New YM tracker: TTRAK

[distantminds]

Hey YQN

I pronounce it 'trak'. I've heard some t-trak's..

Just wait for TTRAK Turbo edition

[607]

When using the envelope editor, there is no indication of where your cursor is exactly. This makes it very hard to draw, in my experience! Even a straight line is barely doable without going block by block. Can anyone think of a way to improve this?
I haven't taken the time to continue with the tutorials lately, but I'm hoping to go through them all soon, so that I can get to know the program and give feedback before the final release. This could be cool to keep using besides MaxYMiser!
Fun note: it took me many minutes to realise what the letters on the Detune Matrix were saying.
I noticed in your tutorial videos that the program is taller than it was showing for me, I guess it draws into the bottom border a bit? I don't usually have borders showing on emulator. It works now, although having to fit the rest of the borders on my screen too might be a bit of a hassle.
While writing this comment, I played around with the frequency modulation, and it's really cool! That's definitely someone to play around with. More than what crazy sounds I can make with it, though, I am curious how I will be able to make good use out of it for full tracks!

[distantminds]

Hi 607,

cool that you had a play - i'm a fan of your work as you know

i'm not really sure I understand some of your feedback - which envelope editor do you not know where your cursor is? if you're talking about the main volume/timer/noise grid.. well, there's a big yellow crosshair showing you where your cursor is! If you want to restrict vertical movement so you can draw a straight line, then hold down ALT as you draw.

Yep it uses the lower border.. ST's have borders, why not use them . it's a bit weird i think that emulators give you the option to hide them

I'm glad you're seeing the potential anyway, thanks a lot!

D

[607]

cool that you had a play - i'm a fan of your work as you know

I actually didn't know; really?

i'm not really sure I understand some of your feedback - which envelope editor do you not know where your cursor is? if you're talking about the main volume/timer/noise grid.. well, there's a big yellow crosshair showing you where your cursor is! If you want to restrict vertical movement so you can draw a straight line, then hold down ALT as you draw.

Yes, I mean that one. The issue with the big yellow crosshair is that there's no way to see where in the square you are, because you don't see your precise cursor position. So as you're drawing, you only know that you got too close to the border of the wrong cell once you've drawn it in. However, this is mostly an issue when drawing horizontal lines, so thanks for the ALT modifier! I hadn't found out about that yet. I did notice just now (because I can draw faster using ALT ) that the editor doesn't seem to update very fast. i.e., if I draw at some speed, not all cells get drawn. This is just a minor issue, to be honest; being able to draw them in at all is already quite cool, but as you're still working on the program anyway, I figured I might as well nitpick!

Ooh, a function that doesn't work in emulators yet, that's interesting! I like to make my original tracks really loud so that they aren't drowned out by the buzzer, but this could be useful functionality!
Oh, the sidechain functionality is cool! Personally, I think this effect is overused in some genres of music, but when used in moderation I definitely imagine it being useful. Link to is really interesting too!
I use custom timer sequences a lot in MaxYMiser, and it's really nice to be able to see what you're drawing here! But I wonder why there's only 2-step and 16-step, and the length is not settable like the envelope length or the arp and noise sequence length? I assume it's harder to implement? It's great that you can change the waveform while a note is playing and hear it change live. Very useful for finding good sounds.

I noticed there are some buttons that can be activated without clicking on them. Sync and Pad for example, and the envelope editor. However, the only ones that seem an issue to me are Freq. Mod and Morph. When I'm working on the shapers, sometimes my cursor gets too high, and I get sent to the other window because I hovered over the button for it. I think for all buttons it would make sense if they were only to be activated if you click on them. It'd be great if this would also be the case for the envelope editor, but that might be harder to work out (of course being able to hoverdraw is very useful, I mean that it would be nice if you could only draw after clicking within the envelope window, so you don't accidentally ruin your envelope when your mouse flies off while you're doing the shapers).

