I love this new phrase editor and i was thinkink about some commands that would influence playback of phrases so it would be even more powerful. We have Bxx but there should be also something like PLAY NOTES IN PHRASE RANDOMLY (inspired by Doepfer Schaltwerk - it doesnt influence timing, just switches notes), INVERT PHRASE (inspired by Ableton, nice function in midi editor) and maybe something like PLAY PHRASE 2x faster (doubles internal lpb) and 2x slower. I am not sure if there are any free letters for these effect but bring even more randomness to renoise would be 
, even keytracking device would be much more powerful.
I had some similar thoughts, hope you don’t mind if I add 
What I’m really missing right now are some looping commands, something that could send the phrase back xx measures. This would be awesome for timestretching and having different stages in the instrument timbre
What is difference between Sxx (with Bxx or without) and your idea? Mabye I dont understand it well 
if I have a phrase of S01 → SFF, I want it to loop between S80 → SFF, so there’s no attack. Sxx chooses a spot on the sample, but I can’t keep the phrase from returning back to the beginning.
If I understand you, it is much more flexible than mine phrase/2 or phrase*2. It would be best if you define start point by first command, last point by last command and every identical command between it (lets say s80) would define lenght (timescretching) of that loop. I hope I understand you (you are mainly about creating loops inside the phrases without need to write Sxx every time) and that my bad english is also understandable 
, i will give example…:
First line would be $s80, second to seventh also and eight would be $sff, then phrase should be played from s80 to sFF in time of 8lines.
I would love to see playback options in the phrase editor as a selectable drop-down list featuring:
-Forward
-Backward
-Ping Pong
-Random
-[etc]
Any of which could be selected via macro or pattern command at anytime during playback.
Also: automation of phrase length within the phrase editor via macro and pattern command.
Wow. Random would be awesome.
Also, what if we could de-sync the phrase from tempo, and instead sync it with pitch? (eg. C5 plays twice as quickly as C4)
I’d think this could be really useful in a lot of cases.
Skolyskoly: It would be useful, but i think that not more than current transposing which works on the same principle.
Chops: Exactly, i´ve said it in different topic. These function you mentioned are exactly same like in Doepfer Schaltwerk. And there is also one other function that renoise could have because it is more comfortable than to write these scales out… It is “create a pattern from scale”. It could be connected with quantization, so when you have Q1, it will create note on every line, when you have q4, it will create note on every 4th line etc (maybe you should be able to directly choose if you want these notes in order or randomly but it is not so important because you would be able control playback of this sequence via command later … you should be able to create pattern from a scale, write random command and it will play “correct notes” in random order.)
I hope that Taktik and others think about that concept as it is not so complicated, but very powerfull (Doepfer knows that and i am heavily influenced by it. It would be also nice alternative to these midi vst everybody wants 
).
Btw. I can see this discussion will become main topic about these wanted features. So if is there anybody on Linux (not me for now…) and wanna explore ideas that me and CHoPS have, try this!:
Softwerk - linux emulation of Doepfer Schaltwerk
I was praising linux for this app, i´ve conected it via jack into zynaddsubfx, selected some scale and fun began. Then i connected it into renoise and recorded it. Came back in ten minutes and had nice and not repetitive seq - as a sample, so Renoise internal solution appears much more sexy to me…
Btw. Softwerk functions are even more advanced (some note can trigger different sequence etc.), but we can end here for now.
I´ve always wanted these random features and i hope that maybe command is just first step. As i tend to work with loops (clips, patterns, phrases, whatever…) in modern daws, i would love to have more randomness here. Using midi plugins is not so comfortable for me and modular sequencers are too much expensive. Random lfo + random sequence? What can be more!
I hope this topic wont dissapear as i think it is easy to implement it (i think) but amazing.
Yeah its a pity the instrument macros do not apply to the few options (LPB, Loop, Key tracking, Base Note, preset, db, transpose, scale) in the Phrase editor. I think it is an overlooked thing though…