What is Reddit's opinion of MilkyTracker?

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renoise is amazing, venetian snares is a renoise user.

if you want something a bit more old-school that's still built for modern OSes, there's milkytracker

and if you want to really test yourself with retro tracking, there's GoatTracker which is a SID emulating tracker. personally it makes my brain bleed but the SID sound chip is legendary

ninja edit: whoops, didn't see /u/Moholmarn had already recommended milky tracker

I use milky tracker to make tunes. It's really not that difficult and I've found some good tutorials on YouTube. You can also load peoples songs in it to learn about how people use it and to take their instruments. There are also sample packs and examples right on the website. There is also a manual the explains all of the effect functions.

I make all of the instruments I use in the tracker. It's pretty simple to do since you can draw the waveforms and generate them. If you want to get started with it and have any questions let me know.

If Garageband is working for you then keep doing what you're doing. But if you want something that might be a little bit better suited to making chiptunes then I would check out MilkyTracker. It's available on Mac and also free!

Yeah, DAW's like FL studio are the way to go when it comes to sampling. The additional step would be mixing in whatever you get out of LSDJ.

Alternatively, you could use a tracker like the free MilkyTracker and load in your samples, then make some GB sounding synths. (Famitracker is another good one if you're looking to make some 8-bit sounds)

Unfortunately, there is no mac version currently. If you have Bootcamp or a Windows emulator you can definitely use those, but that's not ideal. You can also give something called MilkyTracker a try. The basic tracker information still applies, but I don't know how the effects translate over from Famitracker

There's Milkytracker, which is in the tradition of the old DOS and Amiga trackers (and actually still maintains an Amiga port), and is Free Software. If you're not concerned with running proprietary software, Renoise is a more shiny "modern looking" alternative.

You don't have to pay anything to make chiptunes. There are hundreds of free tracker softwares out there. MilkyTracker for example is really good and is completely free and open source.

http://milkytracker.org/

http://milkytracker.org/?download - I use the KIArchive samples. There are many samples in the pack. I make fakebit more than "trve" chiptunes and these have helped me.

MilkyTracker has already been mentioned, and it mimics the layout of FastTracker 2 for MS-DOS.

SchismTracker is another choice that is a clone of ImpulseTracker for MS-DOS.

The 8 bit collective has a wiki with some more possible options, too.

XMPlay can play xm and sid files at the very least, if you're on Windows.

For other platforms, GStreamer should have plugins for it.

I also remember MilkyTracker having better quality playback, not sure though.

No, they’re only built for windows. The YMCK Magical 8 Bit Plug should work for you.

I’ve not used Garageband much at all but the builtin ‘Analog Basic’ instrument and ‘Bitcrusher’ effect would be worth experimenting with for chiptune-esque sounds.

> then another [plugin] that will convert song to 8-bit.

If you have a midi file, this is as simple as choosing 8-bit instruments - though some alterations would enable more authentic and better sounding versions (eg: replacing chords with arpeggios). If you have an mp3 file, there is no plugin that does what you’re looking for. (The ‘bitcrusher’ effect is basically as close as you’d get, and it will just make songs sound painful)

If you don't mind leaving garageband, Milkytracker is free and rather more suited for chiptune.

There might be others, but there are Milky Tracker and Schism Tracker. They are clones of 90s PC trackers FastTracker II and ImpulseTracker respectively. You might find them a bit awkward to use as they are really designed for fast navigation via the keyboard rather than the mouse.

A music tracker format. It's similar to a MIDI file, with the main difference being that the instrument samples are included within the file. I would use MilkyTracker to open it.

Pretty true, though trackers are a very "programmer friendly" way of writing music...

Milkytracker is a very nice open source old-school tracker than runs on modern desktops (and is in debian). I'm terrible at it, but it's fun to play with.

Not all tracker mods are chiptunes as such, of course e.g. Bunch of old Amiga Jungle/Drum&Bass mods on youtube.

No hardware required except for a computer, but for software all you'd really need would be some sort of program that can host sound samples and play notes. There's generally a couple of types of programs that can do that: DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and trackers.

Trackers are almost always free but I've never really spent the time to work out their interface so it looks a little weird to me :P. They're a lot simpler in design though so it's sort of perfect for music based around playing soundfonts because it can't do lots of fancy stuff done with other types of music. I've heard good things about Milkytacker. DAWs, on the other hand are usually not free and go anywhere from $99 to $500. The sky's the limit with these, though, so that's why. If you're serious about making music digitally then you most likely will want one.

The soundfont is the easiest part, though :P. You just google SNES soundfonts and you can find a ton. For my Demon's/Dark Souls SNES covers I've been working on I find myself using mostly a Final Fantasy VI soundfont. This tumblr is dedicated to songs made with SNES soundfonts so it's got rules and limitations that you should set for your music if you want it to sound like the real deal, and they also have a link to a bunch of soundfonts on the right.

You didn't ask for this but I'll tell you anyway since it's pretty much essential to the SNES sound. You need to put pretty much everything in a digital delay effect. SNES sound samples are pretty terrible so they used to coat everything in a light layer of delay to make it sound more lively, so that bad 'reverb' is a part of the sound as much as the sounds themselves. I use this VST plugin to emulate it and it works pretty well for me. I hope this all helped!

not really the answer that you're looking for, but maybe check out some tracking software like milkytracker. Also lsdj if you have a gameboy kicking around. This is how most chiptune music is made, and it's an interesting way to make music if nothing else.

And now for a totally different approach...

If you want to make NES/Famicon style tunes check out the free FamiTracker. But for more general tracker needs there's the open source MilkyTracker. And lastly, for a modern approach to tracking there is the paid ReNoise.

Most are .XMs, so you can convert them using MilkyTracker. It has a render-to-WAV feature.

A couple are Atari-ST .SND files. Sadly I don't know how to convert these, however there are a variety of players (and, if all else fails, emulators) available on the Internet, so I'm sure you can figure something out.

lsdj: http://www.littlesounddj.com It takes some getting used to, but it's actually 4-channel 4-bit. No hacking, just a little digging for hardware. In the meantime, try learning milkytracker: http://milkytracker.org/