What are effect commands
A pattern table is composed of cells telling the tracker which notes to play in which order. It also has a field for effect commands. It is often represented as a three digit hexadecimal value. The first hex digit represents the effect command, the latter represent parameter values used by the command. The table below summarises all available effects in ProTracker.
| Code | Effect | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0xy | Arpeggio | This effect alternates the pitch each tick to simulate a chord. xy needs to be greater than 00. First the specified note is played, then the pitch is increased with x semitones, then with y semitones. |
| 1xy | Porta up | Decrease the period value with xy every tick but the first. |
| 2xy | Porta down | Increase the period value with xy every tick but the first. |
| 3xy | Porta to note | Change the period value with xy every tick but the first, untill the specified target note is reached. |
| 4xy | Vibrato | Oscillate the pitch with magnitude x. Where y relates to the oscillation frequency. |
| 5xy | Porta to note + Volume slide | A combination of porta to note (3xy) and volume slide (Axy). |
| 6xy | Vibrato + Volume slide | A combination of vibrato (4xy) and volume slide (Axy). |
| 7xy | Tremolo | Oscillate the volume with magnitude x. Where y relates to the oscillation frequency. |
| 8xy | Not implemented | This effect command is not implemented in ProTracker, nor will it be in this package. |
| 9xy | Set sample offset | This effect causes the note to start playing at an offset (of 256 times xy samples) into the sample, instead of just from the start. |
| Axy | Volume slide | Change the volume every but the first tick: increase with x, decrease with y. |
| Bxy | Position jump | Jump to position xy of the pattern sequence table. |
| Cxy | Set volume | Set the volume with xy. |
| Dxy | Pattern break | Break to row xy in the next pattern. Note: xy is (even though it is a hexadecimal) interpreted as a decimal. |
| E0x | Turn filter on/off | If x is even, the (emulated) hardware filter is turned on (for all tracks). It is turned off if x is odd. |
| E1x | Porta up (fine) | The period value is decreased with x, at the first tick. |
| E2x | Porta down (fine) | The period value is increased with x, at the first tick. |
| E3x | Glissando Control | This effect causes a change in the effect 3xy (porta to note). It toggles whether to do a smooth slide or whether to slide in jumps of semitones. When x is 0 it uses a smooth slide, non-zero values will result in jumps. |
| E4x | Vibrato Waveform | This effect sets the waveform for the vibrato command to follow. With x modulo 4 equals 0, a sine wave is used, with 1 ramp down, with 2 or 3 a square wave. Values greater than 4 causes the ossicating waveform not to retrigger it when a new note is played. |
| E5x | Set finetune | Set the finetune with x, where x is interpreted as a signed nybble. |
| E6x | Pattern loop | Set pattern loop start with E60, and loop x times when x is non-zero. |
| E7x | Tremolo waveform | Same as E4x, but this controls the wave form for the tremolo effect (7xy) rather than the vibrato effect. |
| E8x | Not implemented | According to official documentation this command is not implemented in ProTracker, but it is. Applies a filter on a looped sample, therewith destroying the original sample data. In many cases this effect is not used like this, rather programmers used this to trigger certain (visual) effects and synchronise those with the music being played. |
| E9x | Retrigger note | Retrigger the note every x-th tick. |
| EAx | Volume slide up (fine) | Increase the volume with x at the first tick. |
| EBx | Volume slide down (fine) | Decrease the volume with x at the first tick. |
| ECx | Cut note | Cut the volume of the note to zero after x ticks. |
| EDx | Delay note | The note is triggered with a delay of x ticks. |
| EEx | Pattern delay | The duration of the row in ticks is multiplied by (x + 1). |
| EFx | Not implemented | According to official documentation this command is not implemented in ProTracker, but it is. It flips sample data in a looped sample, therewith destroying the original sample data. |
| Fxy | Set speed or tempo | When xy is smaller then 32, it sets the speed in ticks per row. When xy is greater than 31, it will set the tempo, wich is inversely related to the duration of each tick. Speed and tempo can be defined in combination. |
Extracting and updating effect commands
To get an effect command from a ProTracker module, you can simply
call pt2_command() to a pt2cell or
pt2celllist class object (see
vignette("s3class") for a ProTrackR2 object tree). There,
are several ways of extracting cells as documented in
vignette("sel_assign"). In the example below there is one
way shown of getting the effect commands of the first 8 rows of the
second column in the third pattern.
mod <- pt2_read_mod(pt2_demo())
pt2_command(
mod$patterns[[ 3 ]] [ 1:8, 2 ])
#> C40
#> C30
#> 000
#> 000
#> 000
#> 000
#> 000
#> 000You can also assign new effect commands to your selection like this:
pt2_command(
mod$patterns[[ 3 ]] [ 1:8, 2 ]) <- "C10"