones who made soundtracking possible: Mr. Obarski of course, but also those who inspired him (and those who, in turn, inspired them<\/em>3<\/a><\/sup>Spoiler alert: It’s turtles all the way down!<\/a><\/span>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, my intent is to find out when the \u00ab\u00a0tracker\u00a0\u00bb way of composing music (or, the music sequencer) made the jump from a hardware, physical product to a software product. Who was the first one to dream up coding that interface? Is it really Karsten Obarski, father of the Sountracker? I want to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let’s start with the culmination of all these inspirations.
Let’s start where this little \u00ab\u00a0quest\u00a0\u00bb of mine started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(drumroll)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Karsten Obarski,
elusive legend<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Karsten Obarski programmed the Ultimate Soundtracker<\/a> tool for Amiga 1000 in the Summer of 1987, and released it through German software publisher EAS in December 1987.
He was 22. It was his first ever completed program. He initially wrote it to write his first music, for the first game of a friend of his, Guido Bartels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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