I don’t know. Anybody used Buzz with it’s new pianoroll and say how it works there?
Expanding the market for Renoise is not a bad idea from the developers standpoint and I fully understand that the inclusion of a pianoroll is inevitable.
The reason for the inclusion of a pianoroll into a software that works good without one is to expand, invite and/or please people who are used to working with them.
Because lets be honest; who would you really be pleasing? The current tracker userbase? or the future potential pianoroll userbase who dont care about Renoise right now.
People who bought and work in Renoise pretty much want to use Renoise to work in a Tracker Interface. Or have I missed something?
People who buy a Tracker without a pianoroll want or wish they could work with a pianoroll? wow.
Doesnt really matter if they are more productive in a Pianoroll environment, they still bought Renoise to work in a Tracker without it.
So Yes, Probably 95% of the people who bought Renoise want to sit down with their computer keyboard and enter some notes.
Lets say Renoise gets a pianoroll as a Secodary option to write music on, and this feature makes Renoise extremely popular (why wouldn’t it?).
Who is to say the Pianoroll wouldn’t become the dominant way to create music on Renoise? Would Renoise still be called a tracker then?
Where do you draw the line between a tracker and a non-tracker? If Renoise had every possible feature and way to put in notes, would it still be a tracker?
Just to clarify, I have no problem with a Pianoroll in Renoise, but I wouldn’t really use it if it was available to me.
What I fear though is that the huge Pianoroll userbase would choke the tracker userbase and pretty much force the developers into a decision to make or breake the Renoise Tracker as we know it.
True, once the piano roll is added it will open the floodgates to new users. It should probably be the last thing though. If you want to retain this new user base then you will at least need audio tracks and maybe time stretching.
How can the answer not be both? But you make it sound like pianoroll would be the only feature that decide if renoise would be a good app to someone. Why is the PR that important?
It’s just another tool in the box. It’s not for everyone. But sure is very easy to use for some tasks.
Again… like in all these PR discussions, why can’t we say the same about any other tool we have implanted in renoise? Not everyone use the mixer, or the automation. Do they complain about it?
I think that is a too simple explanation. I think new people buy renoise because it is overall a very solid product. And yes, the pattern editor is a good part of the deal here. But there us much more to renoise then the pattern editor (parts that you find in many other daws as well).
Well, who knows why people really buy Renoise. We have not made any real investigation into that. But perhaps we should. It’s a lot of guesswork it seems when it comes to these things. But I can’t imagine that renoise having a PR would make someone NOT buy renoise for that specific reason…
If this PR is the evil of everything in the universe we better hide it real good then. Perhaps an Easter egg? Or something you can uninstall and unsubscribe for all information about in the future…
This actually seems to be some sort of fear amongst several in the Renoise team as well.
I say it is a stupid line to even thing about drawing. Why should we draw a line?
There are so many times we have implanted features that has very little to do with the traditional tracker. What is the definition of a tracker anyway? And where is the slightly evidence that any feature we have implanted did make any disturbance to this definition to a point that it become something negative for the overall development? Is it really so hard to believe that many people actually can deal with and find it very convenient to use both the pattern editor and a PR?
And to quote our first lines on the front page:
“With Renoise you create loops, beats and melodies efficiently step-by-step.
Its a complete, expandable Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) with a refreshing twist.”
So with a PR there is no twist anymore? 
I hear that a lot. Many seems to not have a ‘problem with a PR in Renoise’ but still warns about it. Like renoise would cease to be anything special if it was there.
Make no sense whatsoever to me.
We could implant cubase into renoise and still marked it as a tracker.
The main issue here is to make complementary features. Features that fits Renoise.
Only time will tell if some sort of a PR will be one of those features.
I personally would love to have one. And somehow I’m convinced that we could make one that is useful for those who (think they 
prefer to only work in the pattern editor as well…
But we should stop this ‘fear of features’ or even fear for new users…
As far as I know there is no statistics if renoise was their first tracker. Or how many stopped using renoise and trackers for other DAW’s etc.
So all we can do is speculate, but also have votings now and then to get some more reliable hard facts.
In the end it is the gut feeling of (especially) taktik if this is something for renoise. And for now it is ha not been prioritized. Renoise almost did get a PR many years ago. But it was abandoned.
Lets chill and wait and see what the future brings
No need to fear anything.
