First thing I’m going to say is that I know an approximation to this can be done with the LFO and user waveforms, so don’t go telling me to just do it that way, plus it’s not the same for a number of reasons.
What I would like to see in Renoise is another Modulation Meta Device. This would be called and Envelope Generator and would work something along the lines thus:
Once loaded you would be able to draw an envelope using all the same tools as the envelops in the instrument editor, including sustain and loops.
You would then choose a note column (and possibly instrument number) to trigger the envelope.
Then modulation destination would be the same as the LFO, with effect and parameter being chosen. If it would be possible to have the destination on a different track to the device/triggering then you could do some basic ducking, using the kick to trigger, that almost approximates side-chaining (except it obviously wouldn’t take into account level of part being ducked.)
Could be nice to have a key-follow, which would change the speed of the envelope, although I don’t think I would use it much personally I’m sure there are plenty of people who would.
Obviously amount and offset would be required. Rate/speed could also come in useful at times… Probably other controls that are slipping my mind at the moment…
What made me want this was to put a filter envelope on a VSTi which didn’t have one built in.
Something else I would like to see for both this device and LFOs (maybe I should make a separate thread…) is, for when it is active, if you then go to automate the value of their destinations then it would automatically reroute the automation to the offset of the meta-device.
You can not control the filter or volume or whatever of a MIDI or VSTi instrument separately per note, note column. MIDI only offers access to “channels” and all notes are usually played on the same MIDI channel.
If that would be possible, we could simply use the instrument envelopes for MIDI & VSTi. Sorry…
I know you can’t and I wasn’t talking about using it per note. For that to be possible it would have to be incorporated into the instrument itself (whether VST or hardware.) Still, a lot of the time when doing basslines or leads, you are either using monophonic or simple chords which play at the same time.
As I said you would chose a note column to trigger the envelope, which wouldn’t even have to have the actual instrument playing. Like in my previous example of using it for simple (faked) sidechain/ducking you could copy the kick drum track into an empty column of you bassline track and tell it to use this to trigger envelope (you would want to either not copy instrument information or move it to an empty instrument depending on exactly how it works.)
I think I’m over-complicating things again…
You could think of it as note-triggerable automation with sustain and envelope(automation) looping. You could even have different notes triggering different envelopes.
Not sure I’ve explained it very well or used very good examples but hopefully a few of you can see how this could be useful…
That doesn’t take into account notes of different lengths and you can’t get the effects you can get with looped parts of envelops and sustain points plus it’s very hard to match it to tempo. Then there was the possible keyboard tracking, which you would have problems doing with the new metadevice as you are talking about such a small area on the LFO speed curve.
As I said in my first post you can approximate a very simple version of it with a slow LFO but this could greatly expand it in my opinion.
what about complex hydra device full of lfos set to simulate your envelope, that gets triggered by one shot lfo when you need the envelope ? and different one for longer notes ?
i know it’s not the same , just trying to help , i think lots of things are possible with the right approach, what you suggest i think it’s once again similar to amplitude follower that was suggested earlier
