Protracker

ProTracker
Original author(s) Lars Hamre, Anders Hamre, Sven Vahsen, Rune Johnsrud
Initial release 1990
Stable release v3.62 / 2000
Operating system AmigaOS
Platform Amiga
Type Tracker (music software)
License public domain

ProTracker is a popular freeware tracker created by Lars Hamre, Anders Hamre, Sven Vahsen and Rune Johnsrud for the Amiga platform. It is amongst the programs that first allowed for widespread creation of music without studio equipment. It was popular for amateurs and professionals alike, and ProTracker amongst others set a standard for the MOD fileformat.[1]

There's ongoing effort to rewrite ProTracker at SourceForge for modern platforms.[2] It is currently on beta stage.

Introduction

ProTracker allows the user to create sequences of notes called "patterns", which are chained together to form a complete song. Music created in ProTracker uses the MOD file format.

It was initially developed for the Amiga line of computers, but was later made available for other contemporary platforms such as the Atari ST.[3]

Features

In addition to the basic features provided by Ultimate Soundtracker and NoiseTracker, ProTracker came equipped with a built-in sample editor and a keyboard split function to assign multiple instruments to different regions of the keyboard. Later versions also extended the MOD format by increasing the maximum number of patterns from 64 to 99.

ProTracker is capable of playing back music at the correct speed on both NTSC and PAL computers. Previous tracker software used playback routines which were synchronized to the refresh rate of the screen, which would cause incorrect playback on NTSC computers due to the higher refresh rate.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Reimer, Jeremy (2010-06-15). "Shadow of the 16-bit Beast: an Amiga gaming retrospective". arstechnica.com. Retrieved 2011-02-15.
  2. ↑ http://sourceforge.net/projects/protracker/ ProTracker rewrite at SourceForce
  3. ↑ ProTracker ST v2.1 at Pouët

External links