MilkyTracker.vst
The whole of MilkyTracker, as a plug-in
MilkyTracker, the Fasttracker II tracker, running unchanged inside a DAW as an instrument. It follows the host's tempo and transport, or plays patterns from the keyboard, and the song is saved inside the host's project.
Plugin Version
James HansenOriginal MilkyTracker Authors
Peter "pailes" Barth
Christopher O'Neill
Dale Whinham
Leon van Kammen
Tom Rees-Herdman
Johannes Schultz
Eric Price
gecko
Henri Isojärvi
nyanpasu64
Clayton Wells
congusbongus
James Cowgill
lammas
Lasse Mattila
Kowalski Dragon
capehill
vst1.0.0free and open sourceWindows, macOS, LinuxVST3, CLAP, VST2, AU or standalone
downloads. vst1.0.0
vst1.0.0 on GitHub, with checksums and older versions →
what it has.
- The real trackerNot a lookalike. MilkyTracker's own code draws the screen and mixes the sound, so every module it opens, every effect and every key works as it does on its own.
- DAW SyncThe tracker's BPM follows the host's, times a ratio, and the song starts, stops and jumps with the host's transport, landing on the order and row the timeline points at.
- MIDI TriggerTwo zones on the keyboard light up in neon. Green keys move the pitch of whatever plays, blue keys play the patterns you list for them, held or latched, looped or once.
- Free modeThe tracker plays at its own tempo, and MIDI from the host plays and records through the current instrument as MilkyTracker's own MIDI input does.
- Sessions keep the songThe module goes into the host's project as an XM, with the plug-in's settings and each key's pattern list, and comes back out when the project opens.
- An installer for every formatVST3, CLAP, VST2, the 32-bit VST2 with its DXi, AU and the standalone, put in place by the same musica.studio installer FSVR uses, with an updater that reads musica.studio.
why it exists.
MilkyTracker is the open source successor to Fasttracker II, and the tracker a lot of chiptune and module music is still written in. What it never had was a way into a DAW, so a song started in it had to be rendered out before it could sit beside anything else in a project.
MilkyTracker.vst puts the whole program inside a plug-in window. It is built on Hollow, the framework behind FSVR, so it comes in the same formats on the same three systems. The tracker draws into memory and plays through the host, while a column of plug-in controls and a keyboard sit beside it, drawn from FSVR's Blender kit in dark violet chrome to match MilkyTracker's logo.
The plug-in side is new: DAW Sync, MIDI Trigger, the session handling and the window around the tracker. Its version follows MilkyTracker's last release, v1.05.01 from November 2024, but the tracker inside is ahead of it, with the 243 commits made to MilkyTracker's repository since then. All of it is on GitHub under the GPLv3, like the original.
the community.
There is a MilkyTracker.vst channel on the musica.studio Discord. Bug reports, feature requests, questions, and screenshots of what you made with it all go there, and it is the fastest way to reach me about this project.
good to know.
An installer for Windows, macOS and Linux, with no dependencies. It uninstalls from Settings > Apps on Windows, and its updater only ever reads musica.studio.
The plug-in keeps its own settings file beside the standalone MilkyTracker's, so installing it never changes your existing MilkyTracker setup. Its ids are fixed, so projects saved with it keep finding it.
Free and open source under the GPLv3, with MilkyPlay under the BSD licence. MilkyTracker is the work of Peter "pailes" Barth and its contributors; this project is not affiliated with the MilkyTracker team.