By the way, I think the Morphing thing is really cool. I wasn't intending to do much experimentation myself this evening, I just wanted to watch a couple of tutorial videos, but I've spent the last... 10 minutes? making my first instrument. And then I spent 5 more minutes throwing down something to hear it... one channel is playing all notes, then there's a second channel which only plays a low E, to thicken it up and get more out of the morphing. This could actually be a pretty cool intro to something.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ao0PSt ... sp=sharing

[distantminds]

Hey mate

i tried to quote reply you but it was getting really fiddly so i'll try to address all your points below


yes - big fan of your work - i spoke about it in the Sommarhack podcast that Gwem, Grazey, Ben and I did around the release of the tracker... I think the work you and YQN are doing in particular is super accomplished, really awesome stuff! Defo 'next-gen' chip music

Now I understand what you mean about the envelope editor..... i totally understand.. I hope the ALT workflow helps.. i think the 'slowness' you mention is probably tied to into artificial constraints i've put in to the logic around the GUI... i might be able to do something about that

I think the graphical editor is really cool in some ways (loop points, timer/noise selection in combination with volume steps) but yeah, it's not perfect by any means! Sometimes a hex sequence makes more sense... I am considering future editors where maybe there's more flexibility with different sequence editors..

Really cool that you appreciate the various functionality that makes ttrak quite unique - pad/sidechain etc.. yeah the sidechain 'sound' is very cliche, but actually i think used carefully you can more effortlessly create really loud dynamic music without the effort of micro-coding volume steps

Custom timer sequences... yep you absolutely called it.. i keep it 2 or 16 step for pure ease of coding.. me personally, if i want to do a 4 or an 8 or 12, i just repeat the steps.. but i appreciate that the way Gwem has done that for example is much more classy than my implementation . I'm not sure i'll change this.. particularly with the wavetable morph, i think it would be very complicated to allow unrestricted timer sequence length..

Interesting that you're getting rogue button clicks. thanks for the feedback. Do you mean that you're getting phantom clicks when your mouse button is no-where near these buttons? or does your mouse activity stray onto other buttons? I did some work recently to stop the user selecting other buttons when rolling over from the main volume sequence editor.. i think I need to apply the same technique to the freqmod table interactions..

Morphing wavetable - thank you. It's an advanced approach that no-one else has done. It was actually Tat that came up with this and i think it's got a lot of potential

I appreciate all your feedback - you might be interested that serious development continues.. Tat is doing some awesome work with MIDI and i've been working on the GUI, considering a total overhaul. I've spent a lot of time building PC tools to build the GUI which allows me to try out different User experiences quickly. I'm not sure if/when i'll release that stuff but I think about a lot of the (now obvious) flaws to me in TTRAK.. The more I work on TTRAK the more I appreciate the quality of Maxymiser for example, it's so very well thought out.

So yeah, thanks again 607

D

p.s your cheeky preview sounds badass

[607]

I just had some time of confusion. I am following part 6 of the tutorial but wasn't getting any sound out of the instrument anymore. Eventually I killed the instrument and made it just a square, but I still didn't get any sound of it. It turned out that my cursor was in the column to the right of the YM channels on the main screen (not sure what that part does yet!). Is this intended to cause the instrument to not sound? I guess maybe I should wait until I know what the columns for. I'm assuming it is for additional effects.
The syncbuzzer stuff is cool. I'll be honest, in MaxYMiser I don't know what I'm doing with it most of the time, it is, as you said, a lot of trial and error. I feel like it could be easier to get a feel for it here, though. I like that TTRACK has so many visual editors, it really helps!
Looking forward to checking out the last tutorial, but I'm going to bed now. I saw on the first page that some changes were made since you recorded it, so I'll have to check that out.

I did some work recently to stop the user selecting other buttons when rolling over from the main volume sequence editor..

This is exactly what I mean. (but not for the main volume sequence editor ) You could indeed do the same for the freqmod and morph, but isn't it possible to just make each button only trigger when you actually press down the mouse button on it? I don't know how easy that might be, I have zero experience in Atari ST programming... but I can't think of any use cases besides the volume, freqmod and morph tables where it would be desirable to be able to click and drag, instead of just clicking on each thing you want to interact with. I just tried dragging my mouse over the square/buzz/timer matrix (can't recall what you called it), and it creates quite an interesting effect. It's really unlikely to often be an issue, but if it's easy to implement, I'd say go for it, as it makes the program feel more robust if these things don't happen, in my opinion.
I'm very glad to hear that you active development continues indeed!
Amazing to hear that you like my music, it does make me want to make a new tune soon!
Edited: I did a search on YouTube but couldn't find the podcast you mentioned; can I listen to it somewhere? Because I don't follow development while I'm not actually working on ST music myself, I miss a lot of news.

