lol t’was a j/k.
Only wishful thinking eh? Too bad
yeah, but seriously are devs cooking up something or are these just pure speculations of tracker-piano roll hybrid?
idea : notes would be inserted and they would not have a note-off automaticly, like notes do not have those in the tracker pattern.
I don’t know if this allready exists in software but it would be damn usefull in renoise I think.
Or is this “no shit sherlock” ?
I’ve read again the whole thread and propose you my Renoise Multicolor PianoRoll Editor.
- Fact 1, it has to be vertical.
- Fact 2, it has to be large like the jeskola buzz pianoroll.
- Fact 3 the piano view must be on the top, not on the bottom, so that the Pianoroll vertical scrolling would be coherent with the trackers’s typical pattern scrolling.
- Fact 4, some instruments’ vertical automation curves, (at least volume & panning), must be available on the right side of the editor.
- Fact 5, each instrument must have a dedicated color so there must be a place to define it.
- Fact 6, you should be able to define a default track for each sampled instrument.
Result :
hey simonwellander 
I’ve also tried to make a “horizontal” mockup, but realized that when a user is going deeper in the edition he would have to edit pattern commands what would require him to switch back to the classical vertical tracker-pattern view… a view that scrolls vertically… Using a different axis for the same timeline and workflow is a mistake. That’s why I think that new notes edition modes like a pianoroll have to be “vertical” (even if I admit that a computer screen has more space horizontally, than vertically).
If a pianoroll has to be embedded, it would be lame to tease folks that expect something familiar with a different touch. Let them be teased by the vertical tracking layout and try to figure out the relationship between the old known PR and tracker layout for the sake of soul-winning.
If a piano roll, is embedded, I don’t think it will grow the user base via capturing producers from Cubase, Abelton, Pro Tools and Sonar. The other daws, have a lot of audio functionality that Renoise does not. This is not a, “Renoise put down,” its just a truth.
Hey, if I was going to produce somebodies hip hop record… I might do the pre-production in Renoise. Make the beat, make them totally trippy and unique. Make the instruments, and do the arrangement. By the time I get to vocals, and maybe live instruments, like a real drummer playing over a programmed beat, or a bass player laying down some slap grooves… I’m already heading into Ableton or Reaper territory.
There is nothing wrong with using a software, for what the software is designed to do.
About capturing producers from other programs, and growing a user bass by, “steeling,” customers away: I think there comes a point in time, where many producers say, “i’ve got my workflow, I’ve got what works for me, and I’m not switching to another program, unless I really, really have too.” Why would somebody who has spent 5 years learning max, switch to Reaktor, or vice versa. Is somebody going to buy Neundo, after they have spent 10 years mixing and mastering in Pro tools?
I downloaded the demo to Vaz Modular last night. I was always interested in the synth, but its pc only, and I used to use mac. So I downloaded the demo, and… Its already uninstalled. I don’t want to change my workflow to accommodate something like that. But sooner or later Sugar-Bytes is going to release the new Cyclop, and I’m looking forward to it. Why? Cause it will be simple, and great sounding like their Unique Synth. Its not really a workflow change.
But Renoise is complex. Protools is complex. Cubase, sonar, etc, etc. People wont just switch their workflow so easily, because yet another program got a piano roll.
But I understand, that is the, “brainstorm piano thread,” and not the, “argue the cons piano thread.” So here is my brain storm. "If a piano roll is to be implemented, you must have a natural flow, from all the other daws… You must have the “regular style”
http://www.box.com/s/824e111a6f9e07984579
and not this other style…
http://www.box.com/s/8c85907e01f00e055697
Or you are pretty much adding a piano roll, and people are going, “weird!” Why couldn’t they just make it normal. But like I said before, I believe in Renoise, there is already a piano roll: http://www.box.com/s/391ff7214864dcd7e7aa
Maybe what can be done, is a box, that opens up on the sample key range area, when somebody click, and its like, “view patter in piano roll.” or something like that.
Putting up Renoise as a VST instrument, i wouldn’t say that would steal anybody away from anywhere 
I didn’t mention anything, about Renoise as a VST, but I thought about it all day, and:
- Renoise as a vst signicantly raises the development cost of Renoise.
