How to attract more people into tracking?

[The_Traveler]

What makes the two of you Renoise-gods?

Please, no deity worship …

Renoise is not “just a tracker” . nuff said.

In a tracker, the music runs from top to bottom in an easily understood grid known as a pattern. Several patterns arranged in a certain order make up a song. Step-editing in a pattern grid lends itself well to a fast and immediate workflow.

If It walks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck … it’s a duck.

Look, I’m not here to argue semantics. I think Renoise is a first rate piece of software and I enjoy using it. However, it’s still a quacker, er, tracker. I’m content to leave it at that.

Cheers.

[Bungle]

What makes the two of you Renoise-gods?

Stuff and stuff

Renoise is not “just a tracker” .
nuff said.

So what else is it ?

A car ?

A swimming pool ?

Maybe a holographic projection of superman with a kipper jammed up his arse ?

Are you for real ?

First you ask who made who gods, what the hell (See what i did there) has to do with anything in a Renoise forum i will never know, take you religious pandering and shove it right where the sun don’t shine, I am nothing god like, don’t even want to be compared to a god pfft

Then you state something so stupid it really doesn’t need answering, but hey, I am not a god, I have my faults, and one of them is putting plums in their correct order, so…

Renoise is not just a tracker, it is a linear arranger, it is a pattern based clip performance tool, it is…actually wait, no its a damn tracker, and while it is the best tracker ever developed in my ungodlike opinion, it is a guess what, go on, i know you know the answer, yes you got it, it’s a damn tracker, just a damn tracker.

Oh and your lack of knowledge of anything surrounding Sony/Sonic Foundry is staggering, you actually believe there is any comparison in this situation and that, OK lets take a wee look…

Sonic Foundry, some great software, some terrible management, and bam they are screwed

Sony steps in and saves the day, Musicians rejoice but wait, Sony where quite open about the fact that they wanted Vegas technologies, they had no interest in Acid at all.

Sony then uses the next bunch of releases to gauge interest and sales, turns out, people wanted Vegas, People wanted Sound forge, and at a consumer level people wanted a cutdown Acid, very few people wanted the updates that came with Acid, they complained and moaned, every time an update more moans even less updaters, and Sony unofficially pulled the plug on Acid development (By the way i was working with a few folk at Sony at the time, this is exactly how it went down)

Compared to

A couple of part time developers who actually release rarely, but release a product that is actually pretty damn stable, and does what it says on the tin, there is no financial issues as far as we are aware well other than the imaginary ones the forum keeps inventing, there has been zero mention of any other company stepping in to buy them out, and we are all pretty certain that although development is very very slow, the developers actually do still have interest in the product.

Yeah you have seen it all before, definitely the same type of situation.

[Lytz1 (tL One)]

Guys, easy. You can’t put everything into something just to please everybody. Not gonna happen.

Also at some point this scenario is the most likely:

That voyage will end up like a huge bloated thing a.k.a. Cubase which people are happily jumping ship for lean and clean stuff

which even eventually spawns other companies rapid sucess (a.k.a. Studio One)

Second: You will loose part of your core user base. Especailly which is that hardcore like the Renoise Core-User Base is.

That’s just more than likely when you put in more and more stuff that the core user base is not interested in. You’ll never want to loose your core user base unless you give less than a sh** about them.

What I dont think is gonna happen.

Third: Most of the “Newbies” and amateurs theese days want everything as simple as possible, with as less effort as needed and are completely drag’n’drop orientated.

And they loooove colorful stuff with biiiiiig buttons. (a.k.a. Bitwig and other new DAWS on the block.)

And whats up lately with all the graphical plugin pickers that have all the nice little pictures coming up “cloned” from FL Studio lately.

And look what Apple has done to Logic. The “new” (<–LOL) compressor fills now nearly half of my screen man, thats f****n’ stupid!)

Best for them would be something like an electronic music auto-pilot so they need to do as less as possible. And everything so big, that a three year old can hit that button.

