Instruments In 2.7

Ideas & suggestions
1

Ok,

please don’t mind me giving some criticism, I finally got some more time to test this beta some more,
I can’t help but to think that the instrument change is a bit too early, the whole layout just doesn’t feel right,
for me it’s like a mix between the classic tracker layout and regular sampler , but it lacks some overall tightness

for example instruments are still left in the right upper corner, but the samples were moved to instrument settings
so if you want to work with instrument and samples you need to move through the whole workplace - wouldn’t it be
easier if the sample menu was left near the instruments ? - probably on the place of “advanced pattern editor”

  • envelopes -

not happy with the new placement to be honest, if you could adjust the size of the diferent renoise spaces it wouldn’t
be so bad probably but now it’s just small and feels very detached from the instruments.

  • why not use the instrument envelopes as the arranger ? so that you could divide the new samples/layer zone with the instruments ?

i know i was ranting about it before , but that part of window could be like a main instrument view, in which you could set the envelopes,
change global parameters of the instrument, volume, panning, pitch etc, (transpose all)

what i never liked about the envelopes is that you can see ticks - that is not really helping to anybody who is not using trackers
and even myself i don’t really get it, instead it would be better if you could see either the pattern row there, so you know where
the envelope value would be for example at row 10, or just do it musically with 1/1 1/2 1/4 etc

it could work with lfos and loops too, so you would basically be able to set where in pattern is that movement going to happen

it would be great if the instrument envelopes were somehow connected with VSTi, i’m pretty sure at least volume and pitch would be
usable straight ahead, but it would be great to have vsti automation parameters there as well, so you could map them quickly in
the instrument editor to the envelopes and use them - probably creating much more use for the whole area as i assume mostly people use vsti to samples nowadays

i think the different samples work ok but it would definitely help if you could set different colors to different samples in the editor, because if you use too many
samples it begins to be very confusing and hard to work with - don’t think the sample name really works there, color would be much more helpfull.

it would probably help to be able to zoom in and out to the keys for more detailed work with layers as well.

for quick editing of samples in this kind of new layout , i wouldn’t mind to see the preview of sample waveform in the place of the current envelopes,
in this kind of layout, you could see instruments in the top right corner, samples featured in the instrument in current advanced pattern editor,
envelopes with the global instrument parameters in the left part of screen where sample keyzones are now (or where arranger is when you work with patterns)
and of course the sample keyzones themselves - and still when you would click on any sample , you would be able to see it’s waveform in the current
instrument envelopes window - then you would have everything you need to work with when it comes to instruments on one screen nice and easy and i think
overall it would be just much less confusing

still for advanced work on samples , layers or envelopes you should be able to see it in full range as you can now

2

https://forum.renoise.com/t/instrument-editor-envelope-window-make-it-bigger-please/31810
I also agree on the display of ticks in the envelope window , better use the pattern based lpb instead

3

Hi, I have been using the 2.61 demo and loved it so I purchased the license and downloaded the 2.7 beta also.

I feel I need to share some feedback on the new sample (instrument editing) its great to see these added changes that make it more powerful however when I use the 2.61 final with a script tool by >Fabio Napodano | It-Alien called sample slicer I believe it performs how I would expect a beat slicer to work with the ability to choose how many slices and then creates the instrument with the slices and without the whole original sample.

I know how to do this in 2.7 but its a longer process of choosing snap setting the desired snap and then hitting slice - it also includes the whole original sample at the first trigger point? confusing

great for detail but a lengthy and perplexing workflow when you just want to get the ideas out. On the other hand the features such as zones and mapping samples to white key only are fantastic.

It would be great to see this tool added to renoise as an integrated as auto slice function option , along with ledgers TransportStats tool and bantai tempo tap tool. All essential tools in my opinion for musicians as opposed to music programmers.

4

@sevenscientist,
on the sample+keyzones tab there is a box just under the instruments section where you can change what note the sliced sample will start from(inbetween [Drumkit] and [Distribute], change it to B-3 and the original sample will be on B-3 and the first slice will be on C-4. Hope that helps.

5

I like that you can now overlap samples with the “sample keyzones”.
A technique I use a lot is that I load a bunch of samples (snares, kicks, …) into an instrument. Hit “generate drumkit” and can quickly lay down a beat by just using my keyboard. With the new function that’s becoming harder to do. Takes a lot more time and effort. When working in the pattern editor, there’s also no good overview of the samples used inside an instrument, something I really miss. Hope you understand what I’m trying to say. Isn’t there a way to combine te new functions with the old (generate drumkit, the old samples-box in the right upper corner below the instruments)?

6

I don’t know what is harder about it, the generate drumkit button is still there.(top right of the sample keyzones)

7

thanks, found it.

8

Totally agree on everything here.

9

A late feedback for the feedback. Sorry for the lag and thanks for the detailed post B-complex. All the issues definitely things we should address in the next releases.

Actually the problem in 2.7 was not that we ran out of ideas, or that we didn’t wanted to change things because we like them the way they are. The problem in 2.7 was more how to !get started! with a small set of instrument improvements, after all those years where we didn’t cared about it at all. Instruments got no updates in Renoise for a very very long time. Most of the parts still had the status of the old Fasttracker layout Renoise began with. So what we got now is not the end of the improvements, but a start. Nothing more. Its far from complete and there are tons of (very obvious) ideas left.

