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Tracked music is gaining popularity in the world. Not only for games & demos, but also as "stand-alone" music. Modules (tracked songs) are probably going to dominate (if it doesn't already) Internet's music resources, since the individual songs are small and use their own instruments/samples/voices. When tracking, you can use any imaginable sound. Compared to General MIDI (GM) modules are much more flexible. Using GM one has to choose from only the available preset sounds to make it compatible to play on all computers. Modules contain the actual instrument and sound-settings itself, which means any module sounds exactly the same on all computers.
Fasttracker 2 allows you to compose your own tracks including,sound effects, many different instruments and best of all you can sample (record) sound bites from CD's. It is the easiest program of it's type to understand I have ever come across and will run in an MS DOS Prompt window under Windows 95 without any problem assuming you are using a Pentium with 8MB of RAM or more. There are four people in the area who I know of who have been using this program for a little over a year now and between us we have written at least ten tracks which we can be proud of. The four of us are as follows: The following is a quote from the programmers which is printed at the start of the manual. What we've tried to do is not multiplying all figures by 256, we've tried to make composing easier. Some other tracker designers have tried to revolt the music scene by allowing you put 2 or 3 times more effects into your song. Who want to do more effects? We made instruments instead of a bunch of effect columns. We hope we've succeeded to reach our ambitions and we hope you'll find Fasttracker 2 useful. Fredrik Huss and |
| _______________ | Getting started with FastTracker |
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FastTracker is one of the world's best tools to create your own music on your PC. All you need is a PC with a soundcard, a MS-DOS compatible platform and some samples. With all this you can start writing your music! If you used to work with ProTracker on the Amiga I suggest to skip this part because FastTracker is very much the same as ProTracker. First of all make sure that you have the latest version of FastTracker,
2.08! Secondly you have to configure
FastTracker to use it with your soundcard. Click the Config button
and select the type of soundcard you have together with it's IRQ, port
and DMA.
Now you can load a sample and start writing music, but before you
do this go to the Miscellaneous part of FastTracker's config menu
and enter the right path to your modules, samples, instruments, etc. This
path works from the next time you start FastTracker! Now click the Save
config. button to save your paths (and other settings). To exit and
restart FastTracker click in the upper left corner or press Esc
to exit and type FT2 to restart.
To load a sample click the Disk op. button and click the
Instr. check-box. If you've enter your path correctly you'll see
a directory-listing. Now just single-click a sample. To return to the main
menu click the Exit button. Now that you have loaded the sample you would like to edit your
module. To do so you have to get FastTracker in the edit-mode first. To
do this hit the spacebar, you'll see that the FastTracker screen now has
a colored border. With the Tab key you can select the track to edit. You have to use your keybord as piano now, where the z, x, c,
v, b, m... row and the q, w, e, r, t, y... row are the notes
and the a, s, d, f, g, h... row and the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...
row are the half notes. When you press those keys you'll see that you enter
notes in the pattern and hear the notes that you enter. If you want to use another octave use F1 to F7 to
toggle between octaves. Or go to the intrument edit menu by clicking Instr.
Ed. or pressing CTRL-I and select the octave you would like
to play your sample at without having to change with F1 to F7.
Press the spacebar again to stop editing. To playback what you just have edited click Play ptr. or
press Right ALT. To play the whole song use Play Song or press Right CTRL,
this has no use at the moment because you only have one pattern to play.
To add more patterns to your song you have to use the pattern position
editor (shown at the right side of this page). >Click Ins. to insert a new pattern. When you've done this
and play the song pattern 00 will be played two times and then the song'll
restart. If you want to play pattern 00 just once and then a new pattern
you have to go to position 01 in the song (most left row of numbers in
the position editor). Now you have to click on the arrow-up between Ins.
