Fast Tracker
Encyclopedia
FastTracker 2 is a tracker created by Fredrik "Mr. H" Huss and Magnus "Vogue" Högdahl, two members of the demo
group Triton
(who later founded Starbreeze Studios
) which set about releasing their own tracker after breaking into the scene
in 1992 and winning several demo competitions. The source code of FastTracker 2 is written in Pascal using Borland Pascal 7
and TASM
. The program works natively under MS-DOS
.
files, as well as extended MOD files with six or eight channels (identical to standard MOD files, aside from the extra channel data and ID markers "6CHN" or "8CHN"). It was only compatible with Creative Labs' SoundBlaster series of sound card
s, which were most popular on the PC at that time. The whole editor was a single 43 KiB DOS executable
.
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 Gravis Ultrasound
soundcard.
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 commending the very same, and pointing out that every mouse feature has a keyboard shortcut as well.
FastTracker 2 was discontinued after the release of version 2.08 in August 1997, though a beta version of 2.09 was leaked to the public in 1999. Version 2.09 was only an unofficial bugfix by Andreas Viklund. The bugfix also has a few new usability additions, such as the possibility to exit previously "stuck" windows by only using the mouse. Version 2.09 does not have full support for the Gravis Ultrasound card, and it was not an official release although it was available from Starbreeze's website.
On May 23, 1999, Starbreeze productions announced on their website that "FT2 has been put on hold indefinitely. [...] If this was an ideal world, where there was infinite time and no need to make a living, there would definitely be a multiplatform Fasttracker3. Unfortunately this world is nothing like that," signed by Vogue.
Computer games
by Epic Games
like Unreal
and Unreal Tournament
or Ion Storm
s Deus Ex
used the Fast Tracker II XM format additionally to others, encapsulated in a "UMX" Container
, supported by the Galaxy Sound Engine.
's Protracker
. The screen consists of a pattern editor in the lower half, while the upper half features an instrument selector on the right, and the general module settings and some oscilloscopes. The pattern editor can be changed to sample and instrument editors screens. The program also features a little Nibbles
clone and in-software documentation for all the features.
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 0x00-0x40 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.
do. Samples can have a loop start and end point which enable the sound to repeat endlessly, either repeated continuously or in a way which is called "ping-pong loop" in FT2, and essentially means the sample played back and forth as soon as the replay gets "stuck" in the loop. (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 drawing them by hand. There's also a feature to crossfade
the sample with itself, thus allowing the loop points to be seamless.
. 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 allows to play in live with a normal PS/2 keyboard and make a live record with it (in azerty mode, key 'a' would be a C, key 'z' a D etc. ). FT2 was popular with many musicians who didn't have midi keyboards as they could experience live recording without anything equipment other than a PC running DOS.
, 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, vibtrato, panning and tone portamento.
Full list of Effect types (.MOD/.XM) and compatiblity with trackers:
(Module | 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 player software supports the .XMZ and .MDZ formats, which are a renamed ZIP
file that contains a .XM or .MOD file respectively.
as well as Sound Blaster
, Covox and the simple PC speaker. This rendered the software rather flaky to use nowadays, as the recent Windows
versions generally do not allow DOS applications to access hardware directly, let alone the fact that most of those compatible cards are built for ISA
slots, which are absent from recent motherboards. Due to this, hardcore musicians who still want to use FT2 often build "oldskool" PCs with the optimal (and nowadays rather cheap) hardware for the tracker, just to be able to track with it again.
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.
, a tool which was also compatible with many other contemporary DOS trackers. SoundTracker
(not to be confused with Ultimate Soundtracker
) is a free
(GPL
-licensed) FT2-style tracker program for Unix-like
operating systems. For many years, it was one of the very few mature Unix-based tracker programs. Another clone is MilkyTracker, a free software
tracker currently available for Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. MilkyTracker provides nearly all functionality available in the original FT2 and adds various features. The GUI looks close, but intentionally different from the original. The shareware program Renoise
also takes a portion of FT2's basic GUI- and featureset-design, even though there are various major changes in its concept.
Demoscene
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
group Triton
Triton (demogroup)
- History :Triton's first demo, Crystal Dream, was released in the summer of 1992 and won the PC demo competition at the Hackerence V demo party. Their second and last demo, Crystal Dream 2, was released June 1993 and won the demo competition at The Computer Crossroads 1993 party in Gothenburg...
