FastTracker 2
Original author(s) | Fredrik "Mr. H" Huss Magnus "Vogue" Högdahl |
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Initial release | November 1994 |
Final release | 2.08
/ August 1997 |
Preview release | |
Written in | Pascal, TASM |
Operating system | DOS |
Platform | x86 |
Type | Music tracker |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www.starbreeze.com/ft2.htm (archived 1998) |
FastTracker 2 (also referred to as FastTracker II) is a
.History
In 1993, Triton released FastTracker. This tracker was able to load and save standard four channel
Through 1994, the musicians in Triton released some songs in a new multichannel "XM" format, accompanied by a pre-release, standalone player. In November 1994, FastTracker 2 was released to the public, with support for the
Discontinuation
The last stable release of FastTracker 2 was version 2.08, released in August 1997. A newer version 2.09 was under test as
On May 23, 1999, Starbreeze productions announced on their website that "FT2
Legacy
After the announcement that support and development for FT2 would be stopped, Ruben Ramos Salvador (BakTery) started working on a FastTracker 3 that is now known as Skale Tracker, available for both Windows, Linux and online.[3] In later years many other trackers tried to follow up on the legacy of FT2, a notable example being MilkyTracker,[4][5] with special playback modes available for improved Amiga Protracker 2/3 compatibility.[6] See also the Clone section below.
After development of FT2 was discontinued, a project led by developer Olav Sørensen to accurately re-implement FT2 in
Architecture and features
Demoscene |
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Concepts |
Alternative demo platforms |
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Current parties |
Past parties |
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Websites |
Magazines |
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Software |
The FT2 interface is largely inspired by the looks of
Patterns
Patterns are essentially sheets of music where the musician is able to arrange the actual musical score. A pattern consists of several rows (64 by default, 1024 maximum) and is divided to columns ("tracks"). Each row can have one note in every track. A note can look like the following:
C#4 02 20 R11
This means the note is a C#-note on the chromatic scale, played at the 4th octave (according to the scientific pitch notation), with instrument number 2. The next column is the volume setting on a 00H-40H hexadecimal scale, and the last column enables a variety of effects to be applied to the sound (in this case, retriggering).
A song consists of a collection of different patterns which can be played in a user-defined order to create the final song structure.
Samples
Samples are raw PCM sound data to be played back at various frequencies, much the way normal musical samplers do. Samples can have a loop start and end point, either repeated continuously or a "ping-pong loop", which essentially means the sample plays in reverse as soon as it hits the loop start or end (this is also called a "bidirectional loop"). The musicians are able to either record samples or load existing ones, manipulate them by cutting and/or pasting parts, or just draw them by hand. There's also a feature to crossfade the sample, thus allowing the loop points to appear seamless.
Instruments
Instruments are essentially arrays of samples with additional convenience features.[9] A musician can assign different samples to different pitches of the sound, thus eliminating the possibility of a sample sounding bad if played too high or too low. Instruments support various loopable envelopes to be set on either the sound volume or the stereo panning, as well as built-in vibrato. It is also possible to set the generic settings of the instrument here: fine-tuning, default volume, default panning and relative starting note to C-4.
FT2 can get input from a normal
Effects
Each track has an "effects column" which allows the addition of effects such as arpeggio, portamento, vibrato and volume slides. Some control over the song structure can be handled in this column too, with commands for looping and breaking from and delaying patterns, or retriggering, cutting and delaying notes. In addition, a "volume column" allows additional control over volume slides, vibrato, panning and tone portamento.
Full list of Effect types (.MOD/.XM) and compatibility with trackers:
Effect type | OpenMPT | FastTracker 2 | MilkyTracker | Protracker | BeRoTracker |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0xx Arpeggio | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1xx Portamento Up | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
2xx Portamento Down | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
3xx Tone Portamento | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
4xx Vibrato | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
5xx Volume Slide + Tone Portamento | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
6xx Volume Slide + Vibrato | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
7xx Tremolo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
8xx Set Panning | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
9xx Set Offset | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Axx Volume Slide | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Bxx Position Jump | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Cxx Set Volume | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Dxx Pattern Break | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E1x Fine Portamento Up | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E2x Fine Portamento Down | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E3x Glissando Control | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E4x Vibrato Waveform | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E5x Set Finetune | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E6x Pattern Loop | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E7x Tremolo Waveform | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E8x Set Panning | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
E9x Retrigger Note | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
EAx Fine Volume Slide Up | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
EBx Fine Volume Slide Down | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
ECx Note Cut | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
EDx Note Delay | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
EEx Pattern Delay | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
EFx Set Active Macro | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
Fxx Set Speed/Tempo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Gxx Set Global Volume | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Hxx Global Volume Slide | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Kxx Key Off | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Lxx Envelope Position | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Pxx Panning Slide | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Rxx Retrigger Note | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Txx Tremor | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Wxx Custom Sync Event | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
X1x Extra Fine Portamento Up | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
X2x Extra Fine Portamento Down | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
X5x Panbrello Waveform | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
X6x Fine Pattern Delay | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
X9x Sound Control | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
XAx High Sample Offset | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
Yxx Panbrello | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
Zxx MIDI Macro | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
\xx Smooth MIDI Macro | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
#xx Parameter Extension | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Files
FastTracker 2 supports a variety of file formats, though often only two were used by musicians: XM (Extended Module) and XI (Extended Instrument). XM was and still is one of the most popular module formats nowadays, because of its compact and well compressible file structure.
