
Amiga Music Tracker in JavaScript - baldfat
https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/
======
degenerate
GitHub link:
[https://github.com/steffest/bassoontracker](https://github.com/steffest/bassoontracker)

Everything about this makes me giddy with excitement, from the cursor to the
faded out numbers in the digital display. I "miss" these times, yet I was born
too late to enjoy it in real time. I hope the demoscene lives on forever and
we keep seeing it pop up in future tech.

~~~
baldfat
When I opened it I swear I got teary eyed. Things were so much harder that
when you finally got something decent it just made you feel like you were king
of the nerd hill.

~~~
munificent
_> Things were so much harder that when you finally got something decent it
just made you feel like you were king of the nerd hill._

I first started making music using a tracker (PlayerPRO on the Mac) before
later moving to Pro Tools and Reason, and I actually found it much easier to
finish songs using a tracker. The quality wasn't as good, but the limitations
and structure helped me get a song done. With Reason, I find myself just
twiddling knobs for hours and at the end of the day all I have is a few bars
of something.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Though I agree about the structure (and keyboard shortcuts) being helpful,
derping around endless is still how I use trackers.. and after hating it for a
long time, I actually now love it to not ever consider anything "finished",
and trackers are perfect for that.

Instead of a mess of giant files of things bounced from various programs or
even hardware, it's just a file... and though with Renoise the VST matter a
lot, since I still have those I still can load up and work on things I made
over a decade ago. I can try to touch it up some, or steal parts I like to
make something new, with filesizes ranging from a few hundred kilobytes to a
few dozen megabytes at most. That's my bliss. I know the listener doesn't and
shouldn't care about that, but it's a trade-off I make gladly. I think my
music became much simpler, too, maybe "worse", but more fun for me, because
instead of layering instruments that play the same melody in another octave
and a lot of effects, I now remove things with equal glee as I add them with.
The less I use to achieve something I can shake my butt to, the more I like
it... having a rich sound is nice, but seeing all columns on one screen is
_awesome_ , as is rendering a 5 minute song in 20 seconds instead of 3
minutes. I like the agility of this one-person studio that starts up in like 1
second too much, and even if I had the ability to master well, I wouldn't want
to render tracks from Renoise to then master them in another program. Other
than denoising samples, I do it all in Renoise. Considering what other people
are doing with it and the legacy of tracking in general, I don't feel like a
king of the nerd hill though, but I do feel like the captain of my bathtub.

I recommend it to everybody, and I recommend sticking through years of feeling
completely useless at it. It's what I did, and I think if you like music
enough to enjoy it, and if you are making it to entertain yourself, practice
might not make you perfect, but it will gift you some things you wouldn't have
thought you have in you. As far as hobbies go, this is like owning a dog, it
does everybody good (should they have any affinity for it at all, that is). I
say that because a friend of mine thinks making music is somehow translating
the music we can compose in our heads into reality, and at least for me,
that's not the case. I can sing in the shower, or "think music", but when I
sit down with a tracker, I'm still surprised by the results, like, I didn't
come up with this, I just found it. I think the key is to not be shy... if in
doubt, just don't show it to anyone (yet), but do make music regardless. It's
one of the most wonderful things you can do with a computer, IMO.

~~~
munificent
_> derping around endless is still how I use trackers.. and after hating it
for a long time, I actually now love it to not ever consider anything
"finished", and trackers are perfect for that._

I've definitely had many satisfying evenings twiddling knobs in Reason, but
after a while it loses its fun for me if I don't feel I'm eventually getting
to something worth sharing with others.

 _> I say that because a friend of mine thinks making music is somehow
translating the music we can compose in our heads into reality, and at least
for me, that's not the case. I can sing in the shower, or "think music", but
when I sit down with a tracker, I'm still surprised by the results, like, I
didn't come up with this, I just found it._

Yes, I absolutely agree that the instrument affects the music in profound
ways. Music is such a physical act that what you'd compose with a keyboard
(piano or typewriter) is different than what you'd compose with a guitar in
your hands instead.

I love everything about your comment.

