Jump To Song Position

Basically, the “problem” is that Renoise has no way of jumping to a specific position in a song. You are able to use the mouse, or provided keyboard shortcuts for navigating the sequence editor, but it goes either in steps of one (clicking on scrollbar arrows or using CTRL + Arrow keys), eight (when pressing CTRL + page up/down), or a indeterminate value that depend on song length when clicking the sequence editor scrollbar.

I guess there are many ways to make song position jumps possible. So I would like to suggest a number of different approaches:
Song markers. Imagine having “cue points” for the intro, chorus, or other important parts of the song? Being able to skip the chorus, or repeat it twice? Very useful stuff IMHO…

I am not sure how these features should be implemented, but from the discussion I gather that there is a lot of interest, especially from those who use Renoise to play live sets, or for jam-sessions.

I don’t use Renoise live, I would if something like this was implemented. It’s definitely my #1 feature wish for Renoise.

These are issues that’ll prolly get nailed when an arranger arrives. Right now you can’t move between sequenced patterns while song is in play without affecting the sound, even if patternfollow is disabled. This would be a necessity live.

+1 for this one. Marking a line in the song and being able to jump to it at any time may really hrlp and save time in the process of trackering.

I think my recent suggestion overlaps with this one quite substantially - while mine is more from a keyboard user’s perspective, danoise’s is more aimed at mouse use. To have his suggestion as a de facto means of live control in the pattern arranger, then mine as a toggleable option, would be excellent and make Renoise a formidable piece of live performance software.

lightbomb : Sorry, I didn’t see your topic before just now. And yes, it would be really useful to have a pattern play until it reach it’s end before continuing onto the next one. And yes, it should be something that could be toggled.

As I see it, there are two steps in implementing that feature

1: Create a global “pattern changes happen instantly” toggle, which decide what happen on a pattern change event (no matter if the pattern was changed by using keyboard or mouse).

2: Add a number of new keyboard shortcuts for next/previous pattern, as well as eight pattern forward/backwards. Then, the keyboard shortcuts could be mapped to identical shortcuts, but with a SHIFT modifier thrown on top (much like track mute/off works)

You’re probably right about that, but the arranger is not likely to become part of Renoise before v2.0 hits us*. So in the meantime, a numeric input box, or something simular, could be a very useful thing indeed.

*: Well, you never really know with the Renoise dev-team :wink:

^_^

Well, eight wasn’t some value I just made up, it’s the number for the “Go Up/Down in Sequencer” command. Personally, I’d like to leave editstep unchanged, and for pattern editor use only.
An better alternative, I think, would be to introduce a keyboard shortcut for use with song markers: “Go to previous/next song marker [once pattern reach it’s end]” + “Go to previous/next song marker [immidiately]”

But edit step can be so easily increased/decreased/set to a value between 1-9/halved/doubled with just a key command… but yeah, it wouldn’t be very “clean” I guess.

It’s worth bearing in mind that too much complexity in the area of ‘selecting next pattern to play’ would probably benefit a lot from the numpad, in much the same way that Mute does. Given that live-playing users will typically be using laptops, that’s not going to be much help.

I don’t see a problem with using the editstep as a ‘jump modifier’ in this context - Johann’s right; the ctrl +/- shortcut is really fast and easy.

Hi,

I think it’s important that we don’t assume everybody is using the default keyboard layout when we’re discussing these features. If you want something to be fast and easy, it’s really a matter of personal preference.

As an example, I have no need for the numeric keypad. I use the number 1 thru 9 for both track mutes (SHIFT as modifier), and editstep (CTRL as modifier). Octave down/up is assigned to F3/F4, and so on.

Personal preference indeed; I was speaking in terms of the default since that’s what everyone starts out with before they tweak to their own taste.

Perhaps what I should have said was:

“The fact that it can be easily done, regardless of which key-shortcut the user has assigned to it, means that it would be good to have the editstep as a ‘jump modifier’.”

