Tracker

Make chiptune with the D-pad, the LSDJ way, with a few things borrowed from PICO-8.

Overview

Open Games → Tracker. A song is built like in LSDJ: the song is a list of rows, each row says which chain each channel plays, a chain is a list of phrases, and a phrase is 16 steps of notes. Sounds come from instruments, which can run a table with every note; the groove sets the swing, and waves are drawn by hand. From PICO-8 come its eight waveforms, an instrument on every step and a piano roll.

Songs save themselves a second after each change. While the tracker plays, your music pauses, and the visualizers and games react to the tracker instead.

Song modes: Game Boy and Free

Each song has a mode, set in the PROJ view:

• Game Boy: four channels, PU1, PU2 (pulse), WAV (wave) and NOI (noise), with the console's limits: pulse widths of 12.5, 25, 50 and 75 %, a volume envelope that steps at 64 Hz, PU1's frequency sweep, 32-sample 4-bit waves played at 100, 50 or 25 % volume, noise from a 15- or 7-bit register, and pitches rounded to the hardware's 11-bit periods. Instruments are pulse, wave or noise.
• Free: eight channels, CH1 to CH8, without those limits. Every instrument has an ADSR envelope, and there's a fourth type, synth, with sine, triangle, saw, square, organ, phantom and noise shapes.

Any instrument can go on any channel. Switching a song to Game Boy keeps what's on channels 5 to 8, it just doesn't play it.

Song, chains and phrases

• Song: up to 256 rows; each row has a chain number (or nothing) per channel.
• Chain (256 of them): up to 16 phrases in order, each with a transpose in semitones. The chain ends at its first empty slot.
• Phrase (256 of them): 16 steps. Each step has a note (C-0 to B-9, or OFF), an instrument, a volume (0 to F) and two commands (a letter and a hex value).

Each channel plays its own chain and moves on to the next row when it ends. A channel with no chain in a row rests until the channels that do have one move on, so rows stay lined up. A row with no chains at all rests for one phrase.

Time runs in ticks, 24 per beat. With the default groove each step lasts 6 ticks, a sixteenth note, so a phrase is one bar.

The eight views

The tabs at the top are a map, left to right: PROJ · SONG · CHAIN · PHRASE · INSTR · TABLE · GROOVE · WAVE. L1 and R1 move to the view next door. Moving right with R1 opens what's under the cursor:

• PROJ: the song's name (A opens the keyboard), mode, tempo (40 to 300 BPM) and starting groove, plus the MIDI device and sync.
• SONG: rows × channels of chain numbers, with each channel's oscilloscope. The channel you pick here is the one chains and phrases play on.
• CHAIN, PHRASE, TABLE: 16-row grids.
• INSTR: a list of the instrument's settings.
• GROOVE, WAVE: see below.

On narrow screens the tabs shorten to PRJ, SNG, CHN, PHR, INS, TBL, GRV and WAV.

Editing

Every view edits the same way:

A note sounds as you write it, and A on a note plays it. Writing a note on a step without an instrument puts the last instrument used. Below C-0 comes OFF, which releases the note. Chains, phrases, instruments and tables are created the first time you edit them.

The Start menu has:

• Play the song from the start.
• Undo: each press of A is one step back, up to 64.
• Copy, Paste, Clone into a new one and Clear, for what the view shows (a chain, phrase, instrument, table, groove or wave). Cloning copies it to the first free number, and the song cell or chain step you came from switches to the copy.
• In the wave view, the eight PICO-8 shapes, to copy into the open wave.
• Songs: a new Game Boy or Free song, your saved songs and the examples.
• Export to the library (WAV), Export as XM and Export as MOD.
• Import… and Search online…: see Import and export.
• Delete this song and Back to games.

Hold FN for the controls of the view you're in.

Piano roll

Press X in the phrase view to see the phrase like PICO-8 does: steps across, pitches up and down, with each note lasting until the next one.

Instruments

Up to 64. A new song comes with a pulse, a wave and a noise instrument (and a synth in Free mode). What the INSTR view shows depends on the type and the mode:

Imported MOD and XM songs also have sample instruments: the module's recorded sounds, with their loops (forward or ping-pong). They show in the INSTR view with the common settings; changing their type turns them into a new instrument.

A noise instrument's note sets how fast the noise runs: low notes rumble, high ones hiss. A on a setting plays the last note with the instrument.

