A Reminder About Live Recording Features

Ideas & suggestions
1

Just wanted to say thanks for this great update!

Eventhough I never felt the need for a mixer or recording I will ofcourse use them. I also understand that anything that makes this program better is good because it will attract more users.

I´m extremly impressed by the new automation funtionality.

But what I do feel is that features that are not huge vote able ones should not be forgotten.

Nowdays I do most of my recording live with keyboard and there are lots of small but really important features that would make a huge impact and greatly improve/speed up the workflow for us who want to do live recordings.

The main features I´m still missing are small things like:

Record quantisize:

Would be nice if one could quantize but also with the option to keep the delay value.
Example I want a bass to only end up on every other line but I want it to be with some delay at some lines. If I record live with quantisize on and record delay it will end up on every other line but will have a delay value.

When you record something live today you get delay values all over the place.
Its quite time consuming to fix these that got to big delay values and clean.

So a quantisize selection would be nice.

And also the ability to move/warp the stuff you have selected.

Often I make a couple of patterns and I start to record the same melody a couple of times untill I get it right. However the best take often happens to end up between two patterns.

Sometimes I also have a single pattern in which the recording will start in the middle of the pattern and end in the middle of the same pattern.

It can also be that I record a long solo and it ends up on several patterns but needs to be moved up or down.

So ability to move tracks/selections either let the warp inside a pattern/selection or/several patterns etc or move the data between patterns would be very useful.

Would be great if you could move also move stuff up or down subticks.

Countdown/record on keypress:

I can do the countdown myself by copying the first pattern.
So its not that important. But it ought to be quite easy to implement.

Overwrite recordmode: Right now one have to make a lot of patterns if I want to record the same thing a couple of times. This is because if the patterns loop it starts to mix with the old content.

Overwrite record mode would be so useful.

Add patterns when recording: Would also be very useful.

Ability to select small parts and to add and subtract from a selection.

This would also speed things up when you want to adjust every other drum etc.

You could also let a user store selections on a track as presets.
So that you can have a preset selection which selects every other line etc.

I really hope these stuff like this make it into the next comming updates because it makes what I think is the most important part of a music composing program the creation/edit process, quicker.

2

I can’t agree more.
It’s alomst impossible to record midi into renoise.
It’s plain hell to edit your recordings.
Unfortunatley not that many trackers seems to record stuff live, so this never gets the attention that it really deserves.
Thats why so many ppl never want to try a tracker in the first place.
It’s a shame really. The way I see it, the longer you have been tracking and doing music in general, the bigger chance is that you sooner or later find out how greatly helpful midi recording is. But the way trackers are today, you don’t never get a chance to learn it. Because its almost impossible to use.

3

I also agree. I know some people who do not like trackers because they can’t quantize and have not good time resolution. And me myself do not use renoise for live input from my MIDI drumkit because of the limitations shown by splajn.

on the other hand, trackers have never been software for live inputing, so such a change would surely require some more effort

4

i know it’s a workaround, but what i do is first prepare track with ‘delays’ values like ‘D2’ or ‘D1’ on odd rows for the swing feeling.this process is like 3 seconds,then with ‘record note delays’ to OFF I’m recording live.

5

That’s true, but I recorded Midi live in renoise. Especially Piano-parts sound extremely realistic, when recorded live.

6

which BPM/speed settings do you use?

I understand there is really a “bug” in my workflow: I mostly try to record drum lines after I’ve made a whole part of a song, sometimes even when I’ve already makde a tracked drum like which I would like to substitute with an human-made one.

In these cases, I use odd speed settings, and most of times BPM and speed vary “randomly”.

In such situations, there is really no way to input data with Renoise as it is now, but I also understand that the idea of inputing drums data into a tracker is something quite mad…

7

Speed 3 / 100 BPM usually… Because then I get the most realistic piano sounds. On the other hand, I’d never use Midi for inserting strings, drums. Just to improvise. But quantisize would help a lot. AFAIK, FT2 had quantisize (which was quite good, IMHO)

8

Especially these would be must have features for me! Just overwriting would propably double up my work speed! It really is awful to record midi in renoise at the moment, but these features would make renoise almost perfect for me.

You have my support! :w00t:

9

At the risk of sounding like a random “me too!” idiot, I agree with all the previous posters. These would be immensely useful features, and they would make Renoise even more attractive product than it already is.

MIDI controllers have become more common and affordable these days. Getting the most out of them with Renoise is an aspect that should not be overlooked. Giving some serious thought about keyboard-controller based editing and recording would certainly help in setting Renoise further apart from the (tracker) competition, and help establishing it as a more “professional” tool.

I have not yet received comments to my question about external MIDI controller “keyboard shortcut” assignments (which I posted in the Beginners’ section), but I suspect the feature I describe there does not exist in current versions of Renoise. If so, I feel that feature alone would open up lots of new flexibility and possibilities for someone who routinely does live recording using an external controller.

10

I agree Jukka, those should also be high priority for the next updates if you ask me :)

11

Another thumbs up!

I would definitely use my new midi keyboard more when tracking if it was more user friendly. Would greatly speed up my workflow I bet. Now I try new stuff live first with rec off, and then enter it with pattern follow off, it’s often faster than cleaning up all the garbage afterwards.

I also think many potential renoisers might be put off by the somewhat poor live recording capabilities.

12

Of course I agree on these things as well.

There could be one feature, that could make Renoise unique (AFAIK) when it comes to midi recording. That is recording different instruments/samples to different tracks. At once, for example when playing a drumkit. I’d say most of us like to have kick and snare in their own tracks, for DSP and so on. So why not already record them like that. (Btw, I mentioned this also in the Instrument Control Center thread.)

I haven’t been following other hosts that well. But I think most hosts still do drum midi recording like this in FLS. That is, the drums get all mixed up in track, which is not so nice, IMO. (Probably the audio outputs are still separated, but that’s another story.)

In some hosts when you record all in one track you can later separate notes by pitch to different tracks. For example: notes C (kick) on one track, notes C# (snare) on another… still not the best solution, IMO. But it’d be nice to have that in Renoise as well.