(who later founded Starbreeze Studios
Starbreeze Studios
Starbreeze Studios is a video game development studio founded by members of the demo group Triton, based in Uppsala, Sweden.-History:The company was founded in 1998, under the name O3 Games. In 2000, O3 Games merged with the smaller company Starbreeze Studios which was then based in Härnösand, Sweden...
) which set about releasing their own tracker after breaking into the scene
Demoscene
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
in 1992 and winning several demo competitions. The source code of FastTracker 2 is written in Pascal using Borland Pascal 7
Turbo Pascal
Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS, developed by Borland under Philippe Kahn's leadership...
and TASM
Turbo Assembler
Turbo Assembler is an assembler package developed by Borland which runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Borland's high-level language compilers, such as Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic and Turbo C. The Turbo Assembler package is bundled with...
. The program works natively under MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
.
History
In 1993, Triton released FastTracker. This tracker was able to load and save standard four channel MODMOD (file format)
MOD is a computer file format used primarily to represent music, and was the first module file format. MOD files use the “.MOD” file extension, except on the Amiga where the original trackers instead use a “mod.” prefix scheme, e.g. “mod.echoing”...
files, as well as extended MOD files with six or eight channels (identical to standard MOD files, aside from the extra channel data and ID markers "6CHN" or "8CHN"). It was only compatible with Creative Labs' SoundBlaster series of sound card
Sound card
A sound card is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware...
s, which were most popular on the PC at that time. The whole editor was a single 43 KiB DOS executable
DOS executable
The DOS MZ executable format is the executable file format used for .EXE files in DOS.The file can be identified by the ASCII string "MZ" or the hexadecimal 4D 5A at the beginning of the file . "MZ" are the initials of Mark Zbikowski, one of the developers of MS-DOS...
.
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 Gravis Ultrasound
Gravis Ultrasound
Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd...
soundcard.
FT2's biggest "rivals" in the scene were Scream Tracker
Scream Tracker
Scream Tracker is a tracker . It was created by Psi of Finland's Future Crew It was coded in C and assembly language. The first popular version of Scream Tracker, version 2.2, was published in 1990...
, and in later years, Impulse Tracker
Impulse Tracker
Impulse Tracker is a multi-track digital sound tracker . It was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform. It was authored by Jeffrey "Pulse" Lim, and example music was provided by Jeffrey Lim and Chris Jarvis...
. "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 commending the very same, and pointing out that every mouse feature has a keyboard shortcut as well.
FastTracker 2 was discontinued after the release of version 2.08 in August 1997, though a beta version of 2.09 was leaked to the public in 1999. Version 2.09 was only an unofficial bugfix by Andreas Viklund. The bugfix also has a few new usability additions, such as the possibility to exit previously "stuck" windows by only using the mouse. Version 2.09 does not have full support for the Gravis Ultrasound card, and it was not an official release although it was available from Starbreeze's website.
On May 23, 1999, Starbreeze productions announced on their website that "FT2 has been put on hold indefinitely. [...] If this was an ideal world, where there was infinite time and no need to make a living, there would definitely be a multiplatform Fasttracker3. Unfortunately this world is nothing like that," signed by Vogue.
Computer games
Computer Games
"Computer Games" is a single by New Zealand group, Mi-Sex released in 1979 in Australia and New Zealand and in 1981 throughout Europe. It was the single that launched the band, and was hugely popular, particularly in Australia and New Zealand...
by Epic Games
Epic Games
Epic Games, Inc., also known as Epic and formerly Epic MegaGames, is an American video game development company based in Cary, North Carolina. Its most recent success has been the Gears of War series of games, although it is also known for its Unreal Engine technology. It is the parent company of...
like Unreal
Unreal
Unreal is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic MegaGames and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive in May 1998...
and Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is a futuristic first-person shooter video game co-developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It was published in 1999 by GT Interactive. Retrospectively, the game has also been referred to as UT99 or UT Classic to differentiate it from its numbered sequels...
or Ion Storm
Ion storm
Ion storm may refer to:* Ion Storm, a defunct games software company.* An interplanetary coronal mass ejection , a disruption of the fast and slow solar winds, often called "ion storm", "solar storm" or "space storm"...
s Deus Ex
Deus Ex
Deus Ex is an action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role-playing video games...
used the Fast Tracker II XM format additionally to others, encapsulated in a "UMX" Container
Container (data structure)
In computer science, a container is a class, a data structure, or an abstract data type whose instances are collections of other objects. In other words; they are used for storing objects in an organized way following specific access rules...
