Furnace – the biggest multi-system chiptune tracker ever made

by unleaded • 2 years ago

223 64 2 years ago

alister• 2 years ago

Definitions:

Chiptune, also called 8-bit music, is a style of electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game consoles. The term is commonly used to refer to tracker format music using extremely basic and small samples that an old computer or console could produce.[1]

A music tracker (sometimes referred to as a tracker for short) is a type of music sequencer software for creating music.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiptune

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker

ttul• 2 years ago

For people who didn’t grow up in the 1980s and 1990s, these will be key insights!

timthorn2• 2 years ago

And for people who did, but have never heard it referred to as chiptune nor trackers!

tobr• 2 years ago

What I’m wondering is what they mean with “biggest”, though. Largest binary? Most features? Highest resolution? Most users?

kamray23• 2 years ago

more than 3 chips, basically

ilkke2• 2 years ago

I'd assume it means that it supports more chips than deflemask https://www.deflemask.com/

bartread2• 2 years ago

This is pretty crazy - even the ZX Spectrum beeper is supported. Is there some Z80 player code allowing the music to be played on real hardware?

mdp20215• 2 years ago

even the ZX Spectrum beeper is supported

You know what we can do with 1-bit music, right? I.e. Tim Follin's Agent X ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE ) or Agent X II ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNc_xczyGLc ) or Chronos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-D24A_N4d4 ) or Raw Recruit ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8dAVybwq8 ) or Future Games ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orEXKOBIv_8 )...

A modern attempt, the ON and OFF album by Rich 'Tufty' Hollins ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nEfO4Yu7Mg )

jim-jim-jim2• 2 years ago

From the comments:

Say, we switch our signal at a rate of 440 Hz. Or any rate, as a matter of fact. One would assume that the signal is on for half of the time, and off the other half of the time (which is what’s known as a square wave). But it doesn’t need to be that way. We can also create a signal that’s on for 1% of the time, and off 99% of the time. As long as we switch at 440 Hz, we still get a 440 Hz note. However, we now have a lot of space between the “on” pulses. Within that space, we can render a second train of pulses at a different frequency. The result will be that both frequencies are audible. This gives a very characteristic sound. This is pulse frequency modulation. Funny side node, that’s actually how your brain cells communicate with each other. Anyway, Tim Follin’s early works on ZX Spectrum are typical examples of that.

I wish I could use my relative youth as an excuse here, but I'm afraid I don't quite understand what "on for 1% of the time" means. Like the envelope of the beep is extremely short? And then if you pulse at regular intervals, it creates a sustained tone? And then interleaving differently-spaced pulse sequences creates the illusion of polyphony? Or is it something fancier? Does the ZX have any notion of sample rate or is the signal not even digital?

pixelfarmer• 2 years ago

PC speaker:

- 8088 mph demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHXx3orN35Y

- Area 5150 demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWDxdoRTZPc

- Stormlord (game, 1989): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmDJt1etzRE (unfortunately doesn't keep intro screen around for long)

- A nice video explaining PC speaker with examples (also features Chronos from ZX Spectrum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD4m9JvLy2Y

bartread2• 2 years ago

Oh, yeah, very familiar with Agent X and Chronos. I remember getting Chronos back in the day and, bearing in mind it was a budget title, being absolutely blown away by the music.

rsync• 2 years ago

Are there any sample tracks extant that utilize the broad range of chips that Furnace has ?

sirwhinesalot• 2 years ago

Youtube is full of them! Search for Furnace Tracker and check out AshKirby's monster playlist.

isaacn• 2 years ago

Looks awesome! But does it play s3m files? :-)

Moru• 2 years ago

Isn't s3m a bit too modern for chip tunes? :-)

alisonatwork• 2 years ago

Yes! XM and IT are coming too. This was the thing that helped it dislodge OpenMPT for me as a casual tracker for noodling around.

OpenMPT obviously has much more accurate playback of PC era mods, but the UI of Furnace feels less awkward to me and reminds me more of composing in ST3/IT without being a completely backwards-looking clone like Schism.

chrismorgan• 2 years ago

I wanted to try composing some music in this way and this style, but I found it hard to get started, being paralysed by choice. It’s big, it’s multi-system… but I just want to start with something decent. I’m not targeting any particular device, just making music. Sometimes simple, sometimes with more harmonisation, effects like wobble and pitch bend and such, but I’m not interested in things like sampling; mostly I just want something a bit more powerful than BeepBox. I know I’m being vague, but does anyone happen to have any suggestions and recommendations for which systems might work well?

