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[Kitsune Mifune]

Hi everyone!

I'm brand new to trackers, but I was a massive Amiga fan back in the day and it's something I want to pursue. I've been a musician since 1997 and I've been recording my own stuff since about 2000, so I'm fairly well versed in music.

I have a first question though:

I make my own samples, but I can't seem to get them in a format that Milkytracker is happy with. I always get the "Incompatible samples" message, but I'm sure that my samples meet the criteria as they are all 8-Bit, 25K, 22.050kHz, mono, and centred.

The only thing I'm not quite sure about is setting the C-4 base, so could someone please expand on that? Does it mean that I have to export everything from my DAW on note C-4? If not, how does one actually set that within Milkytracker?

I only ask because when I load my project back up, the samples are always played a few octaves lower than what they were before saving, and I can't seem to figure out what to do.

Apologies if I sound like a noob, but trackers are a world apart from any other type of music software I've ever used, so I'm literally starting at the start here.

[qsrmvt]

Welcome!

While I can't comment on Milkytracker specifically, not having used it, I can expand on the C-4 issue.

Unlike VST instruments that generate new sound for each note, trackers rely on samples (you know this already). Apart from cases where one uses an instrument which has samples mapped to each note, the tracker does its job by altering the playback speed of the sample to mathematically match the note being played. These calculations assume that the "natural" playback rate of the sample is pitched for C-4.

So while there's no rule (and there wouldn't, AFAIK, be any way to "enforce" a rule if it existed) that your samples have to be exported from C-4 of the original instrument, it will tend to make things easier in the long run if they are.

Exceptions, I think, tend to be made for particularly high-pitched or low-pitched instruments which aren't normally played at C-4 (basses, bells, things like that) as you want them to sound right, and recording them with a 2 or 3 octave offset, then artificially pitching them via playback speed up or down to their normal range would cause them to sound wrong.

[Saga Musix]

From my understanding this "incompatible samples" message should only pop up if you are trying to save a MOD file, not an XM file. The problem with MOD files is that the C-4 frequency is fixed to 8272 Hz (+/- finetune). In XM the C-4 frequency is variable, and if you load a 22 kHz sample, its C-4 frequency will be much higher than the nominal C-4 frequency of the MOD format.

If you absolutely want to work in the MOD format rather than the XM format, you need to go to the instrument editor and change the "Relative note" (at the bottom-right corner of the screen) to be C-4, which means that a C-4 in the pattern will really sound like a C-4 (i.e. it will be played at around 8272 Hz). Now your samples will of course be played too low as you observed, and you have to make up for that by transposing the pattern notes up. If your original sample was 22 kHz, a C-4 should now become a F-5 (not exactly; MOD finetune does not allow to play exactly 22050 Hz).