Phrase tailing

Just taking the route from this discussion:
http://forum.renoise…post__p__310894

Currently phrases quit running as soon as the note-off is being read. The hold feature here is not an option, because i want the phrase to continue running while the instrument is fading out.
Ofcourse, mangling with the track-volume would offer some workaround, but may not be desired when having multiple notes running (either simultaneously or cascade when you want fading to happen in cascade as well).

If some kind of configurable tail-delay would allow the phrase to keep playing for the specific amount that the instrument itself is fading out, this would solve the how-long-should-a-phrase-run per note problem for all sample-based instruments.
I’m not sure if the limitations of the midi and the VST instruments would work out alright, i suspect this depends on the vst instrument and midi instrument here.

You could emulate this by assigning a gainer to a macro and automate it, but it won’t change the fact that it stops at note-off though.
It would be a nice feature and more intuitive. :)

“Continue playing while the instrument is fading out”

This confuses me - continue playing, to me, is the same as triggering new notes. Exactly how would you imagine the sampler to do this?

Are you imagining that some sort of instrument legato suddenly kicks in when you release the note, or would you expect some sort of velocity ramp to be imposed upon the notes in the phrase - a sort of modulation envelope exclusively for phrases?

I guess the last method would work the best with MIDI and VSTs.

I was thinking there should be an option to make the phrase continue and fade along with the release of the instrument, isnt’t something like that vV is suggesting?

Maybe something like this
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7n-Pv-HgYHOTHI3LVppZW5nMEE/edit?usp=sharing

I don’t see what that’s got to do with this, there’s not even a note off in your pattern. :rolleyes:

I don’t know about vV, but i’m talking about something like this:

c-1… ← phrase instrument




Off ← phrase continous to play and fades out as long as you have a release on, just as if it was a rendered sample.

It is frankly a suggestion to perform ghost noting on the phrase while it keeps continuing to play as soon as the note-off for the note that triggered the phrase, is applied.
This will work for internal samples, but as said:vst’s and midi devices most likely keep retriggering the note in full so for those sections, the trailing would not really work or it should perhaps silently apply a specific volume down ramp using velocity values in a user configurable parabolic curve (or simply linear).This however still has no real option to control internal vst or midi envelopes that are running on that instrument.

Ah, so what would essentially happen then is that releasing a phrase would cause the notes within the phrase to have legato applied to them (as ghost noting is essentially legato)?

I think this would be slightly “hard to use” - it would definitely have interesting results, but I fear they would be hard to control and sometimes undesirable.

The alternative I think is better, to simply apply a gradual velocity ramping to the phrase - just as if you had written a string of velocity commands in the pattern editor (but of course applied to the phrase using it’s own LPB setting). The ramping itself could be specified somehow, as you point out.

Well, at least ramping the velocity would open the door to the possibility that the plugin or synth might treat a lower velocity as something which should affect the timbre of the sound. And since this is also possible with the sampler, I’d say it’s a pretty good all-round solution

Such a thing could go nicely hand-in-hand with an option to create a loop within a phrase

That’s why it is turned off by default when the tail is set to 0msecs or 0 beats ;)
If you noticed what i did in the pitch envelope, you know that that particular set up is by choice and that instrument has a specific purpose. So such feature would only be used with a specific purpose in mind.

Hey, nice little chiptune there!

Let me understand this: that tune has a pitch envelope which just plays along happily for as long as the sample is played, regardless of the volume, whether the note is in it’s release stage etc. And when the note is cut, the arpeggio will fade out without anything else happening. Nice and simple.

But, and this is my point about the “undesirable” effect of ghost noting, if we imagine that this arpeggio was recreated as a phrase then you’d have individual sounds playing each note instead of a single sound. And these sounds would most likely have a release stage themselves? So - if you were to play such an arpeggio it would sound in one way - but when releasing it, due to ghost noting the sounds could potentially change their character (for example, if the sound was being shaped by an attack stage).

On the other hand, velocity ramping would simply cause the arpeggio to fade out, just like in your example. Granted, a change in character might happen due to various factors (velocity tracking in modulation or FX), but otherwise also a nice and simple thing to understand and work with?