For Renoise that would mean to get rid of the whole tracker interface alltogether, because you’ll never get theese guys to remember even 10 keycommands

or god-forbid typing something in instead of draggin stuff around.

Just look at that joke here, new DAW that was presented on NAMM this year:

https://lumit-audio.com/

Thing looks as its coming out straight of a chewing-gum-machine… But multi-touch and stuff, and, you know…biiiig buttons…

You see, you don’t want to be Renoise a Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none kind of thing. You also don’t want Renoise being dumbed-down to draw in theese

“I-mix-loops-I-bought-in-Ableton, so I must be a producer” kinda guys or just to appeal to the “mass”, cause the “mass” wants their stuff as dumbed down as possible.

Especially not Renoise. If that ever would happen you’ll end up very very disappointed.

(BTW: In my book most DAW Software is developed at such a high quality at this point that it simply doesnt matter if its gonna be further developed or not.

You have everything you need and more. More than enough thats needed to make a high quality record. Even if the software was stopped being developed years ago…)

[Mark2]

I’d reconsider taking in pattern zoom.

Delay column = cool, happy with it

Renoise LPB = ok

“BPL” (Buzz) = freaky

Zoom = totally superior to LPB/BPL global settings. I don’t want to shrink/stretch the whole song at some point, though, maybe this would work, but … what’s wrong about being dumb and lazy?..I’m the user, considered to buy something…

http://www.audio-simulation.com/downloads/DS2DemoInstall_R002.exe <- Pattern Zoom

And Revisit has it apparently, too, but I’ve never used it.

F1xx <- no… please. Brainoverfow.

[Roppenzo (Rpnz)]

Please, no deity worship …

First you ask who made who gods, what the hell (See what i did there) has to do with anything in a Renoise forum i will never know, take you religious pandering and shove it right where the sun don’t shine, I am nothing god like, don’t even want to be compared to a god pfft…

I sincerely apologize for my religious pandering.

… it’s a damn tracker, just a damn tracker…

I am exceedingly sorry for calling Renoise “not just a tracker”

…your lack of knowledge of anything surrounding Sony/Sonic Foundry is staggering, you actually believe there is any comparison in this situation and that, OK lets take a wee look…

I deeply regret I have so less knowledge surrounding Sony/Sonic Foundry

peace.

[Raul (Raul (ulneiz))]

I think we can be discussing all yearand not get anywhere because everyone wants something different.I think Renoise must defend what it is, a ADVANCED TRACKER.In Renoise there are still many things that can be improved.The main I think it has to do with the visual way to understand what you write and that is to improve the Pattern Editor.

The first obstacle of a novice is facing relate notes with hexadecimal values.Other DAWs use the Piano Roll replacing it.Nevertheless,the Pattern Editor is itself a “Vertical Piano Roll”.The problem is that almost nobody sees it so, because the interface does not show it, is not prepared.In a piano roll the composer need not memorize where the notes fall, because it has the virtual piano there.You can place a note, make it sound, and if not the correct note, drag and sound again.No need to memorize anything.If Renoise have an interface in the Pattern Editor to help avoid having to memorize the hexagesimal values of each note would help to understand better.

The novice user, when it starts, it is easier to see a rectangle, with a beginning and an end visual. Renoise has an initial value and a final OFF, but not something graphic display it. This makes the composer should know how it works internally Renoise, if not cut a note, it is not finished.

Check this:

http://forum.renoise.com/uploads/post-20356-0-27313700-1444296213.png

https://forum.renoise.com/t/15-interesting-suggestions-for-future-versions-of-renoise-3-1-f/44475

This is a vague outline of the path that could take Renoise in future versions.The Pattern Editor (and Phrase Editor) is a real chaos for any novice.By helping to prevent this without straying from the essence of tracker it would be the way to attract people and leave everyone happy.Of course, Renoise has other parts to improve, but the basics, which is graphically show what’s playing, and also what the composer writes, is perhaps the main problem.

