Sample Mark-feature

Ideas & suggestions
1

I was sitting with renoise, trying to loop a bass-kick so that it reversed after a 4/4 beat, and kept repeating backwards. As usual, I found that it was hard to set a precise loop-point, but then I came up with an idea! :)

Say that you issue a note-on command at row 00 and a note-off at row 04. If we could see where during the playback of the sample the sound was interrupted, we could set a close-to-exact loop point at that place.
What I am suggesting is that after a note-off command, a vertical line (much like the ones denoting loop start/end) can show the user where the sample was interrupted! This could prove to be quite handy when cutting samples and even when working with drum-loops! :)

Wee! I feel good about myself now. I’ll call this my feature if it gets implemented ;)

Oh, and if it has been suggested before, I bow my head in shame and creep back into the dusty corner of my room where my computer resides…

2

An expansion of this idea could be a grid in the sample editor. This grid would be to the scale of ticks (sample offset as another option could be good also). You could have the option to change the scale by highlighting every x ticks. You could also have snap to grid looping.

The grid would be default to be set to C4 but could have the option to be changed as sample bass notes can be now (an option for the grid to match the beatmatch scaling would make sense here also). This "C4,D4… " scaling functionality I think would be necessary for your idea aswell teknocide as renoise doesn`t timestretch the samples when pitching.

I don`t know how complicated this would be to implement especially taking into account finetuning of samples, but it would allow for tick perfect loops to be set.

When the new timing in renoise is implemented this could then be upgraded to the scale of lines, zoomable as the pattern editor will be.

3

I was looking for a simple tool but your idea looks good as well :)

For me, adjusting the marker after the base-key isn’t important; if I want to loop a kick-drum like what I said above, I usually stick with one specific note. In this case, I’d see where to loop the kick and then I’d just set the loop point there. If I later wanted to change this, I could just look up a new point in the sample.

(edit: to further clarify what I meant with my first post:
I don’t mean that the loop-end should be locked to this marker. I am simply looking for a transparent, non-complicated line to let me see where the sample stopped playing. There is already a “progress-line” running along the sample as it plays, but it disappears when the song is stopped. If it would stick at its latest position, I would be happy ;))

4

check out this thread.

5

I can just tell you that super imposing a wave over the track is much more complicated than you think, and would not give the same functionality.

What if the wave was played at a different key?

The grid in the sample editor is probably much more easy to do and gives you the possibility to calculate when the loop will be cut.

6

make a 1 pattern song with 2 lines, play the basedrum, export to wav, reverse that sample and you have an exactly synced reversed basedrum. Or did I miss something ?

7

Only that we need a ‘render block to sample slot’-feature really bad. :)

8

You probably misunderstood what I meant :)

Say for an example that a snare looks like this:

  
|__  
| ___  
| _______  
| ____________  
|____________________________\

Now, I want to insert loop-points like this

  
v                          v  
|__  
| ___  
| _______  
| ____________  
|____________________________\  
^                         ^

so that after exactly 4 rows from the start of the sample playback, the sample reaches the loop-endpoint and reverse direction, effectively traveling backwards for 4 rows until it either reverse direction again (ping pong), or keeps playing backwards (reverse)

What I want to know is where exactly in a sample I have to place the end loop-point for, say, a C-4.
I could easily do this – if I had the feature above ;) – by putting a C-4 on row 00, play the song until a noteoff on row 04 stops it, and then inspect the sample in sample-view to see where the sample stopped playing :) very simple, very efficient.

Edit: God damn it, how do I get fixed-width fonts in my posts…? I was pulling my hair out over those damn code-blocks :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Edit 2: the example above with the snare-drum is of course not the only scenario where something like this would come in handy. It could be useful to see how far a sample has progressed until a certain row, etc…

9

This could only happend if renoise precalculate the sample. Either by have an option to freeze tracks or have special Audio tracks in the arranger that will always play the sample from any position in the sample.
I made some ideas about this in the
Arranger thread.

10

Uhh… what? I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean. The sample will not have to be precalculated for my idea since it’s basically just saving the last known location of the sample progress-line (the one that sweeps over the wave in the sample-editor when you play a note. Sure, you have to pre-play the sample and off it at the apropiate time, but that’s not what you mean is it?) and drawing a line at that place to show where the sample stopped playing… nothing more.

Really interesting thread that! And a nice screenshot you made as well ;)
But I don’t think it has anything to do with what I suggested… or am I misunderstanding you that badly? :huh:

11

The point is if you put a sample in a ‘Audio-Track’ (there are no pitching or anything in these tracks, just pure playback (streaming)), then renoise knows exactly where you are in the sample when you move up/down in the pattern. If you go to line 3 then the sample progress line will also go the line 3 in the sample. Then its peace of cake to set the loop points and then make it a ‘normal’ sample/instrument if you want that. This could also be easily done if you could render a block (selection of lines) to a sample slot. Then you know exactly the lenght of the sample.
This is a very powerful way of editing and creating waves and samples. As well as doing more advanced mixing. Anyone with some experience in wave multitrackers ala cool edit pro should know what I’m talking about.

12

Ahh, I think I see what you mean. Yeah, this might be nice :)