Because of this we also had to do a lot of compromises here and there, like keeping those old “tick” timing in the envelopes, fixed set of modulation possibilities and so on. We also struggled a lot with this in order to be fully backwards compatible, which is, the older and more complex Renoise gets, the more painful. Aka, its a lot harder to change and improve an existing feature, than to simply create a new one. Finally, we also decided to also give other stuff like the automation and sample slicing and so on more and more priority at the end of the 2.7 cycle, because we think that this will be in summary more useful to many, than just working on one single aspect (instruments) in Renoise.

So I hope we can continue in the next releases where we left off now. But again will have to carefully weight the importance of the instruments in Renoise, which you can in doubt always replace with plugins, with all the other general exciting features and improvements for Renoise.

I hope this post does not sound like a excuse. My intention is to try to explain why we do what we do. Got the impression lately, that some people are disapointed that we did not implemented feature XYZ, even though its obviously great to have for nearly anyone.

10

I don’t consider it an excuse, and I have no intentions to bitch or anything like that, I think the changes are definitely step forward and I am understand how difficult the process must be , I’m just trying to give feedback how the changes could be implemented and how some of the features we were used to before may still be there compatibile with new renoise features. Multilayered instruments for example I think are very good step for making renoise even more powerfull sampler than before - though for this to be really effective I think, renoise needs dedicated multisample instruments creators who would create libraries of renoise instruments.

About the ticks vs musical signature, wouldn’t it be possible to let user (or software) decide how ticks relate to the tempo / lpb of track in this aspect ? , I can see the problem with patterns who are in 3/4 signature but if you could actually set this - (signature / bpm / lpb ) and then decide how many ticks represent it musically - this is definitely more of a step forward for new users than setting step length to 1

  • what i would probably like even more and would make more sense for a tracker is to see rows instead of 1/2 bars etc, so i could straight set the envelope between 00/10 (hex) or i could set a loop between 0C and 10
    this probably doesn’t interfere with ticks at all , it’s a question of how it is visually represented.

I see that the old layout seems to be considered “not good for modern times” but actually it was one of the advantages for me compared to standard sequencers,
for example , what I often did with drums , is that while using steep instrument envelopes on drums with a heavy compressor effecting them , by adjusting the envelopes I was able to create right balance between transients and compression etc.

when i wrote the original post i felt like instead of whining it’s better to put the whole thing in perspective, I appreciate all the work done for renoise and I know it’s on the right track - hence why I just upgraded the license for next 1.0 version

11

Hey all :rolleyes:

I agree with some of the B-Complex ideas, especially with the zooming possibilities in enveloppes : that requires sometimes lots of precision (think about the pitch enveloppe).
I’m of course very pleased to see Renoise getting closer to a typical sampler and improve the xrni concept.
Of course I ask myself how new ideas could serve music creation goals, and be implemented,
but without compromising backward compatibility with the old but good FastTracker / Impulse Tracker 2 “instruments” and “enveloppes” concept.

First, there is something absurd.

Check enveloppes grid lines.
Horizontally, we only have 3 available empty spaces between each grid lines, but… we can highly horizontally zoom in it even if it somehow becomes useless.
Vertically, we have a high range of available parametric values (example : cents in the pitch enveloppes) but we can’t “vertically” zoom in enveloppes at all.

Absurd.

For now I must confess that if the relationship between automation enveloppes and pattern lines is clear to my eyes,
I can’t instantly understand why pos. number 16 in pattern lines = pos. 96 in an instrument enveloppe.
while the speed of enveloppes playback is however synced to the speed of the pattern.
and while my defined TPL isn’t 6 nor 12 but 16 by default… ?

I know that a “tick” is like the “atom” in a pattern timeline, originated from amiga. On this basis you defined :

  • TPL (numer of “ticks” in a pattern line/row), example 12 by default, 16 max
  • LPB (number of pattern lines in a beat), example 4 by default
  • BPM (number of beats in a minute) , example 80 by default

Frankly we should make the resolution and display of enveloppes more coherent with the defined TPL parameter.

If we can’t make the instrument enveloppes behave exactly like the automation enveloppes and need to display a specific scale,
let’s assume that each vertical grid line = a pattern line, and that the maximum resolution available when zooming in enveloppes
is equivalent to the TPL (example 16 points max, between each vertical grid line, instead of 3).

Concerning instruments enveloppes, we should be able to change enveloppes types (points, linear, curves) through a pattern command.
Why ? Usefull when creating ARP effects through the pitch enveloppes+point types technique, creating a selective glide effect would be cool.

Concerning the pitch enveloppe : if I understand why we use the “100 cents = 1 half/tones” relationship,
why limiting the system to 1200 cents and not 2400 (2 octaves instead of one)?

I also consider that just tweaking some VSTi parameters through dedicated enveloppes displayed in the Plugin section of Instruments Settings tab,
should be a nice alternative to the track-based automation strategy that we use for now.

After that, concerning the keyzones, the problem of visibility happens especially with overlapped samples.
I don’t know if definining colors will help more, in this situation. When you melt blue with the red, it just creates another new color…

As I said in a previous thread, I’d like Renoise to be able to play overlapped samples with a “round robin” selection logic, and/or
select samples to play in overlapping zones not randomly but following the order defined in the instrument sample list.
It could for sure make renoise an even better sampler.

12

yes. this is my problem in a nutshell as well. too much thinking required, not intuitive to me. the solutions you offer are all good, and i am sure the devs are on to this as well. just thinking about the future makes me smile.