Jeffrey Lim (Pulse)

Author of impulse-tracker. In TraxWeekly he appears as "Pulse": Zinc credits "the neat extras Pulse has put in Impulse Tracker" (panning/volume swing, panning default; source: s-tw075-it-percussion-tips), and in issue #83 (2 January 1997) he replied to Pinion's tip series under his own name, correcting the NNA example, explaining S70 past-note cut and the info page's Tot column, and recommending templates — "one of the most useful tools" — with examples for stereo doubling and open fifths; Pinion also notes that Pulse fixed a v2.09 bug combining volume-column effects with Jxx (source: s-tw081-it-tip-of-the-week). The TOC lists "Impulse Tracker v1.01" by Pulse in issue #42 (12 January 1996) — the first public version's announcement, not yet ingested.

From the IT manual and the 1.01 release note#

Wrote Impulse Tracker in 100 % assembler "on and off during 1995", finishing most of it in the summer holidays of 1996 (over 100,000 lines), starting from the idea of extending Scream Tracker 3; thanks Psi for ST3, Purple Motion ("When the Heaven's Fall" — the best S3M), Red Haze for insisting on ping-pong loops, and psibelius; keeps IT freeware for non-commercial use, asks for donations and answers questions covered by the manual with "RTFM" (source: s-it-manual). The v1.01 note in TraxWeekly #42 (January 1996) lists an order-list save bug and asks for a demo song under 32 channels and 200 k (source: s-tw042-impulse-tracker-v1-01). His own composer hints — never release your first song, echoes with Mxx, several instruments per sample, tune everything to one reference sample, the perfect-loop method — ship in HINTS.TXT (source: s-it-hints).

In his own words (TraxWeekly #98 and #100, May 1997)#

Two pieces under his own name (sources: s-tw098-impulse-tracker-investment, s-tw100-tracking-on-impulse): IT exists "because I track"; it was released freely "so that the hours that I had spent chiselling my sculpture could be seen in full" — "easily over 1500 hours, probably closer to 2000"; the stereo WAV driver cost US$30 for non-profit use and abusive replies to that price ("30$ my asssss") led him to declare IT213 the last feature release — "I used to envy how Psi so neatly avoided any sort of responsibility for ST3. Now, I will be able to join him" (2.14 still followed in September 1997, see below). In #100 he answered Steve Gilmore: no price tags or crippled features, any contribution appreciated ("If you bother about me, then I'll bother about you"), and told the scene to stop demanding Interwave support from triton: "If you're not willing to offer something to them, then you should learn not to demand anything." Airon's MIDI guide in the same issue ends with a plea to pay for the stereo WAV driver — "a pro product at a non-pro price" (source: s-tw098-impulse-tracker-midi).

Release dates#

1.00 on 1995-12-25 ("Final Release for version 1"), 1.01–1.06 through April 1996, 2.00 around June 1996, 2.03–2.06 in July–October 1996 (mouse support, interpolation, a new channel allocation, volume and pan swing), 2.11–2.13 in 1997, 2.14 on 1997-09-02 as "the FINAL public release", patches 3–5 until 1999-04-08 (source: s-tracker-history-notes). His official site lived at users.on.net/~jtlim and lim.com.au (source: s-schism-tracker-wiki).

Users' verdicts in the interviews#

• ryan-sprott (July 1996): "i wish pulse would stop changing the damn tracker so much, and put in mouse/ems support" (source: s-tw063-interview-ryan-sprott).
• mental-floss (February 1998): "Jeff Lim has done a great job with the tracker so far, and when he just added the ability to filter it made it even better"; his wishes were a basic sample editor like fasttracker-2's and MIDI sync/start (source: s-tw119-interview-mental-floss; see midi-in-trackers, sync).

Related#

impulse-tracker · pinion · new-note-actions · sami-tammilehto · schism-tracker · mental-floss

Sources#

s-tw081-it-tip-of-the-week · s-tw075-it-percussion-tips · s-tracker-history-notes · s-schism-tracker-wiki · s-tw098-impulse-tracker-investment · s-tw100-tracking-on-impulse · s-tw098-impulse-tracker-midi · s-it-manual · s-it-hints · s-tw042-impulse-tracker-v1-01 · s-tw063-interview-ryan-sprott · s-tw119-interview-mental-floss