MilkyTracker tutorial #1 - Set Up

So recently I had my first experience with a tracker program.

By 'recently' I also mean that two months ago I didn't know that chiptunes were called chiptunes, and I hadn't touched a musical instrument in probably 5+ years. However, I did have the vague idea that it was possible so I did a little research and ended up with MilkyTracker, a music synthesizing program. It was a free download and had some good reviews, so I went ahead and grabbed it.

My path from that point was an interesting one. The interface and its commands reminded me much more of text editing in Linux or programming (in any language) than it did writing music. There were a lot of new steps to learn, and they could be different on every computer.

Thus, this tutorial is a compilation of the trial and error I went through as a complete novice to the Milkytracker program. I'm going to walk through the basics that I learned, and also a few shortcut commands that I found particularly helpful in making my first song.

For reference, I've been working on an ASUS laptop with an i7 processor running Windows 8. The download (available here) does not claim to support Windows 8, but I have not found any system-related problems running it so far.

So here we go!

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( Image heavy tutorial below! )

Continue to MilkyTracker tutorial #2 - Samples and Instruments.

MilkyTracker tutorial #2 - Samples and Instruments

MilkyTracker 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.

( How to make Samples )

( How to make Instruments )

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