Music tracker (early preview)

An editor for writing a song as patterns of notes: channels across, rows down, played by the same sound engine as synths.

It is an early preview. It is off until you turn it on, it is not finished, and it will change. A song you write in it is kept in a file of plain text, so nothing you make is locked inside it.

Turning it on

1. Open Settings, and stay on General.
2. Under Music, turn on Music tracker (early preview).

It works at once, with no reload:

• Tracker is in the + menu, and opens a new song with a short demo in it.
• A file whose name ends .song.json opens in the tracker.

Turn it off in the same place. A song that is already open stays open and can still be saved. A .song.json file then opens as text, in the code editor.

Finding your way round

The tracker is six views, one for each job. Their buttons are along the bottom on a phone or an upright iPad, and in the top bar when there is room. The top bar is the same in all of them: play the song, loop the pattern, stop, undo and redo.

The piano is a drawer: the piano button in the bar under the grid opens and closes it. Notes are named as on a piano, with C-4 as middle C. C-0, the lowest note a song can hold, is 16 Hz, below a piano's lowest key, so the deep end is felt more than heard, and a phone's or laptop's speaker plays only its overtones: use headphones or speakers to hear bass. To move a whole instrument up or down, use the pitch plate at the top of its General page: octave (four up or down) and transpose (semitones), which click from one whole step to the next so the instrument stays in key, and tune (cents), which turns smoothly. Each dial shows its own value, and the pitch applies to every note that instrument plays. Choosing a new sound with Start from keeps it. A MIDI keyboard's keys below C-0 still sound, but are not written. With a keyboard, the letter keys play notes as a piano does, the arrows move, and Space plays and stops.

Channels. A song can have up to 64. The + at the right end of the channel numbers adds one. Tap a channel's number for its menu: Remove this channel takes out a channel with no notes in it, and the channels after it move left. Undo puts it back. The Song view's Channels sets how many there are.

Zoom the pattern. Pinch the grid with two fingers to make it larger or smaller, from 60% to 200%; the rows under your fingers stay where they are. With a mouse, hold Ctrl (or Cmd on a Mac) and turn the wheel, or pinch a trackpad. Tap with two fingers twice, or choose Zoom 100% in the bar's … menu, to go back to normal size. Each device remembers its own zoom.

Tap a block twice in Song to go into its pattern. Tap a cell's instrument number twice in Pattern to go to that instrument. The arrow at the top left goes back.

Building a set of sounds

+ Add instrument (under the instrument list, or first in the instrument button's menu on a phone) opens the sound library straight away. Tap a sound to hear it, as often as you like; its + Add button adds it as the next instrument, and it becomes the one you play. The library stays open, so you can hear and add the next sound at once. Each sound you add gets a channel of its own: the first channel with no notes in it, or a new channel if every one has notes, and the cursor goes there, ready to play. Search, or browse by category. Drum kits, above the list, has whole drum machines (808, 909, 606 and more): touch a kit to hear its kick, and + Add kit adds every drum as an instrument of its own ("808 Kick", "808 Snare"…), kick first and chosen, in one step that one Undo takes back. A kit gets one new channel; add more with +. Sample… brings in your own sound files instead. Each sound added is one undo step.

On a bigger screen the sound library opens in the left column, full height, with its categories, search, kits and a long list. Use ↑ ↓ to move through the sounds, ← → for the categories, Enter to add or use one and Esc to close.

• Start from opens the library the same way, and lets you try sounds on the instrument. Select a sound and the dials show its settings; the keys, the piano and a MIDI keyboard play it. Your song is not changed. Use (or Enter) keeps it, as one step that Undo takes back. Cancel (or Esc) puts back exactly the sound the instrument had.
• Init, beside Start from, makes the instrument a plain saw to design a sound from. The filter is open, the envelope is full on at once with a short release, and nothing else moves. Its octave, transpose and tune are kept, and Undo in the line that says so takes it back.
• The left column can be made wider or narrower: drag its right edge. Double-click the edge for its usual width. Each device remembers the width.