For a different project, I’d also like this sort of thing but with a Web Audio API-based player, potentially real-time scriptable rather than static. So ideally the perfect system would also be easy to use on the web.

HelloNurse• 2 years ago

I’m not targeting any particular device, just making music.

Then think of the music first and then find a suitable target device and configuration: enough tracks and channels for the various parts, appropriate synthesis and effect possibilities (FM/PM, phase distortion and wavetables, good filters, LFOs, reverb and distortion...) for the timbres you intend to use, a sufficiently high bit depth and sample rate to avoid unwanted artifacts (or a sufficiently low bit depth and sample rate to cause wanted artifacts).

chaosprint• 2 years ago

perhaps give https://glicol.org/ a try?

snowram3• 2 years ago

A classic for starting is the NES sound chip (Ricoh 2A03). It only has 5 channels and is very straightforward to use. FM chips like the one in the Megadrive or Commodore 64 have a way steeper learning curve in comparison.

ilkke2• 2 years ago

Agree NES is a good place to start. C64 SID is not FM at all, but agree it's not easy to learn.

thesuperbigfrog• 2 years ago

> A classic for starting is the NES sound chip (Ricoh 2A03). It only has 5 channels and is very straightforward to use.

Such a simple chip and yet it was capable of producing amazing music in the right hands. Tim Follin created some legendary game soundtracks with that chip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzTDAgG4EXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_gObHt1uZA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQlLl2j5THQ

rob74• 2 years ago

Calvin Harris famously used an Amiga 1200 for his first album (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Harris#2006%E2%80%93200...) and even had one on stage for the Brit Awards this year (https://www.retropassion.co.uk/at-the-brits-well-one-of-our-..., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8vaccttxsg) - although I'm not sure to what extent it was actually used...

dimatura• 2 years ago

Like other commenters said, I would just choose a single chip and limit yourself to that. That's pretty constrained by today's standards (arguably, even all of furnace tracker is rather limited compared to your typical modern DAW) - but still plenty to make great music. Which chipset? Maybe you can listen to tracks made with any of these and see which you like best (if you search for the chip name you'll probably find examples on youtube). Good ones are Gameboy (hugely popular thanks to gameboy-native software like LSDJ and nanoloop), YMF2612 (the Sega Genesis chip, primarily FM-based, so can be pretty modern), YMF262/OPL3(also FM, ubiquitous in old PCs), NES (very barebones, more so than gameboy), SID (the commodore chip, which was pretty ahead of its time in terms of sonic capabilities, has a cult following).

kinduff• 2 years ago

This is a delight. I loved the intro, had a blast from the past with the keygen exes back when.

Looks very sofisticated, gonna give it a go!

MaanuAir• 2 years ago

These guys do this with real vintage hardware:

http://theotherdays.net/

wdfx• 2 years ago

*shameless self promo*

Me too: https://doug.lon.dev/fourays

and I have 2 units for sale here: https://reverb.com/uk/item/83277820-doug-lon-dev-fourays-pol...

082349872349872• 2 years ago

Not exactly chiptune, but I feel the Floppotron ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-WakfBNHD0 ) is more or less in a straight line of descent from the ancients:

https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...

Tymes: ...I found that if I gave a write command to the tape unit and then aborted the write command before it got past the interrecord gap, I could start and stop the tape as often as maybe 300 times a second, which is in the acoustic range. So you could make a lot of noise with those things.

Hardy: He got them to play music.

Tymes: So I wrote the Stars and Stripes Forever. I used the console speaker for the piccolo. It had a drum printer, which I used for the percussion. And I had a row of tape units all synchronized so that they were all pulsing together for the trombones.

...

Tymes: We put the doors to the tape unit half way down so that they would radiate the sound really good. And you could feel it in your chest. It would go bom, bom, ba bam bom. The whole building would shake when that program ran.

EDIT: a picture of this "expensive tracker" (~USD 30 million in 2024?) may be found in http://www.cap-lore.com/Hardware/steam_42-43.pdf

mdp20215• 2 years ago

This is what I wanted:

mix and match sound chips! // over 200 ready to use presets from computers, game consoles and arcade boards... // ...or create your own presets - up to 32 chips or a total of 128 channels

Do you want a SID chip based system with as many channels as you want? There you are...

velo_aprx• 2 years ago

A cool feature for sure, but, kind of ruins the whole concept of that a chiptune is. For me its about the limitation of the system. If that is not one of the core reasons you are into chiptunes you might as well use whatever you like to make music that go plipediblop. (edit): Then again, i have always considered mod and xms that use samples and sound like chiptunes to also be chiptunes even though they fall outside of the true definition.

in_a_hole• 2 years ago

It's nice to have all the limitations in one box, maximal minimalism.

mdp20215• 2 years ago

You are confusing two dimensions: being masterful and cunning in the use of an instrument, and fully expressing creativity. The first thrives on limitations, for the second limitations are unwanted.

