I make most of my music in renoise but found that when recording fast keyboard parts live, the timing is not very accurate (I assume this is due to the resolution of the delay column). In these cases I’m forced to migrate the song I’m working on to another DAW.
I recently came across this tool Tuned Shortcuts, which includes functionality to temporarily expand a pattern to 512 lines while recording, then shrink back to the original size after recording is finished. This seems promising to help with this “fast live notes” problem because you have many more lines to work with. However the tool is old and not working anymore.
My question is, is there a way for me to manually do this using the basic renoise ui (without using a tool)? I’ve been using Renoise for a long time but never really understood how LPB works and how to manipulate it without messing up the song.
What LPB do you generally work at? You can also up the TPL resolution to 16 if it isn’t already. This should also help with timing resolution.
I don’t do a ton of live recording, but working at 16 LPB I’ve never noticed a need for greater resolution than I’m getting, unless perhaps the bpm is super slow
Thanks for the TPL suggestion, I think increasing it to 16 does help noticeably.
I have always worked at the default 4 LPB, and would like to continue doing this if possible because i find it visually easier to edit notes this way.
I guess my question could re-phrased as: Is there a simple way to change a 4LPB song into 16LPB and back again. Is this simply about dividing the BPM by the same factor? Will I lose notes somehow in the conversion back and forth? Will do some experimenting next few days. Thanks for responding.
Is the ffx expand pattern tool not working for you? I haven’t tried it personally, but it sounds like it does what you’re looking for.
In general, if you change your LPB, you would also need to multiply or divide your pattern length by the same factor to keep the rhythmic structure isomorphic. So going from 4 to 16 LPB would mean increasing your pattern length by a factor of 4 if you want to keep the same rhythm. LBP functions independently of bpm. Think of LPB as resolution.
If you’re changing the LPB on a pattern that already has note data, you can use the shrink and expand functions in the advanced editor. I think there’s also a tool that resizes patterns by a variety of factors.
Expanding or shrinking only affects the respective columns, but it doesn’t affect the pattern length. You will have to adjust the pattern length manually first. And you need to mark the area you want to expand or shrink. So it’s a little cumbersome to work that way if you’re looking for expanding and shrinking the pattern back and forth. Therefore it makes sense using 16 LPB and a pattern lenght of 256 right away. 4 LPB is good for producing the simplest music you can imagine, but if you need “humanization” (or playing live), shuffles, quicker cuts or similar, you will need a higher resolution in any case. Or you can try to mess around with delay commands or TPL, but the result wouldn’t be the same. The tool by @ffx seems to be something that could help in this case (even though I don’t understand how it works if you shrink a pattern after expanding the pattern).
I can fix the tool, but I originally added the expand functionality due timing problems while midi recording. Those problems were fixed by Taktik in 3.4 or so, as far as I remember. So I only now use it mainly for: mono/side check shortcuts, and dec/inc step+quant at once (no idea why this is separated). @shawhan do you use 3.42? What exactly does not work, can you post the error?
This one auto-expands the pattern size as well + auto-scales the pattern commands and values afaik, only downside is, it works on a whole song all the time, you can’t set a particular scope;
it is great though when you have an arrangement already locked down and want to increase the resolution for bonus details .
Thanks everyone for the feedback, I appreciate it.
I’ve just upgraded to the latest version and will see how it goes. My previous attempts may have been before 3.4. I am working on a project now which will involve a lot of live keyboard, so I will experiment with these suggestions. Thanks again
