Pattern Building Blocks

Hello. First, sorry for the unclear topic title, but I find it hard to name what I’m looking for (and therefore I found it hard to find an answer by my own on the site).

My question: is it possible to create/define some “blocks” or “tracks”, for example named like: groovybass#1, groovybass#2, normalpercussion, intensepercussion, lead#1, lead#2, lead#3, etc. Which then can be inserted and combined into patterns? Actually, I’m already doing this, but in an inefficient way, by creating them in some work patterns, and then copy/pasting combinations of them into new patterns. It works, but it is not very clear. For instance, to get an overview of the lead melody I have to manually see which notes are played and then recognize if it is lead#1 or 2 or 3. I’d rather simply see in some overview lead#1 followed by lead#2 where the bass changes from #2 to #1, etc. I hope you get my point.

Thanks in advance, I’m considering to buy renoise and this is the only thing that is preventing me from actually doing that.

Hi,

I will answer with the basics, maybe someone can follow-up with more details.

You can name patterns. Click and drag the right edge of the Pattern Sequencer over to the right. This will expand it and reveal the name slots.

@see: http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Pattern_Sequencer#Overview

In the mixer, you can name tracks, and drag and drop them to re-order them.

@see: http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Pattern_Editor#Adding.2C_Removing.2C_Duplicating_and_Re-ordering_Tracks

In the pattern matrix, you can manually assign the color of blocks. So, if you want to color lead#1 red and lead#2 green, you can.

@see: http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Pattern_Matrix#Colouring_Blocks

A combination of these can help your workflow. There’s no magic solution, though.

yeah, i guess he’s talking about using ‘clips’. which cannot be done. despite defining what you actually wanted and stating it cannot be done, you should really look at Conner_BW’s answer instead of mine, as his is very useful for finding a method as close as possible to what you want.
(or, quite possibly, his answer was exactly what you were looking for)

Ok, thanks! So to easily recognize things (e.g. leads) in the bird-eye-view I either need to assign colors to them, or (as work around) create a separate track for each lead (so any notes played in track lead#1 belong obviously to the melody lead#1). Now that leads to another question: is Renoise lacking some feature that I consider useful, or is my workflow wrong? I mean: to me this seems functionality everyone might need: combining and arranging “clips”, isn’t it?

do a forum search; there’s already been a lengthy discussion about clips in renoise. i just look at the pattern and combine that with my memory to know what is what. but everyone works differently of course.

I’ll do that, thanks. (I didn’t know the term “clip” before it was brought up here, otherwise I naturally would have already searched the forum).

@wintermute: regarding my earlier statement about clips not being possible: turns out i was wrong.