SOUNDTRACKER(1)

💖 SOUNDTRACKER 💖

okay bestie, so this is the soundtracker page from the General Commands Manual (that's section 1 for the uninitiated) — it's a tracker for gnome that supports .xm files, and we're gonna walk through it together, no cap. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

soundtracker — a tracker for gnome that supports .xm files 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

soundtracker

that's it. that's the whole invocation. just run it, she's low maintenance 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so this manual page documents soundtracker briefly — and I do mean briefly, we'll get to that. 🙈

this page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program doesn't have a manual page of its own. instead, it's got some docs living in /usr/share/doc/soundtracker, and honestly those are gonna be more up-to-date than this page. so if something here looks crusty, check there first, fr fr.

soundtracker is a program that lets you arrange a bunch of sound samples into a tune, made up of multiple tracks that get mixed together — typically in software. think of it like a collage but the magazine clippings are drum hits and the glue is math. ✨

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🎹 USING 🎹

ngl, some of the functions here are keyboard-only — like, there's no menu item, you just gotta know the combo. so here are all the important key combinations, mostly inspired by the great Amiga ProTracker (and yes, most alphanumeric keys are mapped to a piano keyboard, iconic behavior honestly 👑).

💫 TRACK EDITOR 💫

• Right Ctrl — Play Song 🎶
• Right Alt — Play Pattern
• Right Shift — Record (Play Pattern & Edit On) -- not yet! 😭 (sorry bestie, it's not implemented)
• Space — Stop Playing; edit mode on/off
• F1 ... F7 — Change editing octave
• Left Ctrl-1 ... -8 — Change jump value
• CrsrUp / Down — Walk around in current pattern
• PgUp / Down — Walk around in current pattern, quickly 🏃‍♀️
• F9 — Jump to position 0
• F10 — Jump to position L / 4
• F11 — Jump to position L / 2
• F12 — Jump to position 3 * L / 4
• CrsrLeft / Right — Change pattern column and/or channel
• Tab — Skip to same column in next channel
• Left Ctrl - CrsrLeft — Previous Instrument (faster with Left Shift)
• Left Ctrl - CrsrRight — Next Instrument (faster with Left Shift)
• Left Ctrl - CrsrDown — Previous Sample (faster with Left Shift)
• Left Ctrl - CrsrUp — Next Sample (faster with Left Shift)
• Left Alt - CrsrLeft — Previous Pattern (faster with Left Shift)
• Left Alt - CrsrRight — Next Pattern (faster with Left Shift)
• Left Ctrl - B — Start marking a block (one track horizontally)
• Left Ctrl - C — Copy block
• Left Ctrl - X — Cut block
• Left Ctrl - V — Paste block and advance to end
• Left Shift - F3 — Cut track
• Left Shift - F4 — Copy track
• Left Shift - F5 — Paste track
• Left Alt - F3 — Cut pattern
• Left Alt - F4 — Copy pattern
• Left Alt - F5 — Paste pattern
• Any other keys — Play notes on the keyboard. 🎼

okay quick heads up: those "faster with Left Shift" ones are literal — hold Left Shift and it zooms through the list. the way that works is genuinely so satisfying.

🌸 SAMPLE EDITOR 🌸

Hold Shift and use the left / right mouse buttons to set the loop points in the sample display. that's the whole vibe. 🖱️✨

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🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

if you wanna know more about tracking in general, http://www.united-trackers.org/ has a lot of resources. go forth and get obsessed.

also peep the SoundTracker homepage: http://www.soundtracker.org/ 🦋

SoundTracker still needs detailed documentation. if you wanna help out with that, you should first become familiar with DocBook or similar SGML tools. like, that's the entry fee, bestie, no shortcuts. 💅

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Michael Krause [ raw style / lego ] <m.krause@tu-harburg.de> wrote SoundTracker. king behavior, we stan. 🫶

this manual page was mostly lifted from /usr/share/doc/soundtracker/README by Frankie Fisher <frankie@skunkpussy.freeserve.co.uk>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). so generous. so real.

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💀 BUGS 💀

this documentation is possibly outdated. 😭 like, possibly?? girl. (that's the bug. that's it. that's the whole bug section. iconic.)

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and that's a wrap on soundtracker(1), from the General Commands Manual, written for Debian GNU/Linux — stay slay, stay tracked, and go read /usr/share/doc/soundtracker for the fresh info 💖✨🎀