Track effect column limitations

Ideas & suggestions
1

As I was putting together a drum track (using 5 columns) last night I came to realize the limitations of the current effect-column system. I had wanted to play my snare with a 0980 command on a few lines but couldn’t do it because the command would’ve affected all samples played on that line. Also wanted to do some random 09xx commands for a series of hihats that were being played on one part, but again couldn’t do it because I didn’t want to affect the other samples played on each line with the 09xx command. In addition there were things I wanted to do with panning, volume control and note delay which again were being problematic (can’t do note delay and panning change at the same time for a single note/sample, can do panning, but the note delay would effect all notes on that line). I know there are kludgy ways around these things, but it was getting unnecessarily convoluted.

Anyway I ended up just splitting the 5 column drum track into 5 separate tracks to do what I wanted. This was unfortunate because I then had to duplicate the DSP effects to each of the 4 additional tracks. Which also was unfortunate because that uses more CPU power.

I think it would be better if each note-column had it’s own effect-column(s). Either that or each note-event has effects “attached” to it.

2

I imagine a possible line in one track could look like:

| C-4 02 – -- 0980 | E-4 03 30 – | C-3 04 – -- 0D03 0940 | 0000 |

There are three note columns. The first note column is playing inst. 02 at C-4 with a 0980 effect/command. The second column is playing inst. 03 at E-4 at vol of 30 with no effect/command. The third column is playing inst. 04 with both 0D03 and 0940 commands. The final column is the track effect column, which would contain effects/command applicable to the whole track on that line.

3

I agree with you. But you don´t have to duplicate the effects!

When you want an effect on several tracks at once, put the effect on a sendchannel.

Then on all the tracks you want to use that effect put a senddevice and point it to the correct sendtrack…

Now all the tracks use the one effect on the sendtrack…

4

I’ve already suggested a solution for this ages ago and called it “assignment column”.

It’s no more than a one-digit column to be put near each command column.

This column will tell ReNoise which note column is affected by that command:
0 means every note column (this is how it works now).
1…a means this command has to be assigned only to note column 1…a

You could hide this column as an option, exactly as it already is for volume and pan columns, and leaving it blank (zero) would not affect the present way of tracking.

People said it was too complex and I still can’t figure out why <_<

ps: 300th post reached :rolleyes:

edit:
when I’ve posted this message I’ve realized that I’ve forgot to mention that Vohaul could benefit a lot from the usage of sendtracks, but then I’ve seen that splajn was faster: yes, splajn is right; you definitely have to try sendtracks. Check the manual about them.

5

Hey thanks guys … I didn’t even think of using sendtracks … makes sense … I never needed/wanted to use them before in any music proggy, so it didn’t even cross my mind … :rolleyes:

I think your assignment column idea would work … however, I think it would be a better solution though just to allow each note column to have none, one or more effect columns of their own, and have the “trackwide” effect column(s) that would affect all note columns in that track. This method also allows for full backwards compatibility.

6

Does anybody (esp. the developers) think this idea has merit?

7

I don’t. IMO it would be better then to separate the effects that should affect a single note and create another type of column together with a note column.

8

That sounds good to me … is that officially planned?

9

No. Just an idea.

10

Hmm … well if there is a wish list somewhere, this gets my vote.

11

funny, i didn’t read this thread before and i sent some suggestions to taktik yesterday. one of them is this thread related

add “bypass commands for the column” command to volume or pan column.
for example use “b” in volume column:

c-4 00 B0 – | c-5 00 – -- 0201
— – B0 – | — – -- – 0201
— – B0 – | — – -- – 0201
— – B0 – | — – -- – 0201

here c-5 will slide down, but c-4 won’t slide down because of
“commands bypassing”. i think it’s very useful, especially in some
drum loop remaping when you need to use 09xx command only for one
note.

about x using in Bx, for example

x=0 - bypass all commands for this column
x=1…4 - use the command from x command’s column only for this note column
x=F - solo the commands (use all commands only for this note column)

then we can do something like that:

c-4 00 B2 – | c-5 00 – -- 0201 0101
— – B2 – | — – -- – 0201 0101
— – B2 – | — – -- – 0201 0101
— – B2 – | — – -- – 0201 0101

c-4’s pitch goes up, and c-5 goes down

actually it would be better to use pan column for that command, but i
don’t know about letter to use then. maybe it could be even in both
columns: for example “B” in volume column, and “c” in pan column. the
best way is to expand commands range from A to Z everywhere,
including command column.