sYnCHAoZ' Skale Tracker Drumming Tutorial
Introduction
The goal of this tutorial is to teach you the basic mechanics and workings of Skale Tracker and also give you insight in the dynamic power that a good tracker holds - and ultimately of corse, teach you how to make your own semi-realisticly sounding drumtracks.
First of all you should know a little background on what Skale Tracker actually is. If you don't know what a tracker is, you can check it out on the official Skale Tracker homepage.

A 'tracker' is a music application that utilizes regular samples (.wav files) to construct and assemble musical compoistions with amazing precision and control. Unlike a sequencer the trackers don't have regular tracks in which you can copy/paste samples of pre-made beats. Trackers use so called 'patterns' which technically is the same as a 'track' within other audio apps.
What makes trackers stand out however is the amazing diversity and flexibility it offers - a skilled tracker has 100% control of each single sound, note and beat within his song, even down to the tiniest echo-effect, fading, panning - you name it. This however also makes music creation with a tracker can be a very long and straineous process. Since every thing is done manually, it can quickly become tedious and one needs to stay focused to maintain overview of what is going on where and when within a very limited interface that does not allow you to actively monitor most of what is currently happening.
Tracking requires patience, overview and willpower. If however you manage to overcome and master these traits, you will then find that you have one of the most powerful music-creation tool available ever to be created - unequaled control and flexibility beyond anything even the best sequencer can ever provide.
Skale Tracker is but one of these trackers, and indeed a very good and advanced tracker at that. In actuality Skale Tracker is Fast Tracker 3 - the build-up of one of the, arguably, best and most well-known trackers of all time - Fast Tracker II by Fredrik Huss and Magnus Högdahl of the now known company Starbreeze (now full-blown PC game developer). I'm not going to go into detail about Starbreeze or the creators of Fast Tracker II, however I can provide you with a link to their official Starbreeze homepage where you can read up on them.
When the Fast Tracker II development was eventually abandoned (due to the developers not being able to spare the free time since the financial donations were insufficient). A skilled spanish programmer, Ruben Ramos 'Baktery' Salvador build a new program based on FT2, entitled Fast Tracker 3, which would be based on the Windows platform instead of DOS, like the old FT2 was.
Starbreeze soon found out that Salvador was bringing life back into the old FT2 project (and I'm sure they were very proud to see their legacy being brought back to life), but due to some copyright infringement they could not allow him to use the name "Fast Tracker 3", upon which Salvador changed the project name to Skale Tracker which is now currently in BETA 0.76 - certain features within the program are still either missing or temporarily disabled, despite that although the program is extremely functional and chances are you won't even notice wich features aren't working yet.
With a little historical and technical background you should now have an idea of the koncept of what Skale Tracker is. Now it's time to experience the raw power first hand and learn how to use this little wonder for yourself.

Getting started.

The first thing you need to do is get yourself a copy of Skale Tracker. You can download the latest version (0.76w) HERE - and don't worry, the program is 100% freeware (thanks Salvador, you rock!). Skale Tracker runs on both Windows 9x/2k/XP and under Linux.
Next you will download the 'synchaoz drum tutorial package' (sdtp_v1.zip), it holds the instruments which we will be using in this tutorial. You can find it HERE. It is compressed in ZIP format, and will require an unpacker which supports the ZIP format. The official ZIP packer/unpacker 'WinZIP' can be found at www.winzip.com as a shareware version. Among other excellent programs that support ZIP files are WinACE and WinRAR.
Now that you have the latest Skale Tracker and the drum tutorial package you will need to install them on your harddrive. First unpack Skale Tracker to a directory of your own choice, eg. "C:\Music Programs\Skale Tracker\". Next you must unpack the 'synchaoz drum tutorial package' (sdtp_v1.zip) to a folder of your own choice. I would suggest unpacking it into a subfolder within your Skale Tracker directory, eg. "C:\Music Programs\Skale Tracker\Instruments\".
You should now have everything installed and ready to go. Almost...

Setting up the beast.

