MilkyTracker itself is an interesting beast as it certainly showcases some highlights (and frustrations) associated with the tracking programs of yesteryear along with the magic that was part of those programs as well. It is unabashedly a “2nd Generation” tracker, which means that it does not have plugin support, it does not have modern effects and it does not have  audio recording. Despite its hardcore grasp to hold onto its roots, it does offer some modern convienences that take advantage of the modern hardware that it will be running on. Most notable of these upgrades is the support for ASIO and Core Audio as well as the ability to import and export full 16-bit wave files. Want to know what my full thoughts are on the software? Then read on.

What is MilkyTracker?

So to start out for those who are not familiar with a tracker, trackers were the first music creation programs on computers during the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties. Their major claim to fame comes predominately from the videogame industry, especially on systems such as the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. I want to be clear however in stating that that 8-bit videogame sound is often associated with trackers but not necessarily a product of them. During this tracker area one of the most famous and capable trackers up until the mid-nineties was a program called Fast Tracker II (FTII).

MilkyTracker tries to capitalize on many aspects of the Fasttracker II design and interface and bring up to a little bit of a modern area while still maintaining the classic FTII mindset. One of the other major components to Milkytracker that makes it so unique is its ability to run on almost any operating system or device. Not only does it have the obligatory Windows, Mac and Linux support, but it also has support other platforms such as Windows Mobile, BeOS and even Amiga. The software is open source and is being ported to all sorts of platforms, including mobile devices. This development is a testament not only to the developer, but also to the flexibility of the tracker concept in general. It’s simple design, text based interface and vertical sequencer lend it to work particularly well on small form factor screens.

One of the other extremely strong points of MilkyTracker is its fantastic support for the classic tracker history. It supports just about every classic tracker format from .MOD to .XM, with just about everything in between.

Key Features

• Fasttracker II like, custom graphical user interface with context menus
• Supported on multiple platforms including portable devices
• Very accurate .XM replay compared to FT2 ProTracker 2/3 playback modes for playing and editing .MOD files
• Various resampler options including emulated Amiga 500/1200 sound output
• Choose between a modern and a true-to-FT2 editing scheme / keyboard layout
• Tabbed user interface for opening and playing up to 32 modules simultaneously and for exchanging data between them
• Over 30 imported module formats
• Basic archive support for loading zipped, powerpacked and UMX modules directly
• Rendering songs/patterns to disk (.WAV) or directly to sample
• Powerful sample editor featuring waveform generators
• In-depth instrument editor featuring envelope zooming and scaling and support for copying and swapping instruments and samples across tabs
• Low latency audio driver support
• MIDI In support
• Module optimizer Internal file browser option
• Various font sizes for improved visibility of pattern data
• Prospective pattern view option
• Playing and editing simultaneously
• Live mode for seamless pattern changes

Workflow and Interface

If you have ever worked with a tracker before, especially FTII the interface screen that you see when you first open the program should look very familiar to you. In fact the original FTII shortcuts are still available if you so choose to use them. By default however MilkyTracker installs with its own set of shortcuts turned on by default. The author states that if you are new to tracker you should use the new shortcut schema and he is right in stating so.

On the top left of the screen you will see your basic song information and program parameters. On the very top most left corner you will see your pattern information, we will get into that later in the review, but this is essentially the section where you sequencer your song from. You insert your patterns, set their length and assign them and order.

Continuing further to the right at the top is your main song information: Name, time, BPM, etc. Below that is your menu information to configure the software, transpose information and more. Finally, on the top section of the tracker you have your instruments and samples library in which you can edit your sounds.

Now one of the first things users will probably want to do when they first open the software is head straight to the config button and enter some configuration options to make the software more useable. Perhaps the most important thing to do right away is to set the screen resolution of the software to the correct screen size for your monitor. This will vary depending upon whether or not you want it to operate in full screen mode, but you will definitely want it larger than the default screen display. The rest of the options in the configuration file are fairly standard and actually quite complete considering that this is a tracker. The options include everything from driver selection to re-sampling methods to even audio resolution. It is also highly recommended that you go down to the “Fonts” tab and change the font type or something without serifs. DisorderTracker2 works very well.

Now it is important to note that Milkytracker (and all “traditional” trackers) are inherently and completely sampled based. You will need to load up .wav files for your production. The full scope explaining how a tracker works is not in the scope of this review, but I will say that there are two essential concepts that new users will need to get into their heads when starting to use a tracker, and that is the difference between samples and instruments. Now don’t let the concept of instruments fool you because you will not be seeing anything like VSTi plug-in or anything like that. Samples are exactly what they sound like, audio samples. The sample library itself is fairly straight forward. Load your samples into the sample library with one sample per slot. The concept of instruments though is entirely different. Instruments are not real instruments in the sense that a synthesizer exists or not. Instruments instead can be a collection of samples mapped across a keyboard (much like a sound font) or any other number of pre-determined parameters correlating to a sample or multiple samples. Most often I would imagine they are a layering of samples to create your sound base. For example you might want to call one instrument “Percussion” and then load all of your percussive samples into that and then proceed to map those to particular keys on your keyboard. This in effect creates a percussion kit. It is important to note though that all of your samples need to be in an instrument and it appears that samples cannot be assigned to multiple instruments without being loaded again.

