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              Back to the roots -- this is the Real SoundTracker
        --------------------------------------------------------------
                        http://www.soundtracker.org/
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        v0.6.8

        Written and (C) 1998-2006
        by Michael Krause [ raw style ^ farbrausch & lego ]
        mk@soundtracker.org, http://www.soundtracker.org/raw/

WHAT IS IT?

short answer:

SoundTracker is a pattern-oriented music editor (similar to the DOS program 'FastTracker'). Samples are lined up on tracks and patterns which are then arranged to a song. Supported module formats are XM and MOD; the player code is the one from OpenCP. A basic sample recorder and editor is also included.

long answer:

If you've heard of ProTracker or FastTracker before, you will be familiar with the concept of 'SoundTracker'. The name of my program has been taken from the very first program of this type, which was written by Karsten Obarski for the Amiga in 1987.

The basic concept is simple: you have a number of "sound samples", and you can arrange them on so-called "tracks". A track (or channel) can not play more than one sample at the same time. While the original Amiga trackers only provided four tracks (this was the hardware limit), trackers for PC's can mix a theoretically unlimited number of channels (typically up to 32) into one sound stream.

A set of tracks which are played at the same time is called a "pattern". A pattern typically has 64 entries per track; these entries are cycled through at equidistant time intervals. A basic drum set could thus be arranged by putting a bass drum at entries 0, 4, 8, 12 etc. of one track and putting some hihat at entries 2, 6, 10, 14 etc. of a second track. Of course you can also interleave bass and hats on the same track, if the samples are short enough -- they can't overlap, otherwise the previous sample is stopped when the next one sets in.

And to make this introduction complete: A "module" is a compact file containing various patterns and samples, including a "position list" which specifies playback order of the patterns, forming a "song". A word about file names: Original ProTracker modules are /prefixed/ with "mod." when they come from an Amiga -- ignorant PC users, however, shamelessly save PT-compatible modules with a ".MOD" /suffix/. FastTracker modules have the ".XM" suffix. These both are the most important module types out there and SoundTracker loads them both.

USING

Note that some functions are only accessible using the keyboard. These are all important key combinations, mostly inspired by the great Amiga ProTracker (most alphanumeric keys are mapped to a piano keyboard):

TRACK EDITOR

Right Ctrl              Play Song
Right Alt               Play Pattern
Right WinMenu Key       Just play current pattern row
Space                   Stop Playing; edit mode on/off
Escape                  Edit mode on/off without stopping playing
Shift - Space           Toggle "jazz edit" mode

F1 ... F7               Change editing octave
Left Ctrl-1 ... -8      Change jump value
Two configurable keys   Increase/decrease jump value (see Settings->Keyboard->
                        other keys)

CrsrUp / Down           Walk around in current pattern
PgUp / Down             Walk around in current pattern, quickly
F9                      Jump to position 0
F10                     Jump to position L / 4
F11                     Jump to position L / 2
F12                     Jump to position 3 * L / 4

Ctrl + 1 ... 8          Change "jump" value

CrsrLeft / Right        Change pattern column and/or channel
Tab                     Skip to same column in next channel

Left Shift + first 8 Fast jump to channels 1..8 keys in the first
alphabetical row
(UC-0 ... UC-1)

Left Shift + Ctrl + Fast jump to channels 17..24 above mentioned keys

Left Shift + first 8 Fast jump to channels 9..16 keys in the second
alphabetical row

Left Shift + Ctrl + Fast jump to channels 25..32 above mentioned keys

Holding fast jump keys Mute/unmute selected channel and pressing SPACE

Left Ctrl - CrsrLeft Previous Instrument (faster with Left Shift) Left Ctrl - CrsrRight Next Instrument (faster with Left Shift)

Left Ctrl - CrsrDown Previous Sample (faster with Left Shift) Left Ctrl - CrsrUp Next Sample (faster with Left Shift)

Left Alt - CrsrLeft Previous Pattern (faster with Left Shift) Left Alt - CrsrRight Next Pattern (faster with Left Shift)

