(Vst)Effect Snapshots For Live Situations

Since last September I’m improvising with a bunch of musicians in a free-jazzy-electronics vibe, with me playing and manipulating samples through Renoise, effects, vst & midi-controllers.

Great fun, but I’m running into problems sometimes, hence this thread :) . These may be problems related to my current live set-up (approach) of used effects and controller configuration or simply n00bness, but let me share some
irritations nevertheless:

  1. I wish it would be possible for Renoise to return to a global or track specific default sounding setting at the flick of a button combo or midi-mappable button (something you can rely on to always sound the same, like starting a song just after loading - all the effect parameters are started from wanted values).

    For example when your midi controller tweaking is getting out of control and you’re struggling to find the correct knob (I’m using a BCR2000) to kill the sound/feedback/whatever or return to an initial state right away.

I know I can midi-map the master channel volume, or kill all or certain effects in a song through Bantai’s script, or more traditionally press the stop button 2 times in succession/right click it in case of panic, but this doesn’t ‘reset’ all midi tweaked parameters to their beginning default states (I don’t mean their preset state, but a state I’ve set up).
Stopping all audio obviously has a dramatic sounding impact as well, that can kill any musical flow that was going on, there needs to be a quicker way to figger out which effect does what, but maybe this can only be solved through more practice of the same set-up and becoming acquainted with all the possibilities?

When you press play after such a scenario of right clicking the stop button, the possible wall of noise continues again. Also when you’ve killed all the noise, it still takes time to figger out which effect or chain was the culprit and when you’re improvising with others, having to spend time searching for a solution is time wasted interacting and listening to what is going on.

As a semi-solution I could initialize all midi mapped parameters in the automation editor in a certain pattern, jump to that pattern and press play to get the wanted result.
With only a few effects and controller mappings used, this initializing through automation is doable (although then you could more easily see which effect parameter to adjust anyway), but obviously takes more time with a more elaborate set-up like I’m having now.


In lesser words, could you please implement (vst)effect settings snapshots? :)

Snapshots that can be triggered without having to set-up anything in the automation editor.

  1. Another thing I’d like to see is the possibility to have all midi-mapped (vst)effect parameters shown in the mixer, like beatslaughters script for ‘show automated’ or ‘show modulated’ sliders but then ‘show all midi mapped parameters’.
    This would improve readability in the mixer of what is going on where.

  2. On the note of readability of what is going on, it would be nice to have the status notices in the bottom left corner of the screen also update what effect parameter is tweaked by a controller.
    Something in the format of: ‘ch1|cc104 - rate - Lofimat2’ and if more then one button is tweaked at the same time, have the notices displayed side by side or overwrite each other on the basis of which was tweaked last?

Thats it for now,

grts

R

+1 x3.

Is it not yet possible to have one MIDI trigger (button, knob, doesn’t matter) control more than one parameter/destination in Renoise? If it is, either natively or through Duplex, that may solve No.1 with a bit of set-up…

Shamefully I have to admit that I do not know if it is currently possible to map more then one destination per midi-whatever (without using hydra’s :) ) , although nice to have, this wouldn’t be as spunkalicious as being able to recall a global-sound at the flick of a switch after grabbing it in similar fashion.

Something like you can do in windows using the ‘Prt Scr’ button on your keyboard with the screen image, press this button and the image is saved in the clipboard -> I’d like the ‘sound’ (effect settings) in Renoise to be saved likewise.

Imagine jamming and having created a soundscape that you like, being able to save this like a preset and jam on to another point in time where you snapshot a different sounding output. Now have a function to interpolate, morph through these possible presets and being able to define the morphing speed (like how the Ohmforce boys let you do this in their plugins). I think this has potential :) .

hello,

yes I also feel it could be a cool thing to get midi-mappable A/B presets buttons
(those A/B buttons located next to presets in the VSTs, the native Renoise DSPs
and in the automation device)

a few midi-mapped buttons in the midi controller
would act like “panic preset buttons”
able to quickly roll back the vst instrument param. or vst effect param.
or native DSP effects params. to a previous state

but I would also then add a kind of “inertia” parameter,
next to the presets buttons in DSP fx, VST ou automation device

because when you suddenly have to swap to a previously recorded preset,
it’s sometimes too brutal or too fast and sounds buggy,
so the “inertia”-like parameter creates a smooth transition
or a nice “morphing” effect

I know you can morph between VST parameters through linear automation
enveloppes but it’s boring, and you can of course forget this idea during live
performances

seeya

+1 for snapshots of all automated values - would be very useful (and possible to realize with scripting)

I attach a picture to let you grasp the concept.

(When you try to MIDIMap the A/B buttons for now, you can’t (it’s not highlighted) that’s all the problem. If those small buttons could be midi-mapped, it would be a great help during live performance. Example, you hit a defined “panic preset button” on your controller (for example a button connected to the “A” one in the renoise interface) and get back the initial effect setup that’s been lost. The best thing is that the A/B states are supposed to be stored within the song. The inertia new slider should ensure that the transition between states aren’t to fast.)

Personnaly when I play instruments with Renoise and my m-Audio Oxygen 49, I always use knobs to modify things in realtime, and when I go too far with knobs and sliders, I have to drop the keyboard to take the mouse and click on a small ridiculous button on the botton of my big screen, that’s unnatural.

seeya

+1 for midi-mappable preset buttons, though this would be a device specific solution → I’m looking for a solution for the ‘global’ sound, have something like a global preset that takes into account all effect changes.

  • your inertia suggestion fits what I said a few posts up in this thread about ‘morphing speed’.

If by automated values you mean midi-mapped values then you understood me correctly :P

Well, we have the “is_automated” property in the API, but we don’t have a “is_midi_mapped”, so that kind of limit our options atm.

Ah I see. Maybe these global A/B (midimappable) buttons should then be located in the “Song Settings” tab… in the Template Song box. There’s even enough place here to make them bigger and easier to click. The buttons could grab and store in one pass every A/B states located everywhere. And when you open a xrns song, if the A state is undefined, the A state would be the overall song state by default. It could be a kind of security. So that you could then activate it, during the playback, if something goes wrong.

How is inertia going to work with effects with discrete modes? Think Filter3 with LP,HP,BP etc or the different cabinet models of the Cabinet Simulator for a couple of examples.

It wouldn’t! Those kind of parameters would jump instantly.

Beginning, middle or end of time set by the Inertia parameter for the change?

The point is there is no way to avoid getting unwanted glitches, it is never going to be perfect under all circumstances, and simple inertia can not fix this. As you are mainly talking about panic situations instant change, or inertia time hardcoded to try and remove the majority of glitches, may suffice.

Ok, you’re right, an “inertia”-like parameter, that defines the transition speed, betweeen one state, and another one, shoud only concern “sliders”, and not “mode selectors”.

Maybe the only way to perform a true transition, with no glitches, would be then to synchronise and mix the current playback of the song (that uses the actual state), with the playback of the song (that uses the “saved” state), and perform (between those 2 playbacks rendered by renoise in realtime) a kind of cross/fade effect : … what would probably raise twice the CPU usage during the cross/fade…

If you could set this, then that would be cool.

Actually, I’m the one creating glitches in the first place, processing audio of myself and of the other musicians with lots of noisy results :).
9 out of 10 times I’m midi-mapping sliders (wet levels / feedback etc) not buttons. I’m not looking necessarily for a perfect transition, just a means to return to a wanted state, without losing to much time searching in the screen, losing the moment.