Does look cool… To be honest; I’ve never used the mixer, or the pattern matrix, no idea what thats for…
Guess that just shows the versatility of Renoise; Timtowtdi.
If you want, i make a Logo Channel for you on Renoise Theming Discord, where you can upload your work.
happy tracking 
Not exactly this view, but quite similar:
It’s best for building a proper song structure, there’s no way to beat this overview.
After editing all the stuff in the pattern editor I only look at the pattern matrix to build a song.
Thanks for the ideas, but why tho? Still need some help to get my head around this.
Is it because i never duplicate patterns? Is this pattern matrix only for ‘muting’ tracks,
in my workflow if i don’t want a column to play i dont have notes in it.
Guess it might be because I’m used to a Madtracker feature…
‘New patteren with un-muted tracks’? …miss that option!
Oops don’t wanna take the thread ot, hope it’s no probelm.
Thanks again for info! = )
Because you don’t want your song to be boring, repetitive and same-sounding all the time. You want your song to be varied, even if you’re producing straight forward electronic dance music. Through the pattern matrix you can see what tracks are active in which patterns. And that’s crucial if you want to bring more variation. You have full control over your song structure. You can add stuff in pattern X; delete stuff in pattern Y, bring back some stuff from pattern X to pattern Z and so on. It’s self explanatory, isn’t it? It’s all about the overview. The pattern matrix gives you an overview of your song structure and the mixing view gives you a quick and easy overview of your effect devices, so that you can see if eveything has the right order and so on. It all makes sense. 
Right, got it, thanks; yea so all tracks are always active in all patterns for me, since i never duplicate a pattern.
Nice, so this can help me to visualize a song; this is what I see when i open this tool,
to be honest, im not getting a lot of feedback from what i see here:
Thank you for helping, now i understand the pattern matrix way better! 
Oh and to stay on topic, the color scheme im currently using is attached below:
FT2 Platinum.xrnc (5 KB)
Hm, I don’t get it. So if you’re not duplicating any pattern, how are you working? Do you copy and paste every single track from one pattern to another? That’s very awkward, but I assume you know that. And yes, all tracks are active, but not all tracks are filled with instruments, there are a lot of empty tracks. I was talking about tracks filled with instruments, that’s what I’ve meant when I was talking about “active tracks”.
Well, I do. You should bring more stuff. 
This is a small part of how the matrix looks in my recent song Night Sky:
Yep. And the pattern matrix selection moves with the mixer selection. So it’s easy to zip through everything quickly mainly switching kb focus between the two
Tetris?
Very interesting to read your thread about pattern matrix @TNT and @Jek !
Actually, I would have never imagined that it would be possible to actually finish a track without using the pattern matrix, since I tend to work closer to what you explained @TNT .
Out of curiosity, did you come from a Sequencer DAW background before starting using a tracker ? I feel that maybe, the “need” of using this pattern matrix may come from my sequencer background.
I’ve never used a ‘DAW’ come from FT2 background, where best practice was (at least according to beatmax tutorials) to not duplicate any page, change at least volumes, or panning or effects column slightly, so ‘muting’ tracks was something I tried to avoid.
Me? No, I was using trackers ever since. This is my story. I started making music with the first tracker ever.
Without anything else than I-blocks.
I don’t mute tracks, too. You will never find any Xs in my matrix. This would only worsen the overview. But duplicating a pattern doesn’t mean that you’re keeping the pattern’s content exactly as it is. Of course you change it according to your song buildup and/or song structure. You just need to duplicate a pattern to avoid laborious work, just like copying tracks. The pattern matrix allows you to work way quicker. Building a song is just getting simplified, no more and no less. As I said, it’s all about the overview. All you need for a quick buildup is this and of course this, too.
actually I find it pretty useful to cut out looped samples without creating a new pattern afterwards, with just a OFF command to stop it. Also pretty useful to cut all effects before a drop (reverb, delay, etc…) or anything
Yes, maybe, but on one hand I never use any loops and on the other hand it’s the same amount of work clicking on the duplicate symbol in the pattern sequencer and setting a note off at the beginning of a track than clicking on the track you want to mute by pressing return. The difference is that you’re losing the overview if there are too many Xs in the matrix. I need “black blocks” aka empty tracks in the matrix to keep the overview. I couldn’t work with all those Xs. I think muting tracks in the matrix is pretty useful if you’re playing live. But if you want to create a song it’s pretty messy.
Following what you said earlier, I find it easier to understand that nothing is playing there, than if I had an (almost empty) pattern. Here is an example on one track I’m currently working on:
on the 80 slot, without those Xs, I would have some patterns with just an OFF button (especially the growl track that contains a vocal scream I looped to make it kind of “infinite”).
That may be just me, but I don’t find it that easy to differenciate a pattern with no note data from a pattern with notes. I feel like you need to focus more on the actual pattern to see if there is any note data in it, than just not seeing the color, does that make sense ?
EDIT: yeah, my screen resolution is pretty small so that’s not that easy to see my tracks names
I think it’s absolutely clear and pretty easy to see on first sight, because there are no horizontal stripes within that block. So it’s obvious that there aren’t any notes within that block. But your method is ok, too. You’re having Xs on empty blocks, so no problem at all in terms of the overview. That’s something else than muting tracks containing notes or if you’re having one pattern and you’re building your whole song out of this pattern just by muting tracks. But I’m a huge fan of clean stuff, so any X in the matrrix is one too many in my opinion.
Just a simple black and white theme with a bit of retro neon light for added spice.
I like it because it is simple and doesn’t distract. Maybe you will too.
Here’s my take on the theme. Neutral and bright but grey enough for your mouse not to get lost in the depths of the GUI. As a new user I can’t post files, so down there is the link.
nice one! very tasteful