, supported by the Galaxy Sound Engine.
Architecture and features
The FT2 interface is largely inspired by the looks of AmigaAmiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
's Protracker
Protracker
ProTracker is a popular freeware tracker created by Lars Hamre, Anders Hamre, Sven Vahsen and Rune Johnsrud for the Amiga platform. It is amongst the programs that first allowed for widespread creation of music without studio equipment...
. The screen consists of a pattern editor in the lower half, while the upper half features an instrument selector on the right, and the general module settings and some oscilloscopes. The pattern editor can be changed to sample and instrument editors screens. The program also features a little Nibbles
Nibbles (computer game)
Nibbles is a simple video game and variant of Snake. It was inspired by an early 1980's game called Hustle from the Radio Shack TRS-80 micro-computer....
clone and in-software documentation for all the features.
Patterns
Patterns are essentially sheets of music where the musician is able to compose the actual musical score. A pattern consists of several rows (64 by default, 1024 by max) 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
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...
, played at the 4th octave (according to the scientific pitch notation
Scientific pitch notation
Scientific pitch notation is one of several methods that name the notes of the standard Western chromatic scale by combining a letter-name, accidentals, and a number identifying the pitch's octave...
), with instrument number 2. The next column is the volume setting on a 0x00-0x40 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 generic raw sound data to be played back at various frequencies, much the way normal musical samplersSampler (musical instrument)
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument similar in some respects to a synthesizer but, instead of generating sounds, it uses recordings of sounds that are loaded or recorded into it by the user and then played back by means of a keyboard, sequencer or other triggering device to perform or...
do. Samples can have a loop start and end point which enable the sound to repeat endlessly, either repeated continuously or in a way which is called "ping-pong loop" in FT2, and essentially means the sample played back and forth as soon as the replay gets "stuck" in the loop. (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 drawing them by hand. There's also a feature to crossfade
Fade (audio engineering)
In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for film cinematography or theater lighting, in much the same way ....
the sample with itself, thus allowing the loop points to be seamless.
Instruments
Instruments are essentially arrays of samples with additional convenience features. 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 vibratoVibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
. 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 allows to play in live with a normal PS/2 keyboard and make a live record with it (in azerty mode, key 'a' would be a C, key 'z' a D etc. ). FT2 was popular with many musicians who didn't have midi keyboards as they could experience live recording without anything equipment other than a PC running DOS.
Effects
Each track has an "effects column" which allows the addition of effects such as arpeggioArpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...
, portamento
Portamento
Portamento is a musical term originated from the Italian expression "portamento della voce" , denoting from the beginning of the 17th century a vocal slide between two pitches and its emulation by members of the violin family and certain wind instruments, and is sometimes used...
, vibrato
Vibrato
Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied .-Vibrato and...
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, vibtrato, panning and tone portamento.
