ps, I still would LOVE to see the reasoning behind the pattern matrix, who invented it, what their thought processes were, if they considered other possibilities, how on Earth they came up with it as a good way of sequencing, etc.
No doubt asking such questions is also a capital crime, according to esaruoho…
What ‘attitude’ would that be? Asking ‘awkward’ questions about the cult that is the pattern matrix? I have a program that I paid for, which I can’t use, because the most vital part of the user interface stops me from using it, because it’s unnecessarily difficult to use. I’m entitled to talk about it - why don’t YOU show us a video of why the pattern matrix is actually usable, and how you use it?
Isn’t it funny how you didn’t ask esaruoho to ‘tune it down’ when he started shoving his nose in my thread, yet again… LOL.
Keep it civil, guys. There are some interesting ideas being discussed in this thread, but don’t make us lock it because you’re acting like children towards each other. Either discuss your thoughts maturely and in a constructive manner, or don’t bother.
(I’m writing a quick post now to address a few issues that have been brought up)
That video is a very good introduction to some of the powerful features of the Pattern Matrix. I’m not sure, though, that it’s “exactly” what he’s asking for.
At least as far as I understand it, the key issue is that the Pattern Matrix cannot provide different length patterns for different tracks/groups within the song. I’m sure there’s more nuance that I’m missing, but I personally would love (as I mentioned before) if there were at least one alternate/sub Pattern Matrix so that I could lay down certain tracks with different pattern lengths than, say, the drums.
If I’ve got it wrong, and someone can explain the issue more clearly, that would be most welcome.
No it isn’t.
We are speaking of arbitrary track sizes, not simply shifting track contents from one track/pattern to another.
It is an intermediate solution to clip arranging but the PM lacks the resizing of tracks.
Listen… We understand that you don’t like the Pattern Matrix, and that it’s not (currently) totally suitable for your personal workflow. You’ve made your point. Believe me, we get it. Ok?
You keep asking for video ‘proof’ of someone using the Pattern Matrix to write a song, but what good will come from that anyway? It will only show someone else using a workflow that is not your own workflow. You’ll see someone creating some patterns, and then manipulating blocks in the Pattern Matrix, cloning stuff, aliasing stuff, etc. But what will that actually prove to you? It seems quite clear to me from your posts, that you do not actually want to adapt your workflow to fit the Renoise Pattern Matrix, so how will such a video change anything for you?
There’s really no secret trick to it. There’s no magic thing that we are doing, that you are somehow missing. Based on what you’ve already said in this thread, it seems to me that you do already understand the main features of the Pattern Matrix: being able to easily clone track data from pattern to pattern, being able to alias and re-use track data in other patterns, etc. One of the primary things you seem to be upset about, is the fact that you can’t perform all of the desired actions (and other related sequence editing) with some super convenient keyboard shortcuts like you could in Buzz, or that the Pattern Matrix is inherently slow somehow because you mainly use the mouse to interact with it. Would you say that’s a fair assumption?
You can’t do exactly the same things in the Renoise Pattern Matrix that you can with the Buzz Sequence Editor, simply because Renoise isn’t Buzz. Nor are we trying to be Buzz. This is a simple thing that you must understand and accept before you can move forward. The sooner you accept the fact that Renoise has its own workflow, and that you’ll need to make some small adjustments to your own personal workflow, the happier you’ll be. We all come from different backgrounds here, we all had our favourite trackers or sequencers in the past, and we all had to make some adjustments when we switched to Renoise. You will never be able to replicate your old experiences 100% in Renoise, but in the end hopefully it’s worth it anyway.
Renoise does not currently support all the same things that Buzz does, like easily combining patterns of different lengths in the sequence editor. We cannot easily support such a feature without heavily rewriting huge portions of Renoise’s audio engine. On the surface it may not seem like a big deal to you - and you already admitted that you weren’t a programmer, so I’ll assume that you don’t really understand the amount of effort that goes into this stuff - but the structure of Renoise is built upon a 10-year legacy, so this is not something that we can simply snap our fingers and do overnight. It’s a serious conceptual difference that requires a lot of work to implement under the hood. We are obviously improving and changing things all the time, but we are still a very small development team with limited resources, so this is one particular restriction that you’ll simply have to live with for now.
