Solution for the need of PianoRoll

Ideas & suggestions
1

Even from the days of having FT2 some of us have preferred working mostly without the mouse
As today, we have VST plug-ins incorporated into a tracker, having our hands on the Mouse is pretty much common.
Therefore having some controll over the notes over the Mouse, would speed things up for us.

For example, Finetuning the Timings of notes, one or multiple notes at the same time, like you would do on another Sequencer that has a User Interface that is MouseDriven, this would be not only nice, but it would fit into the scheme of how we use the Sequencer a little better than just typing in the values.

I was also listening to some songs made with Renoise, and i believe we all can recognize a song made with tracker pretty well, from songs made on a non tracker software, and the songs i listened to, i could still hear the sound of the 90 s ( somewhat, not in all of them, but to the most part, not everyone can hide the fact that the song was made on a tracker ) and i relized that the reason why the songs made with trackers sound distinct in comparison to songs made on other software ( like Ableton Live, Logic, Cubase, Sonar, Fl Studio, Bitwig etc. ) is that the methods for both placing and editing notes are different, and actually -depending on the task- more time consuming on Renoise than in the other software… Because what all of these other software have, and what a tracker does not have… is the ability to select multiple notes at once, and change the lenghts or positionings of those notes quickly.

For some tasks the tracking method is indeed the best, fastest and most efficient, but depending on what you want to do, the text and keyboard based editing will actually leave a mark on how our songs sound like.

For example in a situation where you would want to both change the lenghts of 16th and quantize every second 16th note to a groovier timing… or as can be done in all the other softwares, move those notes by a selected amount of time ( with a ppqn = resolution of choice ), and also quickly edit the lengths of those notes…

Now in Renoise, moving those notes by a ppqn would require the typing in of those values by note… Just in order to get into the stage to try out how it sounds… takes minutes, which in other daw is under a second and just one mouse gesture.
Even if you would use the tools available for renoise, they do not cover some of the most basic note editing as of right now.

SOLUTION:
So since a tracker is, a pianoroll, turned 90 degrees… ( and displayed in a text format )

How about… We just add the Notes ( graphichal handles for the text format of data, that is already there in renoise )… that will run from top to the bottom like the rest of the material.

So all we need basically… Is a GUI for what we already have running from top to bottom. Note End command simply is a representation of the End point of a MIDI Note… Delay line value, is simply a text representation of the MIDI Note s delay, that we see graphically portrayed in a regular pianoroll.

We know all with great anticipation that ReDux is coming. But the Same MIDI controls are quite often needed for basic quantization of individual drumhits in beats etc. so incorporating this, will most definetely take that tracker sound we make, to a totally new level, now that we have the VST plugins as our friends within our beloved trackers.

Now how awesome is that? Truly incorporating the best of trackers and the modern DAWs

2

The notes then actually do not even need to look tiny and slim like in a piano roll…

Just when we add the Graphical representation of note lenghts, positionings and velocity

Everything else can remain the same

In fact i believe someone handy, could be able to actually make this tool to Renoise

Since this is only a Graphical and Mouse Editable Representation of the Notes and Notes lenghts and Notes Timings

I wish i could do it myself

I am good at structuring ideas for those who can manage the technical part, but i do not know anything about coding.

3

And this is what I propose http://i.imgur.com/3ey1IK7.png

aIv2TOJ.png

in combination with pattern zooming. (did I mention line independent?)

This should also be visible in the pattern matrix, also give us an option to run the tracker horizontally, our field of view is much larger horizontally.

In my opinion trackers are very nice for note insertion and micro editing, but they’re horrible for navigation and macro editing.

But you can nudge the notes up and down and edit the length of notes in a selection right now with the advanced pattern editor, though just a simple drag and pull would be much handier and I think my method, via pattern zooming would allow that.

4

This is on target

5

I’m bumping this topic.

I think this is the one thing I miss most in Renoise. Turning notes into graphic blocks (preferably colored) that can be moved, stretched and manipulated quickly with the mouse would be a great leap forward in terms of workflow in Renoise. For those that do not prefer this, I would suggest that it could be added as an option that can be toggled on/off rather than replacing the current way of doing things.

6

Forget it, we’re not getting it, it’s way way too much work, simply switch to a different midi editor. Many daws have a ‘folded piano roll’ in some shape or form, effectively a tracker with auto-sorting and all daws have step recording and zooming. No need to trouble the devs with something that has already been made in any flavour imaginable.