Tables

A table is 16 rows that run one per tick while the note sounds, starting with each note of an instrument that uses it (or from the A command). Each row has a volume (or nothing), a transpose in semitones from the note, and two commands. H in a table jumps to another row, which is how tables loop: three rows transposing 0, +4 and +7 with H00 on the last make a major arpeggio, and transposes falling fast with a short noise make a kick drum.

Grooves

A groove is a list of up to 16 numbers: how many ticks each step lasts, in turn. The default, 6/6, is straight; 7/5 or 8/4 swing. In the GROOVE view, A on the empty slot after the last number adds one, and B+A removes one; the title shows the swing. There are 32 grooves; PROJ sets the one the song starts with, and the G command switches one channel to another groove that exists.

Waves

256 waves of 32 samples from 0 to F, played by wave instruments. The first eight are PICO-8's: triangle, tilted saw, saw, square, pulse, organ, noise and phantom. In the WAVE view, ←/→ choose a sample, hold A + ↑/↓ to change it, and hold A + ←/→ to draw (the next sample takes this one's value). Start has the PICO-8 shapes to start from.

Commands reference

Each step and table row has two commands. A new note resets the ongoing ones (C, F, K, P, V, R, the fades and the drop).

Examples

Start → Songs has four examples, each showing something. Opening one saves nothing until you edit it.

• Pocket Pop (Game Boy, 120 BPM): parts as chains reused across the song, and chords with C.
• Crypt Crawl (Game Boy, 140 BPM): tables for the arpeggios and the kick, notes that glide with L and fall with P, and a bass on PICO-8's tilted saw.
• Night Drive (Free, 100 BPM): eight channels with synths, a 7/5 swing groove, panning, an echo made with D, and a fade-out with U.
• Amen Chip (Game Boy, 170 BPM): drum rolls with R, late hits with D, a half phrase that hops into the next with H, a bass line transposed by its chain, and pulse widths changed with W.

Import and export

Export, from the Start menu. The files go to an audiofilus tracker folder in your music folder, and the library picks them up:

• Export to the library: the song rendered once to a WAV.
• Export as XM: a FastTracker 2 module that opens in OpenMPT, MilkyTracker and others (and plays in Audiofilus). Each instrument becomes a sample that sounds like it, with a volume envelope; the notes, chain transposes, tempo, grooves and the main commands (chord, pitch, slide, vibrato, kill, delay, retrigger, pan) carry over.
• Export as MOD: the same as a 4-channel ProTracker module. It can't hold channels 5 to 8 of a Free song.

Import… lists the songs it finds in your music folders and in the app's data/tracker/import folder (up to 300). Each import becomes a new song you can edit:

• MOD (ProTracker and compatibles, 4, 6 or 8 channels) and XM (FastTracker 2, the first 8 channels): a Free-mode song. Each pattern becomes phrases and chains, each sample a sample instrument, and the timing is exact.
• LSDJ: a .lsdsng song, or every song in a .sav. They map almost one to one, in Game Boy mode: song, chains, phrases, instruments, tables, grooves, waves and tempo.

Search online… looks for MOD and XM files on The Mod Archive and Modland; picking one downloads and imports it. The Modules screen can open them in the tracker too.

Not everything survives the trip: module effects without a tracker command (sample offset, pattern loops, tremolo, global volume) are dropped, an XM instrument keeps only the sample it plays at C-4, LSDJ's kits become short noise hits, and an exported module loses tables and the less common commands. Songs made with the earlier tracker open converted: each pattern becomes one phrase and one chain per channel, and its effects become commands (arpeggio → C, duty → W, bend → P).

MIDI

Plug a USB MIDI keyboard or controller into the handheld (through a USB-C adapter if needed) or the computer. It works on the Linux handhelds and desktops, Windows, and iPhone/iPad (USB or already-paired Bluetooth MIDI). The tracker finds it by itself, also when you plug it in with the app open, and connects to the first one.

• Notes: they play the last instrument used, on the channel you're working on. In the phrase view they're also written at the cursor, which moves to the next step: step recording.
• PROJ → MIDI: which device to use, or none.
• PROJ → Sync: who keeps time.
  • Internal: the song's own tempo.
  • Follow clock: the tracker follows the MIDI clock it receives. A drum machine, a DAW or LSDJ itself can start, stop and set the tempo. MIDI clock has 24 pulses per beat, the same as the tracker's ticks, so each pulse is one tick.
  • Send clock: the tracker sends its clock (start, stop and the tempo) to the device, to keep other gear in time with it.

The clock arrives about one audio buffer late (50–100 ms), which only matters when you play along with something live.