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[Vardaman]

Hi,
I'm new to Milky Tracker and Tracking in general, but I'm really excited to learn how.
I've been having some trouble making my own instruments.  I can play other peoples instruments that other people have made, but whenever i try and make my own they never sound when i hit the keyboard.  Anyone wanna walk me through how to make an instrument?
Thanks,
Vardaman

[pailes]

Are you trying to draw a chiptune instrument? You need to loop it, because otherwise it's not very likely to sound like anything.

[Vardaman]

yeah, i tried that and it still isn't working... 

[pailes]

How do you try to play it? When you play it, can you see vertical lines moving through the sample? Also try loading a .wav file and modify that one.

[Vardaman]

Ok, so i didn't realize i needed to load a sample..... wow.......

What kind of sample do you normally load to make basic chiptune leads/basses/drums?

[raina]

You don't need to necessarily load a sample, you can create blank ones and draw, generate and process them. Bring up the sample editor context menu by right clicking, Command-clicking or tap-and-holding on the sample display and select New. Then you enter the length of the sample. Powers of two sizes (like 32 or 64 and so on..) are good for smooth waves and less tuning issues. That's how you make chip instruments.

Drums are a little different, most of the time you'll be wanting to use normal samples and the sources could be anything: synths, games, chopped loops.. Or you can make your own drums with the instruments you've created by applying some pattern effects (portamento down, volume slide..) and rendering that. Using normal drum samples can work, the results can be quite lo-fi and chippy when you need to resample the sample down so it doesn't take too much space for a chip tune.

[Fysx]

So, yeah, for those who draw their own percussion, how do you guys draw chip snares? I've tried the method that described in the old video tutorials, but they always come out sounding rather thin.

[jimee]

The method on video tutorial works great for me... Did you try to play your drawing with a lower note?

[klez]

A white noise should work for the snare... at least in a chiptune track I think bitshifter of 8bitpeoples uses this 'trick'