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saeruMilkyTracker tutorial #1 - Set Up
So now we have the Tracker set up, so it's time to make a song.
What do we need to make a song?
If we're talking real life, the first thing that we need is an instrument to play on, and notes for that instrument to play. The analog to this in MilkyTracker is roughly the instruments and the samples.
Its not that clean of an analogy, though. An 'instrument' in MilkyTracker is more of the volume envelope that effects a standard waveform in order to create its unique sound. For example--it is the way a frequency vibrates through air that makes a piano sound different from a violin, even if they are playing the same note.
We'll get back to instruments in a moment...because before you can have an instrument with a unique sound in Milkytracker, you have to have the notes it will be playing: IE the Samples.
To start with, double-click in the blank space under the Instrument Bar right next to the 01. You can label your instrument this way (which becomes useful later if you're creating a number of different sounding pieces to your music.) For right now, I'm going to show a basic song using a square wave, so I typed in 'Squaretest' in the 01 instrument box.
I then moved over to the Samples box, and typed in 'square1.'
Important: It is, after you've typed in a name, a very good idea to click down in the dot field of the tracker to get the prompt bar OUT of the instrument/sample naming area. If you don't do this, any command that you later enter just gets typed into the name bar, which has frustrated me endlessly when trying to record notes. If you ever catch yourself trying to record notes that just aren't appearing--look up at the name bar to make sure you're not just typing there.
Once the blinking cursor is gone from the name bar, click on Smp. Ed. (I also outlined Ins. Ed. since we'll be using it in a moment.)
This opens the Sample Editor, which you'll see at the bottom of the screen. Right click in the large box with the gray line (our x-axis) and a menu will pop up!
Click 'new,' and you'll find the program asking you to enter a sample size in Hertz (Ie revolutions per second). This determines what is going to be your 'middle C,' the exact center note for your sample range. For (almost) any sample that you're going to make, you want this value to be 64 Hz--IE the ACTUAL middle C on a piano.
Tip: Some chiptunes composers specifically create extra samples that are a little out of phase: IE 62hz, to use for layering on top of samples that are in phase. This can be useful, because if all of your samples are at 64 Hz then your frequencies WILL add on top of one another and create entirely new notes--sometimes a desirable effect, sometimes not. For the simplicity of this tutorial, however, all samples will be at 64 Hz.
Our grey line is now yellow. This is the beginning of our sample--a 64 Hz wave with no amplitude! We could do a few things from here. If you're feeling particularly creative, for example, you can click on the 'draw' button, and then go to town on the yellow line to make your own wave.
Or, you can do what I'm going to do, and right-click on the yellow line instead.
This pops up the same menu from before, except now I'm going to scroll to 'Generator' and then select 'square.'
There will be another box asking for a volume (which you can select at your own discretion) and the number of periods. The higher the number of periods you select, the higher your pitch will be (since there will then be x number of periods WITHIN the 64 hz.) For now, 1 is a good place to start unless you're looking to annoy dogs.
Ta da!
We have a single period square wave!
From here, you can still click 'draw' if you want to mess with the wave. I'd go ahead and hit 'Wav' instead, though, since that will play your square for you.
Careful, or you might miss it! That funny thud you hear when you click Wav is your square wave playing its one single period--very useful for making drum beats! Its not so useful for making a song, however, which is why its good to click the dot by 'Forward.' Doing so will continuously play your wave--going back to the beginning of the period when it reaches the end. (Ping-pong and one-shot can also produce some interesting effects.)
Click on Wav again. Now, your square should sound like a note! One that will keep playing until you hit 'Stop.'
Congratulations--you have a sample!
This means its time to make an Instrument.
Click on Ins. Ed., which is right by Sam. Ed. in the upper left set of buttons.
This will open up the Instrument Editor on the bottom of the screen, which looks like this:
You can see a graph with a single line extending two bars in, and also a piano keyboard with lots of 0s in it.
If you click on either white dot on the volume line, you'll find you can move it around within the graph. Additionally, if you click the 'Add' button to the right of the graph, an additional point will appear!
