Here’s a bizarre, very basic workflow question. what’s the shortest series of keyboard commands to go from entering a note to editing the volume column?
The obvious answer is 3 right arrow presses, but this feels sluggish when I’m enteing a lot of note data. It seems strange that it takes fewer presses to get to the instrument column when I practically never intend to edit the instrument number afte having entered a note, but I very frequently want to change the velocity.
Anyone know of something I may be missing? I’m aware of some baic workarounds - changing note velocity before note entry with paketti helps, as does editing all the velocities at once. Maybe this is something that should be scripted - to have a mappable keys for goto-volume/delay/pan/effect columns.
Another keyboard-related efficiency issue is that if I edit the first digit of the velocity, I usually intend to edit both digits in the velocity , so in most cases, forwarding the cursor to the second digit would be a better default than staying in place and requiring an extra right arrow. Likewise with effect values, usually the two digits are edited in succession, so moving the cursor to a second digit might be a better default. I haven’t used other trackers in a while, but I feel like this was the behavior in some of them, which might be part of the reason why editing fluidity in renoise doesnt quite optimal for me yet. Maybe im missing something obvious though…
+1, I agree, don’t know how it should be though because putting the instrument number anywhere else would be more weirder…
What I do:
set a keyboard shortcut for much used edit step values including 0
you can use shift to enter values to the right instead of down immediately (works for every column except of course note column)
i use pushback keys tool a lot *
I realize it’s not yet on the tools site. Here’s a link to the dropbox upload: clickety
how the tool works:
Use arrow keys to modify vol/pan/delay value
Also notice that PushBack works differently (work area varies horizontally) depending on where the cursor is. If it’s on a note column, it will only modify the values in that particular column. If it’s in the FX columns of a instrument track, it will modify every note column inside that track. If it’s in a GroupTrack, it will modify the values in every instrument track inside that group.
PS +1 me if you think PushBack Keys should be on the Tools page.
There is room for ctrl/cmd+alt +left/right for subcolumn stepping. It hasn’t been embedded, neither is this directly controllable through the API, but could be added.
That would, although deviating from every tracker in the world (I guess), be a pretty good solution. I would appreciate this over a Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right thing (I think I actually asked for such a feature in the lua api)… It’s actually more suitable that direct to subcolumn is done without modifiers, since (when you use shift entering values) you don’t need to be on the second dot very often, but ‘roughly’ editing velocity value is very common.
In terms of design, it would make sense since instrument->note->note properties is the hierarchy in which we work with music. I’d still default to being in the note column when moving between tracks though, since instrument is usually selected prior to laying down a note. Of course, I don’t see this change happening either, it’s too different for a tracker (also, if we’re going to break from tradition, beat-centered timing offsets has more important implications than subcolumn ordering).
I’ll have a look at those tools when I have a chance Cas, they sound pretty neat, but I think I have to try them to really understand what it does.
Regarding the second velocity column, my OCD-ness would disagree Also there’s a chicken-egg issue. I do a lot of rough editing right now because of the way the cursor moves. If I could enter two digits without interruption and have it work with the edit step size (this is key), I’d be more precise about my velocity editing.
For the tools, I agree. Wish I could explain it better but I’d have to make a whole GIF or youtube explanation for the simplest tool in the world. Might be worth it though, it’s already saved me a lot of time. (The original tool was made to create “grooves” with midi control knobs by rhythmically adjusting the delay column every edit step. The newest version also handles panning&volume. Anyway I’ll let you know if I make proper screenshots & post it on the tools page)
Also there’s a chicken-egg issue. I do a lot of rough editing right now because of the way the cursor moves. If I could enter two digits without interruption and have it work with the edit step size (this is key), I’d be more precise about my velocity editing.