ProTracker is a
music tracker
A music tracker (sometimes referred to as just tracker for short) is a type of music sequencer software for creating music. The music is represented as discrete musical notes positioned in several channels at discrete chronological positions on ...
for the
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...
platform. A free software tool that required no additional equipment, it became popular in the early 1990s with both amateurs and professionals, allowing for sample-based music in the
MOD file format.
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
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...
line of computers, but was later made available for other platforms such as the
Atari ST.
Features
Building upon the features of previous trackers such as
Ultimate Soundtracker and
NoiseTracker (of which ProTracker's code is based on), 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, and adding a number of additional effects.
''ProTracker'' is capable of playing back music at the correct speed on both
NTSC
The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
and
PAL
Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
computers. Previous tracker software used playback routines which were synchronized to the
refresh rate
The refresh rate (or "vertical refresh rate", "vertical scan rate", terminology originating with the cathode ray tubes) is the number of times per second that a raster-based display device displays a new image. This is independent from frame ra ...
of the screen, which would cause music composed on one standard to sound incorrect on computers of the other standard due to the differing refresh rates.
Open source remake
There is an ongoing effort since 2010 to make an
open source software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...
clone
Clone or Clones or Cloning or Cloned or The Clone may refer to:
Places
* Clones, County Fermanagh
* Clones, County Monaghan, a town in Ireland
Biology
* Clone (B-cell), a lymphocyte clone, the massive presence of which may indicate a pathologi ...
of ProTracker for modern platforms at
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...
.
Protracker 2.3 clone
/ref> The also "ProTracker 2.3D clone" named software is developed under the BSD 3-Clause License
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...
and available for Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
, Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
, and macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
.
See also
* List of Tracker Software
Notes
External links
ProTracker
at pouet.net
ProTracker v2.3D clone for modern platforms
on GitHub
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...
o
Debian
ProTracker tutorials
on YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...
{{AmigaOS
Audio trackers
Public-domain software with source code
Amiga software