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Effect commands

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
#> 000

You can also assign new effect commands to your selection like this:

pt2_command(
  mod$patterns[[ 3 ]] [ 1:8, 2 ]) <- "C10"

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