I can’t resist quoting David Zindell’s “The Broken God” in this regard:
“‘What is a human being, then?’
‘A seed’
‘A… seed?’
‘An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree.’”
This is the kind of thinking Renoise needs right now. Paraphrased:
“‘What is Renoise, then?’
‘A seed’
‘A… seed?’
‘An acorn that is unafraid to destroy its tracker-only limitations in growing into a tree.’”
before that we invent and add, you should consider what you need and how it can be solved by means of an existing interface. if that does not work then is to alter the fact that there
This was discussed before in the audio tracks thread and probably numerous times over. Renoise isn’t a ‘hybrid’ and its roots will prob’s always be tracker based. But roots are just that. We already have a horizontal sample editor and horizontal automation. So why would a horizontal arranger be a death knell that turns it into another Cubase?
Let’s not do things out of tradition but out of quality. Renoise should always be a primarily vertical program because that’s better than horizontal sequencers. But if some things are done better horizontally, should we not implement it out of conservatism?
In my head, I write verically and arrange horizontally. So I’d like the OPTION to arrange horizontally and have more traditional vertical arranging for those that prefer it.
I was looking at SunVox a while back. It has a really neat modular pattern arranger that would be mad fun in a program like Renoise.
What I find particularly fun with it is that you can create patterns that contain just one Track of programming (ie: drums) and then play them concurrently with other patterns that are different lengths. So you could, for example, write a rhythm loop pattern in 3/4 and then loop it while mixing it with a 4/4 synth pattern.
It would be really cool if SunVox and Renoise could find a way to cooperate.
Here’s what you can do with the Buzz Sequence Editor:
You can download a hi-res version of that video from here:
http://www.fileswap.com/dl/blKs4T0zgY/
Then you can clearly see the Buzz file in high resolution (I recorded it at full screen resolution, Youtube obviously massively reduced it to make it fit, but the Fileswap file is the original file).
You can download the original Buzz .bmx file here:
http://www.fileswap.com/dl/m2BrdVxA3t/
if you want to play with it in Buzz for yourself.
You’ll see that Hunz still only used numbers for each of the sequence editor, but all of those could have been given names (which would appear on the far right of the screen, like:
0. Sarah
etc. So you’d be able to see exactly what vocal part (for example) was being sung in each sequence, just by looking at the Sequence Editor.
Just watch the video and compare that to the Renoise Pattern Matrix.
Bear in mind that I only have to press ‘Enter’ to toggle between the Sequence Editor and the Pattern Editor, for whichever pattern my cursor is on. The whole thing is an order of magnitude quicker and easier to use than the Renoise Pattern Matrix.
Here’s Hunz’s ‘Your Still Here’:
Here’s the full size video file on Fileswap:
http://www.fileswap.com/dl/EOTdu8Fs00/
Here’s the original Buzz .bmx file:
http://www.fileswap.com/dl/InEHe2jymp/
Just like in Buzz.
Here’s a simple tutorial I made on how to use Buzz, which shows the Sequence Editor and how it works. You’ll need to pause when reading the annotations, as there are quite a lot.
You can download the hi-res version of the video (but without annotations) here:
kool
Try the Hunz .bmx files in Buzz, Hotelsinus, if you’ve not seen them before I think you’ll be very impressed. If I had a tenth of his talent I would be a happy man.
Watch this video from 1:30 to 1:50 to see how incredibly fast the Sequence Editor is, in the hands of a master. WARNING - there are large noise bursts on the audio of this video, none between those time periods, but there are others throughout the videos, and they are VERY irritating. Such a shame that these interesting videos are absolutely ruined by those bloody noise bursts.
You simply can’t use the Pattern Matrix even a tenth as fast as this.
I second that! That is almost exactly what I would like to see. Add in a feature similar to the Blocks mode in Reason and it will be near perfect.
The pattern sequencer in Buzz is also good. I don’t really care if it is horizontal or vertical (maybe make it flexible enough to do either), what I need is the ability to sequence patterns in a big full screen UI, preferably with the ability to layer song-length and arbitrary-length audio clips over the complete sequence of patterns (not necessarily aligned to them), so that I can track guitars to a song in Renoise instead of exporting patterns to another DAW for sequencing and guitar tracking.