Quick Start Guide

Furnace is amazingly versatile, but it can also be intimidating, even for those already familiar with trackers. This quick start guide will get you on the road to making the chiptunes of your dreams! If you’re a beginner, it will probably take about an hour from start to finish.

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Before You Begin

If an unfamiliar term comes up or you need more clarification on a term, refer to the basic concepts and glossary docs. With all that said, start up the program and let’s get going!

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I’ve Opened Furnace – Now What?

On starting Furnace for the first time, the interface should look like this. If it’s not quite right, drag the borders between sections until it approximately matches. There’s a lot going on, but the most prominent part of Furnace’s interface is the pattern view – the spreadsheet-like table that takes up the bottom-left.

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Navigating the Pattern View

Click to place the cursor somewhere in this view. It will appear as a medium-blue highlight. Try moving around with the arrow keys:

• Up/Down arrows: Move between rows
• PgUp/PgDn: Move faster through rows
• Home/End: Move to first/last row
• Left/Right arrows: Move between columns
• Home/End twice: Jump to first/last column

The vertical axis represents time. During editing and playback the view scrolls around a highlighted row that stays put in the center; this is called the playhead.

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Playing Notes

Let’s play a little! Notes are arranged on the keyboard rather like a piano:

Keyboard Note Layout

• Bottom row (ZXCVBNM): C major scale (like piano’s white keys)
• Second row (SD GHJ): Accidentals (like piano’s black keys)
• Third row (QWERTYU): Same arrangement, one octave higher
• Fourth row (23 567): Accidentals for the higher octave

To change which octaves are represented on the keyboard, use the / and * keys on the numeric pad. As an alternative, there’s an octave selector at the top of the interface.

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Edit Mode

Now press the space bar to change from play to edit mode. The row the cursor is on will change to dark red – the playhead mentioned earlier. Another way to tell what mode we’re in is via the play/edit controls just above the pattern view in the center; make sure the “record” button is on. Now try playing some notes; they should appear in the pattern view, one after another.

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Understanding Channels

Each channel is a group of columns separated from the others by lines, with a name at the top. Each channel can only ever play one note at a time. To hear this in action:

1. Move the cursor back to the top
2. Press Enter or Return to start playback
3. You should hear the notes played back quickly, one after another
4. Press Enter again to stop playback

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Selecting and Deleting Notes

Let’s clear out those notes. Click and drag to select them all. You’ll know they’re selected when they have a medium grey background. Hit Del to delete them all at once.

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Playing Chords

You’ll usually want more than one note playing at a time. Move back to the start of the pattern in the leftmost column of the leftmost channel. Put some different notes next to each other in the same row. Only enter notes in the first column of each channel; we’ll get to those other columns later. Go back to the top row and use F5 to play from the start. They should all sound at the same time as one single chord.

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Note Offs

That chord will ring out for quite some time, but let’s try stopping it early. A couple rows after that chord, use the Tab or 1 key to enter a note off (sometimes called “note cut”) in each channel that has a note. It’ll appear as OFF in the note column. Before the next part of this guide, save the current module – the tracker file that contains everything needed for a song. Use Ctrl-S and pick a good spot on your computer for the file. Furnace modules always have a filename that ends in a .fur extension.

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How Do I Get Different Sounds?

At the top of the interface, just right of center, is the instrument list. There are also tabs for wavetables and samples, but we’ll get to those later. Click into the pattern view and add some notes in another FM channel well after our existing chord. We’ll hear them with our new sound, and the number 01 appears next to them. This is the instrument column, and it can be edited directly by typing in the number desired.

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How Do I Change Volume?

Next to the instrument column is the volume column. Typing in it will change the loudness of the associated note… but it’s not always as straightforward as it seems.

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Understanding Hexadecimal Volumes

This column operates in hexadecimal. In fact, so does the instrument column, and so will the others when we get to them. If you’re ever uncertain what the decimal equivalent is, put your cursor over the volume in question and look to the menu bar, which doubles as a status bar. Try typing 6C into the volume column of the last note, then play it back. It should be much quieter than those before it in the column because they default to full volume – in this case, 7F. Everything in the column after our 6C will inherit that volume level until it’s changed again.

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Volume Limits

Now try putting 90 in the volume column. It automatically changes to 7F because that’s the maximum volume available for this channel. Different channels may have different maximum volumes because of how each chip works.

