Right now, in order for editstep to affect the cursor keys, you have to hit shift + ctrl + cursor-key. That’s quite a combo to have to push if one is also trying to enter notes.
I need to describe how I used to enter notes when I was using Med Soundstudio.
In particular, there’s the play notes while scrolling option.
Picture there being background music already entered, and now you want to create a main melody for a song.
I’m going to type an example of the keys that I would be hitting to do this, and quickly:
t
down
down
down
u
down
down
down
o
p (oops that doesn’t match the song)
up
0
w
down
m
o
p
down
y
capslock
down
down
down
down
down
t (oops, that doesn’t match the song)
up
6
down
down
down
and if I make a mistake while entering the notes, or enter something that I thought was the right note but wasn’t, I can HEAR IMMEDIATELY that it was the wrong note and can hit up arrow and continue on my way of making the melody as I hear it entered in conjunction with the song.
Without the play notes while scrolling option, and without being able to make the cursor/arrow keys move according to what editstep is set for without having to push THREE KEYS down at the same time, this method of songwriting is LITERALLY impossible in Renoise. It still holds me back tremendously. Melodies that I could have written in 30 seconds take 5 minutes, and sometimes by that time I forget what I was going to enter.
Please please please add a play notes while scrolling option and a box that can be clicked next to editstep that makes the cursor keys go at the rate of the editstep. Please!
These kinds of options can’t be THAT hard to add into Renoise.
I know many trackers played the row that you were scrolling using the cursor keys alone…
The only difference is that to hear the whole row, you have to type enter. (Or keep enter pressed to auto step-scroll) .
You maybe knew that, but you don’t mention it…
But you don’t hear it when you’re entering a note. When you enter a note, the current line is not heard, just the note that is entered is heard, AND when you hit enter, whatever editstep is set for doesn’t affect it.
Without being able to hear what is on the current line at the same time as entering a note, I have to review the pattern that I entered notes in AFTER entering all the notes in hopes that all the notes I entered were correct in conjunction with the song.
If I can hear what is on the current line while entering a note, I don’t have to review the pattern after I enter the notes, I know immediately and can fix the errors in the same timeframe as when I’m actually entering the notes, similar to how when typing, one hits backspace to fix errors immediately after making a typo. With music, it is important to be able to hear what chords are going on in the background at the same time as entering notes to know what sounds right to go with it.
I just can’t stress enough how important this is. No offense meant by this, but I know that most people use Renoise to do Techno, Drum & Bass, Trance, Noise, Hip Hop, and other styles that aren’t very heavily music theory-oriented, so it’s probably not an option that is even considered by most users of Renoise.
Basically, I know I’m in the minority on this.
But it’s a pretty elementary option, and it would seem to me that it would be fairly easy to put into Renoise.
I like the sound of an option to have the current line play when entering a note. This coupled with your mute/solos would make layering pad and atmos chords a fair bit easier (although often chord progression means not all notes change at the same time.) Not sure it’s something I would want on all the time though…
As to cursor moving at edit step: I can see it would be useful but not something I would be so keen on myself. Often I like to jump to half or quarter of the current edit step and if I am entering something where it all falls on the larger spaces and is a new track I just use the Del key to jump the edit step number of rows in one go (obviously can’t be done if you are amending an existing track.) I wouldn’t be adverse to a tick box for it, although real estate on the main screen is pretty limited.
If one has to go to the preferences window to check the options on or off, it would be fantastic. For me it would revolutionize the way I am able to write music in Renoise and I’d be back to a comfort zone I used to be in back on the Amiga with Octamed.
Good point about the Del key–it would take longer to arrow back up if I had an editstep of let’s say 4 or 8, but with the ability to play notes while scrolling, at least I could fix the error when I hear that it’s wrong in conjunction with what is going on with other chords. But still, if the editstep thing was an option that could be toggled, it would cover all bases.
As for screen estate… I’m at 1680x1050, and right now 50% of the upper third are unused because I have diskop open… and the track scopes etc. really wouldn’t suffer at all if they lost 50 or 100 pixels. So make that area bigger and stick useful stuff in there is what I’d say…
I agree with you kizzume, this feature could be good… but…
I don’t make (only) Techno, Drum & Bass… I like melody So for me the goal is to try to play music with my midi keyboard, in real time, instead of being an expert music programmer… Why don’t you play like that? You’re like a compositor who write partitions? I’m just curious.
I worded it horribly wrong, but I certainly didn’t say “all”, I said “most”–with those styles, hearing the rest of the music while trying to enter notes would actually get in the way, especially if there are lots of samples being used–the samples would be totally out of context when scrolling, it would seriously hinder the creation of those styles.