7

Forget it, we’re not getting it, it’s way way too much work, simply switch to a different midi editor. Many daws have a ‘folded piano roll’ in some shape or form, effectively a tracker with auto-sorting and all daws have step recording and zooming. No need to trouble the devs with something that has already been made in any flavour imaginable.

So you’re saying there haven’t been trackers before Renoise - in any flavor imaginable… I see.

8

So you’re saying there haven’t been trackers before Renoise - in any flavor imaginable… I see.

Renoise is a flavour of tracker that is also a full fledged daw.

I’m simply suggesting that instead of waiting for the devs to almost rewrite the entire pattern editor, why not simply use tools that are already available. We have rewire and free virtual midi port software is available. By the time it gets implemented, you would have already learned to use the other daw, and could benefit from what it has to offer that renoise doesn’t.

It is the logical decision.

9

Forget it, we’re not getting it, it’s way way too much work, simply switch to a different midi editor. Many daws have a ‘folded piano roll’ in some shape or form, effectively a tracker with auto-sorting and all daws have step recording and zooming. No need to trouble the devs with something that has already been made in any flavour imaginable.

“trouble the devs”? Isn’t that the whole point of this forum; to give them suggestions? It’s for them to decide if it’s worth their time or not.

I think the implementation we’re discussing here is the most sane one I’ve seen so far. We’re talking about turning the notes from text into blocks that essentially can be drag’n’dropped, stretched, transposed etc with the mouse. It’s still a vertical pattern-editor with notes, same as before but with a more versatile interface. Too optimistic? Perhaps. Too much work? I’d like to think it would be well worth the effort.

I’m simply suggesting that instead of waiting for the devs to almost rewrite the entire pattern editor, why not simply use tools that are already available. We have rewire and free virtual midi port software is available. By the time it gets implemented, you would have already learned to use the other daw, and could benefit from what it has to offer that renoise doesn’t.

It is the logical decision.

Yes, I can agree that rather than waiting, it’s a perfectly good idea to rewire Renoise to another DAW and get “the best of both worlds”. I’ve used Reaper in this manner and while I always prefer working in Renoise, other daws have features that Renoise simply doesn’t have (yet). But we can always wish and hope the devs eventually listen to our pleas. :slight_smile:

10

Just that you know, it is to some extent possible in renoise scripting, click and drag in 1 dimension can be made using renoise.ViewBuilder().valuefield , (see the BPM field etc). You can adjust the height to be 5 pixels and as an effect work like a draggable edge. But there’s no way to move the elements of the view at the same time. Then there’s the other problem of guessing the right formula for estimating the cursor position. The original idea of https://forum.renoise.com/t/new-tool-pattern-pone-pattern-overview-and-editing-tool/41881was essentially what’s asked in this thread. But I came into the problem of not accurately guessing the formula for drawing the note lengths (there are margins and spaces for items, you can compensate by having them negative, but that will also mean that your clicking area will now overlap.

It was far more logical to simply dump the idea and switch the midi editor.

Right now the renoise pattern editor is 100% text, in fact you can edit the font to make things more visible/to your liking. http://i.imgur.com/BfoHkQb.png

So making it drawgraphics would require a lot of work. You’ll have to wait for sampleview in the pattern editor :stuck_out_tongue:

11

So making it drawgraphics would require a lot of work.

So? They are (paid) devs, work is what they do. I understand that for the time being it is best to use another daw or solution but I don’t understand why you’re discouraging people from wanting this feature.

12

They are (paid) devs

remains to be proven :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s a very very small team. I’m not discouraging anyone, I’m simply saying that if you want piano roll features in the next 2-4 years, you should use rewire. Rewire also took a while to implement :slight_smile:

13

Perhaps being vocal about it would let them know how much we would prefer this than some other features? Then again, maybe other features are more commercially viable at the moment.

14

2 months have passed, it’s ok to bump right?

15

Everyone is bumping their threads :c

Come on guys, when did you ever say to yourself: “Man, I love this tracker interface so much, because everything is displayed as text and nothing more and you get to edit everything by hand manually 1 digit at a time then have to move around with the arrow keys to your desired sub column and the second digitin it, because I wish to insertprecisely mathematically calculated values every time I write a note”

Though the sub column issueis ‘treated’ with tools and now natively in redux, having coloured graphical notes as wellwould be so much better, you get the ability to zoom easily, have notes less than a line long, make groves easily and visualize notes in othertracks to create this groove easily by having notes that start on the end of a line still be clearly very close to the next one, you can look over a pattern and see the notes used without actually reading the entire thing or listening and analysing every track, and with tools already available you can turn it into a vertical 12 column folded piano roll.