Adding your own sounds

Drop a sound file anywhere on the tracker. It becomes a new instrument, named after the file, and the next key you press plays it. Several files dropped together become several instruments, in the order you dropped them.

• Drop a file on a sample instrument in the Instrument view to replace that instrument's sound. Undo brings the old sound back.
• Without a mouse, use Add sample… in the Instrument view and choose the files.
• WAV files are kept as they are. MP3, M4A and FLAC files are converted, and so are other kinds your device can play.
• A sound can be up to 30 seconds long. A stereo sound is made into one channel. A song holds up to 255 instruments.

A file that is not a sound is not added, and the tracker says why.

Samples

The Samples view lists every sound in the song: its length, its rate, whether it is mono, how much room it takes, and which instruments use it. Load sounds… adds sounds as everywhere else (each one is a sample and an instrument that plays it); you can also drop files here. Tap a sample to work on it:

• Rename it in the box at the top. The waveform shows its loop; Loop, Recorded at and Volume work as in the Instrument view, and Replace sound puts another file's sound in its place.
• Trim: drag Start and End, then Cut to… keeps only that part. Reverse turns it round, and Normalise brings it up to full level. Each change is one step that Undo takes back.
• Hear plays it. Duplicate makes a copy to change. Make an instrument adds an instrument that plays it and opens it.
• Remove takes it out of the song. If an instrument uses it, the tracker asks again first, and those instruments are left with no sound.

A synth can play a sample too: in the Instrument view's Oscillators, set an oscillator's wave to sample, then choose which of the song's samples it plays, by name, or Load sample… to bring a new one in for it.

Playing in: chords, a MIDI keyboard, recording live

With Record on, what you play is written into the song:

• The edit step. After each note the cursor moves down by the edit step: 1 row unless you change it. The Step button in the piano's header (beside Velocity) sets it from 0 to 16 rows, or as a length of note (1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 bar) where that is a whole number of rows at the song's speed. For a kick on every beat, choose 4 (a quarter at the usual speed) and tap the key four times: the notes land on rows 0, 4, 8 and 12. At 0 the cursor stays where it is. The step applies to the computer keys, the screen's piano and kit, and a MIDI keyboard while the song is stopped, and also to a note off and to Delete, which clears the field and moves on by the step. The keys [ and ] (or Ctrl+- and Ctrl+=, as in MilkyTracker) make it smaller and bigger. This device remembers it. Live recording while the song plays does not use it: there each note goes on the row you heard.
• Chords. Keys that go down together, within about 40 milliseconds of each other, are one chord. It is written in one cell, as its lowest note with the chord, and the cursor moves on once. A key you add later is a new note.
• While the song plays, a note is written on the row you heard when you pressed the key (the nearest row, so a key a little early still lands on the beat), in the cursor's channel. The cursor does not move: it follows the song. Notes played over a looping pattern replace what was there. Each note is one undo step.
• How hard you play a MIDI keyboard goes into the volume column (0 to 64). Keys of the computer and the screen have no velocity, so they leave the volume empty and the instrument's own volume is used.

Playing a chord on every key. On the piano's Chords tab, choose a chord (Major, Minor…) and how it is played (Together or Arpeggio). While that tab is open, every key you play sounds that chord built on the key: the screen's piano, the computer keys and a MIDI keyboard alike. Let go and it stops. With Record on, each one is written as its note with the chord, or the arpeggio, in its cell. The chord stays chosen as the cursor moves on to empty cells, until you choose None. With no chord chosen, keys pressed together are written as a chord, as on the Piano tab. On the Piano tab a key always plays just its note.

From keys builds a chord from the keys themselves. Tap keys on the piano to add or take away notes of the chord. Each key sounds on the current instrument, as any key does. Hold a chord on a MIDI keyboard, or put several fingers on the piano at once, and that becomes the chord's shape, replacing the one before. The shape is the notes counted up from the lowest, so C, E, G and B make a major seventh. A shape that is a known chord is named (maj7), and the buttons show it. Turn From keys off to play that shape from any key.

