A Few Things That Tripped Me Up As A Beginner

are you in edit mode? it does not do it when not in edit (recording) mode (Escape-key on PC). then click on a random position on a random track, and repeat. you will see how the position you clicked is being centered (to test this, put your finger on the screen parallel to the selected position, and start clicking. you will see the editor jump around, while the selected position stays in line with your finger (centered).

Hello there, I guess we are using different words to describe this behavior. The way you describe this is what I mean by jumping around. Yes, the cursor stays centered. This is not what I would like. I want the window behind it to not move so my eyes don’t have to jump to a new spot on the screen every time I click somewhere with the mouse. Now, if you move the cursor to the “top’ of the pattern I’m about 4” from the top of my screen. That’s a waste of space. Let’s say I decide to edit line 55. I select line 55 and now that jumps 4" from the top of my screen too. I was expecting it to be on the bottom where my eyes were focused. It takes me a second to realize what’s just happened. It’s disorienting and unnecessary. I want the lines to not move unless I tell them to. Furthermore, if I select line 63 to edit, I can only see up to line 36 in the same pattern. The top of the pattern is unavailable to view or to edit.

I just can’t see the point. Give me an option to lock the pattern with a key binding so I can choose which scrolling behavior is appropriate for the task at hand. Make sense?

Cheers,

try unchecking this: Edit => Preferences => Gui => Single mouse click navigation". If I got what you mean, the pattern will “jump” only if you double-click it

Thanks for your response Mr. Alien. Yes, this is better for me and what I’ve been doing for the most part. This is about half of the way there because a single mouse click only allows copy and paste etc. as far as I can tell. Data entry still needs to be double clicked, no?

Ya know, I think I’m just going to let this go now and just make some music. After my 1st song or two I’ll no doubt get a better sense of workflow and get a bit more familiar with the Renoise way.

Cheers and see you around the forum.

Ah, now I understand it! I never experienced it, because I rarely, if ever, use the mouse for editing (which is probably also the reason why no one else complains about this, since no one uses the mouse, since it is not as effective as using the keyboard).
But yeah, it would certainly be more consistent if the mouse clicks did the same when in editing mode and when not in editing mode.

fladd

+1

Absolutely, I am not sure about why there is the difference? The option in the preferences panel only effects edit mode and not non edit mode. The only way to make them consistant is to always have single-click disabled:


As someone stated earlier , you can change this behaviour , by disabling jump to next line …( enter value in step edit )
On the other , for me it feels uncomfortable to set this to zero , always keep step edit to 1 ( for effect commands that is ) and yes you have to keep going back to the previous line , but it is lightning fast once you’re used to it , a tracker is keyboard orientated

I still think a -1 setting for horizontal movement would be nice.

Or even enabling something similar to the Chord mode via Shift where, if you hold shift you could enter the values each at a time. That could work well actually.

Good Idea!!

Actually posted it in the 2.6 Suggestions forum, although a bit close to release to really ask for things to be added, but it fits with the rest of the work flow so feels should be there really.

+1. like that idea a lot. fact is, i got used to this behaviour out of necessity, but still think it is somewhat strange.

Hello there and thanks for your input. And thanks to everyone really. I’m learning a lot about renoise here. Very cool.

I get that trackers are keyboard oriented and I can see how you can get fast at that paradigm. (in general) The thing that I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around is how can it possibly be faster to use Tab, Shift-Tab and the Arrow keys to move around for selection duties? If I’m at the top, first track and I want to edit a note near the end of the pattern using those keys is pretty slow. Granted, I’ll probably get better at it, but still … it’s inherently faster to use a trackball and double click the area. If you’re only moving down a line or two then it is faster to use the keyboard, but not for larger jumps.

The only thing I can think of that I’m missing is … in the workflow of making a tune, you never actually need to make those large leaps. This could easily be true. I simply don’t know because I haven’t started writing with the program yet, I’m just trying to wrap my mind around it’s world. Oh, wait a minute. I just tried this a bunch. The way the program is set up now the scroll wheel plus Tab and Arrow seems to be the way to get fast.

Comments anyone?

  • 1 for the Shift Key idea. Nice!

Hint: Try pressing F9 - F12 ;)

pgUp and pgDown are also good for faster navigation (for selections combine with shift).

thanks for the tip, i did not know that! very helpful.

i tried this one out as well, and noticed something ‘odd’. i does not matter if my NumLock is on or off, Renoise always treats my numpad-input as numeric. being on a laptop (glad to have the blessing of the NumPad in the first place), my PgUp+PgDn-keys are on my NumPad. this means i cannot use them in Renoise. this does not seem like a logical thing to me. simply not ignoring NumLock would solve the problem.

Yeah Renoise always treats the key as the key no matter state of locks. On my laptop, which does have NumPad, it also has alternate Pg Up/Down Home/End keys accessed by using the Fn button with the arrow keys. Rarely use it because of this though…

Pg Up/Down moves you by 8 lines always. There is also move by your Edit Step amount, Shift + Ctrl + Up/Down.

@kazakore: yeah i got the same stuff with the Fn-button, however due to re-installations of my OS, these buttons don’t work anymore. :)

just going up/down by 8 lines is not that big a deal to me anyway i guess. i’ll take the F9-F12 tip to heart though!

Home key , will bring youto the first line of the pattern
End key will bring you to tha last line …You can also use the page up an page down keys to navigate trough the pattern with a reso of 16 steps ( lightning fast );;; It’s these litlle shortcuts that make a tracker a breeze to work with , I had difficulties too when I started out with renoise , but don’t worry they will become a second nature once youknow them …

Hi esteso!

Thanks for this discussion, I’m also begginer although I’m learning renoise almost one year…
If you are using small apple keyboard you might want look at this:

I’m trying to set some keys on my MBP to make it easy, but still have a lot of things to do/learn also from here…

Cheers,

Tom

OFFTOPIC:
Does anyone know if there is a chance to map midi to increase/decrease active row in pattern-editor?
I wish that I can edit notes just by my midicontroler and not to touch keyboard or mouse only to move to another row.
I can’t find it. Or maybe some script in renoise 2.6 (I don’t have it yet) ?

Hello there Nero. I’ve had great success using my iPhone as a numpad for Logic and Protools. Can’t see why it wouldn’t work for renoise too.

Good Luck