The thing i’m still struggling with in renoise that’s (imho) easier on ‘regular daws’: arrangement. Of course because the patterns are rigid and you can’t just drag some notes to begin slightly at the end of last pattern, but also, when I start out with 1 or 2 bar patterns and in the end have a song with too many different patterns such that I lose overview, I’d like to join them e.g. 2 by 2 or 4 by 4. Now it’s all good if you don’t ever use the right click on the + sign in pattern sequencer, but I’m from 2.7 so I still use that sometimes and then if you have 0 1 2 3 somewhere and 0 1 2 4 somewhere else in the song, unexpected things happen. Namely, in this scenario I’d like to join 0123 to a new pattern 0 and 0124 to a new pattern 1. If I select 0123 and choose join, they do merge correctly, but the 0124 will still exist with 0 being 4 bars long and 124 sequence 3 bars… This is awkward / difficult to work with because if I would just flatten the whole sequence first I might not remember which patterns I wanted to join to which ones. So my workaround now is: create stuff with small patterns, then when a song starts growing out of that, label different sections, then flatten sequence, then logically join patterns 4 by 4.
So my question is: is there some feature thinkable that would make this merging/arranging thing more visual/obvious.
I used to have this problem, but now that we have the pattern matrix I never even pay attention to the sequence chain numbers and just work in a linear DAW style, always adding new patterns instead of repeating any pattern numbers.
That’s the best solution - just use duplicate button, and slot aliases. Thanks
I wonder if you and I were thinking the same thing… Arrangement Category Trees
1st… lol, I forgot about the pattern brainstorming thread.
2nd… I read you thread here, and still made a new thread, but upon reading your thread again… I am wondering if we were having the same sort of thought…
I started making hip hop, a few years ago, when I was still looking for my, “production style,” and now it seems, I’m really digging the hip hop vibe… but I know the problem you are having with arrangements is a pattern organization one and can not be fixed by, “combining,” patterns, unless you want to greatly confuse the situation, and have all sorts of automation problems.
At least, that is my perspective…
I am doing 100% my arrangement in Renoise, so I can offer, “its doable,” just a practice issue. but I think, “category trees,” would make life very interesting… not just for hip hop… I think everybody can benefit, because, “boom, now there is a new way to group the patterns together, but not combine them.”
cheers
I for one have not yet completely grasped the new workflow with the aliases, but I’m slowly getting there… 
It’s a completely new way of thinking. I instinctively try to repeat the patterns and not the matrix slots and it makes my learning process harder…
But in the end, I think it’ll pay off. I now kind of understand the allegedly heated discussion behind the scenes when developing 2.8. conserning the completely flat sequencer. It would have its merits. The current system on the other hand it allows me to stick to my old ways, but by doing so adds some extra confusion.
Got. To. Learn.
There was a discussion about like, “horizontal?” Cause I think that would have screwed all of us up… lol. I think if we had more, “zoom out.” but certainly, no need for flat… or, “horizontal,” which is like a curse word around these parts…
Aah, no, not horizontal. As I understood it, the devteam had a discussion on whether there would be “patterns” at all, in the sense that you could put them in any other order than 1,2,3,4,5,6,7… Meaning there wouldn’t be patterns, only sequence positions. And the only thing you could repeat would be the matrix blocks. Or at least this is how I personally understand the flat sequencer concept.
They arrived to the compromise that there are still patterns, but there’s a soft push towards using the flat sequencer concept with the ‘keep sequence sorted’ option.
ooh… sequence positions! I can see how that makes sense 
Probably a learning curve from hell, but definitely interesting…
I think it will be cool merge all patterns in one big pattern and when i want doit arange big pattern split to small patterns in pattern matrix.