now I kinda solved the problem for 10 minutes, I printed out four charts (I made 0-255/00-FF, and quartered it), did sellotape on each row and removed it. that way you can make sellotapes with print on them. I put those on my macbook, two next to the display and two next to the keyboard.
it looked awful.
for the built in DSP stereo delay to have a “flip” button which flips the Left side’s time/amount settings with the Right’s
-Pitch control per-channel
-A scope mode where the scope in pattern view is replaced by a miniature status window showing aforementioned pitch, mixer pan and volume, and a short list of effect/VSTi parameters being changed at any given time, for each track (it would look SO COOL going nuts with lots of automation)
-Inertia control for delay times in delay, flange, and chorus modules
-Enable effect feedback
-Some kind of clever performance-oriented pattern switching/muting surface, preferably controllable by MIDI
+4
This’ll sound wierd but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
The toggle Play-Pause-Record key with an alternative mode where whenever the tune’s playing it blanks the screen.
What would be the point of that!?!
Well, ever noticed what happens when you turn a TV on at a house party? Same thing when you use a TV set on stage in a theatre production… Everyone zones out and watches it no matter what else is going on…
The brain’s hardwired to notice movement, and most the brain’s used up dealing with visual processing… So no matter how loud your monitors, or how interesting your music, as long as there’s a screen pumping out light and movement in the same room, it’ll always be the loudest thing going on in your head… Which is why, I think, a lot of the time, after working on music really intensively in a computer environment for hours/days/weeks, you play your recording on a car stereo or hifi and - good or not - it sounds like it was made by a lesser you… A you with a lower musical IQ…
I don’t imagine a feature like this ever being implemented on any sequencer, but I genuinely believe it’d have the most positive effect on music making of any feature ever devised…
Just close your eyes, or turn your chair and look out a window. Works for me, totally rock solid bug free as well 
Hehe, I actually think you have to fully detatch from the concept of the screen moving when the track’s playing… I want to condition myself so Play is automatically associated with the visual part of my brain taking a break… I find even if I close my eyes now, I’m still aware of the screen in the same way I’m still aware of the door behind me and the trees outside.
I think too much about this kind of thing!
OR, J_Swift, you can just press the on/off switch on your monitor/TV
I use a laptop. But even if it had a switch, I doubt I’d use it. I think something like this would need to be automatic.
But I genuinely believe this is the main reason we’re not seeing electronic music evolve - in fact, barely able to keep up with its own heritage - and you’re not seeing a new generation of Mozarts, Debussys, Fripps, etc. now your so-called cutting edge IDM or dubstep album is really put to shame by the likes of Girls Aloud in terms of taking risks musically and trying out new things - even in terms of writing a single memorable musical line… Which is pathetic.
I spent a long time obsessing over sound quality; then a long time re-learning everything I thought I knew about composition… and it’s all been hugely beneficial and opened a lot of other doors for me… But I now realise the single biggest problem with electronic music today is the way the modern studio/computer environment is so completely at odds with being in any sort of creative/musical state…
But… at the same time it does open up boundless creative potential… and I think that’s what we all find interesting and why we all stick with it, but I don’t think any technology or knowledge is going to allow us to go any further until the ergonomics and interaction issues are really dealt with.
-1 stonner rambling, close your eyes, conditioning your own mind is an act of willpower, not a feature request, the fact that you can’t see this is a recursive metaphor.
maybe renoise needs a build-in artificial intelligent listener with a cynical sense of humour that doesn’t hold back to share its critique relentlessly, no-nonsense, no-nuance, notorious, northpole, nothing.
imagine a voice coming from somewhere halfway your track playback:
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!”
Yeah I understand what you’re saying, music does sound different when I’m listening to it elsewhere completely detached from the sequencer. But it’s pretty obvious that you are going to have some sort of visual connection when you’re making music…
The difference between written scores and modern sequencing environments, is that scores are visually more asynchronous to time. There is no quick way of telling how a score of music flows by looking at it from a distance, you have to read the notes in succession.
I don’t think that this visual map of music is made by watching your music zip by though, it’s something that’s being done while you’re working on it, so your solution of blanking the screen would not have the effect you want. What you could do to counter this problem you’re having is to make the screen area smaller, by setting your resolution to 1024x768. And doubling your BPM (or make your patterns shorter).
