I cant get on with the pattern/song arranger

Traffik · February 16, 2015, 2:24pm

Hi

Back in the old Amiga days I used OctaMed and OctaMed Sound Studio. I loved these programs and released a lot of music made using them. I switched to Cubase many years ago and then recently have found Renoise and I love it. Its totally the way I like to make music, BUT I cant get on with arranging my songs at all.

In Octamed you had a block list window, and in that window you could add, copy, delete blocks. These blocks were the building blocks of your song. When you had created a whole bunch of blocks you then opened up the song arrangement window and inserted these blocks into the order needed to make your song. You could try different things, move things around, delete and re-insert blocks no problem, your blocks would remain in this “pool” called the block window and it was happy days. These 2 windows were seperate, one for your pool of block and one to arrange the blocks.

Now, in Renoise, the block creation and song arrangement window are the same thing. So if you want to make a bunch of blocks and experiment a bit its start interfering with your song arrangement. The block numbers change and worse still if you remove a block (pattern) from the song its gone forever!

Aside from this, I LOVE renoise, but really, compared to flow I am used to with Octamed, the arrangement features of renoise and not great. And before you go accusing me of being an out of touch old git or something I would like to add that many other of my fellow musician friends feel the same way as me and many have ditched renoise because of it.

So, I’m not here just to moan! I would genuinely like some help. If I could get my head round a decent workflow here I would be extremely happy. I have tried searching for tips and videos regarding arrangement in renoise but have found nothing of any value.

Thanks

Nat.

Meef_Chaloin · February 16, 2015, 3:47pm

It’s definitely an area of renoise that could do with a lot of improvements. I recently tried Radium and was quite impressed with the way the ‘blocks’ or patterns work in that, despite it not being the most intuitive approach, it was nice to be able to have a pool in order to make a playlist from. A very interesting way to arrange.

As far as renoise is concerned, I suppose there is nothing to stop you from creating your blocks or pool at the end of the arrangement and just add new empty lines above it and copy/paste your pool blocks in to the new empty slots. That way you wouldn’t lose anything completely and can go crazy with removing/changing things in the actual arrangement part.

Chris_Edberg · February 16, 2015, 4:00pm

Hi

Back in the old Amiga days I used OctaMed and OctaMed Sound Studio. I loved these programs and released a lot of music made using them. I switched to Cubase many years ago and then recently have found Renoise and I love it. Its totally the way I like to make music, BUT I cant get on with arranging my songs at all.

In Octamed you had a block list window, and in that window you could add, copy, delete blocks. These blocks were the building blocks of your song. When you had created a whole bunch of blocks you then opened up the song arrangement window and inserted these blocks into the order needed to make your song. You could try different things, move things around, delete and re-insert blocks no problem, your blocks would remain in this “pool” called the block window and it was happy days. These 2 windows were seperate, one for your pool of block and one to arrange the blocks.

Now, in Renoise, the block creation and song arrangement window are the same thing. So if you want to make a bunch of blocks and experiment a bit its start interfering with your song arrangement. The block numbers change and worse still if you remove a block (pattern) from the song its gone forever!

Aside from this, I LOVE renoise, but really, compared to flow I am used to with Octamed, the arrangement features of renoise and not great. And before you go accusing me of being an out of touch old git or something I would like to add that many other of my fellow musician friends feel the same way as me and many have ditched renoise because of it.

So, I’m not here just to moan! I would genuinely like some help. If I could get my head round a decent workflow here I would be extremely happy. I have tried searching for tips and videos regarding arrangement in renoise but have found nothing of any value.

Thanks

Nat.

Hi and welcome!

You’re not the only one feeling that the Pattern Matrix could be so much more than it is now. Just recently I started a topic about it actually, in the Ideas & Suggestion Forum (which I think your topic belongs to also).

I don’t think the “pool” thing is as important as some other functions I’d like to have, but I still like your idea. But I’ve suggested that Renoise should be able to open several instances simultaneously, which is not very far from your thoughts.

I always end up with the feeling that I have to structure all my ideas into different projects, because I can’t have everything in the same song anyway. So being able to just open a new tab/song whenever I come up with something that’s not in the theme of the current working would do the trick for me in the long run I think. Then I don’t have to search through projects looking for an old riff, for instance “in which project-pool did I have THAT thing I came up with three days ago?”

But I would not complain over a pool-feature, I just think there are other stuff to focus on stuff atm.

Anyway, feel free to brainstorm around the Pattern Matrix in the topic I created:

https://forum.renoise.com/t/a-more-practical-pattern-matrix/43134

danoise · February 16, 2015, 5:35pm

Reg. pattern pool - this exact idea is discussed over here

https://forum.renoise.com/t/pattern-pool-toolbox/42238

Traffik · February 16, 2015, 10:49pm

Thanks guys for your replies.
I do create a section at the beginning of my song for my pool and then start the arrangement after that.
Renoise is a such a fantastic program for me, I love it, but this whole side of things kind of let’s it down really.
Buy hey, its a community driven project and I get that, its cool, so hopefully at some point we will see some tidy new features for arranging our songs.

Nat.

Jonas · February 17, 2015, 4:11am

+1 for pattern pool.

Chris_Edberg · February 17, 2015, 6:08am

I slept on this and I think I agree with you more now, a “pool” would of course be handy for trying out alternative melodies etc.

If I came up with something “out of theme”, I’d prefer the tab for a new song though.

Anyway, I have an idea how this “pool” could look like and I’ll hopefully post a mock-up later in the other thread regarding this.

Edit: Done! https://forum.renoise.com/t/pattern-pool-toolbox/42238