I think a piano roll would be quite useful for programming arpeggios for vst synths.
For some reason i find this laborious in the tracker columns - mainly cos i have to enter note offs.
In many instances it would be so much easier to sort musical notes/chords/riffs out on a piano roll.
Particularly with polyphonic/chord arpegio riffs - its a little confusing to overview in (example) 6 or 7 columns in the tracker.
But as its rewire compatible now, its not a problem for me as i sync up to reaper.
I think the only debate is regarding piano rolls priority over other new features and bug fixes.
I’d probaly choose some form of audio support before a piano roll.
I feel exactly the opposite… when making tunes with friends we mainly work in FL and use Renoise
only for bass, arpeggios and melodies because, frankly, piano roll make no sense to me
… Not even to them at times, who are hardcore FL-users (now slowely converting to the Ancient
Gods of Hex, MUAHAHA)… notes all over the screen… bah… top to bottom ftw! Note-offs are a
saviour, because it can trigger OTHER events (instrument envelopes).
Just pointing out there’s no right or wrong, just workflow. Personally, I find trackers perfect
for arpeggios… The reason we mainly use FL is because I’m a hex minority in the studio and
because of the audio tracks. At least I get to work with a different DAW, which is refreshing and fun
but of course a Renoise PianoLOL should go top-to-bottom like the Buzz one or indeed an actual paper piano roll (who knows where this left-to-right crap came from?)
Yeah, I hear ya! If Renoise would get a piano-lol, it would most probably be vertical to avoid further confusion. But what I meant is that I find the whole set-up rather confusing. In Renoise I can ‘read’ the melody. I see c4, e5, a4, a#4, etc… plus their individual distance from eachother. In FL I can only see bars next to a keyboard. To me, it seems illogic, but I can understand how a piano-lol allows quick experimenting with different notes, note-lengths, accents, etc… But overview? No.
would be nice if you could inactivate the silly white and black key thing and have a chromatic layout with keys marked from 0 to b (hex ftw!). or c to c although the sharp and flat stuff is stupid IMOIMOIMO. say no to enharmonicsz equivalence notation yo! 1 symbol, 1 pitch! (((=
even better if you could set arbitarily many keys within an octave and assign a specific frequency to each. now, that would make for a sweet experimental environment!
I’ve been into FL Studio for years now, and started using Renoise 6 months ago… To me, the tracker is far faster to use and more powerful than FLS Piano Roll for instance, and I feel more creative with Renoise. So, I’m not that for saying a PR in Renoise would be an absolute need.
A PR could provide functions like Chop, Strum, Arpegiate, or Quantize (in FLS terms) that would be nice to see in Renoise… But those could be implemented in the tracker view…
The only concern I have about the addition of a PR in Renoise is that it could affect performance. Maybe it could be made as a loadable/unloadable plugin ?
I’m new into tracking but I agree with the oldschool guys here, no compromises ! To me, the only missing feature that could really improve tracking in Renoise IMO is an arranger. Someone suggested a double/triple playlist running in parallel (like note columns in a track), and this is the way it has to be! With full editable text (cut/paste etc) and patterns names in hex…
Klavarskribo? Never heard of that before, seems logical and does away with keysignatures, but it’s not very space efficient.
Arbitrarily many keys within an octave would be sweet, but how would it work in practice, instruments would have to support microtonality, (MIDI note & pitch-bend value could be sent simultaneously to non-microtonal VSTs?) I dunno if that’d work in the context of Renoise though, maybe a tracker with a plug-in pattern editors (Buzz, Nakalyne…) could be open to abuse like this.
As for arranger, that’s a whole other thread I guess.
I use the tracker for sequencing samples or perhaps snyth fx such as whooshes or sweeps etc.
If im using vst synths programming chords - i use reaper.
I do use renoise for some riffs but i’ll often switch to reapers piano roll out of frustraion.
Navigating between columns when notes overlap is what narks me i think - particulary say you have 5 notes playing at once on one synth (you could need 10 columns) - maybe im impatient.
As an overview of a sequence… my main gripe with renoise is only being able to see 4 bars on screen at once.
Its rare i would be making a chord progression only 4 bars long.
This problem could still exist with a piano roll if its resolution was at current step lenghts. (assuming it scrolled vertically).
I think working vertically and horizontally in the same program would be quite bonkers.
I picture chords/notes in my head as the keys i press on the controller keyboard rather than as the notation used by renoise/trackers - probably due to using a piano roll and a midi keyboard for quite some time.
For programming beats and sequencing samples i find the tracker awesome… but due to many years use of a piano roll, the tracker seems to fry my head when doing chords and riffs.
But to be honest - i don’t mind syncing renoise and reaper together - it helps me more rapidly try different sections of songs and patterns together just like the days when i’d be using multiple sequencers.
I think if you’ve been using a tracker for many years - you won’t have the bizarre conflicts in your head that a piano roll user might have.
I do enjoy not being tied to the mouse so much.
I’d certainly agree that a piano roll is not a necessity in renoise - but im sure its a good for anybody that likes piano rolls.
This may be viewed as an asinine remark but… I’d wager that if everyone knew what NOTE they were hitting on their keyboards the number of people requesting a piano roll in Renoise would be noticeably smaller.
same here. I actually bought a keyboard over a year ago, because when jamming on the QWERTY I realized it’s silly to “learn” that… but win2k kept crashing when I plugged it in, and I haven’t tried it since I’m on XP because it just takes too much space. When I have room for a really big desk I will make a point of having the “real” keyboard on it, though. If you can learn QWERTY by jamming on it, you can learn the piano the same way (well, at least a bit, the wrong way, whatever). Could never be arsed to play the guitar correctly, that’s work, but those 88 black and white keys… it would be a crime to not give it a chance to let it sink in… when I’m old I wanna play in a hony tonk after all
I really didn’t mean to sound like an elitist by saying that. It’s not as if I have every scale’s progression and every chord’s location committed to memory, nor am I suggesting anyone should make the effort to do so.
I just can’t imagine any good reason for having a piano roll in Renoise. It’s just an extra option to do exactly the same thing.
Well my main reason for using Renoise is because it is a tracker, obviously. I feel I can more easily control more aspects of my music using a tracker. As for Renoise over other trackers, eh. I’m no expert. I only tried a couple before I decided I favored Renoise. The community here on the forums is hospitable, and it seems to me that people who use and love Renoise have a LOT of love for it, which contributes to the developers abilities to continuously improve it. Not to mention that it looks better than other trackers, and the latency issues one might normally experience when using MIDI devices is quite a bit lower than with many programs I’ve used in the past.
At the risk of writing an essay… that is…
But really, you can do the exact same things in a Renoise sequence using note offs and pattern effect commands that you can do in a piano roll with the pointy-clicky-point, one just takes a little more effort to learn but once you learn it, as I said before, I personally feel an individual has more control over each piece of their music with a tracker minus a piano roll.
! To me, the only missing feature that could really improve tracking in Renoise IMO is an arranger. Someone suggested a double/triple playlist running in parallel (like note columns in a track), and this is the way it has to be! With full editable text (cut/paste etc) and patterns names in hex… 