Concept: Zoomable Pattern Editor

Ideas & suggestions
70

It really is interesting. Textual representations of music (notes, fx commands) are good for representing “events”, whereas graphical envelopes are good for “values”. And color could be viewed as yet another layer of information.
Personally, I tend to favor the “event” type view - e.g. by trying to avoid using envelope automation as much as possible, as the custom LFO envelope can often replace it and thus be trigged with just a few “reset events”.

Just to revisit the idea of a parameter collection: for me, it’s supposed to solve a number of “problems”

First of all, it should make it obviously which parameters are related to each other. This is, or can be, a problem sometimes when I have been away from a track for a while.
Also, sometimes the musical ideas in a song are not that obvious before you hear them. A collection could make this structure more obvious, making the music more “readable” (but this is obviously highly subjective).

Finally, it’s also about convenience: having the parameter right next to each other saves you from having to scan through X number of tracks to look for something - even if you know where a given parameter is located in a complex song of yours, looking at e.g. the mixer can sometimes be quite overwhelming

I’m doing the same thing - it would take someone else to say we are totally off-topic :lol:

71

Just as a feature joke suggestion, the ability to “print” a schematic of complex routes :lol: or grid style signal flow like the youtube Pipe Dream video.

Back to thoughts on parameter collection and 2.8.1, I may exchange the Hydra and use the XY meta device instead since the visuals gives more of an immediate description of modulation range. I imagine it is also “event” friendly since I can take 4 XY devices and use two tracks to express the modulations in “events” but still connected to one device on a send track for example. The Hydra will still get some use but maybe more on signal following and meta mixing.

72

Here for another round of off the beaten path commentary on the mixer, mostly about the subject of perspective.

Generally when I make music, I like to maintain this out of body like experience
where my mind is in one place and my body in a room translating that other world into Renoise.

Its interesting and contradictory to work in this manner,
the mind full to the brim with depths of field while staring at the computer with little to no depth of field.

Still scratching my head on how to fit the idea of perspective in the mixer…

73

Just a quick log in the fire for “parameter collection”.

I’ve been scoping out drububu.com’s tutprials on pixel art…

Never really checked out the rest of the site until recently - came across some interesting visuals…

“Rectangle Packing Problem”: http://www.drububu.com/miscellaneous/packingproblem/index.html

Click on the numbers 4 - 32… looks like different combinations of rectangles, you could also keep on clicking the same number for a different result.

74

early draft…

new draft moved to: https://forum.renoise.com/t/machine-view-like-buzz-tracker/32210

75

moved: https://forum.renoise.com/t/machine-view-like-buzz-tracker/32210

76

Woa, nice picture but now we are definitely offtopic - there is a topic dedicated to something very close to what you have in mind :

Basically, I have envisioned the same approach to routing :)

77

I love this idea!!! MICRO EDITS without having to go to Ableton or Breaktweaker.

78

287do4m.gif
287do4m.gif600×502

This perhaps have been brought up before in this topic, but I imagine both zoom in and out ability!

Zoom OUT to get a better overview of the pattern from start to finish, without being forced to scroll up and down.

Zoom IN to be able to - for instance - insert pattern effect command ”between the lines”, without the need to change the tempo/LPB and reconstruct the whole project. (Actually I believed the second mentioned featurewas actually implemented some years ago[???], but I could be wrong/not able to find it.)

79

I love this concept. I only recently realised how useful it would be to me. I like to use 16 LPB with 128 lines pattern length and 1 TPL, so i can’t ever see the whole pattern. A zoom out feature would be massively helpful like image in the post above or that revisit thing.

My number 1 wish for new features to be added.

80

Wasn’t this topic pinned before? Is the feature implemented? :slight_smile:

81

I love this concept. I only recently realised how useful it would be to me. I like to use 16 LPB with 128 lines pattern length and 1 TPL, so i can’t ever see the whole pattern. A zoom out feature would be massively helpful like image in the post above or that revisit thing.

