So, after listening to countless generative patterns via other sequencers, one thing that’s caught my ear that I cannot seem to do in Renoise is to modulate the delay time for a note to start.
We can set a delay time in the pattern sequencer, which is really great for note strumming and other bits of slop that we want to emulate, like drumming swing/shuffle. But, I have not found a way to set an LFO to modulate that delay time, nor have I found a way to automate it either.
In my head I have this idea of a swinging wind-chime, like the one you may or may not have in the backyard. Depending on the wind’s speed, the chiming may speed up or slow down. I’d love to be able to modulate that sort of effect. I tried it with the PDC Delay Test device, because I thought that introducing latency might make up for it, but it either causes intense bit-reduction on sloped LFO waveforms, and on squared off LFO waveforms, it just becomes a glitchy on/off effect. Cool for glitch/granular effects, but not what I’m looking to do.
Off the top of my head, have not tried this, but: A Lua script that executes at the start of the song (and each time if the song loops) that races through the patterns and assigns delay values based on some algorithm.
Feels hacky. : ) But plausible.
I also think this could be built into an instrument, but it would be nice to have this available for whatever instrument you select (and not have to go mod things each time).
There is a tool that’s almost ready to do such a thing - “Partial Quantize”. It just can’t be automated via LFO, and I haven’t checked the automation area.
Yeah, it’s a bit hacky, but all of the neat slop that could be generated with something like this would be amazing. Turn it way down, and one could have a drunken drummer, it it could be relatively repetitive via the LFO. Or on melodic Instruments, turned way up, wind chimes in a windstorm, or really slowly, pretty music with no repetition, like a dream!
Definitely along the lines of it being a Tool versus being part of an instrument. It would save time, unless it became built-in, then it would be a function of the sampler or a device, and no longer an issue of re-modifying anything
xStream does a lot of stuff like this, but LUA coding is beyond my understanding. I was fiddling with it for a while, and it does some really neat stuff. For me, though, it’s way more than I need. Just looking to work with scripts, etc., that do only one thing.
Earlier this morning, I mentioned “Partial Quantize” as the tool that could be fitting for the job; currently, one can’t automate the knobs. I made a request to the person who designed it, but there seems to be no desire to give it a go. I’d imagine if that Tool could be deconstructed, most of the hard work has already been done. Add in an automation option to control to the device’s knobs? Who knows. The UI is perfect for it, though! Simple, to-the-point, and ready to use.
Great suggestion, and I’ll say it again - I don’t know how to program this kind of thing. I was using the presets for randomized notes, which was very nice. I just couldn’t get it to redo what it was doing when I closed Renoise. It would stop/start randomly, and I would often have to remake that portion of the track, and redo the xStream procedure.
For a non-slop wind chime effect, an easier, more reliable way would just be to make a set of notes from a chord that strikes the user as acceptable, make a set of note columns for as many notes in that chord that they want (maybe even going up/down octaves) and use the Yx or Yxx command. Always melodically different. The “slop” effect doesn’t seem to be able to be randomized via the sequencer, though, unless correlated with the particular Yx or Yxx command.
