HOW
TO USE COMMANDS/EFFECTS ON A TRACKER
(LESSON
2)
Perfect, if you
reached this point it means that:
1 - You come from
Lesson 1, so I suppose that the thing really interests you!
2 - You already know how a tracker works but you want to
read again about it a bit, especially about the commands.
Anyway let's
start back from where we dropped last time, precisely on my
invite to grab tracker and instruments. Good. If trying to
you had problems I invite you to try again under my guidance.
Got a tracker at
reach of hand?
(for example FastTracker 2 which I strongly suggest you)
Once the program is launched you will be in front of that screen
with a lot of tracks and loads of numbers. Good. Meanwhile we
need to manage loading in memory some instrument. Usually in these
trackers there's always a menu regarding disk operations, so look
for something like Disk Operation or something like that.
Done yet? Now look carefully and on this website you will find
a library with a moderate amount of instruments, FBY Samples
Library... nothing too hilarious, just what you need to start
doing something... Ok, once loaded a bit of samples you can start
straight on composing something...
... you'd ask "how"? Simply using your keyboard as a real music
keyboard. Every key is indeed (aside function keys, special keys
and numerical keypad) a representation of a note.
Usually in a tracker the keyboard is mapped like this:
From "Z" to "M" notes of lower Octave
From "A" to "J" "sharp" (#) notes of lower Octave
From "Q" to "U" notes of higher Octave
From "1" to "7" "sharp" (#) notes of higher Octave
So used the
keys as described above to write notes... nothing will
happen though if you don't activate Editing mode. Usually
it's just enought to press spacebar to activate it and press it
again to deactivate it. To verify if you're in Editing or not
you can see (for example on FastTracker2) if the screen borders
are grey (Active) or black (Passiv... errr... Deactive).
Good. Now I leave
you in peace to let you take first steps...
R O N F . . . R O
N F . . . R O N F . . . R O N F . . . R O N F . . .
Ehm.... eh? You
already tried? Want other notions? damm, not even the time to
take a nap... oh well, let's go on....
Once this part is
over you would start using some more effect, to make your experiments
as closer to a real song as possible. Here's the list of most common
effects which you can find and use on a tracker:
1 - Portamento
UP
2 - Portamento DOWN
3 - Portamento TO NOTE
4 - Vibrato
5 - Portamento TO NOTA + Volume Slide
6 - Vibrato + Volume Slide
7 - Tremolo
8 - Unused
9 - Play with Offset
A - Volume Slide
B - Jump to Pattern
C - Volume
D - Pattern Break
E - Secondary Effects
F - Speed (Speed + Tempo)
Watch out -
The order I chose to show you their functioning won't be the
numerical one, rather the best one for a linear and simpler
comprehension.
What's all this
stuff? Well it's surely way interesting, but you're gonna see...
Try to read and learn the following rows and maybe try them
on the tracker. Not all of them are so easy to use, so you
should better start with simpler ones, volume controls related
ones for instance.
Here's the most
common effects in detail:
(*) - VERY IMPORTANT
All the effects marked
with a (*) have a different rendering depending on the pattern
scan speed (F)... Example:
A Portamento Up effect of 102 with Speed 06 will have the same
effect as one of 104 with speed of 03.
In other
words doubling SPEED (be it Speed or Tempo) you halve
the intensity of the used effect. Everything clear??
In case of this lesson the effects have been tested with a
Standard Speed, (Speed=6 and Tempo=7D)
Pheeeeww...
anf... anf... let me cut myself some slack. I hope this stuff
will keep you busy for a while... before having some good knowledge
about all these effects and the usage of FastTracker2 some time
will certainly pass, so I believe that I will have some time to rest...
... so wish me a Good Night, while I wish you:
HAPPY WRITING
!!!
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