My number 1 wish for new features to be added.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

82

I made such thing in a crappy way In a tool. Since it is basically a pattern expansion + tempo fixing on the fly. But lua is to slow for this, it should be as fast as lightning and integrated to the daw… It will never happen :3

Also pattern need to have individual lpb then, so lpb per pattern. Good night.

83

I made such thing in a crappy way In a tool. Since it is basically a pattern expansion + tempo fixing on the fly. But lua is to slow for this, it should be as fast as lightning and integrated to the daw… It will never happen :3

Also pattern need to have individual lpb then, so lpb per pattern. Good night.

Maybe that’s why the thread got unpinned. :unsure:

Sad story for those who followed this thread intensely all this time (started by Danoise 9 years ago).

Then again, let’s hope we’re wrong. :walkman:

84

why the thread got unpinned.

Nothing mysterious about that. I unpinned it primarily for these two reasons:

  1. I lost some of the source files (flash) that are running the interactive demos. Without those, the presentation itself is too broken that it deserves to be pinned IMO.

  2. Concept is outdated. A proper concept needs to be revisited with each major version, and I simply haven’t done that. Half of the features in there are now possible (pattern matrix? instrument clips?), so a refreshed concept would actually be much simpler today.

I think the most important idea presented in this “zoomable concept” is not the zooming itself, but the ability to work in a continuous editing mode. Complicated, yes. Worth it?

85

Nothing mysterious about that. I unpinned it primarily for these two reasons:

  1. I lost some of the source files (flash) that are running the interactive demos. Without those, the presentation itself is too broken that it deserves to be pinned IMO.

  2. Concept is outdated. A proper concept needs to be revisited with each major version, and I simply haven’t done that. Half of the features in there are now possible (pattern matrix? instrument clips?), so a refreshed concept would actually be much simpler today.

I think the most important idea presented in this “zoomable concept” is not the zooming itself, but the ability to work in a continuous editing mode. Complicated, yes. Worth it?

Thanks for clarifying.

True, you were talking about more stuff than the zooming all those years ago. But clearly the title of the topic is about zooming and this particular feature has been discussed in the later pages of this thread. I now understand why you chose to unpin the topic though.Maybe a new topic, a fresh start would work better.

I mean, the concept itself is still up to date and the conditions for it are already set now. The Delay Column indicate a greater resolution in the engine. Moreover, phrases could potentially be a work-around as well? It seems like you can set another LPB, but not sure how well this works since I haven’t delved into that so much.

I just think it gets kind of restricting to rely on an overall hyped paced playback just for some casual “harp-effect” here and there? It gets kinda trippy. :wacko:

Btw - and this could maybe be useful for anyone else missing a zoom-out feature - I was looking in the preferences of Renoise; By selecting Font size: “Small” you actually get an overview of the whole pattern as long as you hide the lower frame & the scopes at the top. Presumed the pattern is a maximum of 3F (hex) lines. I’m sure there could be a “Very small” setting in the future as well, so you can see the scopes for example at the same time.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by continuous editing mode and “worth it”? It sounds good though.

86

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by continuous editing mode and “worth it”? It sounds good though.

I’m imagining a different way of working with the song, in which the pattern boundaries are treated as one, continuous pattern.

This was really important to meback then - the more you zoom out, the more it would sense to be able to work this way.

Nowadays, I feel the pattern matrix is a pretty good substitute, and because of this I would actually like this “poor man’s” implementation more:

Imagine a bunch of notes: nothing special … just kicks and snares?

00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
01 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
02 --- -- --- D-4 40 ---
03 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
04 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
05 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
06 --- -- --- --- -- ---
07 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
08 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
09 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
10 --- -- --- D-4 40 ---
11 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
12 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
13 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
14 --- -- --- --- -- --- 
15 --- -- --- --- -- ---

Zoom out to 2x

00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
02 --- -- --- D-4 40 ---
04 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
06 --- -- --- --- -- ---
08 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
10 --- -- --- D-4 40 ---
12 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
14 --- -- --- --- -- ---

Zoom to 6 and you see just 3 lines

00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
06 --- -- --- --- -- ---
12 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---

Because of the lines that are no longer there, a lot of visual information is lost.

