Editting a column for entire song lenght

For example:
I have a melody going on for four patterns.
The melody needs to play half a beat before it is now.
I want to hit the backspace x times before the melody starts and all patterns get shifted in one go.
Now I have to copy the last half beat of the pattern melody, insert the lines at the top and past the copied piece. 4 times.
I did find the pattern rotate tool which should help with this (i just found it today and havent tried it yet), but then i still have to do this for all patterns in the song (wich can sometimes be more than 4 patterns mentioned in my example…
Have I missed a function for this? Is there a way to do this or is there a tool?
Im allready glad if the rotate tool works as i think it does btw ;)

oh, and with pattern rotate tool i still have to copy the beginning half beat of the melody to the end of the empty pattern before the melody initially started. :s

I am not entirely clear what you are trying to accomplish.

One really handy shortcut for repetitions is Ctrl+P for continuous paste, and duplicating whole tracks to other patterns is best done in the pattern matrix.

I think I understand now :) although I never used the backspace key

Pattern Rotate is a indispensable tool but indeed it still always “wraps around” the pattern edges. It does not see the whole song as a continued series of patterns.

Thanks Cas,
So there is no option to see all patterns in a song as a continue series…
I did my best to write it down in an easy to understand way, but maybe i did not succeed ;)

It is a dangerous option to have because you have no idea what might or will happen to notes that cross the boundary.
So such a tool (if expanded or created) would have to allow you to either really rotate everything (meaning what falls off the last pattern, gets injected into the first sequenced pattern and vice versa).
The tool itself has to take care that all track aliasses are automatically turned into duplicates (because aliassed tracks are a problem as well here) and all double assigned patterns in the sequence range have to be turned into unique patterns as well.

I have created such routines to detect these before:

  
  
function check_unique_pattern()  
 local song = renoise.song()  
 local double = {}  
 local doubles = 1  
 local add_one = 0  
 local hyve = 2  
 local track_index = song.selected_track_index  
 double[1] = song.sequencer.pattern_sequence[1]  
 local i = 2  
 local sp_bound = #song.sequencer.pattern_sequence  
 local alias_encountered = false  
 local return_val = 0  
  
 while i <= sp_bound do  
 local sequence_index = song.sequencer.pattern_sequence[i]  
  
 if song.patterns[sequence_index].tracks[track_index].is_alias == true then  
 alias_encountered = true  
 break  
 end  
  
 for j = 1, #double do  
 if song.sequencer.pattern_sequence[i] == double[j] then  
 doubles = doubles + 1  
 add_one = 0  
 break  
 else  
 add_one = 1  
 end  
  
 end  
  
 if add_one == 1 then  
 double[hyve] = song.sequencer.pattern_sequence[i]  
 add_one = 0  
 hyve = hyve +1  
 end  
 i = i + 1  
  
 end  
  
 if doubles > 1 or alias_encountered == true then  
 return_val = double, doubles, alias_encountered  
 end   
  
 return return_val  
  
end  
  
  

Making all patterns unique is as simple as:

  
  
 local song = renoise.song()  
 song.sequencer:make_range_unique(1, #song.sequencer.pattern_sequence)  
  

Creating duplicates from aliasses i have not coded, but shouldn’t be too hard.
Just a few (working) snippets i submit for the idea.

i’m not sure if i understood correctly and maybe you already knew this but you can move all notes on a track upwards if thats what you wanted to do.

on the right side of pattern editor theres a button to show “advanced pattern editor operations”.
from there, select “Track in song”, Notes-> Nudge: Up/Down

thanks vV for explaining a bit. I’m not a programmer so i don’t understand the routines and unfortunately I don’t have time to get into it. It’s not a big problem though, moving backwards can be done with a delay device, and wanting to move it forward does not happen to often…
@pussi:
I havent tried that, but guess it works the same as the insert and backspace key. Our renoise guru vV would have known about it :lol:

Yes, i would, but forgot it, sorry.
Though nudging doesn’t save notes that fall off the pattern so they don’t rotate.