---- A) You have to go host by host, making sure there is no conflicts, of which I bet there will be many.
---- 
I’m not sure on this, but doesn’t the VST code need to be licensed from stien/yamaha?
---- C) You have to go through feature by feature, and decide what can be accessed from RenoiseVST, and how it can be used in the host.
So for these reasons, I think Rewire is very good. Rewire is a brilliant software idea. And I don’t understand what added benefit of RenoiseVST… I do have a laundry list of bugs and problems, I think can come of it.
1 day crashes ableton, next day crashes cubase, next week crashes studio one, than sonar, than ( insert host here ) And you never really know… Is this Renoise crash, or, “ableton,” or “insert host here,” crash…
Renoise as a vst, probably doubles or triples the cost of a Renoise license. I think because, there are a lot of unforeseen development costs involved in making a vst." There will be bugs, there will be problems.
BTW! I have figured out, what exactly on Rapture, is crashing Renoise. It has to do, specifically with the pitch step sequencer. And here is funny… Only that step sequencer. Well Rapture has 6 step sequencer, so wtf about Pitch, is crashing my Renoise projects?
Oh and Cakewalk… They don’t care. I am going to call and complain next week. They will tell me… “uninstall the program. reinstall, wipe your registry.” lmfao, give me a break.
How come Rewire is so stable? I do not think I have seen a Rewire crash ever. Putting Reason into Cubase, Renoise into Reaper, Renoise into Ableton, whatever. I can not remember 1 Rewire crash. Heavy CPU hit. But no crash.
But to quickly some up: Renoise as a VST… Sounds like a good idea. But it may not be a good idea. I don’t have a preference either way. Except that, "Id love to see the Renoise software, continue to be affordable, stable, and unique.
I came to the same conclusions.
There are good reasons to think that turning the whole renoise software into a VSTi DLL would work out lots of problems. It could finally be more easy to use renoise as an editing tool, in direct relationship with other more known tools, since these known progs are hosts that accept the VSTi DLL format. A good thing : we do not have to turn renoise into a DLL to see if this concept is good or bad, since it has allready be done by another coder ! Check this. I think that the reViSiT software perfectly reached this precise objective : bringing the typical tracking experience into the classic DAWs.
But you also realised for a long time why soundtrackers are so efficient : not only because of the qwerty keyboard edition and shortcuts, but also because most of them (excepted modplug, or somehow madtracker) tried to avoid floating windows. There is indeed something really boring when working with several known popular DAWs (cubase, sonar, logic…) : floating windows. Even when I’m working in Renoise, I often do not use the graphical VST interface to tweak some parameters, but instead the default editor in the renoise track DSP area. Because this kind of window breaks all global visibility on the workflow. And let’s face it : working with ReViSiT totally increases this problem, since you’re working with the host windows + ReViSiT’s one… So the initial idea to turn renoise into a DLL seems good at first but in the end will botch what makes a tracker so efficient.
2 daze j, you also perfectly noticed that technically, hosting VST DLLs isn’t a piece of cake : each time I try to use more than 5 or 6 VSTis alltogether in the same song, like you, I’ve also lots of chances to crash my host - whatever it is. Get a look on the Bug/Help report thread in this forum, the VST/VSTi compatability problems are really frequent. Each time you code something that is based on external libraries, you can be sure that it’s not that reliable in the end. Renoise has made big steps and efforts in terms of DLL tolerance. However there will always be a limit. Rewiring softwares look more stable. This is somehow why soundtrackers like Noisetrekker (and then Protrekkr) on which the renoise code was initially based, was so revolutionnary : it included all its “internal / native dsp effects”. Technically putting everything into the same software increased the reliability of this software solution, and finally everybody today appreciates the quality and the stability of the renoise native effects.
