Using Triplet On The Automation Grid

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
1

Hello every Renoise user out there,

First I have to say I did not found a “introduce yourself” forum or so, so here’s briefly who I am : Hardcore producer, been using another software for my music till know but it’s no more developped and isn’t completely satisfying me anymore. Downloaded demo version of Renoise 2.8 and even made a track and few trials on it but still have very very much to learn.

So here is my question, as I did not found an answer about this in the forums :

I think I understood how to play triplets in Renoise (setting LPB to 12), but once you’re there and you want to add automation, it’s still dividing things on a 4/4 base.

To be more precise : If you’re on a triplet base, each beat may be divided into 3, 6, 12, or 24 slices. But on the automation grid, each beat is still sliced in 8, 16, or 32 slices. So let’s figure you want to divide one beat into 12 slices, and put effect on each “off-slice” (1,3,5, etc…), you can’t manage to figure it out…

Please someone would help me or show me where I just was dumb and missed one thing ?

2

hmm… I believe a better way for triplets is to use dblue’s tool New Tool (2.7 & 2.8): Fractional Notes

edit = cause I think the answers below are a little better

:lol:

3

I wonder… Have you perhaps changed your pattern line highlighting in Song Settings?

The first helpful thing you can do here (if it’s not set already) is to set “Highlight every xx lines” to LPB, then the pattern editor will show a highlighted line on every beat based on your LPB setting. This highlighting will also apply to the automation editor, so you’ll see a highlighted grid line on every beat. That will at least give you a basic foundation to work from.

From there, dividing each beat into smaller chunks shouldn’t be too difficult. If you want triplets at 12 LPB, then you simply place an automation point (or note, or whatever) on every 4th pattern line (since 12 / 3 = 4). If you want stuff to happen in-between each triplet, well you simply place that stuff somewhere in-between the triplet points. You may have to zoom into the automation editor to increase your resolution and show the ‘sub-lines’, but this should still be pretty easy, since in most cases you will only care about placing points exactly half-way in-between the other existing points. You can ignore the fact that the automation grid is showing 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, etc., as this is simply referring to the current zoom level, not really any specific musical timings.

If you need to deal with more detailed stuff (6, 12, 24 slices, etc), then you just need to zoom in a bit further and continue this ‘divide and conquer’ type of approach. You will always simply be dividing something in half. Just lay down your main triplet points, then divide down as much as you need to, in order to achieve the extra resolution you desire.

Here’s a quick example song to show a bit of what I’m talking about. Hopefully you can get some ideas from it.
3595 dblue-triplet-automation-example.xrns

2 daze j has already mentioned one of my tools, but I have another one that I think you might find a bit more useful in this particular case: Automation from notes.

This tool will create automation points from the structure of the notes in your pattern, so if you can manage to lay out your basic foundation in the pattern editor, this tool can quickly generate some matching automation points for you, and then you can edit them a bit more to fine-tune it.

4

welcome to renoise Esox…

Another way to program triplets is to use the delay column. Using this method you can program triplets at any LPB setting.

Here is a quick little XRNS song that demonstrates triplet note placement and automation in 12 LPB and 8 LPB. I just used a hex to decimal conversion table, a calculator and automation zooming to figure out the values.

hopefully this makes sense… ask away if it doesn’t

3594 roughTRIPLETS.xrns

ha ha Dblue beat me to it. His example is probably better…

5

Thanks guys for that quick answer, and the examples and tools you gave, I wasn’t expecting such a quick and quality answer, that’s quite nice and something you don’t find anywhere on other forums by those days :D

Finally I managed to do the trick I wanted thanks to your help, but the result does not really suit me in renoise, in a audio way I mean.
The fact is on my actual software I can get a “ringy” feel to that riff I wanted to create, thanks to that accurate automation (slices of 1/24 of a beat). That’s maybe due to the fact that this software is less pecise or professional than Renoise, but for that particular sound it’s exactly what I wanted and I can’t have it back in renoise so I will export it as a loop to use it in renoise or maybe go on for this track on my actual software.

You can hear the difference here :

My link

and there :

My link

Thanks anyway for your help ;)

6

What is your “actual software”? Many people here are already using Renoise combined with other sequencers to achieve the exact sound they want/need, so you don’t have to hide the name of the other sequencer you’re using. We’re not going to be annoyed with you or anything silly like that.

And what exactly is being automated in your sound example? It’s quite difficult to give you any kind of advice unless we know more about it, how it’s constructed, what exactly is being automated/modulated, why it’s potentially different in your other software, etc. If we know more about this type of sound you’re trying to achieve, we can probably give you better tips on how to achieve it.