I should have just left it as “I’m a minority in this”. I have been having a really shitty week and I’m sincerely sorry for my horrible attitude.
But back to your question: There are songs I make in which the scales change every “measure”. Some of the ideas I have are much more complex than I can actually play in realtime–I have the timings and ups and downs of a melody in my head planned, but I’m usually not completely correct when I try to actually enter it–so when I hear the chords when I’m entering, I can modify (like hitting backspace when typing) the notes I’m entering quickly. I will never claim to be a great keyboardist–it is the thing that has made it difficult for me to set up a live set without working with other artists.
That’s a very good point. If you want the basic arrows to work on edit step just change the shortcut to your arrows then put single step as the old edit step combo (Shift+Control+Cursor.) Renoise having just about every button user-mapable is amazing even if it gets forgotten a lot of the time!
As some of you may know, I recently found some videocassettes (that I thought I lost over 10 years ago) that contained a lot of older music I had made back on the Amiga. There are dozens of instrumentals from back then that I consider to be masterpieces, my very best instrumental work. Many of them were very heavy on pitch bends (I even wrote some 24 tone music), and ALL of them were written in a way that relied very heavily on “play notes while scrolling”: I couldn’t have made those songs without it. I am tired of the musical ruts I’ve been in. I used to be able to start with an almost random element and keep adding more instruments because I could hear what had been entered while entering new notes. If I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t NEED a plan–the songs would almost write themselves. I haven’t been able to do that since my Amiga days, and therefore it puts the missing options in Renoise at the forefront of my thoughts as of lately. In some ways I almost wish I wouldn’t have found those videocassettes because I was still almost satisfied with the way things were until I saw the videos of Octamed on the Amiga.
Majority rules, and that’s totally understandable and it is just and right. After being on this forum for 6 years, I know what happens to ideas that only a couple people say “yeah, that’s a good idea” and also what happens to ideas that people mention workarounds that don’t really take care of the problem: They don’t get put into Renoise. The only exception to this was the record option because someone won a contest. Again, majority rules, I’m not declaring any wrongdoing in any way, it’s just the way things are.
Knowing that a VST-and-MIDI SMOOTH pitch bend effect command, as well as Play Notes While Scrolling are not going to be put into Renoise (after 6 years of the same sort of enthusiasm as in this very thread), I have decided to purchase MED Soundstudio V2.1 which has the options I find so important–as well as the fact that they finally added ASIO and VST support. DirectSound on MED caused all sorts of problems which is the primary reason why I stopped using it (and switched to Renoise), it rendered “play notes while scrolling” almost useless as the polyphony would magically disappear, and the horrible latency made it almost completely unusable. There are many things I don’t like about MED’s interface, but at the same time, I used MED/Octamed on the Amiga from 1989 to 2001, and UNfortunately I used MED Soundstudio V1.X for Windows from 2001 to 2003, so I know the interface well. For instance, I still haven’t gotten used to calling it a “pattern”, I still call it a “block”.
Anyway, Renoise will continue to change and have tons of new options that help the majority of Renoise users, while MED will probably unfortunately stay exactly the same but it has the options I need. --and let me state again, they are options I NEED, they’re not a passing want, and I’m willing to use inferior software to be able to have those options. Renoise is truly superior software, but it’s lacking two options that I find absolutely crucial.
It seems like the “playing the whole row when you enter a note” idea would only have any value if all of your tracks that are currently making a sound have a note on the same row. For me, that’s an unusual situation. I typically have to start at the beginning of a pattern (if not the beginning of a several patterns back) in order to hear everything anyways.
Re: “theory-based” music, if you’re making theory-based music you should be able to imagine what’s going on without hearing it anyways.
You’re right about the “theory based” thing. I worded it very poorly. “Individual-note-based” would have been a better description.
It sounds like you must use primarily samples. I primarily use MIDI and VST instruments and then samples on a more seldom-based basis, like for drums which I just disable the drum track and turn on the metronome when actually working on the details of the song. I generally don’t let a sample (or a group of long samples) play my melody or my chords, I make the melody and chords from scratch.
For me, “from scratch” means that I didn’t take a sample of a melody that someone else wrote, or pieces of a melody that someone else wrote, and overlay it on top of other music–instead it means that I made the melody out of individual notes. Or if it comes to chords, not taking a sample of a chord but making the chord out of individual notes. That’s what “from scratch” means to me.
However as said earlier, lots of earlier notes arn’t played, when just playing the current line.
I type the note in and use enter to listen.
You should be able to make get same kind of quality with this workflow. Though it might take some more time.
Though I think, playing while entering would be a nice addition.
Let me give you an advice, record at slower “live” speeds, its boring but easier to get the timing right.
Forget it