I had mentioned this months ago, but anyway, here goes…
One thing i miss most from ST3/IT style trackers is the ability to roam freely through the patterns, regardless if they’re on the orderlist (pattern sequence) or not - and of course without modifying the orderlist. It would be awesome to have key bindings to go to previous/next pattern BY NUMBER - if the current pattern isn’t in the orderlist, maybe disable/grey it out to visually reflect this. Nonexisting patterns are assumed to be an empty pattern of the default length.
This would be good, better still would be a “Sequence” or “Arrange” tab between “Edit” and “Mix” where you could do some advanced pattern sequencing. A pattern sequencer like the one in Buzz or the Block mode in Reason would be a big improvement on the fairly limited and awkward pattern sequencer in Renoise. The current pattern sequencer is adequate for selecting a pattern to edit, but it is not very efficient for laying out the structure of a song.
The often requested audio track feature would sit well in here, as you can combine pattern sequences with song-length or arbitrary length audio clips running in their own tracks (the way Reason does this with Blocks is my preferred option to model this feature on). Whether this looks more like a horizontal DAW view or a vertical layout I don’t care, but this feature would be a massive time saver for me. It would also mean not having to use another DAW to do sequencing of exported patterns and overlaying with recorded audio tracks - I could do it all in Renoise…
Even modest improvements to the pattern sequencer should be prioritized over any other feature additions to Renoise IMO.
Yeah, but that overwrites the current value in the orderlist/pattern-sequence. What i’m looking for is a way to navigate through patterns that is completely independent of the orderlist.
Maybe add some keybindings which are by default, not mapped to anything?
Good old Deluxe Paint had a concept called the swap screen. You could toggle between your main image and the swap screen at any time, and copy little snippets from it. Is this the sort of idea we are talking about?
Yep, I think so. Some kind of pattern pool outside of the main composition where you can play with ideas for later use in the actual song. Like how it is done in Fl Studio, you can create different patterns and use these in the arranger where they are represented as blocks
Press F2 for pattern editor. You have pattern zero on the screen, and the orderlist is empty. If you press keypad +, you now see pattern #1. You have not changed anything in the orderlist, which is still empty. You can edit, playback, or fiddle around with these patterns even if they’re not in the orderlist. If you do make something coherent out of one or more patterns, you can add them to the orderlist, and are thus creating a song.
Kind of like renoise, but in renoise you’re stuck with seeing/editing/hearing only patterns that are in the orderlist.
Yes please - this also sounds a bit like how Reason works: in blocks mode in Reason, you can edit blocks (which are essentially equivalent to patterns in Renoise) individually, irrespective of the sequence. Then you switch to song mode, where you lay out Blocks in a linear sequence, and can overlay audio and midi clips on top of that. Clips in the song layer can override the block layer non-destructively, so you can sequence a repeated block and then change parts in the song layer to add variations and make it less repetitive. You can also then track song-length audio clips over the blocks underneath.
A place to edit patterns without worrying about where they are in the sequence (pattern mode) and a place to sequence all of the patterns and overlay clips of audio (arrange mode) would be exactly what I am after. Doing this might actually make the pattern matrix useful for me, as it could be used in ‘song mode’ to record the sequencing of patterns live, sort of how it works in Ableton Live…
Doing this allows you to easily create interesting and varied songs out of some basic repeated patterns, will provide a logical home for audio tracks and will drastically improve the sequencing capabilities of Renoise.
I was getting back into Renoise these past few days/weeks, and i would like to make a feature request, on behalf of everyone who was used to ST3 and Impulse Tracker back in the day —
a way to temporarily view/edit patterns without adding them to the orderlist. This would be most welcome for us ST3/IT users!!! In these trackers, keypad + and - were used to roam through patterns (regardless of orderlist) and ctrl+keypad + and - were used to follow the orderlist.
For example, if i have an orderlist of 10,15,20,25,30 (for some odd reason) and i am on pattern 00:
ctrl+keypad +/- goes to the first/last pattern in the orderlist, because the currently selected pattern is not on the orderlist / EDIT / Correction: both will go to the first pattern in orderlist, in this case 10. sorry (:
keypad + just goes up to pattern 1, regardless if it is on the orderlist or not, and keypad - is ignored because i’m on the first possible pattern (zero)
If i have the same orderlist, but i am on pattern 20:
ctrl+keypad + goes to pattern 25, and ctrl+keypad goes to pattern 15.
Keypad + goes to pattern 21 and keypad - goes to pattern 19.
It would be really nice to have a way to edit/view patterns that are NOT in the orderlist in Renoise, without making temporary entries in the orderlist. Use case example: i often have a few “central” patterns that are not in the orderlist themselves, but a bunch of patterns have alias tracks to these pattern(s) - and i can then use envelopes to fade in/out different tracks, or set filter values or whatever… making a 20 second pattern the bulk of 2 minutes of my song without too much pattern data repetition, and without sounding repetitive either… hope it makes sense the way i explained it =)
Cheers to everyone on this message board it’s been a while and i miss you guys! also it was fun debating evolution/creation stuff a while ago!!
What i suggest is simply to add two key bindings for prev/next pattern BY NUMBER, regardless of orderlist. The orderlist could be grayed out when viewing a pattern that’s not on the orderlist. As simple as that =)
it’s been a while!!
a while ago!!