This is the volume envelope that will decide how your instrument plays as time passes. The x-axis in your graph is time, and the y-axis is volume (IE amplitude of wave.) Every two bars of time are equal to one beat (which are the yellow numbers going down in the dot field above. Time proceeds from left to right in the Instrument Editor, and from top to bottom in the music editor.)
I've set my instrument to fade linearly for two beats and then remain constant for one. However, there's lots more I can do!
If I click the 'on' box in the menu to the right of the volume graph, then I get two options open to me. The 'sustain' option creates a vertical bar on my volume graph at mark 02 - the third dot. (The first dot is 00, the second dot is 01, and so on.) This means that when my note is played and reaches that vertical bar, it will hold that volume INDEFINITELY.
The loop command words very similarly. It will loop between two defined dots indefinitely, which can be really useful for creating a beautiful vibrato.
You can create a vibrato without using the loop command, also! To the right of where the loop commmand is are two sliders--Vibspeed and Vibdepth. Using those, you can generate vibrato that will be consistent as your note plays, no matter what the volume envelope.
There are also a number of predefined settings you can chose--the 'Predef' numbers that are listed directly over the volume graph.
I'm going to ignore those for now, however.
Click on the 'play' button beneath the volume graph.
This will change the keyboard image to display the notes, along with numbers to indicate which octave the note belongs to. As you can see, C-4 is the middle C (our 64 Hz.)
If you click on any of the piano notes and hold it, you will see that note play along the volume graph as a purple line. If you have a sustain mark, it will hold at that line, and if you have a loop mark, it will repeat between the loop lines. This is a good way to see how your instrument is going to sound before beginning to program your song!
You can also use this keyboard to record notes directly into your song. However, I find it more useful to do the following.
Strike and hold the 'z' key on your keyboard.
You'll notice that C-4 starts playing when you hit the z. If you hit the x, D-4 will play, and so on.
The shortcuts I use the most often are these:
There are other ones that will work also (such as Q being C-5 and W being D-5 and so on) but those keys were the most handy for me.
So now we have a sample and an instrument, which means we have the basic building blocks to making a song.
Continue to MilkyTracker tutorial #3 - Building a basic song
So now we have the Tracker set up, so it's time to make a song.
What do we need to make a song?
If we're talking real life, the first thing that we need is an instrument to play on, and notes for that instrument to play. The analog to this in MilkyTracker is roughly the instruments and the samples.
Its not that clean of an analogy, though. An 'instrument' in MilkyTracker is more of the volume envelope that effects a standard waveform in order to create its unique sound. For example--it is the way a frequency vibrates through air that makes a piano sound different from a violin, even if they are playing the same note.
We'll get back to instruments in a moment...because before you can have an instrument with a unique sound in Milkytracker, you have to have the notes it will be playing: IE the Samples.
To start with, double-click in the blank space under the Instrument Bar right next to the 01. You can label your instrument this way (which becomes useful later if you're creating a number of different sounding pieces to your music.) For right now, I'm going to show a basic song using a square wave, so I typed in 'Squaretest' in the 01 instrument box.
I then moved over to the Samples box, and typed in 'square1.'
Important: It is, after you've typed in a name, a very good idea to click down in the dot field of the tracker to get the prompt bar OUT of the instrument/sample naming area. If you don't do this, any command that you later enter just gets typed into the name bar, which has frustrated me endlessly when trying to record notes. If you ever catch yourself trying to record notes that just aren't appearing--look up at the name bar to make sure you're not just typing there.
Once the blinking cursor is gone from the name bar, click on Smp. Ed. (I also outlined Ins. Ed. since we'll be using it in a moment.)
This opens the Sample Editor, which you'll see at the bottom of the screen. Right click in the large box with the gray line (our x-axis) and a menu will pop up!
Click 'new,' and you'll find the program asking you to enter a sample size in Hertz (Ie revolutions per second). This determines what is going to be your 'middle C,' the exact center note for your sample range. For (almost) any sample that you're going to make, you want this value to be 64 Hz--IE the ACTUAL middle C on a piano.
