FamiTracker

One of the elements that greatly enhances the overall multimedia experience is music, which you can listen to either for leisure or hear as soundtracks for your favorite movies and games. Creating music on a computer all started out with MIDI, which was also used for NES devices. These can still be created with the help of specialized applications like FamiTracker.

The overall design might create a little confusion at first, but once you get to know how the application works, arrangement of elements throughout the main window seems pretty intuitive. Sequences take up most of the space and is also where you get a visual representation of notes. An instrument list is also available so you can quickly edit or create items.

Your project mostly consists of the number or type of instruments you create. A new window is brought up, giving you the possibility to thoroughly adjust sound settings, such as volume, arpeggio, pitch and more. This is done by setting the size of each effect, with a keyboard at your disposal so you can preview sound.

The instruments are used in order to populate given sequences with notes. Your keyboard needs to be used to trigger a sound while recording is active. Unfortunately, you cannot view which key corresponds to what note unless testing is done and can get rather frustrating when you just can't reach a certain note.

More technical details can be modified, such as speed, tempo, number of rows and frames. What's more, the application lets you create multiple sequences, each with customizable lengths and repetition points. This comes in handy for creating effects for various in-game actions.

All things considered, FamiTracker gets the job properly done, with exporting possibilities available bots as WAV or NSF. Usability mostly stretches as far as creating sound effects is concerned, but don't expect high-quality sound out of an application packed with 8-bit potential.