~~~
PavlovsCat
One thing that really helped me is to realize that many of my favorite songs
are probably not that special to most people. This is, no joke, still one of
my favorite little ditties:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Io5l0YgNko&t=34m20s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Io5l0YgNko&t=34m20s)

I actually sometimes still listen and maybe even dance to the Amiga version of
this ^^ And I'm not saying this isn't a great song, musically, but most people
wouldn't want to hear this on the radio or in a club, while I would absolutely
go apeshit if that ever happened. I know having heard it first as a kid is a
part of it, but the end result matters. I love this tune, even though most
normal people might not enjoy it, and would at least prefer "normal
instruments". (And don't even get me started on L.F.F. by 4mat :D)

So I try to shift my standard from "is this really good, does this make me
look awesome", to "is this _too_ embarrassing, or really just a pointless
amusical waste of time", and try to raise the bar for what embarrasses me...
because even something I might not like _that_ much, might be the jam for
someone else, who knows. What would I tell that imaginary person, that they
never got to hear their jam, because I was afraid of what other people might
think of it? I also know songs where I like the demo or some dirty live
version much more than the perfectly produced studio version, so I try to tell
myself, the more the merrier.

I think what really helped in my case is that it all became coupled with
lyrics that are either very personal or very political, and it took me so
much.. wrestling, not being able to sleep well doing it, but also not being
able to let it go for good... and also the world (and rap music) becoming a
lot more crazy, and probably me getting older, to become less inhibited -- and
being embarrassed about too simple music was completely overshadowed by that.
It used to be a concern but it got lost along the trek :) And I also
discovered that as far as "beats" go, less really is more, at least, very
little is more than enough. The same goes for chip style melodies, and those
two are all I need to be happy musically, basically forever.

Well, that and compos with small sample packs becoming more of a thing again.
Nothing more fun than that IMO :)

------
exogeny
Oh man, this is amazing. I'm teary-eyed with nostalgia, too.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the demoscene and tracker music, here are
some recommended old-school tunes to spin up to get a feel for the art at the
time. (Someone more in touch than me will have to lead you to the new school!)
Just keep in mind the technological limitations on some of these songs: 4
channels, maybe 100k all-in for such wonderful music. Truly amazing.

My recommendations, running from 1986-1993ish: Karsten Obarski - Crystal
Hammer Firefox - Galaxy 2 Uncle Tom - Poseidon Jester - Elysium Captain -
Space Debris Tip + Firefox - Enigma Mantronix - Act Of Impulse 4-mat - Red
Sector Theme Romeo Knight - Cream Of The Earth Greg - Odyssey Part 2 Jugi -
Onward Ride Laxity - Desert Dream

I'm sure others can add more. What amazing times!

~~~
AceJohnny2
Karsten Koch - The Blue Valley (darn, S3M can't be played on Bassoon)
[https://modarchive.org/module.php?37685](https://modarchive.org/module.php?37685)

Skaven - Catch that Goblin!!
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=34654)

Skaven - 2nd Reality (from the absolute classic demo)
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=60400)

Uplink, the hacking video game, actually used a bunch of classic tracks as its
OST: [https://youtu.be/8Esv7RPM--c](https://youtu.be/8Esv7RPM--c)

~~~
Jare
Catch that Goblin was amazing, when it started playing at the partyplace,
everyone sort of stopped not paying attention to the compo, and turned their
heads with a "wtf" face. IIRC some of the samples got Skaven in trouble with
Disney.

------
snvzz
Since it plays modules made for the Amiga, linking this is mandatory:

[https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt](https://bel.fi/alankila/modguide/interpolate.txt)

~~~
akx
This bit made me go "wat" out loud.

> Additionally, it is possible to engage a low-pass 12 dB/oct Butterworth
> filter tuned at approximately 3.2 kHz by turning the Amiga power LED
> brighter with a special protracker command.

~~~
egypturnash
This didn't happen on the earliest Amigas. It just changed the power LED
brightness.

I had one game (Psygnosis "Baal", otherwise fairly unmemorable) that flickered
the LED with the beat of the title track just because it looked cool. It
sounded _awful_ on anything besides an A1000.

------
harel
I graduated from Amiga trackers to a full fledged studio, with hardware
mixers, synths, effect racks etc. And then, years later, back again to just a
computer. Full circle.

~~~
bibac
I messed around with the Amiga trackers back in the day. When I look at the
software available today, e.g. on my iPad, I have a hard time getting anything
useful out of it. Which software are you using now?

