ProTracker 2

(Note that the following is written from the perspective of the Sam, so in SimCoupe for F0-F9 read number pad keys 0-9, for SYMBOL read left-control, for CNTRL read right-control or left-alt, for EDIT read right-alt)

Glossary

Music is arranged in patterns of (up to) 64 notes. Patterns can be played in any order, the order is defined by the song list. Each note is played using a sample (actually chip music, but defines the variation of volume and pitch over time) and optionally an ornament (extra effects overlaid on the sample, which alter pitch a whole number of semitones). Each row can also contain an effect, which make various changes to the note, or other control such as song position etc.

The Sam soundchip has six channels, you can choose MODE 3 or 6 to change how many are visible at one time (in mode 6 you can see a note’s ornament or its effect but not both).

There are five bookmark positions, associated with F7, F8, F9, F4, F5 which initially are set to 0, 16, 32, 48, 63 respectively.

A frame lasts one fiftieth of a second (-0.16%)

There are 256 tone numbers in one octave

Keyboard

The bottom two rows of keys act as a piano keyboard (Z plays a C, S plays a C# etc). Notes are played using the current sample, ornament, and octave. In edit mode these are placed into the pattern at the current cursor position, and the cursor moves down by ‘editskip’ rows (1 by default).

Operations

The program’s current mode is indicated by the colour of the pointer:

Data values can be increased or decreased by clicking the arrows next to the item:

Sample Editor

Don’t store a sample at entry 0, or there may be unexpected effects (sample ‘0’ has the special meaning of not changing the last used sample. This is important as the gaps between notes generally have 00 as their sample field).

Click in the left or right boxes to select which portion appears in the zoom window. Click in the zoom window to set the volume for each frame. Also in the zoom window, left and right cursors move the visible portion left and right, up and down cursors change the volume at the pointer.

The top row of numbers is the tone mask (0 = silence, 1 = allow the note frequency to play), the second row is the noise mask (0 = silence, 1 = allow white noise to play). Both can be set simultaneously. The mask is always the same for left and right channels.

The bottom row is the pitch of the noise (if noise is playing). 0 is the highest pitch, 1 is lower, 2 more so. 3 causes the pitch to depend on the tone frequency in use by channel 1 (if the noise is playing on channels 1, 2 or 3) or 4 (otherwise). (Any noise being played on channels 1,2 and 3 must be at the same frequency, so if two different tracks contain noise effects it is usual to put one in 1,2 or 3, and the other in 4,5 or 6 so that they don’t interfere with each other).

Tone Editor button switched to the tone editor, where the pitch for the sample can be adjusted in tone-number increments (1/256 of an octave approximately).

Ornament Editor

Don’t store an ornament at entry 0, for similar reasons as not storing a sample at entry 0.

Ornaments adjust the pitch of a note in semitones.

Disk Operations

Don’t forget to save your work!

Click on the songname to change it, if necessary, and then click on ‘Save Module’ to save your whole file.

Edit operations

In panel 1, Click the “Track / Pattern” heading to toggle the filter between A (operation affects all notes), S (affects notes matching the current sample), O (affects notes matching the current ornament) and B (umm… dunno.)

In panel 2, items under the “Record” heading modify the behaviour of the “Record” mode which tends to be so unresponsive that I never use it anyway. Items under the “Samples” heading allow you to copy and/or move samples (“S”) but also ornaments (“O”), tracks (“T”) and patterns (“P”) from one index to another.

Setup menu

Various defaults. None of it seems to be very important.

Note Effects

The effects are based on effects available in MOD files. Only a subset of them are supported by the compiler as I never was able to work out what the others actually did.

x,y denotes a single hex digit

nn: denotes a 2-digit hex number

Unless otherwise stated:

Commands are effective only on their own channel.

Commands should be repeated on following lines for as long as they are to remain in effect.

The soundchip waveform function requires some extra explanation…

This remains set until specifically disabled (with x=y=0). It acts either on the pair of channels 2 and 3, or the pair of chanels 5 and 6.

When this command is enabled, the volume of the output at channel 3 (or 6) is modulated into a waveform with a frequency determined by channel 2 (or 5). x is set to 0 or 1, to use a 3bit or 4bit waveform respectively (also changes note by one octave). y determines the wave shape (add 1 for the right stereo to mirror the left, but that effect can cause problems for mono amplifiers)

y=6, repeated decay \\\\

y=A, sawtooth /\/\/\/\

y=E, repeated attack ////////

Sawtooth waveform plays one octave lower than repeated attack or decay.