Renoise could have a 3rd party pianoroll program, which gets clipboard data to paste notes and also copy pianoroll notes which you can paste to renoise. Also vsti plugins that have portamento or glide parameters could be assigned to pianoroll using automation device parameter (basically commanded by effect column) with entering a command number in pianoroll. Then you just
click mouse to glide notes. Right click for slide icon would give you possibility to enter exact glide amount. Other, like cutoff and reso can easily be edided in renoise so, there woudld not be a need for such automations in pianoroll program. Instrument number should be entered in pianoroll as well.
Chords are as easy to implement as well by xml clipboard data. Only minus is that you can’t listen what notes you are inserting in pianoroll, unless you just enter notes in renoise and paste them into pianoroll, add slides and tweak notes a bit.
So, basically it’s 3rd party pianoroll with note slide. Other features could be added like note velocity. Also switching vsti synth between poly and mono modes which works with command line parameter through automation device. This is done automatically if user has set detect poly and mono notes, since not all synths support poly glides.
Fruity + rewire works great but not everyone uses fruity for acids and stuff.
What do you think? Should I dump this idea or try to make it?
Sounds like something that should be possible through scripting. Taking the Song Data from an active song and displaying the data in an alternative way, which can then be edited and the changes represented in Renoise. (Live editing of Song Data is one of the things we have been promised.)
Would require somebody with the skills to program the GUI, which will likely fall outside the scope of LUA scripting, so will be no small feat, especially as many people tell me programming a decent GUI is often one of the hardest parts of programming.
automation nodes can be inserted on top of the window for each tick
automation nodes have “strength”, which is float converted to byte if necessary
Copy and paste of horizontal automation nodes
a number beside “selected automation group button” which’s amount can be changed by pressing mouse and moving it up and down to start using corresponding automation nodes
AutomationBindNr can be assigned to any effect in track’s dsp chain. even column effects for samples could be used.
Beside “selected automation group button” you can change automation type between point, linear and cubic.
notes can be selected with mouse + shift, and automation points move horizontally when selected notes are moved with mouse or keyboard (ctrl + left, right, up, down). In two latter cases automation points aren’t moved of course.
notes rotate from end to beginning when ctrl is held. (either mouse or keyboard move)
ctrl + a selects all notes
Skins have:
background image (which has scrollbar pits and piano pedals and some eye candy)
horizontal ja vertical scroll bar
minimize and exit buttons on top of the window
top window bar
little fonts here and there
The program would make for example slides, velocities, cutoffs etc. easy to program with piano roll