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! 
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.
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. 
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. 
why the thread got unpinned.
Nothing mysterious about that. I unpinned it primarily for these two reasons:
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.
Concept is outdated.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?
Nothing mysterious about that. I unpinned it primarily for these two reasons:
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.
Concept is outdated.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. 
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
Perhaps the ‘filter by every nth line’ (poor man’s zoom) is a different idea altogether. It does something differently, which I find exciting. But it’s not easy to say how it should behave on pattern boundaries.
Mm, I’m pretty sure a scripted prototype would help here (now I’m really sidetracking…)
As for your suggestion: If you look at the two parts in your image, they are actually very similar.
Would it not be better to have just one interface when things are represented in such a similar way, anyway? You’re loosing an essential part of the PM by allowing it to zoom in (overview), something I think could be solved better by the PE
Another quick thought: a lot of your emphasis seems to be on ‘clips’. The way a normal DAW does them, you say. But I think we progressed beyond that point, because we have something far more advanced now (phrases). Just a question of how you look at /work with them.
And with autoseeking samples and phrases and whatnot, perhaps a different/reworked could then have mutes that work from pattern edges as default, but able to be more finegrained if needed.
Because when I play my autoseeking phrase it will stop/resume when muted or unmuted - this is actually very powerful stuff that you can currently only do live, not record anywhere.
Maybe have a look to Radium Tracker? The zooming there is just mind-blowing awesome. Also there seem to be no notes lost while zooming out.
BTW. I completely do not understand, why the Radium author makes such an awesome tracker, but then also uses TEXT/KEYBOARD-requesters (???), really strange menus and fonts + totally strange keyboard shortcuts, which are hard to configure (hacking config files)… That tracker could be easily something great. The author also doesn’t seem to want to hear any suggestions. So non usable for me. :’( Just my 2 cents here.
Maybe have a look to Radium Tracker?
I just found this awesome video which introduces you to the GUI:
The zooming goodness happens around 3:30 into the video.
Perhaps the ‘filter by every nth line’ (poor man’s zoom) is a different idea altogether. It does something differently, which I find exciting. But it’s not easy to say how it should behave on pattern boundaries.
Mm, I’m pretty sure a scripted prototype would help here (now I’m really sidetracking…)
Yes, your idea is a Zoom-in Pattern EDITOR- option. Right? And like I said in previous reply, it’s exactly like how I imagine it too. Presumed I didn’t misunderstand your demonstration. 
My latest idea was just demonstrating how the Patter MATRIXcould be of help in certain tasks, instead of zooming out the Pattern EDITOR. For instance, it’s easier to copy / paste a lot of blocks from different tracks with a Smart Snap feature, than it is to do the same thing in the P. EDITOR were you constantly have to look for the correct line to paste stuff to.
As for your suggestion: If you look at the two parts in your image, they are actually very similar.
Yep, that’s because the P. MATRIXare zoomed in and P. EDITOR zoomed out in that particular example. But more about this later.
Would it not be better to have just one interface when things are represented in such a similar way, anyway? You’re loosing an essential part of the PM by allowing it to zoom in (overview), something I think could be solved better by the PE
You mean like scrapping the P. MATRIX all together?
That could work, but you have to zoom in & out a LOT _ back and forth _ with a “General editing view” (?).There’s a reason why most, if not all, DAWs have decided to split the screen where you do:
1. Rough/Global edits in the 1st window (could be other stuff too though)
2. More detailed edits in the 2nd window
Maybe you have a better idea though, I may have misunderstood something.
But do you mean… Two windows doing roughly the same would be waste of space? I’m not sure as long as you do different things in these windows (like the case are with P. MATRIX and the P. EDITOR today right?), we’ve been through this before, remember? 
Here’s an update of this with scopes :
Another quick thought: a lot of your emphasis seems to be on ‘clips’. The way a normal DAW does them, you say. But I think we progressed beyond that point, because we have something far more advanced now (phrases). Just a question of how you look at /work with them.
And with autoseeking samples and phrases and whatnot, perhaps a different/reworked could then have mutes that work from pattern edges as default, but able to be more finegrained if needed.
Because when I play my autoseeking phrase it will stop/resume when muted or unmuted - this is actually very powerful stuff that you can currently only do live, not record anywhere.
OK, interesting. Care to elaborate that an overview of the whole song isn’t needed when we now have phrases? Isn’t the hierarchy like this:
Pattern Matrix
?