Left Shift - CrsrLeft Previous Position in the pattern order table Left Shift - CrsrRight Next Position in the pattern order table

Left Ctrl - B           Start marking a block
Left Ctrl - C           Copy block
Left Ctrl - X           Cut block
Left Ctrl - V           Paste block and advance to end

Left Alt - Q            Transpose block by one half-tone up
Left Alt - A            Transpose block by one half-tone down

Left Alt + Shift - Q Transpose block by one octave up Left Alt + Shift - A Transpose block by one octave down

Left Shift - F3         Cut track
Left Shift - F4         Copy track
Left Shift - F5         Paste track

Left Alt - F3           Cut pattern
Left Alt - F4           Copy pattern
Left Alt - F5           Paste pattern

Delete                  Clear part of the channel the cursor is over
Shift - Delete          Clear all of current track row
Backspace               Delete current position and pull rest of track upwards
Insert                  Shift rest of track downwards and insert a row

Left Shift + Esc        Move cusror to Note column (from any other column:
                        instrument, volume, effect) in current track

Any other keys          Play notes on the keyboard.

Mouse Wheel             Scroll up and down through pattern (just like Crsr Up /
                        Down)
Left Shift + M. Weel    Scroll left and right through pattern (like a scrollbar
                        under the tracker window)

If SoundTracker is unable to configure the notes on your keyboard on its own, you must use the "Keyboard Configuration" dialog to set up your keyboard. In any case, there you will also have to configure the key that inserts the "key off" note into a pattrern.

Most of the short cuts can be changed in the usual GTK+ way - go to the relevant menu entry, put the mouse over it, and just before releasing the mouse button, hit the desired key combination! The new key combinations will be automatically saved when quitting SoundTracker and reloaded the next time you start it.

effects interpolation

Suppose you want to do a volume slide from C00 to C40 within 16 steps. What you do is, you enter the C00 effect at row 0, the C40 effect at row 15, mark the track from row 0 to 15, put the cursor into the effects column, and hit Ctrl-I. This key combo interpolates every supported effect between block start and block end. Supported at the moment are volume column and effect column volume slides, and volume column panning slides.

A similar job is done by the "increment / decrement cmd value" functions found in the Edit / Track menu. Enter C40, go one row down (stay in the effects column) and hit Ctrl-minus ("decrement cmd value") to automatically insert a 3f there.

INSTRUMENT EDITOR

In the Envelope editor, use Ctrl + middle mouse button in order to zoom in and out of the envelope. Use middle mouse button alone to pan the display. Use left mouse button to move and add points.

SAMPLE EDITOR

Hold Shift and use left / right mouse buttons to set the loop points in the sample display.

REPORTING BUGS

If you want to report a bug, please check first if you are running the latest version of SoundTracker. If the bug is still present there, send a bug report to the soundtracker-discuss mailing list (see below) if you want feedback from other users, or send it to me directly (m.krause@tu-harburg.de).

MAILING LISTS

There are currently two mailing lists:

soundtracker-announce: -> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/soundtracker-announce
This is a read-only, low-volume mailing-list in which I post announcements of new versions.
soundtracker-discuss: -> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/soundtracker-discuss
A non-moderated list open for ST-related discussions of any kind, for both users and developers.

Note that if you have joined `soundtracker-discuss', there's no need to join `soundtracker-announce', as I crosspost all the announcements to both lists.

Once you have joined `soundtracker-discuss', you can send mails to the list by writing to `soundtracker-discuss@soundtracker.org'.

A searchable archive of the list, starting from 06-Jul-2000, is available at
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=soundtracker-discuss

CVS REPOSITORY

The CVS tree has been updated last in mid-2001; not much development is going on right now! In particular, the version in CVS is absolutely unusable right now.

So, if you want to give it a try (from SourceForge CVS howto):

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.soundtracker.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/soundtracker login

After anonymously logging in:

cvs -z8 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.soundtracker.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/soundtracker co soundtracker

After the initial checkout, you can change into this directory and execute cvs commands without the -d option. For example:

cvs update

Watch the ChangeLog for detailed information about what has changed.