Finding it really useful already here already, the inspiration came after watching some Timothy Allan groove3 videos where he shows how important little volume and delay offsets can make a huge difference to the sound of a beat. Not quite so easy/ comfortable in renoise without these envelopes which most piano rolls have as standard.
Not quite so easy/ comfortable in renoise without these envelopes which most piano rolls have as standard.
Here, I just want to point out something, a trick I’ve used from time to time:
If you can live with tick-level timing, there is actually a good “groove template” workflow in Renoise, possible via group tracks
put the drum track you wish to apply shuffle to inside a group track
add tick delay commands (Qxx) to the groove track
copy/alias the group track throughout the song, or wherever you need it
Basically, everything which is entered into a group track is applied to it’s child tracks. So it’s possible to create “hierarchical groove templates” on a tick level
But with panning or volume, this technique wouldn’t be optimal - the Pxx (Pan) and Lxx (Level) commands would affect a sound through it’s playback, and not just from the onset.
Handy tip! thanks. I remember doing something similar sometimes before renoise changed from simple tick timing. The trouble being it had to be global back then.
I just tried this :
-Q02
-Q02
repeating on a beat at 120bpm, 12ticks per line , 4lpb and it adds a nice instant swing.
However the delays I am talking about are not just about swing or groove applied as a template in this way. In the Ableton vids I saw , it was about nudging notes here and there by fractions before and after the quantized timeline, doing it by ear to get the various hits / elements gelling together. This going hand in hand with modifying ADSR envelopes and note lengths at tiny values too.
Admittedly in the PR these nudges are done by hand directly, but in renoise it needs to be done by pattern commands currently. The velocity envelopes are the other PR tool in the arsenal aswell.
Anyhow I shall be experimenting with the Q command too now
If you’re intrested to see the vids I’m taking about there is a free 30 day promotion for the site (not sure if it`s still valid but might be worth a shot).
I’ve thought about making a similar tool, but for any effect value (probably stored in the dsp title). Any chance you will expand this to a more general dsp like that?
PS. Portamendos and volume slides could be interpreted as the envelope curve, instead of just pasting the values. Special cases for arp and vibrato effects might also be fitting.
I understood that the main objective for it is to visually assign values…
It is not really clear that drawing automation only works when track has some notes and that tool operates only on available notes which mean you can’t add automation where no notes present.
Other than that - make is a DSP device and everything is cool.
Thanks, I`ll make sure I make that a bit clearer in the description.
I was going to suggest you put this in the ideas and suggestions forum, but see you already have. Agree it would be great to have a renoise implementation of this.
I was thinking about this tool, and I had an idea how to have some basic piano roll features in renoise via automation envelopes.
Automation points could be used for editing the Note On and Off positions of a note column. If we use the MIDI instrument control device as the automation source, we could even give human readable names to the automation (column 1,2,3) (since the displayed parameter is 0-127).
We’d get zooming (don’t forget, it’s pattern-consistent), an overview of the track and pattern_track, high precision click and drag, and a simple high-precision connection of automation to note starts/ends - with a simple copy-paste.
Switching between automations and tracks can be done very quickly with the keyboard, so a fast comparison and adjustment is also possible
The tool could adjust the values of the parameters in the automation too, so that you wouldn’t change the pitch by accident if you don’t want to.
Maybe in the future we might also get vertical lock for the automation envelopes as well, and the cursor positions and selection via the API - to scroll the pattern accordingly, and have a loop selections function.
To be honest it’s not something I’d be inclined to do myself but please do hack away/ borrow from my tool if you like; though I can’t remember how tidy the code is for this one.
If piano roll (alternative note view) type features are going to only come about by scripters in renoise, my main hope would be for some sort of more advanced graphics framework to be incorperated with Lua. I`m sure people could come up with all sorts of notation/drum/harmonic interfaces.
Reminds me that someone posted a framework to integrate internet browsers for more graphical stuff. I don`t know if anything has been done with that yet though?