Some problems with Phrases imo: You cannot view nor edit more than one phrase at the time, and you have no visual presentation in the P. (Tracker) EDITOR of how short / long the phrases are? Also, the effect columns - in comparison to an ordinary Pattern Editor Track - are rather limited if I remember correctly.
Then again, I may have missed your point (probably).
I presume this could be interesting or messy:
So, essentially, a selective P. EDITOR in relation to a smarter P. MATRIX would make the need for phrases less. At least if you just include the features of phrases to the ordinary P. EDITOR, like playback in another key etc.
Basically, this is how it works with REDUX + other DAW. You track stuff and insert these on a timeline. Renoise, in itself, could work the same way… No?
I just found this awesome video which introduces you to the GUI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhwmT0G5EwMThe zooming goodness happens around 3:30 into the video.
Cool. So is this basically what you tried to explain earlier?
Like he described in the video; Radium Tracker have both GUI-Zoom and LINE-Zoom. That would be interesting in Renoise too. The Font-Size option may be similar to GUI-Zoom though.
Regarding Zoom-In I think we’re pretty much on the same track. Not sure if Zoom x3 is that intuitive though? I mean, trackers like even numbers. We also have the delay-column for further customizations. But I won’t be against it, the more options the better I guess. However, maybe just something like the image down below as a starting-point (more or less like you were trying to demonstrate earlier, right?)
Example: Bass-line, sometimes you want the note-off’s a bit closer to the notes (which isn’t possible with the delay column; no negative values support).
(Hexadecimal)
Edit: lol, maybe 400 % in this example is 300% (x3 ?) after all (my mathematical knowledge isn’t that awesome).
Then again, I may have missed your point (probably).
My bad No really, this is a complex discussion.
But my feeling is that Renoise really has all the features we need. What we should be talking about is how they should be represented on screen and accessed/edited
For example, “clips”, a.k.a. re-usable content. This comes in several flavors in Renoise: pattern aliases, PM slot (pattern-track) aliases and phrases.
To me, the least interesting one nowadays is the pattern alias. Back in the day, composing tunes that needed to fit under X number of bytes made that feature relevant, but nowadays this is a feature I hardly use anymore.
Slot aliases I find super-useful. They are easy to work with in the PM, and - once you don’t need them anymore - also easily converted into “normal” pattern data. So I usually use them in the composing process to quickly put a structure in place, which then gets refined over time.
The last one is the phrase. This is by far the most powerful of the three. But I’m guessing that when you don’t use phrases, this is because they don’t feel accessible enough? I usually hit Alt+D to bring out the instrument/phrase editor momentarily, but it can still be a bit daunting to remember to enter the Zxx commands and such…
Well, you’re definitely not the only one feeling this. Renoise 3.1improved the integration of phrases a lot, but more work could/should be done in this direction.
Some problems with Phrases imo: You cannot view nor edit more than one phrase at the time, and you have no visual presentation in the P. (Tracker) EDITOR of how short / long the phrases are? Also, the effect columns - in comparison to an ordinary Pattern Editor Track - are rather limited if I remember correctly.
Phrases can have the same number of note/effect columns, there is no difference there. Unless you’re still using 3.0 ?
Regarding Zoom-In I think we’re pretty much on the same track.
…
However, maybe just something like the image down below as a starting-point (more or less like you were trying to demonstrate earlier, right?
That was, well, just skipping lines. I was brainstorming about how it would actually “feel” to edit a song while stripping away some (or most) of the lines.
I think it’s an interesting idea, but it needs some some thought. I might do an edit-step type tool which visualizes things for you. Give us an idea about how this would actually work…
Sorry, this took a while but here we go.
My bad
But my feeling is that Renoise really has all the features we need. What we should be talking about is how they should be represented on screen and accessed/edited
Right, but this time I’m not really talking about new features (except the zooming). The other stuff was just concerning how to improve the P. Matrix & the P. Editor etc.
For example, “clips”, a.k.a. re-usable content. This comes in several flavors in Renoise: pattern aliases, PM slot (pattern-track) aliases and phrases.
To me, the least interesting one nowadays is the pattern alias. Back in the day, composing tunes that needed to fit under X number of bytes made that feature relevant, but nowadays this is a feature I hardly use anymore.
Slot aliases I find super-useful. They are easy to work with in the PM, and - once you don’t need them anymore - also easily converted into “normal” pattern data. So I usually use them in the composing process to quickly put a structure in place, which then gets refined over time.
