Would anyone agree with me about a need for a masked edit function (similar to OctaMED’s one)?
I remember using it a lot back in the Amiga days, and have come across the need to do it a few times in Renoise as well.
Something like this:
If you could select in the advanced edit area, a ‘mask’ option, then be presented with two lines like so
Source:
(note)(inst)(pan)(vol)(effect)
xxxx xx xx xx xxxx
Destination:
xxxx xx xx xx xxxx
And by, say holding the left mouse button down over one of the ‘x’, and typing the digit you want to change ‘x’ from and to, you could have much more control over certain edits. (Like changing everything with a note of C-4 & instrument number 5). You could obviously have the option to alter just (for example) the panning column, or track, or even song.
OK, perhaps my explanations for making good use of this idea didn’t come across too well, I’ll give two examples of where I would could use it at the moment:
I created a track throughout a song which uses a breakbeat mapped out across a couple of octaves, then later on I find out that it sounds much better if I choose not to play a particular snippet in specific patterns. So, I want to exchange a hi-hat mapped on note C#1 to E#2.
Referring to the 1st comment’s layout, the solution would be to click & hold the mouse button on the ‘source note’ (xxxx) option, and press the C#1 note. Then I would hold the mouse buton on the relative ‘destination note’, and press E#2. Click swap, with track in pattern selected and bob’s yer aunt!
I loaded an older song which uses an LFO on a VST to get a nice wobble effect which only changes between two specific values throughout the song. I have recently installed a new version of the VST, and the LFO has been changed, and now seems to only sound right when I alter each of the two values to differing ones. This would obviously be a drawn out process, but this feature would resolve this too.
I’ve found that due to my style, a lot of variation in each pattern can make those note/volume/pan/value edits quite tiresome. Recreating parts of the tune & copy-pasting it would obviously not be an option. I also think it could give users more chance to experiment with different values more freely.
I’m sure others could think of instances where this would be needed
I might be a bit off-topic, but maybe you can achieve what you want indirectly. Thanks to renoise’s new XML file format it’s much easier to edit those things by hand, and perhaps search/replace in your favorite text editor can do the job just as quickly as a new feature in renoise.
I haven’t tried to do any of this (haven’t really looked at the internals of the new xrns format, to tell you the truth) but I feel that it should be doable!
Not tryin’ to put down your idea! Perhaps you can try hand-editing your songs in the meantime while the devs figure out something good for this.
Yes, I did think of using a find/replace function in an editor, but it’s probably a lot more fiddly. To be honest, I haven’t familiarised myself with the new xrns format yet, so I think it could take me a while to be sure I know what I’m editing. (anyone know of a good, free editor btw?)
I simply thought it would also be a logical step forward for the advanced editing section. Well, at least I didn’t get dissed for posting some fruityloops pic up lol.
Yes, but once again, I wouldn’t like to leave renoise if I can help it. I’m not into scripting much, and I imagine this would be pretty simple to implement.
No, I guess not. But perhaps (like in the original idea), you could have a 2nd set of parameters which become the destination, so you can always undo the previous edit, then set the destination again.
Or perhaps a checkbox to ‘follow’ the edit? I guess that could become more destructive though if other parts use values that end up fitting the mask.
To be honest, I think that would perhaps be a different feature altogether. Plus, you wouldn’t be able to apply the changes to the whole song or column/track in song if the value’s positions varied throughout a song. It would also be bit tedious to go through it, selecting all the notes you’d want to change imo. I think the efature should be as transparent as possible, so you could still use the rest of the advanced edit features on it.
Using a 2nd set of parameters as the destination still seems like the best idea to me, perhaps with a swap & remap button too, and something like entering xx’s to determine wether to ignore values or include 00’s in the mask.