and Del., now you've got a new pattern (01). If you play the song
now you'll here pattern 00 first and then pattern 01. If you would like to use your pattern 00 in the new pattern (01)
and then add or delete some notes go to position 00 and press Left CTRL+F4,
you now have copied pattern 00. Now go to position 01 and press Left
CTRL+F5 and you have pasted pattern 00 to 01. You can now delete or
add stuff. Note: This text isn't finished. If you think you miss something
here just mail me. |
| _______________ | Keys and Shortcuts in FastTracker |
Cursor moves
|
F9..F12 PageUp PageDown Home End Tab Shift+Tab Alt+Q..I Alt+A..K |
Jump in pattern Jump 16-lines upwards Jump 16-lines downwards Jump to line 0 Jump to last line Jump to next track Jump to previous track Jump to track (0..7) MOD N-Channels Jump to track (8..15) MOD N-Channels |
Cut/Copy/Paste
|
Del Sh+Del Ctrl+Del Alt+Delete Ins Sh+Ins Backsp. Sh+Backsp Alt+Cursor Sh+F3 Sh+F4 Sh+F5 Ctrl+F3 Ctrl+F4 Ctrl+F5 Alt+F3 Alt+F4 Alt+F5 |
Delete note or volume column at cursor Delete note, volume and effect at cursor Delete volume and effect at cursor Delete effect at cursor Insert note at cursor Insert line at cursor Delete previous note Delete previous line Mark block Cut track Copy track Paste track Cut pattern Copy pattern Paste pattern Cut block Copy block Paste block |
Miscellaneous
|
Right ctrl Alt Gr Rightshift Space PrintScrn F1..F7 (1/2) Sh+(1/2) CapsLock Sh+Left Sh+Right Ctrl+Left Ctrl+Right Ctrl+(1/2) |
Play song Play pattern Record pattern Stop/Edit Full screen edit on/off Select octave Inrease cursoradd Decrease cursoradd Enter Keyoff-"note" Increase song position Decrease song position Increase pattern number Decrease pattern number DOS shell |
Window switching
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Ctrl+A Ctrl+B Ctrl+C Ctrl+D Ctrl+E Ctrl+H Ctrl+I Ctrl+M Ctrl+N Ctrl+P Ctrl+R Ctrl+S Ctrl+T Ctrl+X Ctrl+Z Ctrl+1 Ctrl+2 Ctrl+3 |
Advanced edit About Configuration Disk operations Sample editor extension Help Instrument editor Instrument editor extension. (MIDI) Nibbles Pattern CD-Dumper. (Reader) Sample editor Transpose Main screen. (almost alt+X) Full screen edit. (Z for siZe?) Configuration #1 Configuration #2 Configuration #3 |
Instrument select (Numeric keypad)
|
Ctrl+A Top 4 keys + and Top 4 keys Enter 0 1..8 . Sh+. Sh+Up Sh+Down |
Advanced edit Select instrument block Select instrument block + 4 Select instrument bank Select no instrument Select instrument in block Clear instrument Clear sample Select previous instrument Select next instrument |
Command/Volume macro
|
Alt+1..0 Sh+Alt+1..0 |
Write command/volume at cursor Read command/volume at cursor |
Transpose
|
Sh+F7 Sh+F8 Ctrl+F7 Ctrl+F8 Alt+F7 Alt+F8 Sh+F1 Sh+F2 Ctrl+F1 Ctrl+F2 Alt+F1 Alt+F2 |
Transpose current instrument in track down Transpose current instrument in track up Transpose current instrument in pattern down Transpose current instrument in pattern up Transpose current instrument in block down Transpose current instrument in block up Transpose all instruments in track down Transpose all instruments in track up Transpose all instruments in pattern down Transpose all instruments in pattern up Transpose all instruments in block down Transpose all instruments in block up |
Keys in the CD-Dumper
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Right ctrl Alt Gr Right shift Space Ctrl+Left Ctrl+Right Up Down Left Right Ctrl+X |
Play Play Record Stop Increase track number Decrease track number Fast forward Rewind Faster forward Fast rewind Exit |
| _______________ | Modules to Download |
| Song | Author | Filename | Description | Filesize | Download |
| Disaster Aborted | Eamonn | michelle.zip | Drum 'n Bass/Ambient | 249k | Download |
| Hard Times | Eamonn | hard.zip | Drum 'n Bass | 113k | Download |
| Introducing... | Eamonn | slippy.zip | Drum 'n Bass | 400k | Download |
| Random Noise | Eamonn | hop-hipf.zip | Dance/Pop | 100k | Download |
| Song two & 1/2 | Eamonn | happy.zip | Rave/Teckno | 523k | Download |
| Wanted | Eamonn | wanted.zip | Ambient | 70.4k | Download |
| The Wind & The Rain | Eamonn | twtr.zip | Ambient | 302k | Download |
| Break Beat Bullet | Eamonn | bbb.zip | Jungle | 352k | Download |
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Unless otherwise stated, all photographs/images/text/games and all other content are copyright ©Eamonn Linehan,
and cannot be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the express written permission of Eamonn Linehan.
I'm doing this for free and don't like getting ripped off.
© copyright Eamonn 1998 all rights reserved