Before we can start the tutorial, you will need to setup Skale Tracker correctly. Follow these steps closely:
1. Go to the folder where you installed Skale Tracker.
2. Run the file "ConfigSk@le076w.exe". An options window should appear with 3 small white boxes and some buttons.
3. In the "Mode" window there should be a list of available sound modes which your computer is configured with. You should mark either "Direct Sound Primary" or "Wave Out" by clicking on it. It should then highlight.
4. In the "Device" window you should see a list of all the available and correctly installed sound cards in your computer. Highlight the desired card you wish to use with Skale Tracker.
5. In the "Sample Rate" window you will see several different sampling rate frequencies (depending on your soundcard's capabilities). I suggest highlighting "44100" which corresponds to CD quality and is the most common 16bit sound sample rate used by most audio applications.
6. In the "Video" section you can choose a couple of options on how you wish Skale Tracker's graphical interface to be shown. I suggest that you mark the "Hardware Mouse" and "Load Gfx when needed" boxes and make sure that the "Full Screen" button is NOT activated. We will be running Skale Tracker in windowed mode for this tutorial so you can read the lessons while having Skale Tracker running. However the choices are yours, and you should select what suits you best.
7. In the lower right corner you will see 4 different buttons. These are used to manually configure the keyboard layout and the default directories which Skale Tracker will utilize for loading songs, instruments, samples and so on. The first thing we need to do is reset all of the keyboard mappings back to Skale Tracker default. Do this simply by clicking the "Keyboard Shortcuts" button, and then click the "Reset all Keys" button in the new window that appears, then click "OK". Next we will setup the default folders. To do this we will first need to create some directories on the harddrive which will be used to store instruments and songs. I suggest that you create at least 4 folders within your Skale Tracker directory. They are as follows:
\Skale Tracker\Songs\ - The songs folder will be used for saving your songs in.
\Skale Tracker\Instruments\ - The instruments folder will be used to save Skale Tracker instruments (.ski files) in.
\Skale Tracker\Samples\ - The samples folder will be used to save Wave samples into (.wav files)
\Skale Tracker\Unsorted samples\ And the Unsorted samples is a good addition for putting in all your untested instruments and samples downloaded from the internet.
Of corse these are just suggestions. Do as you will.
8. Now click the "Setup Directories" button and a new window appears. We only need to setup the top 3 directories for Module, Instrument and Sample.
9. Click the "Module" button and browse to the folder you just created in your Skale Tracker directory, eg. "C:\Music Programs\Skale Tracker\Songs\", then hit "OK". Do the same with the Instrument and Sample button, pointing to their respective folders.
10. Click "OK", click "Save".
HINT: For power-users who are familiar with various configuration procedures, you can manually configure all these things in the "Sk@le.cfg" file which will be created after running the config utility. However this should only be done if you are sure that you know exactly what you are doing!
We're almost done now, just a few more steps.
11. Start Skale Tracker by clicking the "Sk@le076w.exe" file, and Skale Tracker should start up for the first time. A small notice pops up telling you that the program is still in beta. We've already covered all this, so just click "OK". You are now looking at the Skale Tracker interface.
12. In the middle section of the top part of the program there are two rows of buttons that give access to various parts of the program's features and elements - this is our General Options panel.
In the second row, button number 4 from the bottom up is called "Config". Click it. A new screen appears in the top, where you can see some of the options that we configured beforehand. There are also a few new options that we did not see in the config tool.
13. In the middle section there is a box labeled "Patterns:", underneath that it says "Channels: Auto" and two 'arrow' buttons to the right. Click the 'down' arrow and you will see some changes in the tracks below. Keep clicking untill it says "Channels: 08". Then click "Save" and "Exit".
Congratulations! You've succesfully setup Skale Tracker and you should now be ready to start tracking!

Begin the Tutorial by clicking the below link. You should start with Lesson 1 obviously.
Begin the drumming tutorial
Lesson 1 - Lesson 2 - Lesson 3 - Lesson 4 - Lesson 5 - Credits