It could create other things to improve this:

1. No limit column 12 notes of an octave, but 88 notes (or more).
2. Create a function called "Piano Mode"within the selected track.(A button with an icon of a piano would be enough).When activated a fixed horizontal virtual piano is displayed above the track. Each note column corresponds to a key note, with all octaves. Each key is market with each note (C-4, C#4…, visual help). The composer to play live, write the note in the appropriate note column automatically. It would be an advanced mode of taxation live. Each length of the note would be marked in a background color, unprocessed at all design pattern editor.This would print a piano roll over the pattern editor, through an additional optional feature.
3. A graphical function to compact display all columns and show vertical rectangles.
4. A function of compaction of notes in fewer columns, giving priority to low notes in the first column,second, etc…
5. Be able to write notes in Pattern Editor / Phrase Editor from the mouse pointer from the virtual piano of Instrument Editor.This will compose using only the mouse, all the time. For novices!
6. Offer the user the ability to fit Renoise areas as you want.For example. I have always desired virtual piano under or above the Pattern Editor.Things like that…

Think and analyze all these things will be better than simply adding a classic piano roll, that would break the essence of the tracker The pattern editor can improve dramatically.It is taking what exists and improve it, especially graphically.The graphical interface is very important and is the biggest ally to understand things.Before all this, Renoise should improve the GUI for higher resolutions (zoom entire program, for example recent FL Studio Style).

As Renoise does not have a big team, all these things are light years, and can not compete with other DAWs simply because there is no budget, no team, it seems. But it is a matter of time. The issue is to know the way to go and not go wrong.It is not more than programming with the handbrake on. Version 3.2 may leave next year 2017.In this step, version 4.0 will be released in 5 years.With 5 years all these things are feasible.

[Roppenzo (Rpnz)]

I think we can be discussing all … all these things are feasible.

Loving all the input you gave us the last year Raul. You’ve been a member for a year and you came up with so much good ideas already.

I remember you posting these ones:

https://forum.renoise.com/t/keyboard-in-edit-mix-tab/44501
https://forum.renoise.com/t/add-show-sample-properties-below-instrument-box/44844

Thanks for all these great ideas and good arguments!

[Fsus4]

Maybe thereal questionis not how to attract more people into tracking, but rather how to convince taktik & co to tell us a little more abouttheir future visionsforRenoise (and its potential siblings)?

Maybethe devs arejustgetting annoyed bysome users asking for features XYZ all the time,since the current available resources for realizing those features XYZare so limited that it would require years of effort fromsuch asmall team. We also know for sure that taktik doesn’t want to work under any kind of pressure. Maybe such pressure is defined in extreme ways so thateven informationlike"let’s explore this, can’t promise anything, but…"transforms intoa negative pressure demon that pollutes the forums and stifles creativity.

Anyway, _ some kind _ of official statements from taktik, dblue or whomever is contributing to next version of Renoise (what happened to sharevari and Jälevik, are they still active?) would probably clear the fog and make a nice sticky topic as well. You know, something like:

“We understand that many of our users love Renoise andwish to see the project flourish.Wealso understand the constant efforts made by our userstooffersuggestions in regard to business decisions, what features to prioritize and implement, etc. But we don’t really needany suchadvice.In reality we’re a very smallteam with limited resources andthat’s why we have decided tokeep everything regarding Renoise secret in order to maintainthe requiredheadroom to experiment withstuff. It needs to be done behindclosed doors, because we don’t wishto deal with any potentialpressure, hopesor expectationsfromour users. Please observe that when you purchase a licensed copy of Renoise, youpurchase a license for thecurrent version. You do not get a blank check to claim features and concepts for future versions of the software. Oh, and by the way, we don’t want to be a big company with cute secretaries answering phones. We like to be small and take our time to develop Renoise sothat it’sstable andkeep doing a good job atchasing away 99.9% of all music producers on the planet. Thank you for your understanding and have a pleasant experience with the current version for the next two years.”

