Usefullness Of 09xx Offset Command?

hey hey

I’ve been fiddling with renoise for a few weeks now, trying to piece together some tunes. Its quite dandy.

anyhoo, I’ve noticed people love the sample offset command, but I’ve never understood why. I mean, for breaking apart loops, the cut/paste method seems more tiddy to me. What do you guys use it for?

Also, with the reverse command, how do you get the sample to start sooner (to skip the decay) ? The 09xx command isn’t working for me in this regard.

bye bye

Well, sometimes you really want to cut something exactly in half, quarters etc., and currently that is not possible at all with the sample editor (accurately, that is).

  • to cut long samples in shorter pieces, e.g. so you you don’t have always have to play the pattern from the beginning when working on something near the end of the pattern.

  • to mess around with vocal samples - most of the time I can get what I want (or something unexpected and cool) without the need to use the sample editor.

  • to cheaply make percussion sounds a bit softer / less robotic (try a random sequence of 901, 902, 904, 905 on snares for example).

Probably more… 9xx and beatsync are a great combination, too ;)

“b00 900”: plays backwards starting from the end (same as just “b00”)
“b00 940”: plays backwards starting at 75%
“b00 980”: plays backwards starting at 50%
“b00 9c0”: plays backwards starting at 75%

Well, I don’t use it at all. If I need to chop a loop I do it in wavesurgeon or similar and if I need a vocalsample chopped I chop it in audition (which has a bars&beats timeline and enables you to cut something exactly in half or quarters etc.)

The point is that the 9xx command is way to abstract for me, I can’t keep several Double-Digit Numbers and their respective effect or sound in mind. So for sake of workflow I rather spread single hits of a drumloop into samples of an instrument etc.

But I have to say that I don’t work on songs to be released as xrns files, so I don’t care about the filesize of my renoise-files.

as Johann already said, I mainly use 9xx to soften the attack of a sample. great for many kind of isntruments, expecially for drums

I agree, thats a good use. For me personally it was taken over by the possibilty to link the velocity to the Attack of the AHD-Envelope in Battery.

i pretty much do all of my slicing exclusively with 09xx

i like that i can jump around in a sample at will, instead of having to go take a new cut whenever i feel like trying out a different approach. it’s the versatility of a needle-drop. beat slicing utilities con’t provide you with that.

much like mr mosleh above, i pretty much use the 09xx for everything.

it helps with changing things up quickly to experiment, and it doesnt limit you to just the cuts that youve made. you can go beyond the sample slices or trigger from the middle or just the tail.

its ideal for layering sounds together quickly.

and for some reason i find it easier to remember what an 09xx number is than say C is a snare, B is a kick, etc… but then thats cos i’m a disorganised f****er and i rarely chop things up and assign stuff to keys cos i’m also very lazy :D

thanks for the help

I checked out some of the demo songs too, and it seems pretty good for creating glitched out drum breaks and what not, or for just ‘humanizing’ parts so they aren’t so repetitive.

Another Q, how do you guys go up finding the correct values for the 09xx?
I usually just switch back and forth between the sample and the pattern editor until I get it right.

-It’d be nice if there were ruler markings in the sample editor corresponding to hex numbers so I wouldn’t need to ‘guess and check’.

Btw here’s my band: :drummer: :guitar:

when youre inthe sample editor click on the wave.

you’ll then see a vertical orange line.

if you look just below the wav window, and a lil to the right you’ll find the 09xx number for the region that the orange line is in.

if you then move the orange line with your arrow keys, you’ll see that it changes roughly every 4 time you hit the arrow key.

one thing to remember is that the sample is divided into 256 pieces i think it is. so each 09xx number is one slice. this is where the unaccurate sample slicing/beatslicer demand issue comes from.

so the longer the sample the larger the region.

still a newbie myself so if i made any mistakes above someone please correct me :P

youve probably checked this thread out already but incase you havent:

http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=8912

Hadn’t noticed that. This is even better than what I needed. thanks

Another question;

I have an amen loop and beatsync isn’t working - do the loops need to be properly lined up or something? In other words, can you just throw any old drum recording in and sync it up, or does need to be synced to something to begin with?
(the loop is actually synced up, but in a strange polyrythmic sort of way)

Also, the sync option is just changes the frequency at which the loop plays, correct? Is there a way to speed up the loop while not changing the pitch?

thanks a bunch. If this is all in the wiki I missed it.