[wietze]

@607: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldGRJTG ... nel=evldhs

[607]

@607: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldGRJTG ... nel=evldhs

Thanks!

Is timer type 6 supposed to be so inconsistent?

To start with, set the first 4 steps of the timer waveform to 1,0,1,0. The 1 represent an octave shift. The first and third values are shifts *up*, and the 2nd and 4th are shifts *down*

I followed this and get the following if I play octave 1. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mhA926 ... sp=sharing I set the tick speed to C8 before demonstrating.

Also, can someone tell me how to get the right format digidrums? If I load in samples that I use with MaxYMiser, they don't work (I tried playing them in the highest octaves).

[distantminds]

Hey mate

firstly thanks for the awesome feedback. I take onboard your point about the rollover behaviour.. It might well be counter-productive in 90% of cases

The 4th channel is currently not doing much - historically i always had it there and used it for advanced demo sync and digidrum playback on earlier versions of Triplex2k/TraCQ.. as it stands, it's just adding confusion when you happen to move your cursor on to it and wonder why there's no sound playing!

The FM effect.. yep - somewhere I've ballsed up with the guidance - woops! The 'default' setting for anything meaningful is actually 0101. Not 1010.

Originally the effect had this configuration built in - this amounts to the frequency of the note toggling between normal and an octave up every period. This gives you the baseline FM effect.

I discovered that there were a few other values that give interesting results beyond 0101, so i decided to map it to the editor.. But it's very easy to 'break' the sound...

but also it's possible to discover some strange and interesting things by giving the user these options... with large shift values you can create 'Noise' that sounds quite different to the YM built in noise generator. Good for new drum sounds.

It's quite unstable in nature though, be warned. I haven't been able to iron out all the glitchiness.

You can also detune the SQUARE by 5 semitones and retain a pure(ish) FM sound.


And finally, to get really 'FM' type leads, start with a simple 0101 (with or without the 5 semitone detune) then introduce FREQMOD onto the SQUARE

much like with Syncbuzzer, usually the most interesting stuff is actually across only a small number of values - so i use DEPTH quite a lot to dial in the perfect amount.

Digidrums... these are raw YM volume values, unpacked to bytes.. with an FF determining the end of the sample. It's more or less the same format that Mad Max stored his samples as... I've got a converter script I use.. I've had quite a bit of feedback around this area and i think really we need to try to manage a WAV importer within the app itself.

[shoggoth]

@distantminds: Any plans for SDMA/microwire support?

[distantminds]

Hiya PeP

It's in the backlog... so some kind-of plans

Originally I wasn't really too arsed about DMA sound and was trying to squeeze all I could out of pure YM but when you hear some of the best Maxymiser DMA tracks you realise that actually it's quite a unique sound the STE has - YM and hi-fidelity samples... sick combo

[shoggoth]

@distantminds: It could be used for more than just samples. I think there's still some unexplored territory, e g transwave synthesis as done on old ensoniq gear. A well pre-calculated chain of waveforms could provide pseudo resonant filter sweeps with no CPU load (not counting sample scaling at all there). Then there's the microwire thing, people haven't quite figured out how to use it yet methinks.

[distantminds]

For sure.. transwave/wavetable stuff is very appealing.. you know there's really crusty wavetable synthesis in TTRAK right? . Certainly not as potent as a well designed set of wavetable samples tho... we're getting into chip-MOD territory then aren't we.

I've also toyed with the idea of very carefully controlled synthesis engines with locked off modulation parameters - basically preset-based tracker.. but with enough modulation options to keep it interesting.

My other hunch is that Machine Learning will one day allow us to approximate really complex sounds with the result being not much more than a register dump!

all good fun..

[607]

Here's a feature request. Excuse me if it's already possible somehow. I think it would be nice if it were possible to delay the trigger of an instrument by a specified number of ticks. I don't think this is possible in MaxYMiser. I once emulated it by having a few 0's at the beginning of the volume sequence, but that cuts out anything that was already playing on the channel.