MOD format supported 4 channels maximum in a song, XM format, 32 channels maximum in a song, though there could be multiple instrument on one channel. ( from Channel n°0 to channel n°31 )
Some players — such as ModPlug Player — support the zip-compressed .XMZ and .MDZ formats, which are simple ZIP archives that contain a .XM or .MOD file respectively.
The ADPCM-compressed XM extension is an XM subformat introduced in ModPlug tracker and player. It has the same XM file format structure, except that at least one of the samples is compressed in 4-bit ADPCM format. An ADPCM-compressed sample is almost two times smaller than its uncompressed equivalent. The drawback is the sound quality – significant distortion may arise when using ADPCM.[10]
Another known extension is OXM – Vorbis-compressed XM. It preserves the original XM file structure, except the samples, which are compressed using the Vorbis codec.[10]
The Stripped XM file format is another XM subformat. It was introduced in uFMOD in 2006. A Stripped XM file is smaller than a regular XM, because it uses a more compact set of headers. The audio content of the XM file is left untouched.[10]
Even more non-standard XM extensions exist. For example, some trackers introduce undocumented effect commands used as triggers for software events, Text2Speech (TTS) metadata, watermarks and so on.[10]
Compatibility
FT2 ran with a custom made DOS 32-bit extender and it supports the
An alternative way of getting FT2 to run is by using DOSBox — this, however, as accurate as is, has speed and latency problems, and one needs quite a muscular PC to be able to use it as comfortably as on a native environment. The release of DOSBox 0.7 in March 2007 substantially improved speed/performance problems. Other methods of usage include GUSEMU or VDMSound.
Reception and impact
FT2 got broadly popular in the demoscene and among tracker musicians in the end 1990s. FT2's biggest "rivals" in the scene were Scream Tracker and, in later years, Impulse Tracker. "FT2 vs IT" is a common and still ongoing debate among musicians, usually involving IT users complaining about FT2's mouse interface while FT2 users praise it and pointing out that every mouse feature has a keyboard shortcut as well.
Clones
The FT2 inspired multiple later trackers in UX, design and technical capabilities and became therefore the starting point of a family of clones.
Notably here, Ruben Ramos Salvador's clone FastTracker 3
Recently, a modern clone named "FastTracker II clone" was released; it is written in C and uses SDL 2 to allow for easier porting.[11] Though it runs on modern operating systems, it is otherwise nearly identical in functionality, with hotkeys and visuals accurate to the original.
Professional usage
Several commercial
FastTracker 2 has also been used in the "dance" music scene of the 1990s and early 2000s:[16][17] Gabber, Speedcore and breakcore producers were using it, including Deadnoise, Noisekick,[18] Neophyte.
See also
- List of audio trackers
References
- ^ a b "Fasttracker". starbreeze.com. 2000-03-03. Archived from the original on 2000-03-03.
A development version of FT2.09 has apparently been leaked from one of our beta-testers.
- Andreas Viklund's website (on internet archive)
- ^ a b c BakTery. "FastTracker 3 homepage". Archived from the original on 2001-06-28. Retrieved 2012-01-31.
- ^ a b Elsdon, Ashley (2007). "Mobile Music Creation using PDAs and Smartphones" (PDF). Proceedings of the Mobile Music Workshop (MMW-07), Amsterdam, Netherlands. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-09-03.
- ^ a b Sandholtbraten, Frode; Gogstad, Jostein; Stokes, Michael; Jensen, Remy; Nielsen, Espen; Beiske, Konrad G. "TDT4290 at IDI/NTNU Group 2" (PDF). Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-03. Retrieved 2017-04-30.
- ^ "Tracker Software Overview". The Mod Archive. Retrieved 2 September 2014.
- ^ a b c FT2 on 16-bits.org "Also note that this is not a direct port of the FT2 Pascal/asm code, only some parts were ported."
- ^ "FT2 clone GitHub". GitHub.
- ^ FT2 v2.08 manual Chapter FAQ (1996)
- ^ a b c d Quantum (2007). "The Unofficial XM File Format Specification: FastTracker II, ADPCM and Stripped Module Subformats" (PDF). uFMOD.
- ^ Sorensen, Olav (2017-07-31). "Fasttracker II clone in C using SDL 2".
- ^ Nifflas on Modland
- ^ Gaj Capuder (2004-05-02). "Interview with Nifflas - CTG Music Community". Ctgmusic.com. Archived from the original on 2006-03-19. Retrieved 2015-02-26.
I quit the lessions, and created no music until early 1999. This was the year I found out about Fast Tracker 2.
- sourceforge.net
- ISBN 1-55622-951-8.
- ISBN 978-0253023049.
- ISSN 0967-0378.
- ^ "Noisekick Interview". CCPAR. Archived from the original on 2019-06-23.
How did you get into your djing career? I started producing in 1995 when I was 14 years old with Fastrracker 2.
External links
- Fasttracker 2 on Pouet
- Fasttracker 2 on Demozoo