An arpeggio's Notes setting decides how its steps sound. Each note (the usual) plays every step as a new note, with the sound starting afresh each time, held for three quarters of its step (change it with Gate). Chip is the classic chip-music arpeggio: one note whose pitch hops from step to step, so a sound that fades fades across the whole arpeggio. What you hear while playing is what the song plays, and your choice is used for the next arpeggio on this device.

A MIDI keyboard. Open the piano, tap the round MIDI socket button in its header (on the Piano and Chords tabs alike), then Connect a MIDI keyboard. Your browser asks your permission. Choose which keyboard to listen to, or all of them; the tracker remembers your choice. It also remembers that you connected: after a reload, or the next time you open the tracker, MIDI connects again by itself once the sound is on, with nothing to press (in a browser, only where you have already allowed MIDI). A keyboard you unplug and plug back in is listened to again as soon as it is back. The tick in the menu shows what is connected now; a chosen keyboard that is not plugged in is shown dimmed as not found, and every input is listened to until it returns. Record velocity in the same menu turns velocity off if your keyboard plays unevenly. Once connected, the tracker remembers: after a reload, or when the keyboard is plugged back in, it connects again by itself, as long as the browser has already allowed MIDI. A chosen keyboard that is not there is shown as not found, and every other input is listened to until it is back. Disconnect stops this.

The pitch wheel is at the left of the piano, and the octave buttons are at its right. Push the wheel up or down to bend every note you are holding, from the screen, the computer keys or a MIDI keyboard; let go and it springs back to the middle. It bends as far as the instrument's bend range (2 semitones unless the instrument says otherwise), shown under it. A MIDI keyboard's own wheel moves it too, and is recorded in just the same way. With Record on, a bend belongs to the note you bent: when you let the wheel go (or let go of the note), the tracker writes it on that note as the nearest shape the song can keep. Up and back is a dip; still bent when the note ends is a bend up (or down) to there; bent before the note and brought back is a scoop; a wobble is the note's vibrato. It shows in the note's chord column (↗+2, dip+1.8, vib0.5). While the song plays, the note is the one you are holding, or else the one sounding in the cursor's channel. One shape per note: if you bend a note twice, the bigger bend is kept. Each bend is one undo step.

How hard each key plays. The Velocity button in the piano's header sets it for each input. For the computer keys and the screen's keys there is one value: Full (127, as they always played), Half (64), or a number from 1 to 127. A MIDI keyboard plays As played, with a curve (Soft plays a light touch louder, Hard takes a harder one), or Fixed at one value. This matters for a sound that changes with velocity, such as a filter that opens more the harder you play. Record velocity writes what you played into the volume column. Keys at Full write nothing there, as before. Beside the button, the note or chord you are holding is shown with its velocity, for example C-4 · 96 or Cmaj7 · 100.

MIDI keyboards work in Chrome and Edge, in the Circuitry desktop app, and in the iPhone and iPad app (with its own sound engine on). They do not work in Safari on the web or in Firefox, and not yet in the Android app: there the button says so.

Keys

Record is the red button beside Play and Stop at the top, in every view, as on a hardware tracker (and again in the bar under the grid; the two are the same switch, and Alt+R turns it on and off). While it is on, a key you play is written into the song and the cursor moves on. Turn it off to play the instrument without writing anything: the keys, the piano and the kit only sound, and keys that would change the song do nothing. It stays as you left it on this device.

The instrument follows the cursor. Put the cursor in a channel and the instrument for new notes becomes the one that channel plays there: the last instrument number at or above the cursor, or the first one below it if there is none above. The keys, the piano and a MIDI keyboard then play that instrument, and Record writes it. In an empty channel the instrument stays as it was. An instrument you pick from the instrument button holds until you move to another channel. To pick the instrument yourself every time, turn off Instrument follows channel in the bar's … menu; this device remembers the setting.

With a keyboard, in the Pattern view. On a Mac the key above Return is labelled delete; elsewhere it is Backspace. Press ? (or the ? button at the top) for the same list in the tracker, with a search box. Keys marked Record on change the song, so with Record off they do nothing.

In a cell, the arrow keys move between its fields: note, instrument, volume, chord, and the effect when the effect column is on. On the note field the letter keys play and write notes. On the instrument and volume fields, type two digits (0 then 5 is instrument 05; the volume runs from 0 to 64). With Hex numbers on (in Project, kept on this device) the numbers are hexadecimal, as in FastTracker 2: type A to F too, and the volume runs from 00 to 40, and on the effect field its letter and two digits (A0F). After the last digit the cursor moves down by the edit step, ready for the next row.

Move

Notes and fields

Edit

Selection and clipboard

Play

Record

Views

Touch

Without a keyboard, the eraser in the bar under the grid empties a cell, and … beside it has insert and delete a row. Undo and redo are the two arrows in the top bar.

How long a note lasts, and arpeggios that run

A note sounds until the next note in its channel, or a note off (===), even across the end of a pattern. So one note with an arpeggio on it plays on to the end of the song if nothing in its channel stops it.

• Change the chord, not the note. Put the cursor on an empty row under the note, open the piano's Chords tab and pick a chord (with Arpeggio on). The cell gets the chord with no note: the arpeggio takes the new chord at its next step and keeps its place, with no new note struck. Root moves that chord up or down a semitone at a time (+5 makes C's arpeggio play over F). The cell shows it, for example +5maj↑. This is how a trance arpeggio follows the chords of a song.
• Stop the arpeggio. Stop arpeggio on the Chords tab ends it on that row. With Each note, no more notes are struck, and the one playing finishes its gate. With Chip, the note plays on at its own pitch. A note off (===) stops everything.

Sweeping a setting

A sweep moves a setting of an instrument (the filter's cutoff, its resonance, an envelope or any dial) smoothly while the song plays. Put the cursor on a row, choose Sweep a setting here… in the bar's … menu, pick the setting and its value on that row, and choose whether it glides there from the point before or jumps. Two points make a sweep: cutoff 200 on row 0 and a gliding 8000 on row 32 is one smooth rise over those 32 rows, following the song's tempo. Started part way, the song starts with the value the sweep has there. The cell shows it, for example ↗cut 8000.

With Record on, turning a dial while the song plays records the turn as a curve: every move is kept where you heard it, to a fraction of a row, so a quick twist inside one row plays back with its shape, and a slow move keeps only the few points it needs. The points sit on the rows of the cursor's channel; a row with more than one is marked ~ (for example ↗cut 2400~). A new turn replaces what was recorded for that setting on the rows it covers, and while a pattern loops each pass replaces the one before (overdub replaces). You can play notes at the same time: in the Instrument view, open the piano (or use the computer keys or a MIDI keyboard) while the song plays, and the notes go into the pattern while the dial's turn goes into the sweep. With the song stopped, keys in the Instrument view only sound. A sweep belongs to the instrument, so every note of that instrument moves together. Sweeps are played by the tracker: another program playing the song file plays it without them.

Mod matrix. The synth's Mod matrix tab shows what moves what: the two LFOs, the mod envelope, the filter envelope and velocity down the side, and pitch, osc 2's pitch, pulse width, cutoff, level and pan across the top. Each dial is how much that source moves that setting. A dash is a route the sound engine does not have yet.

Slides and accents, for acid bass lines

• On a note of the pattern: press Alt+S (or … → Slide into this note) and the note slides into its pitch from the one before on that channel, over a sixteenth, as a 303 does. A sliding note is drawn in pink.