7

I think what he is trying to say is that the software he usually uses has a PPQN of 24 for calculating all events, including automation, and this gives a particular sound where you get a kind of stepped feel when it plays an automated curve. Listening to the examples seems to confirm that to my ears but would say I’m quite 100% confident.

If my understanding of Renoises automation in the current versions is correct it has moved away from being Tick based, I would assume when the automation granted the ability to place events on 1/256 divisions of a line. If I am correct going back to an older version, where it was still Tick based, and using a LPB=12 (which you stated you use) and a TPL=2 should give you the same 24 operations per beat as your usual software (TPL is Ticks Per Line.) This would force all automations to be at this lower resolution (but it sounds like you are used to that.)

Alternatively you could use a LPB=24 and rather than using the Automation window and graphical automation you could use the Effects Columns. There you will have your changes per line at the detriment of it maybe being harder to get it all programmed in but at the advantage of being able to use the latest version of Renoise and also having access to nice and smooth automation, which you may find you desire from time to time.

A possible third option (please correct me if I’m wrong) would be use LFOs, either by sculpting the curve yourself one-shot (or getting more advanced with the hidden Formula Device) for the more stepped sounds (still keeping the LPB/TPL settings above) as I’m fairly certain I’ve seen mention that Meta Devices still work at Tick rate, not as full sub-line rate.

8

If you’re working with samples, maybe changing the interpolation setting helps here getting a more grainier sound? Check in the lower tab ‘Instrument Settings’, ‘Sample’ and change Interpolate from Cubic to none. And/Or slap a lofi device on the track and tweak its settings :) .

9

@Dblue :

Sorry man it’s true I did not gave much details…

The soft I use isn’t well known, and is a little different from traditionnal DAW without acting really like a tracker. It’s called Making Waves Studio 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRjj0rBA9Fs) (BTW it’s not a track of mine ^_^ , but just a video to show how it looks like). I’m quite happy with it and I can do almost anything I want but it starts to stuck me as I am developping more and more complex sounds with lots of effects and this soft does not support multicore and hasn’t got a “freeze” function. That’s why I’m actually searching a new soft and after trying many like FL Studio 10, Ableton Live, Reason, … It seems Renoise has a better feel to build up a track to me.

What is automated is simply a volume effect, check the picture :

I’ve processed a note sequence from a VSTi (Karnage), and that part could be achieved the same way in Renoise, and then sliced it with a volume sequence as you can see to get that granular and rythmic sound, and I could not reproduce the same sound in Renoise from that part.

@ Kazakore :

Thanks for your suggestions I will try them asap.

If you take the picture I posted up there, you’ll see that I’m on a resolution of 1/96. I don’t know what you mean by a PPQN of 24, but it seems it’s about that.

@ Djeroek :

I could not get that sound even with effects I tried on Renoise. BTW the Lofi has got some nice rendering :walkman:

…

So you can understand a little better :

The reading works from left to right.
Each step of 4 beats is represented as a “bar”. In my example I have highlited (in orange) 4 bars, so 16 beats.
The screen saying “Track 29 - Vox 2 - Volume sequence” is a the repesentation of the automated effect.
Down this window you see besides “Quantize” 1/96, which means there that each bar is divided into 1/96 slices.
Below this, you may see 16 square screens named 1:1, 1:2, etc… Each one of it represents one beat, and the detailed automation of this beat is what is shown in the main window. So if you look carefully, you see each beat is divided itself into 24 slices.

I hope all that precisions will help

;)

10

I tried settings at 2 TPL and 12 LPB, but it still sounds the same. But I’m running 2.8 demo version as I said, not an older one. I tweaked with the “os mode”, and “pitch mode” there to be on FT2 ways (one never knows :unsure: ) but it did not change anything to the sound…

11

As I said I believe that method would only work with older versions, before we got the extra resolution in the Automation (at least I believe it now interpolates the extra points between compared to before we had the ability to place on 1/256th divisions of a line.)

If you only want to do smooth ramps etc I think your best friend is going to be using the LFO in Custom One Shot mode and using the Reset parameter.

Attached is a very simple example. Hopefully you can see that the Automation versions sounds the same with TPL at 12 or 2, whereas the ones where I’ve used the LFO to control the volume you can hear a difference. The TPL=12 still has enough resolution to sound similar to the Automation ones (at least in my current listening environment) but the LFO with TPL=2 you can clearly hear the “zipper” type effect you get from lower resolution automations, which is what I believe you are after.

EDIT: Forgot to click on Attach button.

12

Thanks man for the time you gave to me…

I listened to your example and only can get a tiny difference that’s true.

But I don’t really understand the way it works, and tried to apply the same lfo with the same TPL resolution on that particular sound I’d likke to create, but it did not change anything once again… :(

I Think I’m a start a new stuff comppletely made on Renoise, maybe something industrial so I can try different effects on the software…