Instruments in Milky are based on Samples; you can use up to 16 Samples in one Instrument and up to 128 Instruments in one Song. So, how do we use Instruments and Samples in Milky? Let's load a few premade Instruments.
Image: loading Instruments - Milkytracker
As you can see in the Image, choose Position '01' in the Instrumentslist and click at 'LOAD' on top of the Instrumentslist.
You get a FileRequester, where you can choose the Instrument, that you like (the Instrument files are ending with .xi) . Don't be to shy to experiment with Instruments, Samples and Songs outside of this Tutorial, because with experimenting you can learn things too.
Instruments are ready to use most of the time after loading them, so that i don't have to say much about loading them again.
The button on the left near 'LOAD', wich is called 'ZAP', deletes the current Instrument (out of Milky's Memory) and 'SAVE' is simply for saving an Instrument. We will have a look at that later again while creating Instruments.
Now to the next one. Samples. Samples are the Basic Part of Instruments in Milky, and so you should choose your Samples with really thinking about what you need and what not and so on. Loading, saving and deleting Samples is as easy as it is with Instruments: You use the buttons on top of the Samplelist and not on top of the Instrumentslist.
If you need more than one Sample for one Instrument, simply choose more than one Position in the Samplelist - Not only '0' , but '1' and '2' and so on too. In a similar way you can choose more than one Instrument, because we need more than one in a Song most of the time.
Now you know, how to load Samples, save them and delete them, but what you do not know, is, how to create an Instrument out of a Sample. Don't worry, we'll go on to that Theme right now.
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There are two or three ways to get Samples:
1.) Samples from Sampling-CD's, a Keyboard or the Internet; 2.) create Samples with the Help of the Synthesize-Function in Milky; or 3.) simply draw Samples - yes, you can create Samples in Milky with a drawing function too - that's good for small ChipSamples.
But you can ask someone, if you can use his/her Samples or Instruments, too.
As an Example, i'll show you here a Chipsample and what to think about while creating one.
Samples are most of the time in WAV file format (File ending: .wav) . That's the standart-audio-format in Windows, besides the newer and compressed WMA-files.
Open the Sampleeditor with a click at 'Smp. Ed.' - You should see an empty Samplefield.
(Btw. you can delete the current song out of milky's Memory, with a click at 'Zap' in the Menu - after that you can choose 'All' in the Dialog-Box - maybe you need to select 'Options' and 'Fasttracker 2.x' in Playback Mode too)
You can see the empty Sampleeditor in front of you in the lower part of Milky. Click with the right Mousebutton in the Samplefield (this space with the line in the middle) - now you can see a small menu - please choose there 'New' and type in '64'. After a click at 'Ok' you should have created your Samplespace.
But we can't hear anything, so please click again with the right Mousebutton in the Samplespace and in the small Menu choose 'Generators' and there one of the possible Waveforms (please play with that, to get a feeling for the sound of every waveform) . To hear the waveform, that you created, you first need to choose 'Forward' or 'Ping-Pong' near 'No loop'
Drawing a Waveform isn't that hard to do, if you practise that a bit. Click at the Button called 'Draw' (near 'Vol') . Now you can draw a Waveform, that you like into the Samplewindow - It will be tuned to C, if you did choose '64' first as the Samplelenght - (see 'Lenght', there you should see a '40' - 40 is hex and should be a 64 in dec) . Don't forget to choose Forward or Ping-Pong Loop, so that you can hear a long tone and not just a click/pop.
Now we have created some rough Chipsamples. Now we can create Instruments out of them. Please click at 'Ins Ed.' - The Instrumentseditor pops up. Click there at '0' near 'Predef.' (on the right near 'Panning') - Ah, we now have created a so called 'Envelope', wich will be our Volume-Envelope, but it's not possible to hear it now in Action, but we'll do so later while we create our first simple song.
Image: Instruments options
Choose now, like you can see in the Image, 'Vibspeed' to '10' (Attention Hex), 'Vibdepth' to '4' and optionally 'Vibsweep' to '8'. Now our Tone should vibrate a bit in pitch, wich is called Vibrato in Music.
Sounds good, eh? Okay, now let's create a simple song: Please click at 'How to create an Example-Song' or just at go on...