On more or less the same subject, something I would be keen on trying out is a tracker that doesn’t use space for silence but one that has a seperate symbol for it, so you have to think more about it. It would be a more additive way of making music, instead of substracting the music out of the slabs of silence 
Oh yeah, the whole cubase syndrome thing is even worse… When you can see your notes or blocks on an arranger plotted against the time axis… It massively affects how you perceive music, but I think just knowing it’s there and making the mental connection does the damage… and this is the reason so many people are still paying through the nose for very old h/w sequencers… I think the tracker perspective is infinitely superior to that - score notation is coded and symbolic for that reason, and it forces you to think musically where a piano roll makes it almost impossible to think musically…
Blanking the screen whenever anything’s playing would be a crude solution, but in the same way, have you ever tried doing an IQ test while listening to 80s music? Something with lyrics, structure, lots of musicality - it’s impossible to concentrate, it’s as if just having it on in the background knocks 20 IQ points off because of the amount attention (which is how much resources your brain’s pumping into that area at that time) is used up interpretting it… I think that’s the effect you want to minimise… and you can find hundreds of examples where a producers who’ve switched from a h/w sequencer to a computer have lost something significant: Liam Howlett, Carl Craig, Ken Ishii, DJ Shadow, etc.
I think to make a feature like sellable it would be to have a light synthesizer or visualizer which switches in whenever you press play (optional of course)… Something which is easy to ignore… Or something which makes a more direct visual connection with what you’re hearing.
Absolutely agree!
Don’t get me wrong… I love the flexibility of software… Cutting up drums in my Ensoniq used to take days on end sometimes.
And it’s a revolution having unlimited compressors and enhancers on hand - But the “consumerism” trap is SUCH a nightmare…
Even if you’re not actually paying for the stuff, there’s this idea magazines are selling nowadays that every kid with a PC, and (the right) plug-ins, is a potential Quincy Jones…
It’s become the new “boy racer” sport… Upgrading your computer, soundcard, plug-ins, Cubase version, etc… And to what end?
Well, much the same as the boy racer with his souped up Nova… You can spend all your life doing up your car, and never actually get any good at driving it… Let alone entering the world of racing and getting sponsored.
It can all too easily turn into one big distraction…
The reality is, many of the finest sounding dance records were made on little more than a 2 meg sampler and a desk - The idea that to produce dance music you need 1gb of RAM and hundreds of plug-ins and softsynths is ridiculous…
To actually get good at making music does involve endless hours experimenting and producing shit - Fiddling with a compressor on a bass drum for weeks on end… I remember when I got my first Behringer composer and Ultrafex I spent months just experimenting… I fear many of the new generation of Computer Music producers bite off FAR more than they can chew from the start… Then blame their lack of progression on a lack of “technology”…
Plus, it’s MUCH less intuitive trying to work out a plug-in than a piece of hardware… The effects, particularly of compression, can be a lot more subtle (in some ways) too…
There’s also nothing new about using computers to process audio… I started off using Stereo Master 2 and Quartet on the ST… You could sample, sequence, manipulate audio… I think that got up to 22khz, 16-bit… There was software to time stretch, picth shift, compress, EQ, add delays, etc…
In the last 15 odd years, what, the sample rate’s got higher, a few more frills here and there, but the only revolution is a marketing revolution… Why not market a product with next to no overheads instead of building gear…?
I was speaking to someone from the Synthvox forum the other day, who thought sampling breaks was lazy, because you could just record your mates’ drumkit in a barn and go to work with the plug-ins… It just makes you think… You can easily get SO caught up in the technology, and the marketing hype, that your perception and common sense goes out the window.
You know what helps too? Not giving a f****. Intelligence doesn’t just dissipate when you listen to bad music or watch patterns on a screen, you have to have some sort of intent to use it, that’s all that matters.
subjectivity’s an illusion
there’s a study being done at the moment into Human-Computer Interaction in music
i’m low on details, but i’m probably going to write it up at some point… anyway, technology is undeniably having a profound effect on the way we interact with music, perceive music, get feedback from music, make decisions, etc.
you can’t get away from it - one major part of most music technology is the nature of a visual interface, and visually representing music… we start hearing with our eyes as soon as the connect’s been made once - so we start structuralizing
is it any wonder 4/4 and 32-bar sections and things are de rigueur nowadays? there’s nothing less audibly natural about 3/4 or 5/4 - it’s just less visually structured… a lot of musicians nowadays can’t even think out of 4/4
when you’ve got a piano or guitar in front of you, that interface dissapears with experience and you get a much more direct aural interaction with your music
of course each of them have their own physical interfaces - you notice how piano music is often very regular, 16th’s or 8th’s - whereas guitar music is all over the place rhythmically
I think that part of the struggle in overcoming problems you face with your tools is what validates your music, it is part of the effort you make to create something. And all the problems you identify are things you can overcome exactly because you have identified them as being a problem. Something I learned by posting insane feature requests 
Yeah but not giving a f**** seems to be at the heart of this… Indie music is wiping electronica off the map at the moment, and you don’t find many decent guitarists who’re willing to settle for cheap knock-off guitars and line 6 pods… Musicians are meant to be anal, over-reaching, ambitious and perfectionistic, not just convenience and price conscious.
Try writing a masters thesis while listening to Thriller at full volume… It’ll just take a lot more effort writing something which will probably end up sounding like it was written by a 15 year old…