Now the sample section of Milkytracker is fairly straight forward. As I mentioned before, you simply load your .wav file into a sample slot and then proceed from there. While this is disappointing it is understandable as all instruments that are loaded into the sequencer must be loaded in as mono as well. This is keeping with the traditional nature of the program. Milkytracker does offer you the ability to choose which channel from your file you would like to import though and you can even mix the stereo file into mono if you choose. Users will be glad to know though that on the whole,Milkytracker does do a rather good job of loading modern samples. Audio quality was preserved nicely from the 16-bit audio wave. I even attempted to covert the same audio samples from 16-bit to 8-bit. The conversion process was extremely fast taking only a couple of seconds even when I tested an audio file over two minutes long. I will admit though that I did not hear the drastic difference in audio quality that I was expecting to hear. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on what you want to get out of the conversion, but if you are looking for your percussion to magically get downgraded to 8-bit magic, that simply is not going to happen.

The rest of the audio editor was surprisingly robust for a tracker and is strengthened by the fact that users can now right click to access additional contextual menus. A right click now will bring up features such as cut, copy, paste and mix-paste which appear to somehow blend the paste into the audio.

There are even some mix/mastering types of features available such as normalization, cross-fade, smoothing (appears as some sort of compression?), re-sampling, and 3-band and 10-band EQ . On the whole the sample editing capabilities of the tracker are extremely impressive and should provide most users out there just about everything they need to edit samples.

Going one step further however is Milkytracker’s ability to draw your own waveforms in or to have the software auto generator common waveforms such as sine, saw, noise and more. The only real problem I found with the sample editor is that there is a lack of documentation on how to create and draw your own waveforms. The manual clearly states that it can be done, however there is no clear explanation as to how to achieve any useful sound out of this process. I was unable to really achieve anything that sounded beyond a simple sine wave. Needless to say however, the process is there and available.

Once you get your mind around the sample editing and creation the process of creating a track from there on out is rather straight forward. You simply need to select the instrument for the track you want to use and then either type in the notes or musically input them. The process of adding additional tracking types of effects to the melody from there is only a matter of typing in the correct parameter. There is a full list of parameters you can do in the manual, but some of the most common used include portamento and vibrato. The mathematical approach to music creation through the use of a tracker I find on the whole lends itself extremely well to IDM and glitch style percussion. Added to the fact that trackers on the whole have the best interface for applying sample and step accurate effects make it extremely good for that style of music.

Final Thoughts

Trackers are an interesting breed of music creation program. In many respects they are a dying breed that is arcane in its methods, but there is still an extremely devoted following to them on the internet. While some developers have decided to take the tracker into the realm of modern music production, others like Milkytracker are a prime example of a traditional tracker sticking to its roots and doing it well. Milkytracker is perhaps the most stable and feature complete “classic” tracker around on the internet. It hits on all of the bases that a 2nd generation tracker should while still adding in subtle features that a modern computer user would expect from their software; namely .wav export and right click contextual menus. The biggest downfall to Milkytracker at this point is not in the software itself, but rather the documentation for the software. Trackers are undoubtly hard to use. That fact is on exacerbated by the relative ease of other music creation software on the market. The manual forMilkytracker at this point is extremely sparse and it does not present any sort of real walkthrough description for a new user to trackers on how to use the software. There is pretty much no documentation that helps a user get started in the tracker world and they are pretty much left to fend for themselves. I myself for example have started with trackers in their 3rd generation with programs like Buzz Tracker and Psycle. The difference in workflow alone from these “modern trackers” compared to Milkytracker is tremendous and it took be a good several weeks to grasp my head around how it works, even when I am comfortable with using hex numbers and so forth.

Perhaps the developer is targeting the tracker for the tried and true community; the diehards that have been there for years. If that is the case it is too bad, because the potential for trackers is growing with the introduction of more capable mobile platforms. Milkytracker is an excellent music creation software would find its home nicely on anything from a netbook, to an iPhone to a PC. The free price is also extremely attractive for the young bedroom artist who is perhaps just getting into messing around with audio production on their computer. The initial shock though of opening the program and seeing a wall of dots and numbers is a quick turn off to most users. The developer could take some steps to help ease that barrier of entry to develop the community as the whole, because the way I see it, Milkytracker right now is the front runner for preserving and maintaining that aspect of the music creation world. It has a place and while it certainly is not for everyone, it should be accessible to everyone.

Summary

Pros:

• Classic tracker interface and workflow
• Feature complete
• Loads just about every format from the tracker era.
• Takes advantage of modern computing (i.e. ASIO, .wav export, right mouse clicks)
• Runs on just about any platform
• Customizable interface

Cons:

• Lacks proper documentation
• Expanded midi support would be welcome

System Requirements:

• Can run on anything that can turn on.
  • AmigaOS 4
  • Mac OS X Universal & G3 compatible
  • Microsoft Windows ANSI (9x & Me)
  • Microsoft Windows CE/Mobile (ARM, MIPS, x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Unicode (NT, 200x, XP & Vista)
  • Arch Linux
    • i686 package
    • Debian
    • Enlisy
    • Fedora  8 & 9
    • Rawhide
    • FreeBSD
    • Gentoo
    • OpenBSD
    • pkgsrc (multiplatform, native to NetBSD and DragonflyBSD)
    • SUSE
    • Ubuntu Source

Price:

• Free
• http://www.milkytracker.net