Automation views - view more than one parameter at once?

I’m fairly sure it isn’t, but is it possible to view more than one automation simultaneously?

Print screen, writea tool that would do that, haha

but no. :c

Alternatively use lfos

Yeah, automation programming lacks seriously by not enabling one to: a) have a 1:1 line up against note data, so you could fiddle autmation right next to the notes being effected, and b) not being able to line up 2 or more automations, so you could synchronise effects that require automating multiple parameters.

I find this a real drag down when trying to make modulation stuff. Always having to compare line position and the notes in the pattern view, and switching between parameters when trying to synchronise something. Other daw’s might use horizontal piano roll, and have ever so often a view of multiple parameter automations arranged next to each other right below the note data - much easier to work with.

+1

On paper, Renoise looks like a great daw for example for drum’n’bass and dubstep. The only problem is that those are automation-heavy genres. Being able to see and adjust multiple automation lanes at the same time are a must for most of those people.

This could also help solve another issue - switching through one automation lane at the time forces more focus on what is getting done at the time, which is good, but it also strains the user a lot when mass automation editing is being done like Fly said. It’s very inconvenient.

Lack of curves in automation line is a serious drawback, it reduces music’s resolution to how detailed the grid is which is very problematic (it utterly destroys smooth parts for example). General pattern 1:1 automation zoom has terrible resolution to get anything done, zooming is implemented awkwardly and can only stretch image horizontally so it’s very hard to modify at large zoom. Every automation workflow is very bad compared to almost any daw on the market. I think the best way to solve this would be to be able to adjust curve when pressing some key and dragging the line with a mouse and complement the grid data with high resolution curve information between two points on the grid. This would make it relatively easy to implement without dropping the grid thing on which the whole automation is obviously based on. Of course I’m not a programmer so maybe it’s pure gibberish what I’m saying :slight_smile:

Notes need to be somehow present in the automation window - either as colored very thin stripes on top of the automation window (this could take close to no space) or as gray barely visible by default (but color-adjustable) blocks in the background. The second solution would probably be worse as it would require more work and automation data covering those blocks is a problem that would have to be taken care of (automation color would have to be partly transparent for the blocks to be visible at all times).

Implementing vertical graphical automation like in that clever little software:

http://users.notam02.no/~kjetism/radium/

could be great! One keyboard shortcut could open an automation lane of a focused track, just like vol/pan/del columns pop up. On the surface, this looks less convenient than horizontal automation, but so does tracker interface compared to horizontal piano roll and we know what’s the end story with that :wink: Automation glued to the track would be so much more logical and would complement so much! Right now everyone has to compare horizontal automation to vertical notes, which are in a text format which makes it even harder. This would solve the problem entirely. Curve adjustments of course would be lovely!

Tonbery: Switching automations on a track(s) is quite fast and simple really, maybe even faster than other daws, as you can search and move between them with they arrow keys/tab and shift-tab,I am quite pleased with it.

Yeah for a single track automation it’s very visible. But the fact that no multiple automations can be displayed can be a problem for some. One downside of Renoise is its inability to display multiple automations for one or more tracks. This can be extremely helpful, for example when someone is writing a track in a “typical” daw and automates the same parameter for all of the tracks. Zooming out gives a “global view” where all automation lanes are shown - many things can then be visually spotted for correction or for addition. For example let’s say we spot a strong automation tendency in a short time of a track - introducing a contrasting instrument with a generally opposite automation pattern could bring back the balance. Things like that can be spotted in an instant when viewing many automation lines. It takes more time and effort to find them by ear, which of course is a good ear and musical memory training, but then every obstacle is.

Introducing curves would make automation more keyboard friendly for sure as well! With curve it’s setting up starting point, end point and then reshaping the bezier curve with directional buttons. Doing it with keyboard right now requires up to 20x more work (20 times more points + correcting whatever mess is created) and gives fragmented stairs, getting more detailed vertical resolution than 40-50 (visible bumps between points) is huge amount of work and it’s still nowhere near the CC standard of 128 which can still be lacklustre. In the meantime, doing the same thing in most daws is: click (or shift click/ctrl click) -> move mouse -> another click -> move over the curve -> press button when necessary -> shape. 2-4 secons of work tops. This makes Renoise completely useless for automation heavy music unless it’s simple “robotic” automation that’s desired and audible bumps in automation change caused by poor resolution just put the icing on the cake.

One thing that partly solves this issue is increasing a grid resolution with zoom and then using draw mode to paint higher resolution shapes but it’s not without problems - zooming in and out should not be required and it takes much more work to paint wider automation data when everything has to be so precisely shaped one small block at the time. It’s also more error prone - it’s hard to make a coherent bigger shape when working inside “puzzles”.

Recording automation with midi or clicking with right mouse button and then moving a slider to the music could help but it gets recorded at default grid resolution and I don’t know about 3.01 but in 2.8.1 every recorded parameter makes the sound glitch like crazy even though I tried many things to solve this problem. Without decent recording resolution it doesn’t matter anyway.

So every direction is a dead end except zoomed hand drawing which is a poor man’s solution. I so love Hydra compared to how tedious the same thing is to set up in other daws, but so what, when I get to the automation itself I lose all the time I saved with Hydra and then multiply it by a large number. From what I read, they were supposed to do something about those problems in 2012, I hope they get it sorted out finally.

One-stop killer solution to end the suffering? VST note expression!! Press a special button while on a note, either a special window or automation lane pops up with every automation parameter that is active on a selected track in current pattern and then select the parameter and shape it with smartly crafted keyboard controls! This is the holy grail of MIDI and so far only Cubase is on that level, that would Renoise the second program that has the most advanced and forward-thinking automation shaping technique today.

Actually, as it turns out a DAW called Tracktion has this sort of thing already - copying Steinberg’s note expression idea and applying it to vst2 plugins. Bitwig has the same thing for its own internal plugins and they’re working on making it universal (which probably means vst3 note expression as well in version 2).

In a way, renoise already has ‘vst note expression’ (do you mean just that or the rest of vst expression?), simply have only one note column in a track, spread the notes automatically between tracks with an external program. A VST3 plugin (and that supports expression)is required for a full implementation of vst note expression, it wont just work as is with all plugins (may not work at all too), some workarounds will be used, like sending to several midi channels in a plugin for each note.

A tool could be written to move the automation together with the notes or at least shift them all in time at the same time, though I just use rewire and have no big complaints, so I can’t see someone else writing it, not hard to implement, but no one really uses the envelopes to such an extent toneed it that’s all.

Alternatively for expression maps, simply have a keytracker>lfo:custom envelope(frequency = inf) >parameter.

do you mean just that or the rest of vst expression?

Just the note.

Writing true vst note expression would probably require more serious effort as it’s something relatively new, pseudo-note expression on the other hand should be simple to implement as this really is a linear, non-overlapping automation, just fragmented in display for each note.