If that’s how it’s going to work - with patterns being more or less copy-paste macros - then I guess it will be charming. I think old skool tracker approach will benefit much more from the arranger than the arranger from patterns, but still - it’s about time those two met! Thanks for a clear explanation, Taktik. Having seen what I had seen in Renoise so far I have a strong belief that you’ll find a way of implementing it all nicely.
My wish list for the future interface is:
clips editable as single entities, meaning: double-click a clip and you get a single track pattern editor view of the clip data.
a single timeline, pattern editor styled song view with clips marked with background colors and frames. Perhaps a ‘view clips only’ switch would be nice - when checked, only clip data will be visible, not showing the empty space around them.
clips not linked to a particular track - instruments linked to tracks (we already have that when using VSTi).
instrument independent clip pool - in other and note clips useable for any instrument.
possibility of overlaying clips, as long as there are enough note columns left to place data from different clips in different columns.
clips not linked to a particular track - instruments linked to tracks
(we already have that when using VSTi).
Clips must always be in a particular track, but I’d like to have default
instruments in tracks (as an option). If a default instrument is assigned to
a track, the instrumentcolumns in that track will be hidden and all notes
sent to that instrument. Is that what you meant?
possibility of overlaying clips, as long as there are enough note
columns left to place data from different clips in different columns.
As I see it patterns will also be a fast way to navigate through your song. Hold ctrl+down arrow for a short while and you’ve jumped from the start to the middle of the song instead of having to search in the arranger’s time line. This way patterns can be seen as indexes - a rough time range as Taktik said.
I agree with double clicking a clip to edit the clip in the pattern view would be good. But I don’t see the advantage of seeing only that clip instead of seeing the clip in it’s context (if the clip is clearly marked with the same color as in the arranger that is). Double clicking a clip could then go to the clip in the pattern view and center the start of the clip on the screen. The separate clips is one of the drawbacks in Buzz IMHO, where you don’t get the overview as in other trackers.
What is the advantage of this compared to all clips beeing owned by a track? Clips will still not be locked to a track in any way and can be moved to other tracks if you want. I think this will be more confusing than useful, but maybe I don’t understand what you are aiming at…?
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The entire song can be seen as a clip pool as you can copy any clip and then change it’s instrument number. Also it would be good to be able to load and save clips to exchange clips between songs. Then they could be available in the disc op.
Basically yes, though I think that having a default instrument for a track should not be an option. The way I see it, as Renoise’s internal sampler is to move later to a solution based on a sample pool and instrument patches that could contain effect chains, perhaps it would be better to link instruments to tracks, like in a MIDI setup, as it might be hard to get it to work otherwise. The ability of using several samples on one track will still be there as long as there’s an option of creating drumkits (already possible) and instruments with layered samples.
But we were talking about clips. If there will always be an instrument defined for a track, there’s no need to have clips attached to instruments or tracks, which means a higher level of reuse freedom. If you want a unison of the same sequence of notes on three different tracks, you can have it without any need of creating a copy of a clip for each of the tracks. Instead, you will be able to create clip-instances, so that when you decide to change a note in the sequence, you’ll only have to do it once - and not for each of the tracks.
Basically, I tend to think of note clips plainly as bunches of notes which are not connected to a particular instrument - but perhaps it would be a good idea to have both kinds of clips: those connected to instruments (call them phrases for example) and those not (plainly clips). This should also be reflected in diskop (I assume loading/saving clips will be possible) as an option to load/save clips with or without instrument information.
Imagine that you have a song with many instrument parts, but you just want to focus on the drums for a while. You double-click the desired drum clip and get this clip only - for editing and playback. This would simplify what now has to be done by muting or soloing tracks. Of course, once you’re finished with that particular clip, you can go back to the song view (pattern editor) and edit the clip further, hearing it in it’s context.
Obviously, making default instrument not optional doesn’t add anything to the original idea of having an optional default instrument in tracks. It merely removes the possibility for people to work in another way. Thus it can be a step back for some people, AND it’s not backwards compatible. So this is not an option.