This fear of losing the special tracker niche factor with the introduction of a PR in Renoise is really stubborn amongst some. If I look at how Renoise has been evolving through the years I feel confident a piano roll implementation will be sweet and ideal for certain tasks. I welcome one for sure, but no hurries.
Like Renoise is still just a “tracker”.
It’s much more - sometimes I like to use it’s sample editor and build in
effects to pump up tracks a little. Playing with multiple line-ins when
software monitoring is great too (thanks to Renoise efficiency I can do it
with lower latencies than with other software).
There is nothing against a pianoroll view. Except as you said the “niche
factor”, but then using old Amiga500 would be even more “niche” then.
I am pleased to see the discussion that has taken place since my couple of posts.
I always try to see the other side’s point of view, I especially try to do so when I am vehemently against something.
Psyj had said enough for me to see the usefulness of a PR.
HOWEVER, I was glad to see Lain’s post as it echoes much of the sentiment amongst us who love the tracker concept.
I also agree that the developers should found more information about their users, they may be suprised to see what they find.
As a piano roll is least on the list of improvements I would like to see implemented, it would be safe to assume that I have been using trackers for years and am a “tracker purist” so to speak.
This would NOT be the case. I am relatively new to production based music, I have been studying production for almost 2 years now, seriously using Renoise for around 8 months maybe(?)
I am a guitar player originally (12yrs) who fell in love with dance music when I discovered the healing power of dance after a tough episode in my life. I found out about Renoise in CM mag, the first sequencers I had used were PSP SEQ and PSP Rythym[(which has a piano roll)both sequencers are for the portable playstation] and Energy XT(pr as well).
I have always been someone who thinks outside of the box. The fact that Renoise was NOT what all the producers were saying I should be using, combined with its low price, amazing features, “matrix” style interface got me very interested. Listening to some Keith 303 tracks convinced me that you could make professional dance tracks in an “underground” DAW known as a tracker.
Mind you I found out about Renoise b4 the 10/10CM review, almost a year before…I didn’t even have a computer then!
After I read the review, I was like I knew it man…F$%%$£ that professional DAW sh$%…Renoise is more than capable, I had just purchased my laptop and shortly thereafter downloaded and registered a copy of Renoise.
I mean, it just LOOKS cool!! 
I could see how it could be quite useful for moving/resizing notes if it automagically calculated values for the delay column.
I have some after midnight wine in me, so if I don’t make sense, it’s not the wine, its me 
Its about displaying information so your eyes or mind’s eye can have a coherent conversation with your ears or mind’s ear.
I still think that, if you analyze what a piano roll conveys, you can re-interpret it in a number of ways, maybe even more flexible for unheard methods to rise.
Lately I’ve been interpreting music in a series of intervals from rhythms (time) to frequency (space).
I won’t use it all the time, but it will be handy to have as an extra feature when I need it. Much like the sequencer integrated into the fruityloops interface, just an extra tool in the toolbox.
I would love to see Piano Roll make it in Renoise.
I’ve been tracking since 1993, and the tracker interface still annoys me for melody entry - the note-on / note-off separation is one of the worst bits - it means entering or deleting a single note requires 2 separate entries or deletes in most cases. It is, however, the absolute best for intricate effect and drumbeat programming.
Piano roll helps in or facilitates these scenarios (when reading, please note that I imagine Piano Roll to be vertical).
Move or transpose a single note in one step
It should be drag-and-drop - that’s it. But instead, you have to draw out a selection, then move that. When moving, that selection must include both the note-on and the note-off, or your note becomes an indeterminate length after you drag it.
Enter a note of arbitrary length in one step
Draw-release.
Punch-in with three steps
Drag a selection, hit record, listen to the 4-beat count-in and perform. Old selection contents disappear, replaced by new contents. Notes overflow into the selection from above are cut off, and resumed after the selection. Newly entered notes inside the selection do not “leak outside” of it.
Triad inversions in one step
Drag the left-most note one octave to the right, or drag the right-most note one octave to the left. A “fit inversions tool” to change all selected chords to inversions that fit within a certain range of pitches would be intuitive to use in piano roll - it would look a bit like word-wrap for notes.
Pitch bend / glissando in one step, with visualisation
Don’t guess which note you are gliding to: see it. Just drag the start, end, or middle of a note sideways.
