Would it be possible that certain scales looked up instead of down when trying to find the nearest note?
The current system is great when you choose a scale that contains only flats. You can treat those scales as if they were C Major. Every natural note, C to B, would correspond to a degree of the scale. This makes playing chords and melodies in unfamiliar keys a breeze and I love it. I especially love using phrases to transpose material in the same way.
In a flat key, all the accidentals are correctly applied because Renoise always looks down the scale when trying to find the nearest valid note, in case the note being played is outside the scale. You can safely use phrases to make one-button-chords, arps, transposed melodies etc.
If you choose a key with sharps though, Renoise will still look down the scale and flatten notes that should be sharpened. Playing the white keys yields doubled and missing notes. This breaks the phrasing system. You may transpose a melody somewhere and get a bunch of notes that are in the scale but sound totally wrong.
Setting some scales to look up for the nearest note seems like it would fix the problem. Is such a fix possible or is the note-searching behaviour hard-wired?
Just to clarify, I am talking about they way Renoise transposes notes when a particular scale is set, not the way Renoise displays sharp/flat notes in the pattern editor (though flats would be nice!).
I was really pointing out that the way Renoise chooses the closest note when the scale mask is on and a non-scale note is played, by choosing the next lowest note, is great if you happen to be playing in a scale the uses flats but not so great in scales the have sharps.
For example, I can set the scale to F Major, which has 1 flat, run through all the white keys and get F, G, A, Bb (A#), C, D, E. When it hits a B it flattens it and I get the A#. Wonderful. I can use only the white keys and the scale sounds fine. Phrases can transpose the scale fine too. But if I use G Major, with one sharp, and run through with the white keys, I get G, A, B, C, D, E, E. The second E should be F# but Renoise flattened the F instead of sharpened it. If in the G scale Renoise looked up for the next note the scale would be fine.
Anyway, I certainly don’t have high hopes for a fix but I thought it might be possible for some scales to look down for the next note and some scales to look up.