for chip fans only – The Arkos Tracker

June 16, 2010 · Posted in Uncategorized

Arkos Tracker is a freeware Windows-based tracker to compose music for the AY3-8912, a soundchip used in the Amstrad CPC, but also on MSX, Spectrum, Atari ST and many other computers in the 80′s.

Arkos Tracker is born from the native CPC tracker called STarKos. It retains most of its features, extends some, and will evolve in future versions.

One of the most interesting stuff is the pattern editor, the place where you edit your tracks and insert the notes to be played. This is what makes the tracker a tracker. Classic tracker stuff indeed: note, instrument number, volume, and effect column. But what is very interesting in AT is the fact that you can set a name for each track, and give it a special color. A bit like when you choose a color for a clip in a modern sequencer like Reason, Ableton, or whatever you want. Higher level! Renoise does this since version 2.5 only Very useful when you have several parts in your song (intro, main part, transition, ending, …) and you want to easily see where is what. You can also choose to give a special color to make a distinction between test or definitive patterns ready to be used. When you set the color of a track in the pattern editor, it appears with this color in the linker, that’s why the previous screenshot was so colorful. That’s clearly one of my favorite features in Arkos Tracker, contributing to the good overview over the song.