Tip: Some chiptunes composers specifically create extra samples that are a little out of phase: IE 62hz, to use for layering on top of samples that are in phase. This can be useful, because if all of your samples are at 64 Hz then your frequencies WILL add on top of one another and create entirely new notes--sometimes a desirable effect, sometimes not. For the simplicity of this tutorial, however, all samples will be at 64 Hz.
Our grey line is now yellow. This is the beginning of our sample--a 64 Hz wave with no amplitude! We could do a few things from here. If you're feeling particularly creative, for example, you can click on the 'draw' button, and then go to town on the yellow line to make your own wave.
Or, you can do what I'm going to do, and right-click on the yellow line instead.
This pops up the same menu from before, except now I'm going to scroll to 'Generator' and then select 'square.'
There will be another box asking for a volume (which you can select at your own discretion) and the number of periods. The higher the number of periods you select, the higher your pitch will be (since there will then be x number of periods WITHIN the 64 hz.) For now, 1 is a good place to start unless you're looking to annoy dogs.
Ta da!
We have a single period square wave!
From here, you can still click 'draw' if you want to mess with the wave. I'd go ahead and hit 'Wav' instead, though, since that will play your square for you.
Careful, or you might miss it! That funny thud you hear when you click Wav is your square wave playing its one single period--very useful for making drum beats! Its not so useful for making a song, however, which is why its good to click the dot by 'Forward.' Doing so will continuously play your wave--going back to the beginning of the period when it reaches the end. (Ping-pong and one-shot can also produce some interesting effects.)
Click on Wav again. Now, your square should sound like a note! One that will keep playing until you hit 'Stop.'
Congratulations--you have a sample!
This means its time to make an Instrument.
Click on Ins. Ed., which is right by Sam. Ed. in the upper left set of buttons.
This will open up the Instrument Editor on the bottom of the screen, which looks like this:
You can see a graph with a single line extending two bars in, and also a piano keyboard with lots of 0s in it.
If you click on either white dot on the volume line, you'll find you can move it around within the graph. Additionally, if you click the 'Add' button to the right of the graph, an additional point will appear!
This is the volume envelope that will decide how your instrument plays as time passes. The x-axis in your graph is time, and the y-axis is volume (IE amplitude of wave.) Every two bars of time are equal to one beat (which are the yellow numbers going down in the dot field above. Time proceeds from left to right in the Instrument Editor, and from top to bottom in the music editor.)
I've set my instrument to fade linearly for two beats and then remain constant for one. However, there's lots more I can do!
If I click the 'on' box in the menu to the right of the volume graph, then I get two options open to me. The 'sustain' option creates a vertical bar on my volume graph at mark 02 - the third dot. (The first dot is 00, the second dot is 01, and so on.) This means that when my note is played and reaches that vertical bar, it will hold that volume INDEFINITELY.
The loop command words very similarly. It will loop between two defined dots indefinitely, which can be really useful for creating a beautiful vibrato.
You can create a vibrato without using the loop command, also! To the right of where the loop commmand is are two sliders--Vibspeed and Vibdepth. Using those, you can generate vibrato that will be consistent as your note plays, no matter what the volume envelope.
There are also a number of predefined settings you can chose--the 'Predef' numbers that are listed directly over the volume graph.
I'm going to ignore those for now, however.
Click on the 'play' button beneath the volume graph.
This will change the keyboard image to display the notes, along with numbers to indicate which octave the note belongs to. As you can see, C-4 is the middle C (our 64 Hz.)
If you click on any of the piano notes and hold it, you will see that note play along the volume graph as a purple line. If you have a sustain mark, it will hold at that line, and if you have a loop mark, it will repeat between the loop lines. This is a good way to see how your instrument is going to sound before beginning to program your song!
You can also use this keyboard to record notes directly into your song. However, I find it more useful to do the following.
Strike and hold the 'z' key on your keyboard.
You'll notice that C-4 starts playing when you hit the z. If you hit the x, D-4 will play, and so on.
The shortcuts I use the most often are these:
There are other ones that will work also (such as Q being C-5 and W being D-5 and so on) but those keys were the most handy for me.
So now we have a sample and an instrument, which means we have the basic building blocks to making a song.
Continue to MilkyTracker tutorial #3 - Building a basic song