Yeah, you’re right - that would make importing old mods quite problematic. Still, that is the only reason I see for having this option as soon we might probably only have instruments not usable across tracks anyway - there is little or no point in using MIDI instruments across tracks, VSTis can’t be used across tracks and it might be the same case when we’ll have instruments with effect chains. In my opinion, making default instument not optional adds one thing - a more clear, more coherent and comprehensible song structure that would be for example easier to export to a MIDI file and might also be easier to implement effectively… But I’ll agree that the default instrument should be an option unless a nice way of keeping backwards compatibility with only default instruments is found (however by backwards compatibility I mean a way of importing a mod so that it sounds the same, not necessarily keeping a similar notation).
aside from the fact that i agree with most or all of the development ideas that martinal has put forth here so far, i did want to say some things to the other people here regarding the “old school” vs “new user” paradigm that seems to exist.
the “old school hex” style of arranging patterns was invented as a way to work within the confines of limited computer resources 15 years ago. it is not the result of a carefully planned “flexible” way to arrange patterns in mod files.
it’s not the idea of patterns themselves that bother me, it’s the 20x20 pixel area of the screen that is dedicated to MANIPULATING them and their relative order that makes it hard. doing things like inserting patterns, or SECTIONS of patterns is not a one or two click process. it doesn’t involve things like keyboard entry OR dragging the mouse: two important and ubiquitous parts of modern pc interface design. instead, it involves clicking around about 20 or 40 times (and that is WITHOUT making a mistake), while having to retain a mental model of what is contained within each hexadecimal symbol - easily THE most abstract design metaphor that exists in tracking.
trackers are not defined, in my personal opinion, by the interface or method used to organize the patterns of a track, so i think this discussion from both sides has gotten a bit ouf of hand. for me, it has ALWAYS been about step-sequencing, and keyboard entry with text-based note, volume, and effect entry. anyone who has seen cakewalk, logic, or cubase’s event edit knows why trackers are fundamentally better at this level.
anyway that’s my 2 cents. i am looking forward to the arranger. i’m not a newbie or a new user or anything like that, i can think in hex, octal, binary, whatever you throw at me, and in fact i LOVE working in hex… but the orderlist is stone age stuff, guys. it’s about making music, to me, in the end, not about keeping it real or some nostalgia. if that were the case i would be making music on an amiga!
Yes you have point, but as I see Martinal already show they sequencer. Difference between will be Buzz has vertical seqeuencer and Renoise will have horizontal. Which one is better don’t know but I can use to any direction .
Alos Renoise as I understand will have some additional things to control in Sequencer so I believe when this version will come out it will be awesome.
Then just need to wait for voice recording possibility and I will be able to make all song including rapping in Renoise.
Uff, when will that day come that day will be in calendar “Renoise day”.
About the arranger; now, in the upcoming 1.5-release, that the sequencer is a whole column on the left, why not make it possible to entirely rename the pattern from ex. 0F to “INTRO 01” or what have you? After all, 0F has nothing (numericly) to do with the sequence, other than identify the pattern…
Oh, and ofcorse put the alphabetic patterns first when clicking between them to in the sequencer. Or something…
I think he was saying, that the pattern numbers don’t tell anything about the pattern sequence. So pattern 01 could either end the song and also pattern ff could start it. If there were pattern names you could call them such as “beginning” or “ending”.
If I have to choose I think colors are even better than names, because than you could select say for patterns and give them a color, this is much quicker than to type a name for each pattern, unless you could select several patterns at once and give them a name and they would all be automatically be named+ have a number. Like you select four patterns and type chorus. and they would then be named chorus 1, chorus 2 chorus 3 and chorus 4.
Also with colors you don’t have to view as much of the patterns to identify them.
But ofcourse I would like booth and naming is easier to implement as it would not require a color selector…
long time ago i suggested a sequencer with named patterns … the upcoming 1.5 solution isn’t better as in 1.28 (ok more lines for the pattern numbers )… naming of patterns is extremly important …
there is little mistake in the picture … the first row is the normal line-count (05 & 03 is doubled 04 is missing etc. - painting mistake) and the second displays the pattern numbers
I think I’ve commented on this before, and I support it, atleast as an intermediate between the current arranger and having draggable clips with names.
i thought id jump in and say my thing about the sequencer…
in my opinion now (1.281) its far too small and its one of the most important thing when creating a song. i really really like renoise and am really curious about 1.5 but the sequencer has to change and must have more functionality so u can easilly rearrange the patterns you have made and set appropriate names and overall bigger workspace for the sequencer.
I defineaely give my vote to having a buzz-style song editor. This was a great way to compose tracks from patterns, very intuitive i thought.
I have to say that the current method in renoise is a good traditional tracker method, but even the addition of muting tracks for each step in the song would add a lot for me.
That way, fewer patterns needed and a much quicker way alter song structure in a major way, try new things arrangements etc. I can’t rememberr what tracker i usd that had that feature, but i liked it.
I have sadly not had much time with renoise, and not tried the 1.5 alpha releases, so this may already be possible without me knowing!
Besides freeing precious screen space, switching instruments would be a lot easier this way too.
.
)… naming of patterns is extremly important …