This is a small thing, but it has bugged me a bit since i first got into trackers. Is there a way to get a clean reset when the playhead exits the last line of the last pattern and jumps to the first of the first? I say “Panic” in the topic title but i suppose what i’m looking for is basically a global keyoff. I know for some people this isn’t a problem, it might even be a feature, but for really pad heavy tunes with slow builds and plenty of decay, leaving a song to play on repeat means the first pattern(s) is just a mess of notes.
So are we forcing users who want a stop-on-song-complete to put keyoffs all over their first pattern, or even add an empty pattern of decay at the bottom of their song?
I suggest a per-song repeat behavior dropdown; 1. Continue (the current behavior) , 2. Global key-off, 3. Panic.
I never thought about resetting a song by a global trigger possibility. Even your last suggestion does not get a plus from me. (Does not get a minus either but i don’t need it) If i desperately needed a key off, i would insert a small pattern with 16 rows and add note-offs on the first row. There were cases i definately didn’t wanted a song to be interrupted at all when it transits from end to start so for that reason never cared for a by program determined transition mode.
If 9 out of ten cases you need this empty first pattern, include it into your template song, then remove the pattern if you want a non-note-off end-start transition.
I suppose it’s less about what i want (after all I’ve been tracking since the early 90s; I’m used to this by now) and more about what i would expect as a new user. When a song starts over, i would expect it to start over. Definitely not a big deal, but i can’t help but feel it would be nice to have. It seems odd to have to have this “garbage” pattern to clean up the song.
Personally I think it would be strange if Renoise were to silence everything without you asking it too, especially as it can be used for looping small segments to jam along to and the like if you want. Don’t see myself personally needing, or even wanting, anything other than current operation.
Sometimes it would be nice, when rendering your tracks, if it could calculate if sound was still present and render beyond the last pattern, rather than you having to add empty patterns to catch all the tails of the sound, but that’s a completely different matter and another one which is easy enough to live with.