[distantminds]

hmmmm.....

very interesting! I'm curious to know your application

you could do it now but it would be a bit laborious.

You can use the Link-to feature, i don't know if you know this? It' quite powerful. You could have essentially blank instruments of X ticks length.. and then you could use the link-to tracker code to jump to your desired instrument after the silent 3 tick instrument...

So say you wanted to play instrument 3 with a 3 tick delay, you would have an empty instrument (in slot 1) of 3 ticks length, and you'd trigger that with the desired note you wanted, and use the L tracker code to link to instrument 3:

C#3 01 L03

complete brain melter to implement though . You really need a delay by N ticks tracker command.... i'll add it to the backlog.

[607]

hmmmm.....

very interesting! I'm curious to know your application

I wanted a legato arpeggio with an (also legato) echo (I don't mean the arpeggio effect here, just regular arpeggiated chords). Needed all 3 YM channels for that instead of just 2.
I don't think your suggestion would work, as playing the silent instrument also cuts out what comes before on the channel, making it impossible to play legato. When using the link to feature in the instrument editor this is indeed what happened.
However, when I use the L command in the song editor I get unexpected behaviour. It seems that for as long as the step is 'selected', the instrument linked to is retriggered. Once playback advances to the next step, it just follows the regular repeat points. Is this intended? I can record a demonstration if you'd like, but I hope that this information would be enough to get what I mean if it's intended or reproduce the behaviour if it's not.
Edit: Such a command could be useful in other instances. For example, it would let you create tuplets. TTRACK has a modifiable Groove, which MaxYMiser does not, but it is song-wide, right? So you still can't play triplets... although actually, I just realised you can do it if you create a really slow instrument and use an arpeggio to do it... sounds like a solution that will introduce a lot of other problems, though, as messing with the speed of an instrument does a lot more to it. (There might be some trick I have never thought of? Besides just doubling the song speed for more rhythmic precision, which I prefer to avoid because it makes patterns less useful units and makes it harder to read a pattern)

[distantminds]

I see ok..

I sense a virtuoso at work here

If ever i wanted to personally deal with triplet timings before, i just treated each step as a tuple (so 24 steps to each bar?) and then did a pattern break at 48.. that sufficed but then i'd have to get into silly driver hacks to reduce the pattern length to 48 steps. You're much more advanced than i am so i'm sure that's of no help to you

Your Link-to issue sounds really wierd - you might be the first person beyond my initial tests to actually test it! I'll take a look.. does it behave like if you set it to link-to itself?

[distantminds]

ok i can repo your LXX bug <groan!>

thanks for the heads up 607!

[607]

I wonder how development is going?
I will probably create a TTRACK track over the summer, but I'd like to be able to use DigiDrums, and I don't understand the MadMax format. Do I need to look into that, or is it possible to let TTRACK import 8-bit wavs like MaxYMiser does?

[distantminds]

Hiya 607.

That's great news! It would be amazing to hear what you might come up with

The madmax format is basically the 4 bit register values ready to poke into the volume register, unpacked into bytes. At the end of the file is a signifier byte with the upper nibble set (ie. $80 or above) that tells the replay routine that it's reached the end of the sample.

I'm using Tat's python script which you can find here:

https://gist.github.com/tattlemuss/8bf9 ... 0e1f01c4d8

It takes a 16/24bit .wav and spits out a .4BI.

I appreciate a python script is not for everyone and no doubt an import .wav within ttrak is my ultimate wish.

Otherwise, there's another beta of ttrak in the wings with the hardsync effect and MIDI, which i've been finding really satisfying! Will kick that once i've managed to record a couple of demos showing the MIDI workflow


thanks for taking a look, 607!

D

[mOdmate]

607, just write me an email (modmate(at)smfx.st) and i'll send you my TTRAK sample library.

[607]

So about the Link to feature again: is it supposed to only work while the step is active in playback? I was expecting it to keep going until it got cut off by another note or a cut-off command.
What is the key for Stop? I don't think I ever managed to find out, but having to press Enter twice to get a note to stop is really annoying, as it changes the cursor location and starts playing back the pattern.
TTRACK just crashed for me. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing. I was testing the link-to feature and also using the frequency modulation, and pressed escape to return from the instrument editor to the song editor, and then both got drawn over top of each other and it wouldn't accept user input anymore (but I kept hearing the instrument playing back).
I'm not giving up yet! I would like some clarification on the link to feature though, as it could be useful for what I'm working on.
TTRACK has just one effect per channel at a time, right? This is very normal, but MaxYMiser has spoiled me.

