Optional Track Preview

Ideas & suggestions
1

I was just thinking, when going through my unfinished songs the other night, that it might be useful to have an option to place a brief track preview (X seconds rendered) inside XRNS files when saving. That way, for those of us who have a library of umpteen hundred unfinished tracks, we won’t have to load the entire song just to remember what it was. It would be completely optional, by default turned off, and perhaps we could set a default number of seconds to render.

Just a thought. It would be VERY useful to me, and I’m sure it would be useful to many others as well.

2

I second that suggestion. I have tons of unfinished songs with titles such as “dupa12.xrns” or “somesong666.xrns” so it would be very useful. Of course, proper naming conventions and keeping some order among the songs would also be helpful in this situation, but you know…

3

You can do something close manually, may be of help in mean time:

Render a relevant pattern to sample;

  • Ctrl + A
  • Ctrl + Shift + R

Now when browsing your xrns press the [+] expand button. You can find the render in your saved instruments/ sample list.

If you always name your rendered sample: “preview” or something, you can use the search function in disk browser

or if you always render and move to first slot you will find it even quicker.

Simply select sample for preview.

4

//Of course, proper naming conventions and keeping some order among the songs would also be helpful in this situation, but you know… //

What the heck are we supposed to name our tracks? “DnB_track_with_that_synth_you_liked_march_25_2009.xrns”?

I honestly can’t think of a naming convention that would help me remember what unfinished tracks should sound like. Currently, I’m naming tracks based on what’s been going on when I create them, but it still rarely helps. Besides, I can only name so many tracks “House.xrns” or “Watching_House.xrns” or “House_is_such_a_cynical_bastard.I_love_that_dude.xrns”

5

+1 I experience the same needs.

6

That’d be soooo slick. +1.

7

Funny that you posted this.

As things progress in fine-tuning the art of doing everything fast and precise (so I can plant some tomatoes or something).

I’ve taken almost all of unfinished songs and piled them in one XRNS and I’m continuing to work that way so its much easier, space saving, and closer to go from yesteryear’s idea to today’s idea. As for finishing a tune, I can always delete or copy a very satisfying sequence to another XRNS for the finishing steps.

I try to keep the format universal so that I can store it my flash drive or email. A real drum kit, an 808 kit, some single cycle waveforms, and for anything complicated, recordings, dsp chains, 3rd party synth patches, renderings, I just keep it separate but readily available at such and such folder. The main point is to compose and arrange at the lowest level while having room to do some modern complications and all must be able to interact with each other. I think I’ve used almost every single file saving feature to keep it streamlined.

8

I could never do that… I’m too much of a DSP chain and VST whore. Glad it’s working for you though :D

9

has been suggested before and if I remember correctly the general reply was ‘render pattern selection to disk’ or something. :) Maybe this is something that can be automated with scripting?

The name or opening a song file with the + symbol in the disk op and browsing through samples, most of the times, is enough for me to remember a track, otherwise I just open it :D .

10

Yay for hellish inconvenience. There’s a reason I don’t do this, and it has nothing do with the fact that I hadn’t thought of it… because I most definitely have.

This is of no help when one often uses similar samples.

11

+1 :walkman: