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
- Open Settings, and stay on General.
- 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.jsonopens 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 five 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.
| View | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Pattern | Writing notes. Tap a cell, then play a key. The bar under the grid has what can be done to that cell. |
| Song | The order the patterns play in, and the song's title, tempo, speed and number of channels. |
| Instrument | The song's instruments. A synth shows its settings; a sample shows its sound. |
| Mixer | A meter for each channel, with mute and solo. |
| Project | Save, save as, and open a .mod or .xm file. |
The piano is a drawer: the piano button in the top bar opens and closes it. With a keyboard, the letter keys play notes as a piano does, the arrows move, and Space plays and stops.
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.
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.
Keys
With a keyboard, in the Pattern view. On a Mac the key above Return is labelled delete; elsewhere it is Backspace.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Letter keys | Enter a note, as on a piano (Z is C). The cursor then moves down a step. |
| delete / Backspace | Rub out. It empties the cell under the cursor. If that cell is empty, it goes back to the note you just entered and empties that. It never moves another note. |
| Shift+delete / Shift+Backspace | Remove this row, and pull the rows under it up. Hold Alt as well for every channel. |
| Shift+Return / Shift+Enter | Open an empty row here, and push the rows under it down. Hold Alt as well for every channel. |
| Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z | Undo. One note is one step. |
| Shift+Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z | Redo. |
| Arrows, Tab | Move. Hold Shift with the arrows to select. |
| Space | Play and stop. Shift+Space loops the pattern. |
| Alt+1 to Alt+5 | Change the view. |
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.
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.
- Sample instruments from sound files, dropped in or chosen, with a loop.
- Opening a
.modor.xmfile 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.