Edit: Forgot to say: the script worked for me! I wasn't sure what frequency to export the samples at, but 19200 played back at the third highest note sounded pretty close. It wasn't exactly the same frequency, though, so if you've done the maths, maybe you could share the solution to playing samples back at the intended frequency.

[distantminds]

Hey 607

So about the Link to feature again: is it supposed to only work while the step is active in playback? I was expecting it to keep going until it got cut off by another note or a cut-off command.

are you using Linkto defined at an instrument level or ad-hoc using LXX? Either way, I can't repro the above.. it just carries on until it's interrupted by the next note. I just remembered the bug you found previously btw where the link-to repeats when using LXX. Feel free to send an example of the issue to ttrakinfo@gmail.com

What is the key for Stop? I don't think I ever managed to find out, but having to press Enter twice to get a note to stop is really annoying, as it changes the cursor location and starts playing back the pattern.

To stop playback? Space! To stop an instrument sounding when you're auditioning notes? Use the note-off key - Enter on the numeric pad, or alternatively the hash key. You can use the same key in record for a note-off.

TTRACK just crashed for me. I'm not sure exactly what I was doing. I was testing the link-to feature and also using the frequency modulation, and pressed escape to return from the instrument editor to the song editor, and then both got drawn over top of each other and it wouldn't accept user input anymore (but I kept hearing the instrument playing back).

Stuff happens The latest version is very stable, but it's possible to crash due to CPU overload. I talked about this on the website - do you restrict the range of certain timer effects to reduce the risk of crash, or do you let it all hang out? I let it all hang out Wild freq mod with an expensive timer effect could for sure crash the editor.

I'm not giving up yet! I would like some clarification on the link to feature though, as it could be useful for what I'm working on.

I'd be so stoked for you to make a track in TTRAK so if I can help/fix something, I will..

TTRACK has just one effect per channel at a time, right? This is very normal, but MaxYMiser has spoiled me.

'fraid so!

Edit: Forgot to say: the script worked for me! I wasn't sure what frequency to export the samples at, but 19200 played back at the third highest note sounded pretty close. It wasn't exactly the same frequency, though, so if you've done the maths, maybe you could share the solution to playing samples back at the intended frequency.

Excellent work with the script mate. I've nearly finished .WAV import now also..

19200 is spectacularly expensive for an STFM digidrum! Madmax era digis are more like 4000hz iirc. If you want to play a sound back at exactly (or close to) the right pitch, you'll have to match the pitch of one of the notes. Maybe try C7 (4186hz)..

[607]

To stop playback? Space! To stop an instrument sounding when you're auditioning notes? Use the note-off key - Enter on the numeric pad, or alternatively the hash key. You can use the same key in record for a note-off.

Thanks, Enter on the keypad works! Saves me a headache.

are you using Linkto defined at an instrument level or ad-hoc using LXX? Either way, I can't repro the above.. it just carries on until it's interrupted by the next note. I just remembered the bug you found previously btw where the link-to repeats when using LXX. Feel free to send an example of the issue to ttrakinfo@gmail.com

Ah, I found the source for my confusion, I think. The Ixx command isn't persistent, it is only in effect for as long as that step is active. I guess that makes sense. I used a workaround for my issue, which prompted a feature request down below!

Stuff happens The latest version is very stable, but it's possible to crash due to CPU overload. I talked about this on the website - do you restrict the range of certain timer effects to reduce the risk of crash, or do you let it all hang out? I let it all hang out Wild freq mod with an expensive timer effect could for sure crash the editor.

I guess I should save more often. I did just find the 'CPU safe' option, I guess I could use this if I want to limit the crashes?

19200 is spectacularly expensive for an STFM digidrum! Madmax era digis are more like 4000hz iirc. If you want to play a sound back at exactly (or close to) the right pitch, you'll have to match the pitch of one of the notes. Maybe try C7 (4186hz)..