Full list of Effect types (.MOD/.XM) and compatiblity with trackers:
| Effect type | OpenMPT | FastTracker 2 | MilkyTracker | Protracker |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #xx X parameter | ||||
| \xx Smooth Midi Macro | ||||
| 0xx Arpeggio | ||||
| 1xx Portamento Up | ||||
| 2xx Portamento Down | ||||
| 3xx Tone Portamento | ||||
| 4xx Vibrato | ||||
| 5xx Volume Slide+Tone Portamento | ||||
| 6xx Volume Slide+Vibrato | ||||
| 7xx Tremolo | ||||
| 8xx Set Panning | ||||
| 9xx Set Offset | ||||
| Axx Volume Slide | ||||
| Bxx Position Jump | ||||
| Cxx Set Volume | ||||
| Dxx Pattern Break | ||||
| E1x Fine Portamento Up | ||||
| E2x Fine Portamento Down | ||||
| E3x Glissando Control | ||||
| E4x Vibrato Waveform | ||||
| E5x Set Finetune | ||||
| E6x Pattern Loop | ||||
| E7x Tremolo Waveform | ||||
| E8x Set Panning | ||||
| E9x Retrigger Note | ||||
| EAx Fine Volume Slide Up | ||||
| EBx Fine Volume Slide Down | ||||
| ECx Note Cut | ||||
| EDx Note Delay | ||||
| EEx Pattern Delay | ||||
| EFx Set Active Macro | ||||
| Fxx Set Speed/Tempo | ||||
| Gxx Set Global Volume | ||||
| Hxx Global Volume Slide | ||||
| Kxx Key Off | ||||
| Lxx Envelope Position | ||||
| Pxx Panning Slide | ||||
| Rxx Retrigger Note | ||||
| Txx Tremor | ||||
| Wxx Custom Sync Event | ||||
| X1x Extra Fine Portamento Up | ||||
| X2x Extra Fine Portamento Down | ||||
| X5x Panbrello Waveform | ||||
| X6x Fine Pattern Delay | ||||
| X9x Sound Control | ||||
| Yxx Panbrello |
Files
Fasttracker 2 supports a variety of file formats, though often only two were used by musicians: XMMod
- General :* Honour Moderations, a first set of examinations at Oxford University* Maximum operating depth, in scuba diving, the depth at which a gas mix exceeds safe limits* Ministry of Defence, the part of a government responsible for matters of military defence...
(Module | 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 player software supports the .XMZ and .MDZ formats, which are a renamed ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
file that contains a .XM or .MOD file respectively.
Compatibility
FT2 ran with a custom made DOS 32bit-extender and it supports Gravis UltrasoundGravis Ultrasound
Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd...
as well as Sound Blaster
Sound Blaster
The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95, which standardized the programming interface at application level , and the evolution in PC design led to onboard...
, Covox and the simple PC speaker. This rendered the software rather flaky to use nowadays, as the recent Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
versions generally do not allow DOS applications to access hardware directly, let alone the fact that most of those compatible cards are built for ISA
Industry Standard Architecture
Industry Standard Architecture is a computer bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers introduced with the IBM Personal Computer to support its Intel 8088 microprocessor's 8-bit external data bus and extended to 16 bits for the IBM Personal Computer/AT's Intel 80286 processor...
slots, which are absent from recent motherboards. Due to this, hardcore musicians who still want to use FT2 often build "oldskool" PCs with the optimal (and nowadays rather cheap) hardware for the tracker, just to be able to track with it again.
An alternative way of getting FT2 to run is by using DOSBox
DOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
— 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.
Clones
After the announcement that support and development for FT2 would be stopped, Ruben Ramos Salvador (BakTery) started working on a FastTreacker 3 that is now known as Skale Tracker, available for both Windows, Linux and online. Another early FastTracker 2-compatible tracker for windows was ModPlug TrackerModPlug Tracker
OpenMPT is an open source audio module tracker for Windows. It was named by Computer Music as one of the top five free music trackers. It originally started out under the name ModPlug Tracker, and was developed by Olivier Lapicque in September 1997....
, a tool which was also compatible with many other contemporary DOS trackers. SoundTracker
SoundTracker
SoundTracker is a free tracker for Unix-like operating systems running X Window System for composing music to be saved in module files.- Description :...
(not to be confused with Ultimate Soundtracker
Ultimate Soundtracker
Ultimate Soundtracker, or Soundtracker for short, is a music tracker program for the Commodore Amiga. It is the creation of Karsten Obarski, a German software developer and composer at a game development company; sources differ as to the name of the company, recorded it as reLINE, whereas ...
) is a free
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
(GPL
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
-licensed) FT2-style tracker program for Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating systems. For many years, it was one of the very few mature Unix-based tracker programs. Another clone is MilkyTracker, a free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
tracker currently available for Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD. MilkyTracker provides nearly all functionality available in the original FT2 and adds various features. The GUI looks close, but intentionally different from the original. The shareware program Renoise
Renoise
Renoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using sound samples, soft synths, and effects plug-ins. It is also able to interface with MIDI and OSC equipment...
also takes a portion of FT2's basic GUI- and featureset-design, even though there are various major changes in its concept.
External links
- Fasttracker 2 on Pouet