so i always wanted to have a device that would pan each played note to a random L/R value, or in a ping-pong-panning, military marching band fashion, ‘Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left’.
i always made do with the Phaser ‘fast autopan’ preset, or had to do it manually through pattern effects. until tonight.
do:
Keytracker [Scaling: Limp Dick | Range: Octave] > LFO Reset > Custom Pyramid LFO Shape > Frequency 600000000000 > TrackVolPan/Panning
take a look at the panning indicator on the Mixer while the pattern is playing. mine was a bit too much on the left side, so i adjusted the LFO Offset so as to push it further to the right, thus spacing out the panning mix.
Yep! This is a good one I also discovered this last year working on some Hunz mixes. That Keytracker is severely underrated as tool of absolute coolness. Coupled with the LFO reset like you’ve outlined above I used it a lot for other effects as well, particularly lofimat settings.
thanks man!
the keytracker is indeed underrated when it comes to this purpose. the thing is, people will often take the expected route of using a Signal Follower for resetting an LFO envelope. this, however, does not work well (in this case). the keytracker is the way to go.
do you care to expand on how you use the keytracker with the lofimat settings?
i’m curious, as i have never done this myself. will try it out tonight.
Here’s a similar technique I came up with that gives you a true pingpong behaviour: dblue-autopan.xrns (2.7.1)
Velocity Tracker > LFO 1 > LFO 2 > Gainer
LFO 2 is connected to the Gainer’s Panning value. The LFO itself is set to points mode, with one point being panned hard left and another hard right. Most of the time this LFO remains in a paused state by having its frequency set to 60000000 LPC, so in other words it will stay fixed in position on either one of its points. By adjusting LFO 2’s Offset and Amplitude values, you can effectively control the amount of panning that takes place and also make it more biased towards either the left or right channel.
LFO 1 is set to one-shot mode and is connected to LFO 2’s Frequency value. Within the space of a single pattern line, it sets LFO 2’s Frequency to 1 LPC before immediately jumping back to 60000000 LPC to pause it. Essentially, this causes LFO 2 to pingpong between its two points.
The Velocity Tracker is connected to LFO 1’s Reset function and has its Min and Max values set to 0. This is because we always want LFO 1 to reset to its starting point when a new note is triggered, rather than resetting to some different point depending on note velocity. (A Key Tracker would also work in the same configuration)
Something to keep in mind…
Since values like volume and panning are always ramped (smoothed) to avoid clicks when making large changes, it’s not really possible to get an instant pan from side to side at the exact moment a new note is triggered. We have to make do with the note attack being triggered on the left, for example, and then very rapidly fading over to the right. In many cases this will still work out fine and give an interesting result, but it’s just something to be aware of.
So in explanation, have the Keytracking Device reacting off the desired notes, and connect that to an LFO Device Reset parameter. The LFO is in random mode, but you could use any envelope you like really. Then point that LFO to the Rate parameter on the lofimat. Every “note” will then have randomised characteristic lofi crunch!
Because I’ve had to do a lot of mixes for people like Hunz where we’ve tried really hard to get a professional sounding mix using Native Only DSPs, I feel I can venture this opinion:
Renoise’s internal native FX and routing possibilities are simply and unquestionably fantastic. If you put your mind to it, you can achieve most of what a lot of 3rd party plugins claim you need to buy to do. All your major mixing qualities are there: super precise EQ; lovely sounding filters; a range of unique modulators; workable compression especially now with the ease of multi-band Send Device routing; a large range of distortion and texture alteration options; workable delay and reverb staples; and so on.
Maybe some practical additions to cover the gap would be:
Basic M/S processing for simple tasks like making the low-end mono (maybe this could be done with another Send Device?).
Granular tool (which we had for a little bit in a beta a while ago).
Feedback loop style delay attached to the Filter3 set.
There are probably other ‘mix staples’ we could add, but that’s all that was in my mind for the moment…
@MMD: i agree with you. the native fx are indeed fantastic. in fact, i ‘lost’ all of my vsts after a complete system reset (not on my laptop drive anymore), and i never bothered putting them back because i now only use the Renoise native fx. they rock.
i think the M/S thing (i’m not an expert here!) should not be in the DSP chain. it should indeed be done either through sends or through some mixer-option, imo. feels more logical to me.
i would love to see some kind of granulator-device. it would fit in nicely with Renoise’s other surgical sample edit possibilities like the 0Exx and 09xx commands.
i don’t know what a ‘feedback loop style delay’ would sound like.
personally, i still hope the devs will consider doing some device that does sound-creation more than modulation. really curious how that would work out.
Your standard ‘dub echo’ DSPs are ‘feedback loop delays’. Each repeated echo goes back into the filters after being delayed - so each iteration of echo becomes more mid-range sounding. I’d argue it’s a “staple” sound of most of the producers here.
I also discovered this last year working on some Hunz mixes. That Keytracker is severely underrated as tool of absolute coolness. Coupled with the LFO reset like you’ve outlined above I used it a lot for other effects as well, particularly lofimat settings. 