Fasten your seatbelts!! The faster, better, stronger version of Grid Pie has arrived.
A whole batch of changes, so let’s take them from the top:
PERFORMANCE
Edit-synchronization is now a complete feature. Previously, certain actions would cause TERRIBLE slowdowns.
Extensive support of + use of matrix-slot aliases combined with a pattern-cache system means a HUGE difference, CPU-wise.
Together, this means that Grid Pie is now faster than ever. The worst slowdown gone, and overall performance improved.
It’s not a completely magic bullet, as you will still need to wait for Grid Pie to compute sequences, but now you only have to wait once
INTEGRATION
Integration with the Renoise workflow has been improved a lot in this version. A hardware controller is still the optimal way to
control Grid Pie, but there is a lot closer integration with the Renoise user interface:
- You can toggle Grid Pie’s slots by alt-clicking the Renoise pattern matrix
- You can toggle a pattern by switching to / scheduling in the Renoise pattern sequence (1)
- You can loop patterns by creating a loop in the pattern sequence
- You can clone the currently playing __GRID PIE __ pattern (create a “launcher” pattern)
(1) Due to limitations in the Renoise API, the first few notes will be missing when using the pattern sequence to schedule a pattern. Use a controller if you plan to use this feature in a live performance.
ETC
Here’s a tip if planning a performance: if you are working with differently-sized patterns that, when combined, form longer
patterns you can maintain the pattern cache between sessions. Otherwise, there is bound to be a lot of copy-expand
- but you can control which parts need to be expanded!! Here’s how you maintain the cache:
- Using Grid Pie, create combinations of important slots and then hit the “clone pattern” button in the pattern sequencer.
This will create a special pattern which has aliased tracks that are expanded to the optimal length - this is then imported
into Grid Pie the next time the song is loaded
Well, this didn’t make it into this version. Not even sure if it’s practical, as the manual caching trick (mentioned above) seems good enough.