With that in mind, the Pattern Matrix was designed as an alternate method of sequencing blocks of pattern data within Renoise, and to provide a method of arranging/organising pattern data in a more intuitive manner - more intuitive than a shitload of manual copy/paste operations within the Pattern Editor spanning multiple patterns. In this respect it’s actually very powerful, and many of our users now rely on it as part of their workflow. Especially with the recent introduction of alias blocks, which make it very easy to re-use phrases and rhythms throughout your song, while also being able to quickly edit something and have it reflected in the rest of your entire song. This is essentially the same as “clip”-based concepts that you might find in other DAWs, and when you compare this to Buzz it’s basically the same as repeating blocks in the BSE. We don’t let you simply type “0” or “1” into the Pattern Matrix to quickly alias a particular block, but there is a shortcut (CTRL + P by default) that allows you to type in a pattern number and alias a block to that pattern. You can easily re-map this shortcut to a key that you feel more comfortable with.
For a (hopefully) good example of alias usage, you can check out my own demo song included in Renoise 2.8 - “dblue - Syntechtic Sugar”. While the overall musical style may or may not be to your personal tastes, hopefully you can at least appreciate how the song is constructed, and the fact that it relies heavily on aliasing to achieve the end result. In fact, the entire ~6:00 minute song is made up from only a small handful of unique pattern blocks which are aliased/repeated everywhere, and it also takes advantage of the fact that track muting and automations are still unique to each Pattern Matrix block, in order to create builds and sweeps as the song progresses. I cannot provide you with a video of the song creation process, but I can say that I was able to put it together way more quickly than anything I’ve done in the past, simply thanks to the aliases in 2.8. Actually, this was quite a refreshing joy for me to work with, because in the past I always get stuck creating 1 or 2 patterns and then struggle with the overall arrangement, because it has always been quite a pain in the ass to copy/paste everything manually when I want to make some changes to a basic rhythm.
Anyway…
Our Lua scripting API can address some of these issues. In fact, earlier in this thread when you expressed some of your thoughts about your BSE workflow, like being able to select a few pattern matrix blocks and then quickly insert them into a new pattern above/below the current sequence position with a single key-stroke, I actually started working on a Lua tool that provided some additional keyboard shortcuts to perform these actions: copy selected blocks above/below, move selected blocks above/below, insert selected blocks above/below, etc. I will try to finish up the tool soon and post it on the forum, and then maybe this can at least give you a little bit of relief in your workflow.
Overall, we do listen to our community for ideas and feature suggestions, to see what people generally seem to want most, but we’re not just going to rip or emulate entire chunks of functionality from other software - that simply isn’t our style. We also don’t have the ability to implement every damn thing that anyone ever said on the forum - we have to prioritise the stuff that appears to be more important or urgent. We’re not miracle workers here, we’re just a few dudes working on some code and trying to do the best we can.
As always, we will try to keep some of your (and others’) suggestions in mind for the future. At the very least, we can always try to implement new native key bindings that perform common actions, to make your workflow more fluid and natural within the Pattern Matrix. Some of this stuff can be done with tools, but other stuff has to be done natively and requires extra work.
In conclusion, we do understand that you are a bit frustrated, but when you repeatedly post things like “What exactly is so good about the pattern matrix?” and “how on Earth they came up with it as a good way of sequencing”, etc., please understand that it sounds quite aggressive and confrontational. It’s really not constructive and it undermines all the damn hard work we’ve put into Renoise over the years. Yes, you are a registered user, and we sincerely thank you for your support in that respect, but you also had the perfect opportunity to test the Renoise demo and all of its features before you spent any money. You knew exactly what you were buying. And if you bought Renoise before the Pattern Matrix even existed, then you obviously saw something you liked in the program that made you buy it anyway. So to say “I have a program that I paid for, which I can’t use” is simply unfair.
Well, that’s not my biggest problem with the pattern matrix, I want to be able to write a ‘clip’ and then put it anywhere I want to, name it anything I want, enter it just by pressing a number on the keyboard, and insert and delete to move it up and down the sequence editor (in exactly the same way as you would move notes up and down in the pattern editor) - but having different length patterns is very important too.
I presume that that would be the hardest part to code.
That video isn’t really what I was asking for - I just wanted to see how other users actually use the pattern matrix when writing a song. I can’t believe there is only one video of this in existence!
I didn’t want them to prove anything, I wanted to see how they do the sort of basic things that I do in Buzz, so that I can move over to Renoise. I wanted to see if maybe I was wrong, and that other people are using the pattern matrix to do the sort of things I do all the time in Buzz.
