I have both Renoise and Bitwig. As you all know, Renoise is my favorite DAW, like evarrr. I know all about the Repeater tool, I use it all the time, and I know about the RXX (oops, not CXX) commands, they get the sounds to repeat pretty quickly, sounds much more rapid than the Repeater.
That being said, and without offering the same option of speeding up the tempo and increasing the LPB, is there any other function that I might be missing to get the samples I use to repeat as quickly as Bitwigâs Operators? Those have pretty much turned anything I throw at them into an almost melodic instrument, at the rate of repeats I can get within a time-frame. If we had something like this in Renoise that operates at a normal tempo, thatâd be killer and Iâd love to know about it.
No key special commands afaik, but out of the box thinking you could also render a selection in the pattern to sample and set up loop markers in the sample editor, either loosely or through setting the ruler to beats and snapping to (8th - 128th) divisions. Put the looping samples in the pattern editor or phrases and you can add commands like DXX and/or UXX for slowing or speeding up the triggers, combine it with other stuffâŚre-sample those sections again, rinse and repeat . Then again Iâm not familiar with bitwig so donât know how it sounds, do you have an example?
Thatâs not a bad idea, either - itâs just that Iâd be doing this on single drum hits - the phrase method works, itâs just not as convenient as making it right in the pattern - instead I have to pre-make a bunch of different speeds in a bunch of different phrases. Iâm posting a video here, and youâll be able to see how quick ân easy the Operators in Bitwig are - I just tried this out today, and found it to be pretty simple and really quick. Then I wondered if we had this, and we âkind ofâ do. Itâ just not as fast. Itâs something that I wonder from time to time. Hereâs the video:
I see, the piano roll kind of control of selecting notes and applying the randomness et cetera is indeed another kind of workflow. Not sure the current piano roll tools offer this sort of (randomness & retrigger) control, would be cool. In the past Iâve used plugins for this kind of stuff, resampling and processing the samples.
The polyend tracker has a bunch of different random & retrigger pattern commands, so the above is a matter of inserting a command in the pattern.
I have suggested more pattern commands in Renoise before, as indeed we can program similar stuff in the pattern editor or phrase editor on high lpbâs, but the quickness of a dedicated pattern command saves a lot of time.
Yep, thatâs pretty much it - ignore the piano-roll stuff. Itâs just neat to see these operators pushing individual sounds to do a variety of repeats at super-high frequencies. More commands is all we really need for this type of action- to break beyond the speeds we have now. This capability is something truly wonderful.
I took a snare drum sample, then an AHDSR envelope. Set the sample to loop forward with a short envelope decay so it loops in silence. A decay length suitable for the percussive sound.
In the Samplerâs âModulationâ portion, select pitch, and adjust the âPitch Rangeâ to 96.
Add an âOperandâ to the Pitch
Drop down the âMacrosâ, by hitting the âMacrosâ Button
Assign a Macro knob to the Operandâs âValueâ slider and assign a knob to the AHDSR envelopeâs âHoldâ
In the Edit Screen, add an âInstr. Macrosâ device
Use the FX column to trigger different values on the Instr. Macros device.
This will create a little âbuzzingâ drum sound for the length of the sample, little drum buzzes that go incredibly fast, they also change speed/pitch, as the sample is being pitched upwards or downwards. Automating the Hold in the AHDSR keeps the sound buzzing for a particular length of time.
This is not as easy as the Bitwig method, but it works pretty well for straight buzzing. I havenât experimented beyond this. I do not know if there is a way to make it do the âbouncing ballâ effect that many are fond of, and I donât know how precise it gets with the amount of repeats. I also did not find out if it can also be only buzzed faster with no pitch shifting. These are things that can be figured out in time, I suppose.
. Then again Iâm not familiar with bitwig so donât know how it sounds, do you have an example?