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Linear vs Logarithmic Volume

Understanding Volume Curves

Some chips use “linear” volume, which translates directly to amplitude; dividing the value in half results in half the volume.Other chips, such as the one we’re using right now, use “logarithmic” volume; subtracting from it lowers the volume based on how loud it sounds. In this particular case:

• Subtracting 8 to get 77 lowers the volume by half
• Subtracting 8 again to get 6F lowers it to one-quarter

This takes some getting used to, but it’s more convenient in some ways.

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Volume Effects

There are more ways to change volume using effects. Clear out all of our notes and place one at the top of one of the FM channels, and set it to full volume (7F). Next to the volume column are the effect columns. In the effect type column, type 0A; this corresponds to the “volume slide” effect. Next to that, in the effect value column, type 02. Hit F5 to play from the start, and you’ll hear the note play but instead of staying at a steady volume it’ll smoothly fade out.

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Continuous Effects

It’s important to know that most effects are continuous, meaning they will continue to do what they do until explicitly stopped. Volume slides are like this. Place an effect type of 0A on row 16. You can leave the effect value blank or type 00 there; these are equivalent, and both will stop the effect.

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How Do I Make the Song Longer?

Right now, our track is only about six and a half seconds long. This is because we only have one order. The term “pattern view” is slightly misleading in that a pattern is just one channel’s worth of data; the pattern view shows all the patterns in an order at once. At the top left of the interface we find the order view. Similar to the pattern view, it’s like a spreadsheet, but even simpler.

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Deep Clone

When you want to make variations of the same patterns, right-click the “duplicate” button (showing two overlaid pages). This creates a “deep clone”, meaning that all the patterns in it are duplicated to new pattern numbers.

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How Do I Change Tempo?

Tempo and speed are a little tricky – in fact, for the purposes of Furnace, they mean different things! First, let’s clear out our first order and put some evenly-spaced notes there.

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Understanding Ticks

The most basic unit of time is the tick. Almost always, videogame systems take actions based on each frame of video, and these most often happen at 60 times per second, usually expressed as 60Hz. (This is for NTSC systems; systems that expect PAL will use 50Hz.) Because of this timing, everything that happens during playback will happen on a tick, never in between ticks.

Understanding Speed and Tempo

If we click on the “Speed” tab at the top-right of the interface, we’ll see:

• Base Tempo: Shows the tick rate as “60Hz” to the right
• Speed: Set to 6 (each row takes 6 ticks to complete)
• Calculated Tempo: Shows “150.00 BPM”

If we change speed to 5, the tempo will now read “180.00 BPM” and notes will play faster.It’s possible to get tempos in between by alternating speeds using grooves.

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What About Those Other Channels?

Here’s where we really get into the nitty-gritty of our emulated videogame system. We’ve been using Furnace’s default system, the Sega Genesis. It employs two very different sound chips:

1. Yamaha YM2612 (OPN2): Uses frequency modulation (FM) synthesis to generate sounds
2. Sega PSG: A programmable sound generator that can only make square waves and variations of noise

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PSG Channels

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What About Samples?

The FM side of the Sega Genesis has a special feature; channel 6 can be used to play back digital samples. This means that any recording – a snare drum, an orchestra hit, somebody talking, whatever you have – can be part of the music.

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What About Wavetables?

Some chips can use wavetables, which are a lot like very short looping samples. One of these is the Game Boy. Let’s start a new file with Ctrl-N and select “Game Boy” from the system dialog.

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Creating Wavetables

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Using Wavetables in Instruments

Right now, we can’t do much with this wavetable; as with samples, it needs an instrument.

1. Go to the instruments list and add a new one
2. Open it in the instrument editor and select the “Macros” tab
3. Click the down-arrow next to “Waveform”
4. Click the + button that appears; a column will turn grey
5. Click in the middle of that column to select which wavetable to use

Now add notes in the “Wavetable” channel to hear the wavetable in action!

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But… What’s a Macro?

The macro is perhaps Furnace’s most powerful feature. Formally defined, it automates a note’s parameters while it plays. A lot of what can be achieved with effects can be done with macros, but on a per-tick basis instead of per-row.

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Creating a Volume Envelope

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Release Points

Hold Shift and click directly underneath the peak of the macro. You’ve just set a release point. Now holding a key will hold the note at top volume – at the release point – until let go. To get the rest of the macro to play after a note, use the ` key (backtick) to insert a macro release instead of a note off. It will appear as REL.

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What’s Next?

Now you know the basics of how to make music with Furnace. From here, the rest of the documentation should make more sense, and it should be your primary reference.

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Learning Tips

Most of all, don’t be afraid to experiment. Go play!