To me, DAW software (may it be piano roll or tracker style) in terms of “huge ideas” are good as they are, even if I would love a hybrid of Renoise and FL Studio.
BUT it’s the small changes that make a difference to me. There are always hundreds of small things that can be perfected. I can’t spend an evening with a DAW without thinking “hey, this would be much better/easier if it were that way”.
Fully happy with everything? Never have been. Probably never will be. But enjoying every single little update that makes the experience a little better.
[…] Buzz’s Sequencer where patterns belong to a particular track and are independent of those that play in parallel. I get that having that feature would mean totally changing Renoise’s concept of patterns, but it makes it much easier to write a song instead of a collection of loops.
Actually you can use renoise phrases as “pattern belonging to a particular instrument”. It is not exactly the same as a “pattern belonging to a track” but it can give a similar workflow. Renoise pattern can be then used as an arranger, where each line trigger different phrase across different track.
it would be cool to be able to ‘widow’ and ‘orphan’ ‘chunks of patterns’, detach and re-attach sections of patterns, to and from other patterns as wanted.
also that thing of only having a 64 line limit when step editing, that would be my personal peeve.
all of the other stuff being suggested here sounds really great. proper time stretch/pitch shift with the samples would be great.
with a piano roll, being able to work in that environment, directly and wholly from the computer keyboard; that would be intense.
ymmv
be all of that as it may, i can’t imagine not having worked in renoise, now going on 10 years. Renoise is really an incredible piece of software!
It seems that it refers to the length of the step, that the maximum value is 64 lines. In a pattern of 512 lines, it would jump 8 times. Perhaps the reasonable value would be 128 (a pattern of 512 lines would be divided into 4 jumps).
You can get this workflow with the Piano Roll Editor tool. You only need a short period of adaptation.
Im seriously impressed by Sunvox in terms of innovation in trackers.
In some ways renoise has better features, in some ways sunvox.
The best two trackers in the world must be Sunvox and Renoise.
The others like modplug tracker arent as good, no way.
Sunvox will catch up to renoise, developer of sunvox is fast, updates are cleverly thought out.
If you compare features you will see what I mean.
For tracker innovation Id like to see more mobile trackers like Little Game Park Tracker which runs on PSP or other handheld games console. Its awesome but its so buggy, full of errors and bugs…Its a shame, that way of tracking is nice. Someone should fix it up so it runs perfectly.
Renoise still seems to be most professional overall though in my opinion, although its hard to say between sunvox and renoise, they are very different, each has its own amazing features.
Sunvox is innovative as fuck though, have to say…so good.
To innovate in building a new type of tracker from scratch it would be breaking convention - with no hex, more like MPC1000s original numeric sequencer, it would have live features and audiotracks, native synths and effects
There is so much that can be done already. People obsess about the software features rather than writing music.
Above you can see what Im trying to describe when I say MPC1000s numeric sequencer is like a tracker without hex (it just doesnt show any empty lines without note events)
Each note is 8 ticks apart in the image above (starting with bar 2, quarter note 1)…there are 96 ticks per quarter note / ‘beat’ - no hexadecimal used at all and still a great system.
They are 8 ticks apart so they are triplets (if ‘ticks per quarter note’ is 96, multiples of 8 are triplets, multiples of 6 are straight notes).
Effects could be handled in the same way as velocity in the screenshot above (the values next to ‘V’)…
Thats how a non-hex tracker should be done (but it would also show empty places with no note event…MPC1000 just does it as a list of events, without showing empty space).
If someone did a tracker like that which ran on some handheld device with all different ways to control (keyboard and mouse, touchscreen, gamepad, midi controller etc)…it would be good
automations, envelopes, LFOs etc (even Attack and decay) should all be measured in ticks - for accuracy. The patterne editor screen would probably have to be zoomable because 96 tick per beat…the equivalent of a ‘line’ would be a (zoomable) beat…the idea is to do away with hexadecimal and counting ticks across lines. Trackers like renoise and that system are pretty much the same anyway. Automation could be drawn directly over pattern editor tracks…
SunVox is so cool I find it easier to arrange and that theremin it has is brilliant!!I built the nicest ryzers with that theremin I wish Renoise had one,but Renoise has its one sweetness and more advanced feauters at the time being.It would be cool if Renoise could bring both daw worlds together but that costs money allot of money and time that the developer of Renoise doesn’t have and I am ok with that.
Its true. money and time, family and commitments, wives and children and all that business, priorities, ageing…excercise, health…other artwork. making time.
I like the idea of Little Game Park Tracker though…I bet renoise or sunvox developers could do the same thing quickly and better…its a fine idea…just tracking on a PSP in beautiful outdoor surroundings beats being hunched over a computer desk indoors…sure it is slower input method…but fun and has advantages…that kind of tracker should be able to put together quite fast for professional developer…
always dreamt of a synth tracker with synths of PSPSEQ and tracker interface of LittleGameParkTracker…and if not PSP then any generic games emulation thing with control pad control…ipads are lame. Have to hold it up with one hand while sequencing with the other…shit gets tiring
and also, yesh, sunvox timeline view is great. patterns can just be picked up and dragged around to any position you want…later on there will be samples directly into timeline view…the whole design of sunvox is a beautiful, well thought out thing
In regard to Hex vs. Decimal, Hex doesn’t stop at FF so you don’t really need to change it totally.
It would also probably be better from a backwards-compatibility perspective or no conversion need to be made.
Though it still probably will require a lot since I’m guessing many places depend on it being only 2 characters long.
On the other hand this discussion is kind of moot if there isn’t any planned work/update to use the ideas.
A tracker is a tracker and trackers use hex. Thats traditional. Thats the convention.
Im just saying, if rernoise and sunvox are not the last of the trackers, and there is to be made a future tracker-like software, the MPC1000 sequencing system is pretty much a tracker without hex…the tracks would be wider than in a tracker because hex saves space, but does it matter?
It is not only MPC1000 that uses the whole ‘96 pulses/ticks per quarter note’ numeric sequencer, also other comparitively old hardware sampler sequencers such as boss SP505 (see below). Its a good system because you dont need to know hex or count out ticks across lines to do triplets. but if you load up renoise at 8LPB its basically the same system but with hex and lines (96 ticks per quarter note/beat)…
renoise already broke tracker convention with the pattern effect commands, because they use letters other than the hex letters
Does a hamer need to evolve? Renosie is close to perfection as it is hell i was more than happy with 2.8 - 3.1 is a peace of art. only thing id add is sunvox as a dedicated Tab
This thing about hex, besides saving room, is because it is base16 it is more music friendly when it comes to 4/4 or other standardized timings than base10. (Things get out of whack a little when going 3/4 etc)…
Instead of counting 4 , 8 , 12, 16, 20, 24, etc… - HEX makes it easier repeatable 0,4,8,C → 10,14,18,1C
→ 20,24,28,2C etc… In a 4/4 world, this is magic when trying to determine where you are in a pattern. I am horrible with math myself, and HEX just makes up for my shortfalls lol. I am actually surprised more applications do not implement HEX.
I think the next step is adding more complex pattern command FX than the ones that have been around since the 90s. Right now you can mainly just retrigger various things, modulate volume, and modulate pitch. You can do a lot with this but adding new ones would be really nice.
DSxx a command which downsamples the sample
FMxx a command which FMs the sample against a sine or something (this would sound bad but eh)
CFxx, HFxx, LFxx, built in comb hp and lp filter commands
FBxx some kinda feedback effect
Getting super creative and dumb with the effects would breathe new life into this.