I’m sure there would be subtle ways of hinting this - but what’s more interesting is that new things appear too.

You can basically work with (or discover) hidden “structures” in the melody or beat by filtering out all but every Nth line.

This really fits well with a lot of the stuff I’m doing with a tracker - it’s usually about some kind of repeating intervals or patterns :slight_smile:

87

No, but then of course multiple lines would be used with delay values? EDIT: Ok, that wouldn’t work with note-off. Anyway personally I would be much more interested in a zoom-in. So you base song seth is the maximum zoom-out setting.

Nevermind. I just wish there was LPB per pattern, that overloads the LPB per song, so optional.

88

More poor man’s fictional examples because I forgot about pattern numbers.

In case of the “Zoom to 6” example, let’s extend it a bit:

00 00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   06 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   12 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   18 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   24 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   30 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   36 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   42 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   48 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   54 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   60 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
01 00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   06 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   12 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   18 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   24 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   30 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   36 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   42 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   48 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
   54 --- -- --- --- -- ---
   60 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---

Now you see the pattern numbers appear as an extra row.

Having an extra row appear is actually a great visual indicator that zooming is active

Zooming all the way out to “pattern level”, and you have a miniature pattern sequence.

01 00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
02 00 C-4 80 --- --- -- ---
23 00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
24 00 --- -- --- --- -- ---
05 00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---
06 00 --- -- --- --- -- ---
17 00 --- -- --- --- -- ---
17 00 --- -- --- --- -- ---
08 00 C-4 80 --- D-4 40 ---

Still watching only the (selected) line, of course.
What would be great about this the ability to spot/enter stuff like LFO and Device ON/OFF commands.

What I’m undecided about is how the “continuous mode” play into this. By ignoring it, counting would reset for each pattern. This makes sense from a display point of view, but would be strange when editing (you’re used to that entering a note at position 60 in a 64-line pattern will bring you to line 2).

89

Before last post

These examples are exactly what I was trying to demonstrate a little bit back in this thread [link] (whoa 2 years ago… time flies!), but the images were not that worked through although the idea got through I think.

Maybe the 3x Zoom isn’t that intuitive for accurate editing but may give some satisfactory overview temporarily… Depending on the project.

Anyway, I agree that pattern boundaries aren’t necessary but more about this later in this post.

Last post

Interesting, but maybe I’m missing the point. Because, aside from a total overview, I would probably have a hard time to input notes with that kind of zoom out. But yes, just for the sake of zooming I’d agree. However, maybe a better Pattern Matrix would solve some kind of issues here…

Wouldn’t some kind of continuous timeline, not based on patterns, in the Pattern Matrix be a more natural solution? That’s how most DAWs works; Clips on a timeline. The “Blocks” in the Pattern Matrix is basically the same thing, just a bit butterfingered in current form. Also, you may want to switch to horizontal mode to get a better overview of the timeline though.

So, the Blocks / Clips could instead determine the lengths of the tracked stuff. Meaning, Renoise could be Pattern Matrix-based rather than Pattern Editor-based. I was recently talking about this in another topic, actually [link].

With this approach you could focus & select the areas where there actually are note information in your song. Moreover, no need to input the kick-notes more than once and/or copy & paste blocks - just loop a small block. Additional blocks are needed only when you want to do modifications like drum-fills etc.

Another example, if I just want to edit the bass to match the kick I just select the corresponding blocks. Which could be a relief if there are other tracks in between, because I don’t need to see them (not to mention, all the areas in the tracks where there are no actual notes!). Also, in this hypothetical case, all the drum tracks are grouped, which makes sense on its own to not move tracks around.

Anyway, tried to compile the ideas in a picture down below. I may have gotten off the track a bit regarding the zoom-in discussion though, so I save that for another post. But well, just imagine zoom in & out for both the PM and the PE. Oh, and this is in hexadecimal btw.