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Back to the roots -- this is the Real SoundTracker
--------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.soundtracker.org/
--------------------------------------------------------------
v0.3.8 --- THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT VERSION!
Written and (C) 1998-1999
by Michael Krause [ raw style / lego ]
m.krause@tu-harburg.de, http://www.tu-harburg.de/~semk2104/
WHAT IS THIS?
==============
If you've heard of ProTracker or FastTracker before, you will be
familiar with the concept of 'SoundTracker'. The name of my program
has been taken from the very first program of this type, which was
written by Karsten Obarski for the Amiga in 1987.
The basic concept is simple: you have a number of "sound samples", and
you can arrange them on so-called "tracks". A track (or channel) can
not play more than one sample at the same time. While the original
Amiga trackers only provided four tracks (this was the hardware
limit), trackers for PC's can mix a theoretically unlimited number of
channels (typically up to 32) into one sound stream.
A set of tracks which are played at the same time is called a
"pattern". A pattern typically has 64 entries per track; these
entries are cycled through at equidistant time intervals. A basic drum
set could thus be arranged by putting a bass drum at entries 0, 4, 8,
12 etc. of one track and putting some hihat at entries 2, 6, 10, 14
etc. of a second track. Of course you can also interleave bass and
hats on the same track, if the samples are short enough -- they can't
overlap, otherwise the previous sample is stopped when the next one
sets in.
And to make this introduction complete: A "module" is a compact file
containing various patterns and samples, including a "position list"
which specifies playback order of the patterns, forming a "song". A
word about file names: Original ProTracker modules are /prefixed/ with
"mod." when they come from an Amiga -- ignorant PC users, however,
shamelessly save PT-compatible modules with a ".MOD"
/suffix/. FastTracker modules have the ".XM" suffix. These both are
the most important module types out there and SoundTracker loads them
both.
USING
======
Note that some functions are only accessible using the keyboard. These
are all important key combinations, mostly inspired by the great Amiga
ProTracker (most alphanumeric keys are mapped to a piano keyboard):
TRACK EDITOR
------------
Right Ctrl Play Song
Right Alt Play Pattern
Right Shift Record (Play Pattern & Edit On) -- not yet!
Space Stop Playing; edit mode on/off
Shift - Space Toggle "jazz edit" mode
F1 ... F7 Change editing octave
Left Ctrl-1 ... -8 Change jump value
CrsrUp / Down Walk around in current pattern
PgUp / Down Walk around in current pattern, quickly
F9 Jump to position 0
F10 Jump to position L / 4
F11 Jump to position L / 2
F12 Jump to position 3 * L / 4
Ctrl + 1 ... 8 Change "jump" value
CrsrLeft / Right Change pattern column and/or channel
Tab Skip to same column in next channel
Left Ctrl - CrsrLeft Previous Instrument (faster with Left Shift)
Left Ctrl - CrsrRight Next Instrument (faster with Left Shift)
Left Ctrl - CrsrDown Previous Sample (faster with Left Shift)
Left Ctrl - CrsrUp Next Sample (faster with Left Shift)
Left Alt - CrsrLeft Previous Pattern (faster with Left Shift)
Left Alt - CrsrRight Next Pattern (faster with Left Shift)
Left Ctrl - B Start marking a block (one track horizontally)
Left Ctrl - C Copy block
Left Ctrl - X Cut block
Left Ctrl - V Paste block and advance to end
Left Shift - F3 Cut track
Left Shift - F4 Copy track
Left Shift - F5 Paste track
Left Alt - F3 Cut pattern
Left Alt - F4 Copy pattern
Left Alt - F5 Paste pattern
Any other keys Play notes on the keyboard.
SAMPLE EDITOR
-------------
Hold Shift and use left / right mouse buttons to set the loop points
in the sample display.
MORE DOCUMENTATION
===================
I know that there's no documentation available as of yet. If you just
want to know more about tracking in general,
http://www.united-trackers.org/ has a lot of resources.
SoundTracker still needs a detailed documentation. If you want to help
out with this, you should become familiar with DocBook or similar SGML
tools first.
You may of course ask for help in the mailing list (see below)!
MAILING LISTS
=============
There are currently two mailing lists:
* soundtracker-announce:
This is a read-only, low-volume mailing-list in which I post
announcements of new versions.
* soundtracker-discuss:
A non-moderated list open for ST-related discussions of any kind, for
both users and developers.
If you want to join any of these lists, send a mail to
`minimalist@soundtracker.org' with a Subject of
subscribe soundtracker-announce
or
subscribe soundtracker-discuss
Note that if you have joined `soundtracker-discuss', there's no need
to join `soundtracker-announce', as I crosspost all the announcements
to both lists. Think of `soundtracker-announce' as a subset of
`soundtracker-discuss' :-)
Use `unsubscribe' to cancel your list membership.
Once you have joined `soundtracker-discuss', you send mails to the
list by writing to `soundtracker-discuss@soundtracker.org'.
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