shield tracker

by herr shield

ai generated image of a jungle musician
A musician using shield tracker to create jungle music.

About

Shield tracker is a tracker focused on live performances, heavily inspired by the eurorack hardware sequencer NerdSeq, running on Linux using Jack. It's functionality includes built-in samplers, sound generators, CV sequencing via a suitable dc-coupled audio interface and midi sequencing. The UI is designed to be controlled entirely with a gamepad. The current main target platform is the Valve Steam Deck, although it can run any Linux platform with a sufficiently modern GPU supporting WebGPU.
shield tracker main screen
Main screen of shield tracker.

How to install shield tracker on steamdeck

Navigate to https://bleep.toys in the browser on your steamdeck and download the shield tracker binary. Using the file browser, extract the archive and run the stracker binary in the stracker folder. You can run the create_shortcuts.sh script to create desktop shortcuts for running and updating stracker.

Quitting shield tracker

The quit function has been protected to avoid accidents. Repeatedly press the left joystick until you reach the main screen. Press the right joystick to open the project settings screen. Navigate to the quit option and press the button combination X + A.

This is early alpha-state software

Shield tracker is a very new project and still under heavy development. Everything is still in flux and as a result things will occassionally break between updates of stracker, requiring slight tweaks to the patterns. On the plus side, it means you get new features frequently! Always save your project before updating, and if you want to be extra safe, make a backup of your current version of stracker alongside it.

Saving and Loading

Shield Tracker does not automatically save your projects!

always save your project
PSA: ALWAYS save your project in the project dialog or you will lose data.
Shield tracker has a memory file that holds all of the state, persisting across launched of the stracker app. However, this file will be deleted upon device reboot! Furthermore, whenever stracker is updated, the memory file will become invalid and all unsaved state is lost!
Always make sure to frequently save your current project, especially before updating!
Shield tracker maintains a version history of the saved projects using an automatically created git repository, it is therefore possible to recover earlier state of projects. If you know what you are doing, you can edit the respective scripts in the scripts/ directory. Reminder: Shield Tracker does not automatically save your projects!

Quick start guide

button mappings on steam deck
Button mappings on the steam deck.

Shield Tracker has 16 tracks whereas each track can have a different type, such as sequencing midi, built-in sampler, etc. Patterns are created per track and can be launched independently.

Let's get some bleeps out of shield tracker:

  1. Proceed to the main screen by repeatedly pressing the left joystick.
  2. Press and hold the left joystick and press X to open the track settings.
  3. Move the cursor to the type field.
  4. Hold the X button and use the cursor keys to change the value to Chiptune.
  5. Move the cursor to the update settings field and press A.
  6. Proceed to the main screen by pressing the left joystick.
  7. To make sound, a pattern needs to be created first. Press A which creates a new empty pattern
  8. With the new pattern under the cursor, pressing A opens the pattern editor
  9. Use the cursor keys to move around. When holding X, the cursor keys edit the value under the cursor. The first column is where the notes are entered.
  10. Holding X and pressing right shoulder (clicky button) deletes the value under the cursor. In some places, such as note columns, deleting an empty cell will create a special value. On the note column, it will insert [ ] which means note off.
  11. After composing a little melody, the pattern and the sequencer needs to be started. Press the left joystick to proceed back to the main screen. Press Y to queue/start the pattern. To start the sequencer, hold the left joystick and press Y.
  12. To stop the pattern, press B. This will play the pattern until it's end. To stop the sequencer and all playing patterns immediately, press and hold left joystick and press B.

Button mappings

The tracker can be controlled with a regular keyboard as well as with a gamepad. Refer to keyboard_shortcuts for more details. The following describes the gamepad mappings for the steam deck and similar controllers.

Universal mappings

Button Function
cursor keyscursor movement
shoulder buttonsjump up / down
X + cursor keyschange value
X + right shoulderdelete / note off
left joystickback
right joystickmenu / settings
circle left joystickcursor movement
left trigger + Xstart selection
left trigger + Ycopy selection
left trigger + Apaste selection
left joystick + Bstop sequencer
left joystick + Xtrack settings
left joystick + Apatch memory

Main screen

Button Function
Acreate pattern / open pattern
X + Aclone pattern
Ystart pattern
Bstop pattern
left joystick + Ystart sequencer
left joystick + Bstop sequencer
left joystick + right shouldermute/unmute track

Pattern / Tables / Programs

Button Function
Acreate / open / perform action
Binsert last value and jump steps
X + Bdelete value under cursor and jump steps
right trigger + Xstart staging mode
right trigger + Yabort staging
right trigger + Acommit staging
right joystick + left/rightchange edit-step value (jump after pressing A)

Text Editor

Button Function
cursor keysselect character
Aadd character
X + Aaccept changes
X + right shoulderdelete last character