Ok, so bear with me on this one. I haven’t delved into all the features in Renoise, at least these ones aren’t familiar to me.
Pattern aliases is the same as copying, right? If so, then I understand it isn’t needed. But sometimes you just want to loop some segment all the way through, so I suppose it has a function after all.
Not sure I understand what Slot aliases are and when it’s useful, could you provide an example?
The last one is the phrase. This is by far the most powerful of the three. But I’m guessing that when you don’t use phrases, this is because they don’t feel accessible enough? I usually hit Alt+D to bring out the instrument/phrase editor momentarily, but it can still be a bit daunting to remember to enter the Zxx commands and such…
Well, you’re definitely not the only one feeling this. Renoise 3.1improved the integration of phrases a lot, but more work could/should be done in this direction.
Phrases is a tool, just like the P. Matrix & the P. Editor. They do different stuff, but I wouldn’t say one of the tools is more powerful over the other? For instance, you can’t bulk-copy half the song with the phrases like you’d normally do with the Matrix. lol
Phrases can have the same number of note/effect columns, there is no difference there. Unless you’re still using 3.0 ?
No, actually you’re right. Seems like I had a ”3.1 mindset”. 
And while checking out the phrases; it seems like there’s a workaround for a zooming feature right there (well Zoom-In at least), by increasing the LPB? Haven’t tested it out that much, but it seems to be a nice workaround.
That was, well, just skipping lines. I was brainstorming about how it would actually “feel” to edit a song while stripping away some (or most) of the lines.
I think it’s an interesting idea, but it needs some some thought. I might do an edit-step type tool which visualizes things for you. Give us an idea about how this would actually work…
Sounds interesting!
Pattern aliases are not a copy, no. They are the same pattern being used in different positions in the patt. sequence.
So any change to the “original” pattern will be reflected in those aliases ones.
Same with matrix slot aliases - created e.g. by alt-dragging in the matrix. They are restricted to the same track, but otherwise work the same as pattern aliases.
So if you have a nice rhythm going, you can quickly e.g. Alt-drag to expand it to more patterns, _without_copying. Meaning, you can tweak the original rhythm from just one place.
Phrases take this idea of tweaking from one place even further. Because, obviously a phrase is playing whatever you had defined for that phrase.
But they are not limited to just repeating stuff - you can apply most of the usual note stuff - glide, offset and many other pattern commands to them.
Perhaps this is all obvious stuff, but worth reflecting over. What are the problems we are trying to solve here?
Pattern aliases are not a copy, no. They are the same pattern being used in different positions in the patt. sequence.
So any change to the “original” pattern will be reflected in those aliases ones.Same with matrix slot aliases - created e.g. by alt-dragging in the matrix. They are restricted to the same track, but otherwise work the same as pattern aliases.
So if you have a nice rhythm going, you can quickly e.g. Alt-drag to expand it to more patterns, _without_copying. Meaning, you can tweak the original rhythm from just one place.
Phrases take this idea of tweaking from one place even further. Because, obviously a phrase is playing whatever you had defined for that phrase.
But they are not limited to just repeating stuff - you can apply most of the usual note stuff - glide, offset and many other pattern commands to them.
Perhaps this is all obvious stuff, but worth reflecting over. What are the problems we are trying to solve here?
OK, then I see. Pretty nice feature then. Track-aliases more useful than Pattern-Aliases, if I understand you correctly? I think I agree on that one.
No problems, just a matter of improvement ideas. But they were slightly off-topic so I understand why no one followed these up here.
Well, I think it is quite unrealistic to believe that Renoise at any time will get such features, since the team has other priorities and such zooming would require quite a lot core changes (if done properly).
What about to bomb-email the Radium Tracker’s author instead, and teach him interactive beta-test / multiuser-concept teamwork / real internet communication? At least, Radium already has that all inside, only a bunch of Non-Linux-Nerd / Standard-conform stuff obviously is missing in that software (not everybody is using terminal for daily work, man). And no forum, no progression.
It’s seems to me this wouldn’t be such a complex question if it wasnt for this question: How will a cell look in zoomed out mode if it contains several notes?
Other than that, I think it’s “just” a matter of changing the xrns format to an “analogue” timeline (more hires delay value is enough), and then render notes graphically with a usual rounding+delayvalue scheme depending on zoom level?
