Back in the days, achieving stretched sounds was done through the sample offset command (9XX, now SXX), placing note events all throughout a track and iterating through the offset creating a distinct often metallic sound. Using it in combination with variating the speed/bpm commands or notes you could/can do interesting soundsculpting, effects.
The only ‘drawback’ is that it takes some time setting up, expanding the pattern/doubling the speed for bigger resolution, placing notes/ pattern-commands & interpolating the values between minimum and maximum (oo & ff).
It isn’t that bad to set-up, but these are steps that could be scripted, made into a tool for easy of use, better flexibility imo.
Example of what an envisioned tool could do is:
(Temporarily) create a new pattern, filling up the selected track (where the cursor resides in pattern editor) with the selected instrument in the instrument list with base note c-4.
Use current settings or be able to set up pattern length, edit step length, bpm & lbp values in tool gui to define stretching resolution.
Auto render the newly created pattern to empty sample slot in instrument, then optionally, afterwards delete the pattern.
Renoise had an offset tutorial for years that used trickery with the offset command which has a fun effect indeed.
Never really popped into my mind to script the effect though…
Great idea. In the meantime would using slices with the Slices to Pattern tool and Akaizer along with the Arpeggiator or the random shuffle tool get close?
Don’t know why you include the slices to pattern tool and the arpeggiator etc, but unfortunately Akaizer doesn’t work on my system! I do have other time-stretch tools installed, but that’s besides the point…
Offset stretching has a distinct unpolished sound and now that we can automate bpm/lbp in the automation editor, it offers nice sound-sculpting possibilities, creating all kinds of gestures, speeding or slowing down the bpm while the pattern iterates through the offset.
This isn’t just a way to get that oldschool sounding jungle intro time stretch, but also a way to generate cool new sounds. Replace the stock sample in my linked example .xrns with different stuff from your own sample collection, and play around with the bpm variation envelopes to get an idea.
I used the same Sample offset technique and packaged it up inside of a phrase editor for easy access. You can mess with the LPB in the Phrase editor to get some crazy effects. Resampling is cool here!
