Like panning and volume, is there any track envelope that can control the velocity? If not, is it possible to map volume to velocity, like it’s possible the other way around in the keymap editor?
Controlling velocity with an envelope doesn’t really make sense. Velocity is basically a control value that represents how hard you hit a MIDI note. Which is usually mapped to volume for convenience. Renoise does this by default but you can turn it off with the “Vel->Vol” button.
If you want to use velocity to control other things you can use the “Velocity Tracker” in modulation or as a meta device for controlling/triggering other DSP devices.
Controlling velocity with an envelope doesn’t really make sense
Sorry, but nope. I agree that it’s not a feature you need everyday but sometimes it could makes life easier.
For example, if you lower volume level of piano you would hear just a more quiet piano (which is logical).
But if you lower _velocity _you’d hear timbre and volume changes as well.
Lets say I have some piano passage begining and want to experiment with expression. So I draw the graph. If I draw volume graph it would sound strange, like if listener becomes closer-father to instrument… or if someone turning volume knob on your audio-system. However, if I draw velocity graph, it would sound just as it should - like pianist plays softly-expressively.
It sounds like we are talking about different velocities. When I say velocity I mean the MIDI control value between 0-128 which is determined by how hard you hit a key. You can’t control this value with an envelope, you can control it by playing notes at different velocities or manually entering them or automating them. And then you use this value to control some instrument parameters, like volume, cutoff, or trigger different layers in a multisampled instrument. (Which could achieve the expression you described in your piano example.)
there’s only one velocity I know: a number which is sent with ‘NoteOn’ MIDI command.
yes, it is determined by how hard you hit a key.
no, you’re wrong, that this value can’t be controlled with an envelope (at least many other popular DAW’s can do that somehow)
there’s simple algorithm: when note is about to play (‘NoteOn’ event is coming) then value for velocity is a) taken from the envelope graph; b )taken from the current note velocity/default velocity and multiplied by coefficient determined by envelope.
second method is more popular. In fact this envelope should be called ‘velocity scale’ instead of ‘velocity’.
velocity envelope typically useful to get overall volume changes (crescendo-diminuendo), while details are defined by default velocity (from keyboard/entered manually/etc).
for now I use ‘Veloscaler’ plugin to simulate this. I explained it here:
https://forum.renoise.com/t/where-is-note-velocity-graph-automation/25931
typical example:
background strings (violins) quickly plays double notes when a bow moves forward-backward. to make it sound good, every second note should be more quiet.
we set this values manually (lets say 80 and 60).
now we need to make an intro from pianissimo to forte. we just make two points on velocity envelope: first - about zero, second - about 1 (if we use multipliyng algorithm). now we have given structure (loud note-silent note-loud note-silent note…) and we have overall level (rising)
if we use volume envelope to make this effect it would sounds unnatural, because strings has different attack and timbre when played silent or loud. yes, it would work, but by the price of sound. piano is even more demanding. You can easily say by sound was it velocity change or just volume change.
i wrote a tool a while ago that helps with this. A bit hacky but it works:
EDIT: works for pre renoise 3.1 only… note to self to fix some time
https://forum.renoise.com/t/new-tool-2-8-velocity-pan-delay-automation/39441