~~~
zellyn
SunVox is a fantastic modern tracker that runs on pretty much anything.

~~~
tgvaughan
True, but SunVox is so much more than just a tracker. In my experience with
(PC) trackers they rely mostly on modifying pre-recorded samples. SV on the
other hand allows you to chain together a crazy array of synth modules to
produce sounds "from scratch".

~~~
PavlovsCat
Well there's Renoise, there's Jeskola's Buzz (the changelog starts at 2008 but
I'm sure I used it well before that), Noise Trekker had a synth as early as
1999. Adlib Tracker? You're still right in that for the most part, for a long
time, tracking on the PC meant FastTracker or ScreamTracker, and those just
used samples. But we've come a long way since then in the early 2000s.

~~~
coroxout
Buzz was around in 1999 (I think - I first used it in 2000/2001) but circa
2001 the coder had a hard disk crash and lost his code, and finally resumed
work on it in 2008 from a much older codebase or possibly from scratch. I
assume that's part of why the changelog starts in 2008.

I miss the 1998-era softsynth with built-in tracker Analogic, later called AXS
(or was it the other way round?).
[http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11012&page=1](http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11012&page=1)

------
ekianjo
Superb! The second song, Stardust, was in the demo "World of Commodore 1992"
(EDITED). Excellent track.

[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2FStardust...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2FStardustMemories.mod)

~~~
degenerate
Sanity - World of Commodore 92

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u43uH-
kQpzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u43uH-kQpzk)

~~~
ekianjo
Thanks! One of my favorite demos from Sanity remains Arte:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFh07lXfxTY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFh07lXfxTY)

~~~
armitron
Great demo.

Not as good as the best ever though :-)

"Kefrens: The meaning of life is to become a legend"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jziQBWQxvok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jziQBWQxvok)

------
zestyping
Omg. Man,
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=demomods%2Fspacedeb.mod)
really brought back memories.

------
onion2k
Modarchive and modules.pl API support under Files -> Load is brilliant.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Weird, I can't find Skaven on their integration of either modarchive.org or
modules.pl

~~~
amatecha
I think because all his modules are .it and .s3m, so they are excluded. This
tracker can only play .mod and .xm

------
blt
Writing a .mod player is a fun recreational programming project. I kind of
want to get an Amiga so I can hear the sound of the Paula chip doing
resampling by changing the audio clock rate instead of my PC doing digital
resampling to 48kHz.

------
LeoPanthera
Load the "Lotus 2" music, and disable channels 1, 2, and 4, to hear their
attempt at subliminal messaging in the first few seconds of the song.

~~~
hmfigueiredo
"You will not copy this game!"

------
noddy1w
Amazing project, thankyou :)

Notable artists who started their careers on trackers: aphex twin,
machinedrum, axwell, darude, deadmau5 +many more

------
EamonnMR
I've been trying to get into trackers for sequencing for a while, but the
learning curve is very steep. Has anyone got resources to learn how to
sequence one of these beasts with a keyboard? They seem to be the key to
making lots and lots of intricate breakbeats.

~~~
pan69
With "keyboard" you mean, a musicians keyboard, right? I assume you need a
midi interface to the software but I don't know of any tracker that supports
midi.

My personal favourite tracker is Fast Tracker II, but it also don't support
midi. However, it has some really good documentation that might help you get
into working with trackers:

[https://milkytracker.titandemo.org/docs/FT2.pdf](https://milkytracker.titandemo.org/docs/FT2.pdf)