It seems that concerning the PR orientation, (horizontal or vertical?), people are hesitating. You know why I initially proposed something vertical, (cohesive frameworks and workflow axis). I’m allready a bit worried about the different axis with the sample editor, the automation editor (horizontal), and the pattern editor (vertical), this is why I though that a horizontal PR, would increase this problem. But in the end, I find that this debate is wrong, because the devteam is skilled enough to add both a vertical & horizontal scrollings in the GUI if they want. Just clicking on a button for example, would quickly change the orientation of the scrolling… I mean : why the hell should we have to choose ?
Rewire is good, but it only allows one-way traffic of audio and midi: Slaves to master.
VSTs allow multiway traffic of audio and midi, if the host allows it.
A:VST is a standard that should not require testing a VST in every host if the standard is strictly being followed. In that case the only risk of conflicts could be the use of DirectDraw routines conflicting with the host. (Renoise is one of the few hosts using DirectDraw for its GUI design, thats amongst others why some VSTs collide with Renoise).
B:Licensing is needed, but i thought it didn’t costed anything particular, the only problem with the licensing is that it doesn’t allow open source models (Hence VST isn’t widely supported on Linux) of plugins. The latter is however not a barricade for Renoise.
C:not everything is required when Renoise is a VST. Features like ReWire and ASIO support can be stripped, Midi in can be crippled. It is easier to go to a VST model because there less things usable than you would need for a host program.
Also there is a good example around:ReVisIT
I downloaded the demo, “non commercial version,” today. Here is a pic https://www.box.com/s/97875ab08def517ed4e3 That is a far cry the, “Zen of Renoise.” But this is way, way, way off topic, for the piano roll thread.
But! to be fair… I think if Renoise did do a VST, it would be a lot better than that. I don’t mean to be so negative on the subject.
PLEASE keep it vertical, the last thing we need is every logic and ableton noob to start using Renoise. lol
I am n ableton noob & I want 2 crete som phat beatz and make funkey music & stuff & piano roll lolz
yes yes, where were we…
I agree that it should be kept vertical for consistency. I’m not really for or against a PR, but if it is added I’d like to see it integrate with the existing framework in a logical manner. Coming from FL Studio I have to say what they’ve done to their piano roll in the last few versions is actually a big reason I decided to get back into tracking, it now tries to shove the ABC piano roll mode down your throat which auto zooms and zooming it vertically to the desired level isn’t even consistent with the playlist(alt+mouse wheel, in the PR you have to middle click the keyboard and move the mouse, it’s obnoxious).
I like the mockup KURTZ posted, it doesn’t create a whole new GUI with a completely different paradigm, it’s a logical extension of what already exists. Lines and beats are displayed exactly as they are now. The one thing I would change is having a graphical display of velocity/volume column, this could either be done at the side or maybe having a slider within each note that could be changed via the mouse wheel or something…maybe in piano roll mode it would switch the Vol, Pan, Del show/hide to mono mode where it will show one at a time within each note?
Another advantage of being vertical is that most peoples computer monitors are much wider than they are tall, you don’t NEED a zoom feature to get the whole keyboard, compare how far out I have to zoom in FL to get the whole keyboard compared to KURTZ’s mockup or the sample keymap in Renoise
(photobucket resizing my picture diminishes my point a little, but still, I think it’s understandable, everything has to be tiny with the more standard horizontal PR)
I’m not gonna give you my own thoughts about this one. To begin with, I am not very used to working with piano rolls, and I haven’t tried this one out much yet… BUT…
The new Ohm Studio which is for public beta testing now has the ability to rotate the whole sequencer vertically including the piano roll:
You guys with more experience about piano rolls go try it out and fill in with your expertise here 
EDIT: Tried the beta out some more this weekend and they have removed this feature for some reason.
yeah, it’s logical. when you sit down in front of a piano then the keyboard is just like in the picture above. also, you can fit a lot more of the whole keyb on a standard screen without zooming out.
same thing with audio tracks. if you are working with stereo tracks then it’s quite logical to put the left track on the left and the right one on the right but you see less of the audio data.
a mixer view is more logical in a horizontal layout: you need to be able to see a lot of tracks concurrently and it’s easy to see which track corresponds to which fader.
it comes down to a trade off because screens are rectangular (do you want to show a lot of concurrent events/tracks or show more of one track) and people being accustomed to time advancing from left to right.