You can create a masterpiece with a stick and a pebble - but not all masterpieces.

Netcob• 2 years ago

I sometimes feel that way about pixel art in modern games, but maybe that's a bit like getting angry at people playing checkers for using a chessboard wrong.

For some people it's about being creative within the very narrow bounds of a specific system, for others it's about using a very specific style that originated within those bounds. In order to use that style you still need a good way to simulate thouse systems.

NobodyNada• 2 years ago

There's a lot of artists who write music that's inspired by chiptune or has chiptune instruments but is not pure chiptune -- they use modern production techniques, don't limit themselves to specific hardware, and often combine chiptune elements with modern instruments.

I agree that there's something special about music composed with the limitations of a platform in mind, but there's also something special about music that's not constrained by these limitations and just uses chiptune hardware as an audio production tool. They both have their place, some people will prefer one or the other, and that's fine. Making a tracker configurable like this makes it useful for both times of music.

Some examples of "unconstrained" chiptune-style artists:

Anamanaguchi: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cppRxHfmY403D https://youtube.com/watch?v=gpzAaJ1ikZ0

Lindsay Lowend: https://youtube.com/watch?v=EZjt9Jl3GGA

Fearofdark: https://youtube.com/watch?v=R4N_YrnUTC4

rollcat• 2 years ago

A cool feature for sure, but, kind of ruins the whole concept of that a chiptune is.

It's called a band, or an orchestra. Or a guitar effect. Or using a brush instead of a stick to play the drums. Or defretting a guitar. Or a happy accident during recording that produces a unique tone.

An instrument has a limitation. Artist can work with, or around the limitation. It may no longer be "chiptune as you know it", but that's essentially how new genres are born - you can't discriminate creativity.

foft• 2 years ago

Is it possible to use this to make songs for multiple chips at once?

In the pokeymax and sidmax projects I have dual pokey, dual sid, dual ym2149 and a simple dma sample engine available. It would be great to make some songs using all of them for their strengths at the same time.

lloeki• 2 years ago

README:

    Features:
    [...]
      - mix and match sound chips!

fuhsnn• 2 years ago

I'll give the benefit of doubt in accuracy for chip emulations not executed in their real world clock rate, which would be quite expansive to do real-time. But as a creative environment, this is pure fun!

superdisk• 2 years ago

This thing is truly a technical marvel and a massive accomplishment by the developer. He works tirelessly and at one point closed out every one of the hundreds of issues filed on the repo before it's 0.6 release. The number of supported chips and interacting features is unparalleled by anything else.

sim7c002• 2 years ago

this is really epic. Little sad to see the instruments aren't vsti, but i guess that's totally understadable for such a project :D. work daily with Renoise tracker and was hoping to grab some haha!. Love trackers! <3 its the best way to make digital music!

Very epic project and a crazy achievement to make such a complete and huge tracker for chiptunes!

djdrone• 2 years ago

I tried Furnace Tracker earlier this year. I always wanted to learn more about using trackers to create chiptunes. I followed a tutorial from Button Masher:

How to Learn Chiptune Trackers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37XuOLz0jw

The tutorial uses Furnace. It provides a great overview of the components, and then guides you through a hands-on exercise of transcribing an existing demo. This was a nice way to get more familiar with Furnace. Button Masher provides some demos to use, but also there are many demos at the furnace github project:

https://github.com/tildearrow/furnace/tree/master/demos

klez• 2 years ago

Speaking of tracker music, I can't not mention "Professional Trackers" by Hoffman & Daytripper. Not only because the music is cool but because of what they did visually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ErmKpTcFA

Even better, if you have a tracker that lets you see a whole patch at once (worked fine with milkytracker) download the MOD and play it directly in the tracker

https://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&qu...

shidoshi• 2 years ago

Lots of comments herein cover things I would otherwise post, so I'll just say this is great fun. Love that it's FOSS. Now, everyone go make some music!

spockz• 2 years ago

Here I was, from the title alone, under the impression that this was something created to be able to track different cars/engines based on their individual chip tuning (performance enchantments etc.). Boy was I wrong.

RunSet• 2 years ago

I thought it was going to be a massively collaborative chiptune tracker.

Furnace – the biggest multi-system chiptune tracker ever made

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