Notes in different colours and styles - see and understand everything going on at once
Notes in different hues for different instruments, bright or faint for loud or quiet volumes, more saturated when using the mod-wheel, noisy+pixelated when lofi-ed, etc.
(As Lew mentioned) Move notes in time by ticks, not lines; scale melody durations.
No need to recode tuplets over. Halve or double or 1.5-ble or 0.666-ve speed of a melody simply.
So many inefficiencies we work around every day in Renoise without even realising it become glaringly obvious when our work is seen in the new light of a piano roll.
+1
One can get most stuff done without piano roll but it would really make some tasks lot faster and more efficient, like selecting notes by pitch and such. Notes could be colored with track colors and shown as ghosted if they’re on another track than current one. Moving (and viewing) notes by ticks instead of lines could be done in pattern editor too like in Aodix (I would like this in addition to delay column).
As a n00b to Renoise, I’d love to add my .02 to this conversation–
I’ve used traditional DAW’s for years, Pretty much used 'em all. Now, I’m going to be buying renoise in the near future, as I’ve completely fallen in love with it’s workflow. In truth, I like the tracker interface for most uses, but there’s one place where having a piano roll will be a godsend: Chords.
Currently, editing chords with renoise takes a while and is quite a messy process. Adding a piano roll would be perfect for these situations, and is one of the only reasons I’d want it in renoise–but I REALLY want to be able to edit chords easily so that I can keep that fast flow happening.
It has it’s place in renoise-- there’s a definite gap that it could fill easily-- does that mean I’m coming to renoise to get rid of it’s “trackerness” ? NO! I love the tracker aspect. It’s what renoise is. I just want fast, clean functionality on all fronts.
Idea for the old timers: Instead of looking at this idea as “tracker vs. DAW”, consider the view that what we all want is the most efficient and elegant program possible for our music making. To that end, a piano-roll is a relevant idea well worth considering.
Same reason you are: it’s efficient, and the tracker interface rocks.
If they could come up with a way to do chords without it looking so damn confusing and messy, I’d say keep 'em tracker style! I don’t really need a piano per se, I just want a clean way to view my chords. Otherwise, I love renoise more than any program I’ve used, and though I’m new to tracking, I doubt I’ll ever go back!
Just because a tracker has the option to use a piano roll in it, doesn’t make it any less a tracker!
QFT
Yes, you’re massively failing to see the point here. Look, I’ll repeat myself for you:
Tracker patterns are total undisputed champions for quickly programming rhythms, intricate effect tricks, laying down monophonic melodies and basslines. I imagine everyone here uses Renoise because everything is centered around the far superior old tracker notation style, not in spite of it.
But when you get deep into complex chord arrangements with 8+ notes being triggered at once it just isn’t suitable, an optional pianoroll that you could flick open for these cases would give you a completely different visual overview of your note data and allow you to transpose entire chords, transpose broken selections of notes, or make inversions instantly and painlessly.
I want it to be vertical too, in fact I’d throw a hissy fit not dissimilar to yours if it wasn’t
I didn’t read the entire thread… just a small observation, tho.
I bought Renoise and will update my license without even thinking about it.
Maybe I’m an exception, but I did NOT buy Renoise because it’s a tracker. I’ve been using a tracker on and off since the days Impulse Tracker was the hot stuff, but I do NOT want a tracker.
I just want something to make music and Renoise just happens to be one of the best tools available. The other programs might have some advantages in some areas, but also some disadvantages in others. I love the way the sample editor is integrated in Renoise, for example. This is something the trackers usually got right, from my point of view.
But I would love to see more of the features “from some other programs”, including a piano roll. I also wouldn’t mind some GUI related changes to the classic trackerish pattern editing itself. For example, even after years of using some kind of tracker I still find it more intuitive to think in terms of beats, 1/4ths, 1/8ths etc. instead of lines, so I would welcome this kind of view as an option in the pattern editor.
Using many programs for composing feels kinda clumsy to me, even tho it can often work very well. So my wet dream remains one single program that would handle everything.
+1
Likewise, renoise was what finally got me out of impulse tracker. All the additional features that have been implemented so far really have only increased how useful I find it, and how much I can use it for. It’s becoming one of the most versatile tools I have now. No complaints here
isn’t possible to use a VST as a piano roll?