Coded by:
Juan Antonio Arguelles Rius "ArGuru" - gx11488@agger.net
Donations to this adress are 8) wellcomed: J. Antonio Argⁿelles Rius - C/Edisson Blq.13 1║B - 29006 Mßlaga - Spain
and additional programming by Amir Geva "Photon" photon@photoneffect.net
Official NoiseTrekker sites http://getit.at/twnn and http://members.xoom.com/arguru/home.htm
NoiseTrekker is a Win32 old-style-tracker music composer for Windows 9x. The word tracker was inpired from the first stages (about 1987-88) of the Amiga computers, and with the first releases of SoundTracker/NoiseTracker (M.K.) and finishing with the outstanding Protracker program. The word "Module" or "Mod" gives names to the songfiles generated by those programs. Then, a lot of tracker-programs were released, each one with special features:Octamed, Startrekker, Digibooster, etc...
A tracker is the mixture of a pattern-sequencer and a sampler. The old-amiga mod format consist of 32 samples and info (loops, finetune, etc...), 4-track patterns (64 lines per pattern), pattern order-info, and 8-bit mono-raw-sample data.
The purpose of these programs was simply and clear: applications that can easily made songs for games, demos, etc. Amiga was only 4tracks, 8Bits, and the converters only can output 28Khz, but this limitation converted "tracking" in an art, and for some people, a life-style.
But with the new-PC technology, music trackers programs started turned into 1/2 proffessional-background. And most of newest trackers includes realtime-synthesizers, sample-splits, envelopes, thousands of channels, stc... You can get more info on http://www.maz-sound.de , also, you can download some of those programs here.
So, why I coded "twnn"?...
Well twnn, was originaly created for personal-use and not for public-releasing. For me, it's the best and powerful application to make music on PC platforms with proffessional soundquality. Uses S+S synthesys with a lot of advanced DSP effects. [This will take a lot of CPU, a p2 300Mhz it's strongly recommended to run it without problems].
Well, we can divide the screen into three main parts:
Part 1: The main controls
1.1 Player section
PLAY: Clicking left mouse button (LMB) will play the song. Clicking right mouse button (RMB) will only play the current pattern.
Slider Recording: When this button is ON: the changes made in realtime on the cutoff, resonance, panning, thresohld, clamp, reverb amount, etc while playing a song, will be written on the sequencer. Very useful to give more live warthm to a song. It works very similar to Rebirth tweaking recording mode.
STOP: Will stop the playback. Also, it will stop the Hd-disk recording if it's enabled.
1.2 Sequence (pattern-order) section
POSITION: Select the current position in the sequencer. Each position have an specified pattern to be played. Pressing LMB will +/- 1 to the current position, and RMB will +/- 10.
PATTERN: Selects the pattern to be played in that position. LMB +/- 1, RMB +/- 10.
SONG LENGTH: Simply, sets the song length. When position raises this number, the player will be restarted to the position 0. Example: Length=01 means that this song is only a pattern. LMB +/- 1, RMB +/- 10.
1.3 Master section
VOLUME: Master volume. (FF - Max,80- Half, 00 - None). You can also view the amount on % in the Master-userscreen. LMB +/- 1, RMB +/- 10.
BPM: Song TEMPO in Beats per minute. LMB +/- 1, RMB +/- 10.
TPB: Ticks per beat. Set the number of lines to be played each beat. The default is 4. You can also change this value in the pattern sequence. LMB +/- 1.
1.4 Pattern Editor settings
STEP ADD: Set the lines to be jumped everytime you enter a new note. Default 1.
SAMPLE: Select the current sample entry. LMB +/- 1, RMB +/- 10. Empty means that no sample is allocated on that entry. Stereo means that you have a stereo sample allocated on that entry. Mono means... well, you should know this already! =)
OCTAVE: Select current octave. 4 is default. C-4 note = 44100 Khz. No resampling. Twnn supports 10 octaves. From C-0 to B-9.
1.5 File browser
C.DIR: Displays the current directory.
File List: Show files. Actually you can load WAV samples or NoiseTrekker songs simply double clicking on the file to be loaded. NoiseTrekker will automatically detect if the file is a wav sample or a NoiseTrekker song. If you double clik on a directory, then that dir will be the current directory (note: \.. is the parent of the current dir).