Okay, thanks! Do you reckon the high frequency causes it to crash?
I only made one non-DMA track before and I didn't even really figure out how to properly do DMA digidrums until gwEm's recent video... sorry for the questions.
In any case the short test I just made causes some strange behaviour in the editor (look at the cursor in particular). I'll send it to you, have a look. I guess that this is because of the high CPU load? I love that the screen flashes at the end.

I came across an apparent bug, I suppose you probably know about it already, but I don't know of a known bugs list so I'm just noting it in case you don't. It seems that when you load a digidrum, it gets saved to the sample number of the instrument number, regardless of what is specified at 'use'. So if I want instrument 6 to use sample 2 but haven't loaded in sample 2 yet, I have to do that from instrument 2, even if I have set sample 2 at instrument 6.

Two requests, let me know if they're already possible: I'd like to be able to copy one instrument to another. For the test I did here, I wanted to both increase the link to speed and increase the freq mod depth, which wasn't possible, so I used different instruments with different speeds. This meant I had to reset the parameters for each version of the experiment. This wasn't a big deal in this case, but with more intricate instruments or more required variations it could break an idea if it's not possible to start out an instrument with a copy of another!
Second, I'd like to be able to turn off the preview play that happens when editing. I think it's quite useful that you hear what notes you're entering when working on melodies, and it's very useful that when you tweak an effect you hear the result right away. However, when I was working on these rapidly repeating snare drums, I really didn't fancy hearing them any time I changed a number. I just turned down the volume now, but that meant that I had to turn it up when doing actual playback, and turn it down when dialing in more. It would be a quality of life feature to have a toggle to completely disable playback in edit mode.

[distantminds]

Hi mate.

thanks for that, and for your mail

Ah, I found the source for my confusion, I think. The Ixx command isn't persistent, it is only in effect for as long as that step is active. I guess that makes sense. I used a workaround for my issue, which prompted a feature request down below!

I took a quick look at the tracker code implementation of link-to and yeah i think there's some logical decisions in there that are making life difficult for you. If you're specifically looking to use it as a retrigger (in the case of your snare drum example) then you could enable it at the instrument level, and then use the instrument speed code IXX to set a really slow speed so it doesn't repeat..

In your case you could really benefit from a second FX channel though! I've got the beginnings of a TTRAK pro with multiple FX columns and other features, but i'm not sure i've the energy to see it through!

I guess I should save more often. I did just find the 'CPU safe' option, I guess I could use this if I want to limit the crashes?

Okay, thanks! Do you reckon the high frequency causes it to crash?

In any case the short test I just made causes some strange behaviour in the editor (look at the cursor in particular). I'll send it to you, have a look. I guess that this is because of the high CPU load? I love that the screen flashes at the end.

Yeah very likely it's CPU utilisation causing crashes. There is some work in the code to slowly turn off certain things as the CPU use ramps up (you're seeing that with the cursor and mouse pointer disappearing!), the CPU Safe idea went further and limited the highest possible timer frequencies of each channel, but for now i've turned this off. Needs more thought!

I came across an apparent bug, I suppose you probably know about it already, but I don't know of a known bugs list so I'm just noting it in case you don't. It seems that when you load a digidrum, it gets saved to the sample number of the instrument number, regardless of what is specified at 'use'. So if I want instrument 6 to use sample 2 but haven't loaded in sample 2 yet, I have to do that from instrument 2, even if I have set sample 2 at instrument 6.

Mate, i noticed this myself yesterday whilst working on WAV import! I was so confused as I'm sure it used to work 'properly' before . I think i've fixed it in the latest beta. so odd....

I'd like to be able to copy one instrument to another.

There's a COPY INST and PASTE INST feature in the instrument editor.. Is that what you mean?

Second, I'd like to be able to turn off the preview play that happens when editing. I think it's quite useful that you hear what notes you're entering when working on melodies, and it's very useful that when you tweak an effect you hear the result right away. However, when I was working on these rapidly repeating snare drums, I really didn't fancy hearing them any time I changed a number. I just turned down the volume now, but that meant that I had to turn it up when doing actual playback, and turn it down when dialing in more. It would be a quality of life feature to have a toggle to completely disable playback in edit mode.

Ok interesting! i'll add it to the backlog. Should be easy to include.