BEATSYNC adjusts the sample playback frequency so that the sample’s duration fills the specified number of beats for the current tempo/speed. if your amen break isn’t cut to be a perfect 4 beats (or whatever size chunk you’re working with) beatsync won’t be able to accurately sync.

the number next to the “Sync”-option is the number of 16th beats. So for a one bar-loop its 16, for a two bar loop 32 and so forth. So normally you use properly cut 1/2/x-bar loops with the sync option. If you got a whack old drumloop with sloppy timing or one that is not exactly trimmed to the bar syncing is not really possible. Note that for example old Sample-CDs had loops organized in another way, after the loop the first hit was always repeated so you could loop it easier (by using audible flamming), those loops are not usable with the sync-option unless you cut that repeated first hit.
so if you have a loop you want to sync just count it while playing to make sure it is exactly 1/2/x bars long.

Speeding up a loop without changing the pitch is called timestretching (or pitchshifting if you want to change pitch while keeping the speed), so far there is no real free/opensource software avaiable for that, most algorithms that work half-decently are pretty expensive and therefore probably won’t appear in renoise.

I’m quite positive that Audacity has effects capable of doing both.

Or do you mean that no free program does it well/that it won’t appear in Renoise? The pitch sounded quite right when I tried this.

Back to what looza said, the concept that 16th beats are represented in the ‘sync’ box are assuming you use speed of 6. You need to double that number if you halve your speed…for instance, the same 4 bar loop at song speed 3 need 32 put in the box.

Generally, if you’re working in 4/4, it’s encouraged you use 3 as your base for speeds (3,6,12,24,48,etc). This will make your syncing of loops and other such 4/4 items feel more natural when doing the math because it will correspond musically with 16th notes, 32nd notes, 8th notes, etc.

Back to 09xx command, something you can try is to manually quantize a drum loop. It’s a bit of work, but the results are well worth it.

First, open up your raw drum loop (i.e. your own home made sample of the amen loop). Chop it up beat-slicer style like you’re used to. Recreate the loop via the pattern and the slices so that it’s rhythmic properties are identical to the original, but are quantized to remove human inconsistancies with the drum hits. Now, render that to sample…then have fun with the 09xx command because it will accurately trigger each hit on time without any issues of starting in the middle of hits and you don’t have to remember a whole lot of numbers…

It should turn out that (assuming you’re using the non-jungle version…i.e. the first measure of the whole amen):

0900 start sample, first kick
0920 second kick
0940 first snare
0960 ride
0970 tap
0980 ride
0990 tap
09a0 kick
09b0 kick
09c0 second snare
09e0 last ride

If you don’t quantize, you’ll end up having things like:
0942 first snare
0971 tap
etc.
it’s just harder to keep track of that.

Keith303 and others expressed delight in simply placing a trigger for the quantized loop every 8th note and just changing the 9xx command all the way through the song…it’s easy rearranging of the loop. If it’s quantized before hand, it will always sound good, however because you’re not using chops, you can add in things to taste, such as timestretch, strobe muting, ‘rewinds’ (combo of b00 and chained 1xx), etc.

Hopefully, that helps you out a bit achieving whatever effects you’re after…and don’t forget, you can still incorporate the subtle snare/kick changes using this method as well.

:)

lol d’oh!

dunno why i didnt think of doing that.

cheers for the tip hseiken.

Err, do you mean a 1 bar loop (4 beats) needs 32 at speed 3?

But yeah, I had been doing the quantize thing to line up the loop but only at certain points.

exactly. one easy way to get figure that out is the number of lines you want to fit the loop to :

if you want to play it between line 00 and 10 chose 16 (equals 10 in hex), if you want it to play it between line 00 and 20 chose 32 (equals 20).

And another simple solution : If it plays too fast rightclick (!) on the right-arrow next to the beatsync number, if it plays too slow rightclick on the left arrow. That changes the beatsync in 16th steps.