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Each red coloumn is the pattern being played. As you can see, there are three numbers always highlighted in red. It is used to play the main melody and other things.īe sure to have a look at the upper right corner of the Goattracker window. Arpeggios or arps are ringtone-like sounds used as one channel chords. Then, another track appears playing arpeggios. As long as a note hits that line, it is played.Īs we have three channels, we have three tracks.Īt the very beginning, the first track on the left plays bass sounds and drums. As we said, we can imagine a fixed horizontal line that is being hit by notes. You’ll see that tracks are scrolling upperwards, and the notes being played are highlighted in green. The song is slow and that helps to understand things better. Listen to the song and please look very carefully at what is happening on the screen. You can stop the music at any time by pressing F4. To load the file, select it with cursor controls and hit enter. Browse on the folder “examples” and load the file “everlasting.sng”. Be sure that 1x mode is active (if you are in “2x” mode, just click on the “2” in the “2x” label and you will go back in 1x mode. Start Goattracker, by double-clicking the “Goat icon”. To realize better what I am talking about, you may do the following. So, if the ideal fixed line encounters an empty entry, it plays nothing (or keeps playing the previous sound), if it encounters a note, it plays it. Those are the notes that are being played at the moment.
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While the tracks are scrolling, for a fraction of seconds you’ll notice that some notes become green. On Goattracker, you see this line as green characters on the tracks. There’s a fixed line on the screen (usually made of reverse or colored characters). Each entry on a track may be empty or may contain a note. That is, a maximum number of notes you can enter on it. Since the SID has three channels, there are no more than three tracks.Įach track has a fixed lenght. A track is a sequence of notes played on a single channel.
#Chronos c64 goattracker Pc
Goattracker is a simple PC program that you can download here. It is a good tool and it comes with an excellent documentation. Still, you can fine-tune your song on the real Commodore 64 by using a special utility, and of course you can listen to your songs on real hardware as much as you want. It has some disadvantages, as SID emulation is not perfect, but it is the most used tool among SID musicians. I love the real hardware, but I think that using a cross-platform tool such as Goattracker is the easiest way of doing Commodore 64 music. To set speed mode to “2x”, just click on the 1 in the “1x” label that you see the first time you start Goattracker: it will turn into “2x”. Also, be sure to set the speed mode to “2x”.
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Just click on “6581” on the upper blue bar if needed, it will turn into 8580. Please be sure to set the SID type to 8580. Goattracker required to listen to it ( download). Two examples are offered, including a cover of the famous Castle Master tune I did some years ago. This article covers the basics of Commodore 64 tracking. The SID chip can produce really expressive sounds that are still interesting even today. Commodore 64 music is really fun, and I think composing is a good way to tell others what you feel inside.
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