• Steps play as (in a synth's Steps) chooses what the step table does:

  • Notes: each step is a note struck afresh, with its own envelopes. This is a custom arpeggio, or an acid line. A silent step is a rest. A Slide step glides from the note before without a new attack, as on a 303. An Accent step is struck harder, and opens the filter as far as Accent opens the filter says.
  • Gate: the steps' levels chop a held note in time, as a trance gate. Choosing Notes or Timbre afterwards switches the gate off again, for the notes you play by hand as well as in the song.
  • Timbre: one voice whose wave, pitch and level move step by step while its envelope runs once. This is the classic chip sound, and what every table made before plays as.

  Acid line and Trance gate in the table's Start from set one up in a tap. Another program playing the song file hears a gate as it is, but a Notes table as plain notes.

• In a synth's step table (Steps): each step has a Slide (~) and an Accent (^) of its own. A sliding step glides to its pitch from the step before; accented steps are played at full volume and the others at two thirds. A slide needs the step table's speed set to Rate or Division (with Tick it is a jump).

Keeping time with the song

In an instrument's Steps, the step table's Speed is Rate (steps a second), Tick (one step each tick of the tracker) or Division: one step each length of note, such as 1/16, a dotted 1/8. or a triplet 1/8T. A division keeps to the song's tempo, and follows it when the tempo changes, also while the song plays. An LFO's rate can be a division too: a cycle each 1/4, for instance. The song also keeps the rate that the division makes, so other programs that play the file hear the same.

Presets: sounds to start from

A synth instrument starts from a preset: open an instrument and tap Start from (on a phone it is in the instrument menu at the top). The library has 161 sounds in ten categories:

• Touch a sound to hear it; its Use button makes it the instrument's sound. Nothing changes until you press Use.
• Search by name, genre or kind: acid, trance, house, supersaw, 808. A search looks in every category.
• Built-in is the short list of synths the tracker always had.
• A preset is only where you start: turn any dial after. Start from shows the preset's name until you change something.
• Drums and effects are made for one note each (a kick low, a hat high); the arps and sequences play a figure from one held note.
• Each sound follows a published description of how it is made, from articles such as Sound On Sound's Synth Secrets and magazine tutorials. A name with "-style" is a sound in the manner of that instrument, made on this synth: none is a copy of the original's own patch.
• A few can only come near the original and are marked approx.: sounds that were recordings of real instruments (the M1's piano, the 909's hats and cymbals, the LinnDrum and DMX), and the pumping pad (a real side-chain ducks to the kick; this one dips with the beat instead). The rest are made in full on the synth: FM sounds such as the DX7's electric piano with ring modulation, the hoover's pulse-saw wave with a ring-modulated pulse, a choir's vowel with two resonances.
• Stabs and chord pads carry their chord: a house stab is a minor seventh, a deep house pad a minor ninth. The list shows the chord each is voiced for; write that chord on the note (the cell's chord) to play it in the song.

What works

• Notes, note off, instruments and volumes in a pattern, with select, cut, copy, paste and transpose.
• Chords and arpeggios on a note.
• Synth instruments with every setting of a synth, and a step table for chip sounds.
• A library of 161 preset sounds to start an instrument from, in categories, with a search and a preview.
• Sample instruments from sound files, dropped in or chosen, with a loop.
• Opening a .mod or .xm file as a song.
• Editing while the song plays: a change is heard from the next row.
• Undo and redo, and an unsaved copy kept on the device.

What does not work yet

• No faders in the mixer. A channel has mute and solo, but no volume, pan or sends of its own, and the shared echo and reverb cannot be set for a song.
• No loop points. A song plays through its order and starts again; one pattern can be looped while you work on it.
• Sample editing is small. A sample can be brought in, looped and tuned. It cannot be cut, and one instrument is one sample.
• A song's samples are kept inside its file, which makes the file large.
• No light theme, and no names for patterns or channels.

The file

A song is a .song.json file in synths' own song format, which a program can play with playSong. Songs says how.

Related

• Sound and music
• Songs
• Chip sounds and arpeggios