This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

11

MilkyTracker Community / Re: I wanna make a decent dnb song...

« on: April 23, 2010, 00:20:17 »

hmm, get your drumloops into a sample editor, and cut them into their individual drum hits! don't hesitate to cut out more than one hihat, if they sound differently, same goes for other drums. I like to cut out different levels of snares, for example, like having different sounding hard hits and light hits of the same kit.

then you can make up your own rhythm sounding like the drum loop you've cut the drumhits from, and even mix it up with other drumkits (be it from loops, or standard kits) to a single rhythm. it also gives you opportunity to add more interesting variations to the rhythm - I love drum&bass styles, but think most stuff is too monotonuos (and it is for good reason, it's thought for dancing to it). yes, it is work, but very rewarding.

as for the "shookashooka" I'm not sure what you mean, I guess some combination of a shaker sound alternating with "light" snare hits (like the "ka"'s in a 2step "boom-ik-tek-shh.ka-shh.ka-bop.ka-tek-tshh" or whatever )

as for hihats, I love to combine different samples, like shakers, normal hats, short cuts from rides/cymbals, metallic hits, and engineer them to something that sounds like a single breakbeat to one who listens first time without analyzing, though it's very different samples, arranged with note delays to groove it up, and volume differences to set accents. just like saga hinted to, good grooves need their work to be created!

if you want to mimick a certain sound, I can just give you the tip of sampling that drumloop, and play it back over & over at half playback speed, listening to every single sound, drum hit, timings, volume accents, or whatever, and trying to cut it apart with the ears (and with the eyes in a waveform view). then when you understand what sounds it consists of, and how they are arranged, try to mimick it with oneshot drumsamples that sound like the ones you analysed in the original. then variate & be creative

12

MilkyTracker Support / Re: Cursor jumping after note insertion

« on: April 16, 2010, 00:02:53 »

yeah, next to the "flip" thing by the "bpm/spd" infos, there's an "add" value...that determins by how many rows the cursor will jump ahead after entering a note/effect value in non playback mode.

the key combo to change this value is (at least in ft2-mode that I use): (<shift>)-<key above tab>. I used the term "key above tab" because it depends on the language of your keyboard - it's the one left to the "1"-key. without shift, the ammount of rows jumped forward will increase, with shift (the left shift key, not the right) it will decrease...handy when working with the keyboard as much as possible, to not have to touch the mouse to click the "+/-" buttons next to the "add" value.

so to disable "autojumping" just set the "add" value to zero somehow, and the cursor won't move ahead anymore after entering something. higher add values than one are of course handy to enter note progressions quickly that are spaced by the same number of rows...but you'll figure out yourself, I guess...

13

MilkyTracker Support / Re: Requesting some beginner help!

« on: April 09, 2010, 01:19:25 »

I think there's no pic needed, text must suffice...would be hard to put that to an image or video, I guess   

never mind the "hehe", I've got spare time, am bored & have lots patience naturally. 

have you dug the difference between "instruments" and "samples" yet? each "instrument" is a map of samples on a piano-keyboard. each instruments has 16 sample slots. so best is in the beginning, to use one sample per instrument, as sample "00". to select an instrument, or an sample just click the list "instruments" or "samples" on the top right of the screen. you'll see that instrument/sample line will be "lit" like instrumen "01" & sample "0" in the pic you gave.

so for a start create/load a sample in "samples"-slot "00" while "instruments"-slot "01" is selected. to select, just click the list. then hit the "rec" button, so it's red, move the "cursor" (the gap in the middle line of the tracks view, that is moving with the arrow keys) so it is at the first 3 dots of the 10 dots of any track collumn. hit the "q" key of your keyboard, and a note "c-5" with an "01" next to it (the instrument number) should appear. you now have done what you were asking for in the image in your first post, putting a note of instrument 01 to the first row of the first track, and the cursor jumps one row down. hit some other letter keys, or the number key row above the letters, and other notes than "c" will appear in the list.

unless you fiddled with the ins.ed. piano (it should be showing all zeroes when "edit" next to it is pressed), the notes should playback sample number "00" (of the samples list, when the instrument is selected) of that instrument. you can name your instruments & samples by right clicking the huge space next to their numbers, and entering some useful text there. try that with a sample, and then select another instrument. and then reselect the instrument that was selected when you entered the sample name, and you might get the idea

if you "created" your samples in all the sample slots of instrument 01, you can move them to slot 00 of other instruments with the "copy/swap" buttons in the lower right corner of the in.ed. screen. bit hard to handle, but works...

but now my patience is gone, and instead I'm dreaming of a document, that explains the interface for people, who've never seen a tracker before, so over & out...

p.s. don't feel dumb, just fiddle around in the meantime, yes, the program is really hard to handle for people who don't already know it of fast tracker 2... 

14

MilkyTracker Support / Re: Changing speed?

« on: April 06, 2010, 20:41:10 »

yep, it is like that, and that's the correct behaviour. speed is not set on per-pattern basis, but globally - once you the tracker gets to an F command, the speed is set up according to it, until it finds another F command overriding. the "song" bpm & spd values are just meant to set up the tracker to a certain state once, when a song is loaded.

this behaviour is also with many other effects: notes continue to play over pattern boarders, untill another note is set in that channel. portamento, vib, etc. parameters get stored for the channel, and remembered for these effects beyond pattern boarders if you use these effects with zero parameters. global volume, once changed, won't automagically be restored when you skip back in the tune, or restart from the beginning after stopping, unless it is set to the desired level on the row of the pattern you're starting playback with.

that means you have to keep track of the speeds, levels and parameters yourself, so if you enter another speed in pattern 2, the speed is applied until you change it again. just use an Fxx command on first row of pattern 1, too, so it's always playbacked at correct speed.

all those quirks are of course ultra-user/newbie unfriendly, but it is also part of the art of tracking to "abuse" them wherever possible to get unusual results from unusual pattern data. a bit like coding a microchip with assembler, and optimizing the code.

it would be possible to change the code of the tracker, so speed changes are remembered/set up per pattern, but that would break compatibility with lots of tunes. I think there's also lots of "insane" modules that rely on that behaviour. simplest example would be a song with a slow and a fast part, using the same fill patterns in between, and two "initial" patterns where the speed is set once.