No tracker advantages are lost and once you learn the mere 12colours for each note you get all the advantages of a folded piano roll. (a traditional musical grid and other obvious features were not mentioned in this post but were obviously intended)

:c

16

bump? :c
alternatively, we have that ajax via sockets tool
alternatively someone could merge renoise and reaper via lua

so little time…

17

I can’t imagine a grove being easier to make in a tracker, easier to copy paste, sure, kind of (maybe 'some kind of’is the keyword here), but not easier to make. There are few things faster and easier than just recording (at half the bpm if you can’t) and then adjusting whatdoesn’t fit.

And adjusting things that don’t fit is exceptionally hard in a spreadsheet, especially, since sooner or later you will have to move your note to the line above or bellow it or to another column. Making rapid changes of note positions, lengths and navigating in a pattern is exceptionally slow in a tracker, the fix for that is a low LPB, but that’s an even bigger can of worms.

Then there is the problem of having pretty much no overview of what’s in a pattern and at all in other patterns. 2 tracks with3 note columns and you end up mostly blind to anything but the line you’re editing, and importantly the midi positions, to see what’s in another track you have to actually read the entire thing listen to it and memorise it, not just take a glance and compare (and adjust a tiny difference quickly in both tracks till things fit, there are many situations when both midi events on the same linewill not actually sound together when needed (and that doesn’t only end on samples)).

Anything recorded in a tracker that uses 4 columns is an uneditable, unreadable mess.

Only in a tracker do people wow when someone uses a high LPB, could you imagine that in a piano-roll-like environment, having to zoom in being praised?

18

Let’s not get personal, HeadphoneCue. The original post is a year old. There have been an increase in re-suggesting the same suggestions, people not being fully satisfied with renoise, and I feelit’s important for letting people consider the issue as well. Can you just use rewire? - kind of. Would a native implementation in any shape be far better? definitely

I only wish the best for renoise, but the number one response from other daw users I showed renoise tomake them interested is “it takesforever to do anything” and it is, " <copy block --> paste block “n” number of steps further down, to create extra space>" etc. takes 5 - 6 seconds per note and probably 10s more for the untrained, compare that to all the other daws were it takes less than one second. It completely overshadows everything else good about renoise that has nothing to do with the tracker (and there’s a lot).

This kind of implementation could also allow sample views, without ever breaking the tracker paradigm.

[details=“Click to view contents”] if you want to get personal, your suggestions were already there, implemented, you’d know if you’d simply read the very short user’s manual, or if you prefer not to, come to the irc ask and get an answer quickly, at a different time.

EDIT: at the right top corner of the forums, if you click on your name you can manage user ignores [/details]

19

“gently brushing a pony’s mane”
I have absolutely no idea what you mean.

You should read the entire thread. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea if I’m bumping the thread and providing examples, explanations and images. But I am saying that we’re certainly not getting anything in the, honestly,next6 years maybe, if renoise development exists at that point. Anything over4 years is really just worth hoping, not waiting for (hence ‘forget about it’, not literally), hence I wish more people to consider the problem and conceptand possibly decrease that time, as I believe the feature in some formwould be inevitable if enough attention is gathered by the community,but till an unspecified time in the future, possible for ever, use rewire.

Concerning the image, that is renoise with the line numbers in hex, not decimal, and I’ve edited my renoise font to have empty spaces being empty spaces, not dashes or etc.

Instead of a note off, you get, as the original poster said, graphical handles for notes. These notes can be manipulated like in any other piano roll, but omitting the roll itself andthe lanes for a specific note (thought easy to implement with a tool, and already is by a few people). That way the tracker system is not removed and you can use all those, soon to be coming, per-column sample commands etc.

This includes but is not limited to:
adjusting the length and position of notesby simply clicking and dragging them, both one at a time and several at the same time

having the notes coloured by their pitch, both in the pattern and the pattern matrix (the arranger on the left), so that to have an overview of the pitch content of a pattern’s tracks

zooming

I’d honestlylike it if all piano roll functions would be implemented,more than one note in a line, classical music grid, stuff like that. In audition, having sample views in as those notes instead, when needed, the ability to also have device parameter automation to be displayed and edited on the side of the track, to simply move everything when needed (not even asking for stretching here), you know the basic stuff in any other daw that even the not at al needy people use and complain about when they try renoise.

Click to view contents

The list of things that I believe are very basic but missing in renoise, is quite substantial, I can compile it for you in a PM, if you wish. I’ve used renoise since 2.7, I know it pretty well

20

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