Part 2: The pattern editor
1.1 General description
PATTERN
Here is where you make the song. Each pattern consist of 16 Tracks (0 to F) and 64 lines. Each track is divided in:
Note __Sample
number
| |
| | __ Vol Row ($00 = Min, $40 = Max)
| | | _Pan Row ($00 = Left, $40 = Center, $80 = Right)
| | | |
C#1 04 05 40 00 00
| |_Effect Value
|
|__Effect Number
VOLUME ROW
Values between $0 and $40 sets the volume. "Fx" makes the note-cut. Where x is the number of subticks before make the note cut. IT'S VERY USEFUL FOR MAKE SLICED SEQUENCES OR TO AVOID NOTE CHOPPING!! (Similar to ECxx notecut command on Ft2)
PANNING ROW
00 = Left, 40 = Center, 80 = Right
TRACK EFFECTS
01xx - Slide pitch up.
02xx - Slide pitch down.
04xx - Trance Slicer (like note-cut but it resets the volume every time called, so it's very useful for trance sequences)
05xx - Glide effect.
08xx - Set the filter track cutOff.
09xx - Start playing sample at relative offset xx. (00=Start ... 80=Middle... FF=End)
0Axx - Randomizes the track cutoff.
0Bxx - Decrease track cutoff.
0Cxx - Increase track cutoff.
0Exx - Retrigger note every 'xx' subticks.
0Fxx - set xx Ticks Per Beat
10xx - set xx Set delay send of this track (0=no send, F=Full send)
11xx - set xx Set reverb send of this track (0=no send, F=Full send)
12xx - set xx Set distortion threshold (0=low, FF=high)
13xx - set xx Set distortion clamp (0=low, FF=high)
14xx - set xx Set filter resonance / bandwidth (0=min, FF=weird)
15xx - set xx Set filter type (0=Lp12, 1=Hp, 2=Bp, 3=Br, 4=Thru [off], 5= Lp24, 6= Lp48, etc...) (two last filters could smash your speakers at higher resonance)
1.1 General
LEFT ALT+ESC: Exit the program.
LEFT CTRL+ESC: Switch windows.
RIGHT CONTROL:Play song.
SPACE:Besides turn ON/OFF editor mode, it stop the player.
CTRL+S:Save the current song.
1.2 Editing patterns (Notice that most shortcuts are the same as FT2)
SPACE: Toggle ON/OFF the pattern-edition mode.
INSERT: Insert a empty line on the current track.
BACKSPACE: Move all the track below the current cursor position 1line up. (Like Ft2)
DELETE: Delete current line.
LSHIFT+F1: Transpose 1 semitone down all track notes below the current line-position.
LSHIFT+F2: Transpose 1 semitone up all track notes below the current line-position.
LSHIFT+F3/F4/F5: Cut, copy, and paste track.
CTRL+F3/F4/F5: Cut, copy, and paste pattern.
+/- KEYS ON THE NUMPAD: Select current pattern.
zsxdcvgbhnmk,l.:Virtual keyboard (lower octave).
q2w3er5t6y7ui9o0p:Virtual keyboard (upper octave).
Right shift:Insert note "OFF" command.
Page Up: Advance -16 lines.
Page Down: Advance 16 lines.
Tab: Select/advance to the next track.
Mays+Tab: Select/advance to the previous track.
F5,F6,F7,F8,F9: Set line position at 0,16,32,48 or 63.
1.3 Editing patterns (Block shortcuts)
CTRL+B: Select block range start.
CTRL+E: Select block range end.
CTRL+C: Copy block.
CTRL+V: Paste block.
CTRL+X: Cut block.
CTRL+I: Interpolate effect data between first to last line of the marked block.
CTRL+Z: Like CTRL+V, but it will paste ONLY the command data/value.
MAYS+F3/F4/F5: Cut, copy, and paste track.
CTRL+F3/F4/F5: Cut, copy, and paste pattern.
+/- KEYS ON THE NUMPAD: Select current pattern.
zsxdcvgbhnmk,l.:Virtual keyboard (lower octave).
q2w3er5t6y7ui9o0p:Virtual keyboard (upper octave).
Page Up: Advance -16 lines.
Page Down: Advance 16 lines.
Tab: Select/advance to the next track.
Mays+Tab: Select/advance to the previous track.
F5,F6,F7,F8,F9: Set line position at 0,16,32,48 or 63.
Special loop editor.
16 Splits [samples] per instrument.
Bugfixes.
4 New filters.
Assignable midi programs to each instrument.
Optimized playroutine.