question about offsets and slices

I am quite a renoise noob but I have learned how to form drum break variations by using the offset command. I love this because I can set the break on loop and maintain the original flow of the rhythm.
It is however a little frustrating that the offset markers don’t align exactly where I would like them to. I thought that using slice markers would be a perfect solution since they also respond to the same command but then it only triggers the slice alone. It doesn’t continue to loop through the break like it does when you trigger offsets.

Am I missing a trick here or is it just not possible with slice markers?

I considered the alternative of duplicating the break several times with each duplicate starting at a different point in the break. I could then have them all set to loop and effectively achieve the same thing but then I’m arranging rhythms with notes on the keyboard instead of the offset command and lose the very handy randomize feature. I’m not keen on this.

There is a little button next to the sensitivity % amount box and the snap button above the waveform display. It will let you play to the end of the original sample. If you enable looping on the slice it will return to the beginning of the slice, though, and not the beginning of the original loop. There are advantages and disadvantages to that. About doing exactly what you describe I’m not sure how/if, without restarting it in the pattern editor. Clicking that button should make doing that much easier, though?

Thanks for this. I’m not sure how I missed that button. However, you are right about it not looping. That is a problem for me. I’ve also realized that the nice randomize feature isn’t so great for slice markers. It generates values beyond the last slice and I can’t see any way to set the randomization range so I guess this not going to happen. I’ll stick with using the offsets. Such a shame that this feature doesn’t exist. Just an option to move the offset markers would be perfect.

One thing you can do is slice the break to a phrase, and then trigger the phrase using an offset. The 0Sxx command offsets the line # in the phrase, making it really easy to access the specific slice you want (and it’ll play the rest, and loop).

Thanks for this suggestion. It works pretty well but doesn’t respond well at all to tempo change. If I change the bpm it gets messed up. I tried beatsync on and off on all slices but it’s not good either way. Triggering offsets from a loop with beatsync on works flawlessly.

Randomizer is no good in this method either because it doesn’t generate the right lines.
Also this forces me to switch line number format to hex so that lines in longer patterns that are triple digit can be triggered by OSxx.