Furnace – the biggest multi-system chiptune tracker ever made | Hacker News Reader

Furnace – the biggest multi-system chiptune tracker ever made

github.com

223 pointsunleaded64 comments

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

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

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

"Chiptunes" is a broad term for any music with the same aesthetic quality as old video games and their chip-based music.

Tracked music is music typically created with a tracker that emulates the qualities of chip-based music, keeping you bound with those constraints. However, some trackers are designed to run natively on older microcomputers and video game consoles, allowing those systems' audio processors to be used to create music.

There is also a whole community around executable music, where the entire synthesizer is coded alongside the music itself.

Amiga trackers all used samples; whether they sound like chip tunes (that is, like a NES, a C-64, an AY-3-8912 etc) or not depends on the instrument samples used.

AFAIK, the thing that qualifies a music editor as a “tracker” is a tabular representation, rather than a score.

So is there a difference between a tracker and a sequencer?

A tracker is a type of sequencer. Not all sequencers are trackers. Trackers use hexadecimal notation for effects, volume, stereo, etc... They run vertical (see screen shot at OP link), whereas most traditional sequencers (pianoroll, step sequencer, etc) run horizontally.

You have a row consisting of Note, Amplitude, Volume, etc. There are multiple columns, one for each instrument (in modern trackers it's often samples, or you can even use VSTi (VST Instruments, a standard virtual synthesizer format).

I've used various trackers since the 90s, and for some reason, as much as I like the idea of a piano roll sequencer on a PC, this seems to be the most efficient for entering notes to me. I love hardware step sequencers (especially for drums; the standard roland 16 step, for example is fun/great).

This particular one allows you to use emulated chipsets which I assume are controlled via the effects commands (00-FF values) to determine things like delay, echo, repeat, pwm (pulse-width modulation), etc...)

People do amazing things with them, and the demoscenes tend to use them alot.

SO yeah, they're sequencer in the sense they sequence notes, and effects, and can control software instruments, samples, or in this case, virtual chips. But the layout is very different and more "nerdy" than most sequencers. And definitely very good for looping/electronic music.

The one I've used for about a decade if not longer is Renoise: https://www.renoise.com/

It was the first one that I saw that let me use VSTi, and that's what really did it for my personal style. It has sample chopping and tons of other features that blew other trackers in the dust at the time it was released (Buzz was one that was similar in that you could build your own virtual synths via modular boxes connected to each other), but up til that point most trackers were IIRC sample based only. They all did things differently, but the core principle was the same between them. Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, Modplug Tracker are some of the ones I played with before Renoise came along.

Definitely want to check this Furnace one out. I've seen one other one that was IIRC, only a Nintendo chip based tracker.

There's also sunvox which is a weird little tracker that uses like... bitmap fonts for game characters to represent things, but I never quite understood that one. It's cool to look at though :)

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

more than 3 chips, basically

Forget everything, we're doing 5 chips

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

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

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.

> 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).

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

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.

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

SID chip does have some FM components to it, for exemple ring modulation or LPF/HPF. This is what makes the learning curve pretty high for it.

Ring modulation is a form of amplitude modulation, not frequency modulation. Filters are not modulation at all.

>> 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

Can't talk about Tim Follin and not talk about Plok!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peuTnilEv9g

Feels very proto-Hotline Miami to me

Plok! was SNES, not NES, though. Very different audio hardware.

The Follin brothers used straightforward methods but took them to the extreme. Arpeggios? Double them and make them use complex chords. Triangle channel? Use it both as bass and drums. Note attack? Use the octave to simulate guitar sound. Wrap all that in prog rock composition and you get a very unique entry in the chiptune landscape.

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...

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).

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?

> 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 )

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?

> what "on for 1% of the time" means

It's a description of the synthesised waveform. There's no envelope and sample rate isn't particularly meaningful as there are no samples or recording involved.

The wave is a pulse/square wave -- 1 bit. The signal goes high/"on" at a frequency of e.g. 440 Hz. The 1% refers to the duty cycle[0] -- this is expressed as a percentage of the wave period (1 / 440 Hz) that the signal remains high. So every cycle of a 1% pulse wave, for 0.01 / 440 seconds the signal is high, then 0.99 / 440 seconds the signal is low.

Changing the duty cycle can change the character of the tone, but the note/frequency is unaffected.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_cycle

That clears it up a bit, thank you. To simulate 440hz and 220hz playing simultaneously, would the phase of the latter have to be offset?

https://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/platform3.php#LessonP23 if you are interested in the beeper and how to make sound on it :D it has few tips but can give an idea how basic the stuff is. appearently the 128k has a better chip. I am wholly unfamiliar with the platform tho so sorry if my comment is a bit off the rails :D

Specifically here I believe he is referring to the pulse width of the square wave, like you would see on many basic oscillators. A 50% setting would have the wave high for half of the cycle, then low for the other half (111110000011111000001111100000 etc). A 1% setting would have the wave high for 1% of the cycle, then low for the remaining 99% (something like 100000000010000000001000000000). This is still a 440Hz periodic signal, just with a somewhat different timbre.

Wonder if this could be done with light as well? For example, an LED flashing at 60Hz, but duty cycle of 30%; vs an LED at 60Hz, but duty cycle of 70%.

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

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.

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...

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!

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

> a masterpiece with a stick and a pebble

"Baroque Pickaxe Handel and Rock (A Miner)"

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.

For others (for those who brought us the best), it is continuing a path which continuously overcomes itself (so, the style is just a side effect of the medium).

Apex of Punk music was The Strangler's Golden Brown.

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

> The Elektron SidStation is a synthesizer and sampler designed by Elektron in 2001. It is based on the classic Commodore 64 SID chip, which was used in the Commodore 64 home computer. It has been used by a variety of artists, including Aphex Twin, Daft Punk, and The Prodigy

https://synthpedia.net/elektron/sidstation/

# Aphex Twin - Vordhosbn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYrQC-jWMFM

> 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.

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.

README:

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

These guys do this with real vintage hardware:

http://theotherdays.net/

*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...

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

Treewave used something similar, to great effect, on his Cabana EP. Prominently here on Sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byKx8bZ5eq8

He hacked up the firmware of a dotmatrix printer to send it commands from his Atari 2600 or 80286 Compaq to make music. "Sound is generated by the print head pins striking the paper and the sound is picked up by a tie-clip mic on the print head. By adjusting the frequency of the printing process in software, different pitches can be played (with about a two octave range.)"

He thoughtfully includes all the source you need to do this to your own Epson LQ-500! https://www.qotile.net/dotmatrix.html

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!

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!

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com