My FastTracker II Music

The contents of this blog post was previously a menu page, but I have since decided to change the menu page into an index of all the blog posts that contain chiptunes and tracker music. Hence this is now a blog post.

In 1995-98, I created 14 official tunes and another 14 unfinished work tunes in FastTracker II.

FastTracker II was a popular DOS tracker in the 90’s that used the proprietary XM file format. It employed samples as instruments, played with alphanumeric notes in patterns of typically 64 rows each. Up to 32 channels were possible. I have converted the original XM music to stereo MP3 for easy listening here.

Acid Jazz
February 1996
This was made in less than three hours without a keyboard.

Ara
March 1996
Originally created in summer 1995 but first finished in March 1996.

Bambi Funk
December 1996
Unfinished work tune. The deep leader from 1:10 was supposed to slide on a lot longer.

Calvin Shuffle
August 1997
Unfinished work tune.

Commercial Rhythm
July 1995
The leader was inspired by Jan Hammer.

Cute Tune
March 1996
Unfinished work tune with placeholder samples. A tune with what Drax used to call a “Pinocchio” bassline.

Dim Jingle
August 1998
Most of the samples were taken from “no. 1 instruments” by Matthias “MAZ” Ziegs. This was the last tune I released in FastTracker II. Inspired by my own “Going Up” on the C64.

Drum Test
March 1996
Unfinished work tune. Actually it works quite well as it is.

Erik Instrument Test
August 1996
Unfinished work tune. I was never satisfied with the second leader sample in this song (0:34). At the time my sample library was limited – and because I couldn’t find anything better, it was never finished.

Fuse Intro
September 1997
Unfinished work tune. A short jingle (only 9 seconds).

Guard
November 1996
Unfinished work tune with a raw bassline. Slightly inspired by the Amiga tunes from Chris Hülsbeck.

Heaven Revived
February 1996
Inspired by the C64 tune “Heaven” which was originally composed by Drax.

Joey Folky
September 1997
Unfinished work tune. Especially the drums needed more tweaking in the second part (0:14).

Jolly Game Console Tune
February 1997
Unfinished work tune. Probably one of the best tunes I did in FastTracker II. A shame I didn’t finish it.

Little Zig
December 1997
Electronic style. One of my personal favorites. I just love the ending from about 4:13 and onwards. Made for the music competition at The Party 1997, but sadly it wasn’t played.

Memories
July 1995
My first and probably worst among the released tunes. Inspired by my own C64 tune “Louisiana”.

My Dog is Dead
June 1997
Unfinished work tune. By the way, it was just a title to describe the mood. I didn’t actually have a dog.

Orchy
September 1997
Unfinished work tune. The later part from 0:49 is still missing some copy/paste reverb effects.

Pinocchio
February 1998
The totally annoying bassline was made more or less on purpose. Kind of a tribute to the jargon “Pinocchio” which Drax used, to signify such simple basslines.

Pylon
July 1997
Composed in 1995, then changed the samples and drum tracks in 1997.

Simple Does It
August 1997
Unfinished work tune. Originally I wanted to make this a lot longer and with a more sophisticated and vivid bassline, but somehow I like it the way it is now. Hang on until the wonderful part at 1:24.

Stardust
February 1997
Unfinished work tune. Conversion of the C64 tune “Swing” which was originally composed by Soedesoft.

Starring
July 1997
This was supposed to sound like an intro for an action TV series. Imagine the guitar playing as the intro displays the first credits. The guitar is actually individual notes too, it’s not a big sample.

Superhero Music
February 1996
A tacky piece of symphonic music inspired by movie composers such as e.g. Alan Silvestri.

Sweet Kettle
September 1998
Unfinished work tune. Also the last thing I did in FastTracker II.

Task III Hiscore
February 1997
This is a conversion of the hiscore tune from the C64 game Task III by Databyte. I even used a few samples from the original tune. I was never quite satisfied with this conversion.

Thunderwaves
August 1995
A cooperation with Trap of Bonzai. He made the first three patterns and I added the rest (from 0:30).

Weird Drums
March 1996
Unfinished work tune.

Download as XM files for FastTracker II: FT2_XM_JCH.zip (8,9 MB)

Bonus

The following was added in April 2017 after going through some of my old DOS archives. These tunes were originally excluded for good reasons, though – they were too short, used too much sample cheating; that sort of stuff. Comments for them individually will elaborate.

10CC Samples
July 1995
Unfinished work tune. A samples cheat where 10CC did most of the work.

Big Samples Cheat
August 1998
This is pretty much just a bunch of samples put together like LEGO. Nothing creative on my part.

Cornflex (Edit)
May 1996
A minor remix of a tune originally made by Torben Hansen (Metal). I made a few chorus modifications.

Cute Crap
March 1996
A very silly version of “Cute Tune” with a few heavy guitar samples on top. Hilarious? You decide.

First Test
July 1995
Unfinished work tune. Possibly predates “Memories” above as the truly first tune I ever made in FT2, with crap instruments from my Korg M1 keyboard.

Hair Dance
August 1998
A very short and unfinished work tune.

Heavy Test
July 1995
Unfinished work tune. Another sample cheat tune, this time with big samples from ELO.

Moments of Despair (Edit)
January 1997
A remix of a tune originally made by Thomas Mogensen (Drax). The changes I made were very subtle.

3 comments on “My FastTracker II Music

  1. Nice to hear these again after a long time. A real time trip. Also post MSK’s tunes, Lack of Negligence (if that was the title?) was a great piece of XM soul =)

  2. MSK? Really? I was afraid his FT2 music was forgotten by now. Awesome. Well, I plan to do more music posts later but first I have to finish my 5-part chronicle series.

  3. I remember when I’ve discovered Fast Tracker 2 tunes from Vibrants in the late ’90s I was puzzled that they’d all have that “SID chipness” style to it. Was interesting that you were never tempted to move away from it 🙂

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