15

MilkyTracker Support / Re: Requesting some beginner help!

« on: April 06, 2010, 18:45:25 »

maybe you haven't really understood how trackers work, yet?

of course you can insert your samples with those note input methods! it's the only way to use samples in trackers, insert them as a note. the pitch of the note is the playback speed. you can't just insert a sample like in a sample editor or some music maker toy, it's an oldschool tracker.

make sure you have the instrument selected that features your sample. it works like this: you have 16 sample slots per instrument. if you want to use a single sample for an instrument, put it to sample slot 0 and you can use it right away, by having that instrument selected.

if you want to use multiple samples for a single instrument, you can map the samples in the ins.ed. screen when edit instead of play is selected: you select the instrument, then one of the 16 sample slots it can hold, and if you click one key of the piano, that particular note will playback the sample you've got selected. handy for setting up single instrument drum-kits. as you will see any new instrument will have every possible key associated to sample number 0. note _every_ instrument has its own 16 sample slots.

16

MilkyTracker Support / Re: trying to get volume changes to take effect

« on: April 06, 2010, 01:33:11 »

what's the problem? have you read and understood what you're citing?

if you're having notes there without any volume-collumn of fx collumn volume _set_ effect, that won't respond to the instrument volume (btw, you can set it _per sample_, maybe you've selected the wrong sample slot when changing the value), you might have found a bug 

I found it useful, if I want to lower (or raise, if possible and the sample is not clipping) an instrument in the whole tune without having to recalc all volume commands/effects, to use the sample editor and (de)amplify the sample(s).

17

MilkyTracker Support / Re: Requesting some beginner help!

« on: April 06, 2010, 01:20:41 »

wtf...? now that is one basic question...!!??

have you tried your keyboard? hit the "rec" button so it's red, and you'll see your keyboard represents a piano with white keys from "q" to "p" and the black ones in the number line above...the 2 lines of keys below are one octave below...select octave with "F1" to "F8", or "flip" the bpm..spd..add thing and edit "oct"...

and, rtfm, there's documents that state that.

if you still prefer clicking a piano with the mouse, hit "Ins.Ed." and the "play" button left of the piano. when rec. is on, you can enter notes with it, when not, you can just jam around for testing (also with the keyboard in front of your pc).

18

MilkyTracker Support / Re: pattern order

« on: March 31, 2010, 19:34:44 »

use the +/- buttons under the ins(ert) button next to the  to change the number of the pattern associated to a song order number.

question from my side: always clicking with the mouse is tedious...one can select the pattern currently in the pattern editor with <ctrl>+<left/right>, but that doesn't change the sequence. it would be cool to be able to sequence a song like that, together with <shift>+<l/r>

19

MilkyTracker Tracks & Songs / Re: For Julia

« on: March 31, 2010, 01:01:13 »

no bad!

I expecially like the broken piano harmonies that add to the main piano melody line in some parts.

maybe it could use some more depth, in terms of deeper sound on the drums and the main piano line, like adding some stereo delay or using "wet" drum samples that are downpitched - kind of trip hop feel would be great for that tune.

also I miss a little variation, i.e. a breakdown with different chords & melody joining in to the main theme; the song just goes on the same harmonies all the time. the half-time feel is already a start to such.

and...whow, yeah, throw away those brown little brix that dangle around in your pocket; give them to breakout fans, who don't smoke them but let them pop from that balls they steer with their paddles into them. will make you bloom again, after some time, giving you motivation to track more&better deep tunes with milkytracker. just like one freak, after finding something precious on the sidewalk: "haschhhisch!!!" - cop witnessing that shout: "gesundheit!" ...

20

MilkyTracker Bug Reports / Re: milky interface somethimes becomming unresponsive with jack

« on: March 08, 2010, 00:30:40 »

o.k., thing is it seems my cpu is to slow...old 1ghz machine  

I've tried with alsa driver now, too, and can reproduce it happily by choosing fast sinc interpolation, unlike with the jack driver, I also get sound dropouts then...have to kill mt to get rid of it, interface just doesn't respond, but gui & sound stutter on ad infinitum...

I mean it's ok that the sound/gui get choppy when no cpu ressources are available, but I think at least input handling should get some higher priority somewhere, so one can at least stop the stuttering  

but maybe it's a problem with the sdl input handler? I think I remember it can't be threaded? well, I'll try to look at the sources someday when I feel whacky...

p.s.: I found that the main ressourcekiller seems to be the graphics, mainly the scrolling tracks. i.e. 1024x768 = +/- 100% cpu usage, 800x600 = +/- 50% , with same resampling/frequency!

p.p.s.: well, I happen to like using spd = 3 and bpm's above 150. I've tried to set spd to 6 on one of my songs (making it play at half speed :p), and the cpu usage went straight down. It seems like the gui updates the trax based on the trackspeed, and doesn't skip any frames properly!
the rate is no prob., I can playback/edit at 96khz rate fine (yeah dope sound!), as long as the gui doesn't hog ressources too much...so the mt mixer is quite fine...it's the gui where the problem is, and I think some input event list just piles up totally when cpu max is reached. duh, maybe my post should've be placed at the "support" channel first. my apologies.