It’s not so much trying to adapt my workflow, more like that I can’t actually do the basic things I do with every song I write in Buzz - write a drum pattern, copy it four times, write a bass line, create a copy of the drum pattern and edit it, then put it in the first position, then create a copy of that and put it in the second and third positions, use Insert to move the last two drum patterns down two spaces and insert two other drum patterns in their place, etc.
Am I right in thinking that one of the reasons for not making the pattern matrix more like the BSE is because you would have to rewrite the entire audio engine? So far nobody has said that (unless I’ve missed it), so if it’s impossible without massive work, then that’s it, end of story, I just have to see if I can get used to the pattern matrix.
Yes.
I agree - the pattern matrix is much better than not having it at all. If it wasn’t there I wouldn’t have bought a new licence of Renoise, because it would have been no better - in the most important part of the program for me (the arranger) - than the old version I had already.
I will try that, thanks for the tip.
I’ve had a look at it, and I can see how you’ve used loads of aliases, and it all makes sense to me.
Thanks very much! That sounds like exactly what I was looking for.
Well, I don’t expect you to change anything just on the wishes of one person, me, and the reason I posted up the Buzz video was to show how quickly and easily I could edit things in Buzz. I do like EVERYTHING else in Renoise, that’s why I am so keen to move to it from Buzz, I just find the change to my workflow very difficult to get used to, and I haven’t been able to get into all the other aspects of it, because I am still trying to get au fait with the pattern matrix.
When the cursor is on a block in the pattern matrix, you can’t just type a number and have an alias of a pattern appear there - you have to press CTRL-P and then enter the number - is it possible to make it so that you CAN just type the pattern number that you want? (I realise that at the moment it triggers the selected instrument, but presumably if your cursor is on the pattern matrix, not the pattern editor, you don’t need to play an instrument with the keyboard. Or it could be toggled on or off.) Just an idea which would speed up my workflow a little bit.
I don’t want to use the mouse at all, just move the cursor keys, type a number, and that’s it. It’s a very minor point, not important at all, I’m happy using CTRL-P at the moment, and will redefine it to something else when I have time to work out what key(s) is/are best!
I just thought that most people probably don’t want to play the selected instrument while actually in the pattern matrix, so it would save one step.
Now that I understand what you are saying, “mouse over/enter alias.” I think I have to agree, that is another very slick idea. But I think that has been the whole story throughout the thread, “none of your ideas, that you have shared have been bad, or wrong, or not worth thinking about.”
However, the Renoise Pattern Matrix still deserves credit, for being a really great part of the program. I quite like it, and I am not sure if it is my, “dream matrix.” I do not even know what my, “dream matrix,” would be… I have used Buzz, and in short, I found the program to be a disaster. However, I have not used it since 2007, maybe it has changed. I find I can not download or install it, cause I’m very happy with Renoise, and I am very busy juggling music, and work, and all sorts of stuff, “like everybody else here.”
You can play the instrument no matter where your focus is, therefore you can not assign these keys as you desire. Plus you would still need a key to get into enter number mode and then enter the number, not 1-9 instantly entering the numbers, with the basic Renoise program. A script in focus taking keystrokes could behave differently…
Or I would consider using the key A or the key 1 as both of these are single keypresses, easy to reach and remember and do not play piano keys and can thus be used.
Unlocking the computer keyboard, giving access to shortcuts for any key, has been suggested a few times. People who want to use Renoise live or mainly record from external MIDI devices being the main proponents of this idea.
It should be possible with the existing lua API to create a tool which could do something like immediate alias entry.
You would bind a keybinding to start/stop this tool (e.g. Ctrl-Shift-B or something).
Upon starting, the tool would display the pattern matrix (if hidden), give it focus, and show a small dialog box (with no controls preset - it would just be a title header).
Keyboard focus would then be diverted to this dialog and into the tools control. The tool could then handle the keys as required, e.g.:
Cursor keys - move around in the pattern matrix (I think you can hook the cursor keys, h-j-k-l would be another option).
Numbers followed by enter - alias the currently selected pattern track to the entered number.
Another key, e.g. ‘u’ to unalias the selected pattern track
More keys to clone/clear etc. as required.
From a usability standpoint, you could display the ‘queued’ number as you append digits in the dialog title so it appears in the header bar.
Pressing the start/stop key combination again will stop the tool, remove the dialog and (as required) rehide the song matrix.
Hopefully this description will assist people who want a ‘buzz like’ workflow tool and someone will start making a tool along these lines (I am too busy).
