First of all: Renoise is one of the finest music sequenzers around.
My whole life I spend a lot of time in tracking (since ProTracker).
But there’s always one thing I couldn’t understand in tracking since fastTracker:
Why theres no command or ability to link blocks?
It would make composing so mutch more faster and comfortable.
So here an example:
First define a block with an ID
(in this example A0XX , where XX is the Block ID, A1XX for the end mark):
Now you can call the defined Block on any position (pattern) of the song
(this example B0XX , where XX is the Block ID, B1XX to abort the end):
So the Data will automatically appear (maybe as “ghost entrys”) when calling the block.
(would be fantastic if the ghost data could be overwritten, with normal entries).
This would be so amazing. Because there would be no need for the ugly copy 'n pasting
if you change the entries in the defined block, everything will change automatically.
I know that this suggestion would be hard to realize, but for me it would be the last
important step to reach the perfect tracker.
If you think about it, implementing this with effects could be totally separate from any arranger stuff (where you arrange notes and effects, one of which would be this thing)?
At first i didnt really understand the concept but this sounds pretty neat. Would be cool if it could work. Then you could use a pattern as a clip board with all kind of stuff in it, and just using stuff from that pattern when needed.
I think it would be cool if tracks could actually play at variable speeds independent of eachother too. Each track could have their own individual BPM and speed setting and lenght. Since you can already see what’s coming on next pattern with that option turned on, bits and pieces could be created in a couple of “pool patterns” or something… then pasted with commands like these in to the song.
Would probably look wierd though with tracks moving across the screen at different speeds hehe
There is trackers (“goat tracker” for example) that have the ability to play tracks at different bpm so that should not be impossible to implement. It can be pretty useful for som really wierd effects and odd time signatures etc. But as you said… it looks kind of odd and it is hard to see what is really going on.
I was thinking on another thing in goat tracker that is about recycling material. In goat tracker The arranging is more about arranging individual tracks with each other wich in one way saves you a lot of time as you can recycle material and in a quick way try it with other stuff. The downside is that the interface in goat tracker can give you headache as you have to remember which track is which. If there was a way to combine the pattern sequencing á la renoise and the track sequencing á la goat tracker it would totally rock!
I guess something like this is maybe described in the pinned Arranger thread…
I just wanted to mention that it would be usefull to define and recall blocks. Don’t need an arranger or top level sequenzer for mixed pattern calls. (like Aodix or Buzz)…,
Different bpm in tracks !? ?? who would need this?
Renoise should stay smart and tracker like without this stuff
also had this always in mind, in impulse tracker you could at least do templates and i think it was like if you pressed d-5 the template was not only inserted but also transposed two half notes.
“block recalling/triggering/linking/nesting” isn’t hard to realize, just make sure you get no recursion then you can also realize it with unlimited nestings (block triggers another block etc),
but one big set back is nature of vst, which is stupid and unmodular, things like vsts that only live as long as a block lives will never exist, 'cause instantiating the vsts takes usually too much time
so the block recall thing would be sadly limited to what you send to vsts, vst instances will stay as a conventional static list and kinda stop the idea of overall modularity
and block triggering/linking is confusing, tried it myself with a little test tracker…once you want a block to play slightly different you slip into the idea of derivated blocks (like classes in oop), or some way to overrule notes
now i think copy and paste is at least equally good because it’s so stupid…maybe the impulse tracker template function would be helpful *and easy to integrate into renoise
imho the idea of reducing redundant notes in general (like refactoring in programming) doesn’t work so good, it’s better to copy&paste till u get sore fingers…
hehe
