Schism Tracker wiki and README

What the schism-tracker project says about itself: a free reimplementation of impulse-tracker on top of a modified ModPlug engine, why IT deserved a clone, a FAQ in Storlek's voice, links to fonts, other trackers and archives, and the hidden config options.

Key claims#

• "Schism Tracker is a free and open-source reimplementation of Impulse Tracker, a program used to create high quality music without the requirements of specialized, expensive equipment, and with a unique 'finger feel' that is difficult to replicate in part. The player is based on a highly modified version of the Modplug engine, with a number of bugfixes and changes to improve IT playback" (the Player abuse tests, a suite of effect tests rendered from IT 2.14p5's disk writer — "bitwise-exact output is not the goal, identical playback is"). Runs "on almost any platform that SDL supports" — Linux, macOS, Windows builds; also AmigaOS 4, Wii, OS/2, Haiku per the config paths; builds with GCC/Clang, SDL 1.2/2/3.
• Impulse Tracker page: IT "simply rocked … 64 channels, 99 samples, REAL stereo support on the Sound Blaster (instead of just hard-left and hard-right), disk rendering" — it "made Scream Tracker obsolete, and dealt a low blow to Fast Tracker as well"; written for MS-DOS "in 100% assembly language", it became impossible to run on new systems; Windows trackers (ModPlug) and cross-platform ones lacked its look and feel; clones such as Cheesetracker were abandoned; Schism's goal is "to fill this long-needed void". Links to the official IT site (lim.com.au / users.on.net/~jtlim).
• FAQ: Schism follows MIDI start/stop but neither follows nor sends MIDI clock ("tracked modules generally have a very different concept of speed and tempo from MIDI"); Ctrl-Z in the pattern editor arms MIDI-triggered playback; runs on a Linux framebuffer; Mac keyboards lack Insert/Delete (Fn combinations, Ctrl-F for Scroll Lock); IT's font.cfg can be loaded from Schism's fonts directory; file formats are listed in include/fmt-types.h; on the tiny sample display: "stop looking and start listening. Make a rough guess, type it in, play the sample, and use the + and - keys to adjust"; no sample drawing — "Tell the Milky Tracker guys to add NNAs ;)", but Alt-Y generates a throwaway sample from typed text; why use it at all: "Most of us who use the IT/ST3 style trackers use them because we're most comfortable and productive with this style. VST effects and shiny gradients aren't everything" — the keyboard interface "becomes apparent that it is a very efficient and comfortable way to work" once learned (Ctrl-C/V do not do what newcomers expect).
• Links: IT/Schism fonts (electrickeet.com; the IT Font Customizer's ITFONTS.ZIP), other trackers — ChibiTracker (abandoned), BeRoTracker ("Think IT3, but not vaporware"), MilkyTracker ("a Fast Tracker clone"), OpenMPT ("the open-source continuation of the first Windows-based tracker. Only for Windows, but mostly functional on Linux with Wine"), Renoise; Mod Archive, Modland, Nectarine; a Schism/IT tutorial at dexp.in.
• Config: a plain INI config file (Windows %APPDATA%\Schism Tracker, macOS ~/Library/Application Support/Schism Tracker, Linux ~/.config/schism/), a fonts directory with font.cfg auto-loaded and *.itf fonts for the built-in font editor (Shift-F12); hidden options for what the UI does not expose.

Practical takeaways#

Schism is the way to use Impulse Tracker's keyboard workflow on a modern machine, with IT-accurate playback measured against IT 2.14p5 itself; its clipboard is shared with OpenMPT and duet.

Notable quotes#

"Tell the Milky Tracker guys to add NNAs ;)"

Pages touched#

schism-tracker · impulse-tracker · storlek · openmpt · new-note-actions · sync · chip-samples