[fifagifs]

I kinda picture the devs as people with full-time jobs and families and interests outside of music and Renoise, who have Saturday mornings set aside to edit code over a nice cup of coffee/tea. Just sayin’.

[Fsus4]

Sure, that could very well be the case.

But if so, that’s alsoinformation that could be communicated in order to clear up some fog and reduce expectations, suggestions, speculations, etc.

[fifagifs]

I don’t disagree that it could be divulged, but whether or not it should be is another matter. I think that for the devs, Renoise is just as much of a creative endeavor as their/our own music, and if any successful artist put out a press release saying, “Look, I’m glad you like my art, but it’s mostly just a late night thing I do to blow off some steam”, I can think of two possible reactions: a) The audience is blown away at the seeming lack of effort given the excellence of the work at hand or b) the audience scoffs and loses faith in the artist for their lack of committment. Neither has any real impact on the audiences expectations of the artist’s work, but has a big impact on their appreciation and interest in the work. I think we can make two assumptions about the dev team: a) Given current resources, they are working as hard and as much as they can and b) they enjoy the speculation from users and integrate our feedback to the best of their ability. But I think it’s our responsibility as a community to understand that they have some notion of distance between what is practical and what is possible. Do I cringe at Raul’s amazing mockups of a virtual piano roll? No way, I respect them and take interest on his vision of what’s possible. Do I feel remorse when suggesting audio-rate modulation? Not really, but I do acknowledge that my suggestions are personal to my workflow and wishes for what Renoise can be. Am I in constant distress over the lack of any one feature? Not at all, because it’s part of the tracker producer’s tradition to work within limitation. I just wish that as users, we can be respectful of each others feature requests, and not treat them like optimizations of the dev’s time resources. Maybe it’s a framing issue, but I think one way to start attracting people to Renoise is to be a little more peaceful in the co-existence of our desires for the program, and a little more innovative in developing strategies for achieving certain ends with the feature set we already have, even it means saying, hey, I found a great third party plugin/software that can do x feature really nicely.

[Abissus (VΔƎРЯÎŞΜ)]

^^Well said. I think it is difficult to not be passionate about a program that fits a need so well. We all have our unique ways of expressing that

[Bungle]

I sincerely apologize for my religious pandering.

I am exceedingly sorry for calling Renoise “not just a tracker”

I deeply regret I have so less knowledge surrounding Sony/Sonic Foundry

peace.

No problem, at least you apologised.

[TheBellows]

Cats!

[Abissus (VΔƎРЯÎŞΜ)]

Cats!

Zang.

[TheBellows]

Hey, don’t forget the hedgehogs:

We attract people too!

[Fsus4]

So… I interpret thecats and hedgehogs to imply a really urgentneed for a linear arranger, pianoroll and audiotracks.

[Populist mode]

We’re winning in a lot of usergroups, I tell ya. We’re winningBIGLY.A huge Pianorollwill be built, the Bitwigs will be forced to pay for it,and the nay-sayers need to get OUT.

[/Populist mode]

[Abissus (VΔƎРЯÎŞΜ)]

CatRoll…

HedgehogRoll…

[TheBellows]

CatRoll…

HedgehogRoll…

What else does one need?

[rutra80]

Isn’t this thread in fact more about “how to guarantee the future of Renoise”? Because then I’d say that the most realistic scenario of bright future is that the devs are musicians, they earn for their living by making music, and Renoise is their main tool which they develop to actually create music the way they like.

As for the piano rolls, lets say that trackers are muscle cars and other DAWs are Priuses. Now in times of eco-hype you’d want to appeal the eco crowd by adding a bunch of heavy batteries to our 5 litre engine. What do we have then? Instead of the best muscle car, we have a mediocre Prius and mediocre muscle car all-in-one. Instead of putting the development effort into perfecting the tracker, it would go into making a hybrid which still would attract only those few eco-mentalists who don’t laugh at that 5 litre engine charging the batteries.

I’d say lets keep focus on tracking and hope that the devs keep interest in eating their own dog food with some extra money from us.