~~~
EamonnMR
Actually my understanding is that you can use a computer keyboard to very
rapidly enter lots of notes quickly and precisely without relying on your own
human limitations as you would with a musical keyboard. I've seen it billed as
sort of like Vi for music.

~~~
pan69
Yes, I'm pretty sure you can set FT2 in a record mode and then "play" notes on
your computer keyboard, but I don't think that's what OP is asking.

How I understand OP's question is; you make a drum pattern in FT2 which you
can trigger to play by pressing a key on a musical keyboard. I think the
context of OP's question is for during a live/real-time performance.

------
mortenjorck
Not only has the author collected a great library of classic mod files to play
back, they compiled a fantastic starter library of mod samples for composing
new work. These have such a delightfully retro sound to them, I'd love to use
them in other software as well, such as the sampler in my primary DAW – anyone
know how to extract a WAV file from these vintage Amiga DMS archives?

------
kristiandupont
Cute! Sadly it doesn't handle my .it or .s3m files.

------
scruffyherder
I'd been using [https://github.com/defrac/defrac-
sample-8bitboy](https://github.com/defrac/defrac-sample-8bitboy) 8bitboy for a
while, but alas it seems that most things block it from playing music these
days.

------
growlist
Thanks for the trip back in time to Octamed and a £20 sampler. This is one of
the best tunes produced on an Amiga IMHO:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L36m5sobhOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L36m5sobhOE)

------
rothron
This takes me back!

But it feels kinda wrong to have that mouse cursor and have it not move
perfectly smooth.

~~~
pan69
> But it feels kinda wrong to have that mouse cursor and have it not move
> perfectly smooth.

So you get the full immersive experience. :)

~~~
zozbot123
The "immersive experience" would have that cursor move at a solid 60FPS and
negligible latency. Amiga had hardware sprites, and even software-managed
sprites had comparable performance.

~~~
rothron
You also need a CRT or at least some sort of strobing refresh display to
eliminate smearing from persistence of vision.

------
JeanMarcS
Just for information, it just crashed on the Space Debris song for me (FF on
linux), had to close my browser for the sample to stop looping.

Retried on chromium, no problem, and it's cool !

Bringing back memory from when I was a student :-)

I'm going to open an issue if it can help

------
AndrewStephens
I love this. Like many people here, I mucked around with modules on the Amiga
using OctoMED. I could never match the great songs that came with the games
and demo of the time but I had a lot of fun.

------
AceJohnny2
Well this brings me back a few decades. Funny how music does that.

------
6c696e7578
This brings back memories. For the life of me though, I cannot remember what
the music format was that I could use to play background music in turbo
pascal. Happy days.

------
general8bitso
This is great.

I remember listening to Axel F, and attempting to make my own mods, but
basically just changed the instrument samples.

~~~
partomniscient
This video is for you then:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlyK_elUmIw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlyK_elUmIw)

Not the author - just wanted to add to your nostalgia kick.

~~~
ugotsta
Good grief, he did that with just 4 tracks! Sounds exactly like I remember it
too. Thanks for sharing.

------
Dragon256
This is really good. It takes me back to my Amiga days ! BTW: VLC can also
play MOD files.

------
timc3
Just amazing and brings back a lot of memories. Now I just need to find the
music I did

------
batiste
It works incredibly well even on my Android cellphone... I am surprised.

------
pmarreck
OMG, the memories.... .mod files, right? I used to have thousands

------
gabrielflorit
This is fantastic. I love the demo tunes. Runs pretty smooth too.

------
jcpst
very cool, and all in vanilla ES5, impressive.

~~~
pjmlp
Quite true, in spite of favouring native over Web when given the option, it is
demos like this that show how much we have evolved and make me reassess the
current state.

------
rafaelvasco
Wow. Respect. Amiga represent !!

------
amatecha
I am really impressed by the responsive layout -- the UI adapts to different
window sizes! Nice touch :)

Some favorite modules to check out. First link is link to modarchive site,
second link is direct link to Bassoon Tracker with the module pre-populated so
you can listen instantly! So handy!

Matrix Cubed - Fluff
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=145090)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D145090)

DeusEX - Joy
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=143186)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D143186)

Sybaris - Welcome to the Gods
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=151392)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D151392)

Mindwalker - Evoke '98
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=169456)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D169456)

xerxes - hesse's sovesang
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=62901)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D62901)

"me and kenet" (unsure of artist) - Beautiful or not?
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=139336)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D139336)

drax - repeating patterns
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=67478)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D67478)

Tim Wright - Agony (intro) original version
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=126853)
|
[https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m...](https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D126853)

Unfortunate some mega favorites like Skaven's "The Alchemist"[0] and
Vincenzo's remix of 2nd Reality[1] are Impulse Tracker modules and won't play
in Bassoon Tracker. Maybe .it support will be added? :)

[0]
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=48557)
[1]
[https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...](https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=49947)

------
teknopurge
this thing is gorgeous.

------
starlig-ht
holy f. well done