It saves GUI space, apart from anything, and I’d imagine that using it live wouldn’t clash with the original, non-live intent for editstep, since it’s highly unlikely people would be editing patterns while being engaged in live playback. (Actually, I did this once at a gig…it had the desired effect, but it was clumsy and risky).

This arranger stuff will kill performance would it not? All the samples being used have to be loaded and cached somewhere or what?

Well…given that a song can cycle smoothly through patterns 0-1-2-3-etc, this feature (or at least my part of the suggestion) would give people the option of changing the order on the fly; 0-3-2-1. I don’t see how the actual smooth progress of the song, as heard by a listener, would be interrupted as long as the performer knew which patterns he was intending to line up. I realise you’re specifically referring to caching and resources, however…well, I was under the impression that Renoise would just diskread whatever was required by the pattern whenever it came up, so that jumping positions wouldn’t actually cause confusion (assuming Renoise doesn’t ‘look-ahead’ to what samples are coming up, only to be confounded in case like this).

Sorry if we’re misunderstanding eachother! All I know is that I can load up a fairly extensively-textured song, press play, then move around the patterns without the playback itself actually going to hell. Of course it sounds a mess musically, because my suggested feature hasn’t yet been implemented:P If I’m failing to get your point here, please say! Obviously anything playback/cache related that would dick up a performance would be a huge concern to me!

Cheers.

Yesterday I tried something fairly different to achieve “jumps to song position”. Basically I used an external software (CPS) to generate a midi clock signal, and made Renoise run as a slave to that clock signal. I was able to jump around in the songposition like a madman! This is definitely worth investigating (and I’d like to share the CPS patch if anyone is interested, just send me a PM)

Only problem is, that any VST(i) running in Renoise that sync to host clock (like synths with built-in arpeggiators) will fail utterly. But then I decided that they are crap anyway :slight_smile:

Haha nice one - yeah, built-in arps are crap. Anyone who can’t work out arpeggiations without the aid of a synth patch shouldn’t be allowed near sequencing software;) However, I wonder what it would mean for stuff like dBlue’s Glitch… Anyway, that’s not too bad - after all, if you’ve got preprogrammed synced VST/i stuff that you wanted to playout live, you’d render it to a sample. Then you can control the effect (or whatever) manually from your controller live.

So yes, this sounds like a very appealing prospect. I suppose I could map to some free trigger buttons on my controller? Novation X-Station, in my case. I’d be very interested in trying your patch danoise:)

Apparently you haven’t used NI Massive’s step sequencer … it kicks some kinda ass. And just because a synth includes an arpeggiator, doesn’t mean the end user doesn’t know how to use a sequencer… the power of arpeggiators is live interaction, not simplified sequencing ;)

I don’t want my arpeggios to be simple, nor necessarily complicated; I just want absolute control - particularly if I want them to rise and fall, with different intervals on the way down, etc. It’s hard to trust even the most complex arpeggio automation with the nuances of evolving arpeggiated harmonies, particularly if you want to work with organic-sounding contrapuntal progressions which incorporate interwoven arps. Although arguably it’s no longer ‘arpeggiation’ in the electronic music sense of the word at that stage;)

And I merely meant that reliance on arpeggiators is a worrying thing, when one would hope that an electronic musician is harmonically and technically proficient - the fact that those who are can use arpeggiators to make life easier seems fine to me:) I’ll avoid my pseudo-fundamentalist hyperbole in future, though:P

EDIT: Not saying that anyone IS relying on that…bah…just a throwaway comment that I probably made without thinking too much about it, probably. Just me being snobby about all those lazy Trance producers whose music is full of odd atonal artefacts here and there where they obviously haven’t been careful enough with their arp programming. I’ll go back in my cave now :D

You can still jump to specific pattern positions using the fbxx command (xx will be the startposition in the next pattern) but it would not make it possible to switch to specific songpositions.

…and how is that useful?