[tool idea] Note event signifier

Renoise Tools
1

Ey,

Looking for a tool that can do the following;

Dealing with a densely programmed multi-sampled breakbeat instrument in the pattern editor it can often be tricky to quickly see where certain sounds are, for example if you want to align hits with sounds in other tracks. Align kicks with subs, snares with claps. cymbals, atmospheric stuffs etc.

7654 notes.jpg

I would love a tool where you can keyboard shortcut or right mouse click a sound from the sample list in the instrument editor or the particular note-event where the cursor resides in the pattern editor, select ~signify or something and all the note-events from that selected sound in the track get a kind of code/pattern command that makes it stick out from the other note events.

I’m not sure what would be the most handy, none affecting code that could work, perhaps a currently unused pattern command could be inserted?

7655 notes2.jpg

So in above screenshot the selected kick sound gets a KXX as pattern command.

Would something like above idea be doable? :yeah: Perhaps there already is a tool which can so something similar?

2

AFAIK the API does not provide any kind of note highlighting/coloration functionality, so I believe your vision is not possible to do currently.

3

I’m not talking about highlighting or coloring (would be great to have though in the future), the blue’ish color you see now in the screenshots is from my own pattern selecting. As mentioned above some kind of currently unused pattern command could be used for the note events you want to stand out from the rest.

4

Ups sorry, did not even see that unused command :slight_smile:

5

A bit like how many text-editors nowadays have identical word highlighting.

Good idea, and also, a feature that would work much better if done natively - what a tool does in the pattern will end up in the edit history, which is probably not what we want.

But yeah, until then, and without any special room in the editor, what could indeed be the way forward?

To me and ffx, those KXX are quite hard to spot. I think it would be better to allocate a special note column for this purpose.

It could then contain a duplicate of the actual note, or better still - just a OFF (that doesn’t have an affect on playback), along with the note column name.

For example, here’s an example phrase getting the treatment:

7656 signify.gif

6

Ey,

Looking for a tool that can do the following;

Dealing with a densely programmed multi-sampled breakbeat instrument in the pattern editor it can often be tricky to quickly see where certain sounds are, for example if you want to align hits with sounds in other tracks. Align kicks with subs, snares with claps. cymbals, atmospheric stuffs etc.

attachicon.gifnotes.jpg

I would love a tool where you can keyboard shortcut or right mouse click a sound from the sample list in the instrument editor or the particular note-event where the cursor resides in the pattern editor, select ~signify or something and all the note-events from that selected sound in the track get a kind of code/pattern command that makes it stick out from the other note events.

I’m not sure what would be the most handy, none affecting code that could work, perhaps a currently unused pattern command could be inserted?

attachicon.gifnotes2.jpg

So in above screenshot the selected kick sound gets a KXX as pattern command.

Would something like above idea be doable? :yeah: Perhaps there already is a tool which can so something similar?

Well, I think I understand the idea.I can think of 3 ways to do this:

  1. Include effects parameters in the note. The first form is the one mentioned by DJeroekbut done to make it more useful, not just to mark.It is possible to select any block within the pattern-track and analyze a specific note and assign any command. Not only would you mark it but you could assign any command, and this is useful.
  2. Include note-OFF’s separately. The second is the one mentioned by Danoise. But it is limited by the number of note columns, and I would use the first column of free notes to write the notes-off.
  3. Export / Import to a phrase the note. If the block to analyze is a single note columnit is possible to import that note column of pattern editor into a phrase within the instrument itself,and separate the notes there in some way, duplicating only the note selected in another column of note, or only export only that note in the corresponding position, being able to export the 12 note columns at the same time.

The 3 ways are possible through the available API (v3.1.1).The best way is not to abuse the process and analyze blocks within a pattern-track (not analyze an entire track, the worst case are 1000 patterns x 512 lines).In fact, it would be possible to create a tool that includes the 3 methods.I quite like the third method, create a phrase and paste there the notes you want. You would have a clear view of the notes, and you could later import the phrase into the pattern editor, separating notes easily between patterns.

  • The simplest method to follow is to copy the entire block, all the notes, and then delete all the content that does not correspond to those notes, preserving the effects parameters of each note even.
  • The cleanest and fastest method, I suppose it’s just copying the selected note inside the block to analyze.

I have a module in a much wider tool that already exports and imports from the pattern editor to the phrases. By adding a single drop-down menu to the GUI to signal a note, you could already do method 3. It is even possible to add a checkbox to automatically analyze the note you want to duplicate so that the menu changes automatically.

Of course, any useful function, it is better to be under the hood of Renoise.Regardless of this, the best way to highlight is to isolate.

Edit:I forgot… Any function is possible to fire it from a specific keyboard command, if the tool is a window, it must be selected (if I’m not mistaken).

7

I think it would be better to allocate a special note column for this purpose.

It could then contain a duplicate of the actual note, or better still - just a OFF

+1 for extra column and offs, indeed pattern commands don’t necessarily standout (pattern highlighting color in my example also doesn’t help :)) especially if the particular track already contains a lot of commands.

8

Hello, I have a tool that can do this and keep it updated in realtime. In this particular case, it would be done by naming a column

=notevalue(120, filter("instrument", 13, column(1)))

The problem is that I don’t want to release it, since it’s too difficult getting it to work with pattern aliases. I just want to mention the approach.

9

Hello, I have a tool that can do this and keep it updated in realtime… …The problem is that I don’t want to release it, since it’s too difficult getting it to work with pattern aliases.

Dude, no one uses pattern aliases :ph34r: :stuck_out_tongue: , but seriously, with realtime you mean whenever you insert a ‘flagged’ note in the pattern editor, the tool will insert an off in the ‘signify’ (or however it’s called) column? Hightech :yeah: . Personally I’m pretty paranoid about tools running in the background though, a simple offline method would suffice for me.

10

Would say the same, nobody cares about aliases, and it wouldn’t matter if your tool wasn’t supporting it, Joule!

11

Ey

Yo!

Any particular reason you’re not simply using multiple note columns in this type of situation?

Example:

7688 renoise-breaks-columns.png

Pretty clear what’s going on here, no?

A bit of extra work to set it up, sure, but I think it pays off in the end, and it doesn’t require any hacky tool to insert dummy codes into the pattern :slight_smile:

And if you want to maintain the feel of fitting the break into a single note column, where each note abruptly cuts off the previous one, you can simply set all slices/samples to the same mute group and set NNA to cut.

A well organised pattern is a happy pattern :slight_smile:

12

Any particular reason you’re not simply using multiple note columns in this type of situation?

Speed, style & convenience, your slices to pattern tool also doesn’t help :P. Less clicks & tabs to jot stuff down, prolly a workflow thing engraved since the protracker days. I know you can program the same thing in multiple ways and also do this, mixing styles in one song, single tracks for breaks & single tracks for separate elements at the same time. I’ve used Fladd’s excellent ‘split into separate tracks’ tool (http://www.renoise.com/tools/split-into-separate-tracks) in the past for example, it can split and collect a multi sampled instrument across tracks inside a group, though when you have a lot of different samples, the amount of tracks can get overkill, losing overview in the pattern editor/mixer in the end (I know you can collapse tracks, improve the view…but still).

Also through using one track for multisampled instruments, I like the way you can fill up a track full random drum hits as a starting point, then bring in structure through ctrl+X’ing different editstep amounts to bring in regularity, some kind of structure. For example ctrl+6 a kick drum on top all throughout, overwriting previous random stuff.

For me when dealing with filled tracks it can be handy to flag elements somehow, but will try splitting into groups again and see if I can get some kind of workflow with it if such tool never manifests :wink: .