Basically one of the things I really miss with the tracker paradigm is being able to record staccato notes live. It’s impossible unless you’ve actually set LPB to about 32
Also the workaround with note cut (Cx) doesn’t really work if you have a volume envelope on the instrument.
It’s difficult to think up a solution though. Maybe a Cx version that respects envs?
I would make two instruments with the same sample but different envelopes (one with no sustain for the staccato notes) but it’s a desirable feature.
Yes, that’s also an option to think about. Now that I read this back, my own topic, it’s kind of vague because I start talking about a Cx workaround but I meant actually recording live played very short notes (shorter than a ‘line’ duration), and possibility to later on quantize those, etc.
I don’t know what form this should take in the pattern editor, other than a Cx equivalent that does note-off instead of cutoff.
The other thing I want to record from live playing is drum patterns, renoise could shine much more in this aspect by 1. having “choke groups” inside multisample instruments, and 2. being able to set “Don’t record note-offs in any case” per instrument.
Currently, a less-than a single line note happens only when the note-on was struck not precisely on the line but with a little delay.
I’m pretty sure you know this, but just to illustrate:
C-4 – ← note being struck precisely at the line, with note-off occurring exactly one line later
OFF
C-4 D2 ← note being struck pretty late, with the note-off occurring something like a 1/8th of a line afterwards.
OFF
Which means, that the actual duration of the note - when recording un-quantized - is actually pretty much up to chance. But as you point out, the higher LPB, the better.
A proper solution, I think, would be to allow negative delay values. Then, the OFF note could happen immediately (well, 1/256th of a line) after the note-on.
Yes, and it’s funny because, note-offs also get recorded with their delay values! So short hits of notes, recorded from live play, are very possible, as long as they span at least the transition from one pattern line to another.
Notes could also be drawn/positioned freely between lines. It would give plenty of accuracy for all practical purposes but then effect commands probably would have to follow notes for them to work. Notes could be color-coded to mark if they’re exactly on the line or not.
Negative delay might be the best.
I always had issues with this, but your example illustrates how arbitrarily bad it can be />
Despite being a strong advocate of delays being centered on the beat (i.e. pos/neg delays), I don’t think they fully solve this particular problem. For example, sometimes you want the hit to come down late (practically, this is a problem if you’re at a higher LPB or if you’re shaping the decay of a swung note). It’s not a general solution.
For stacatto type material, I usually end up relying on hacks, for example, cutting sustain to 0 programming the decay parameter on a VST. This is obviously no good for capturing a live performance though.
More ‘live recording’ stuff could be added, think about Shift-F11/F12 when follow is on and record is on