Working With Automation Envelopes

Hello everyone,

Is there any way to work with envelopes that carries across patterns? I haven’t found anything yet, so here goes:

Every now and then I find myself wanting to work with effects that span several patterns, i.e. a slow volume fade. As far as I can see, the envelope editor cannot deal with this problem because it “resets” every pattern and doesn’t remember where it was the last pattern. This makes it painstakingly slow to do envelopes as described above, as you must (in low resolution at that) find the exact point where your envelope left off, and duplicate that in the next pattern. As far as I am concerned, this is a major drawback with renoise in general. In my opinion, to be confined to a pattern in this manner discourages music that doesn’t rely on rhythm. Is it possible to implement something to cure this?

This has been suggested dozens of times before. I’m all for it. But, it’s not something that will be done for 2.5.

For now, I just click on the dot of of a specific envelope. At the bottom of the Automation Pane you will see the position of the dot represented in dB. (example: -1.166dB) - With this number, I just go to the next pattern, create a dot and punch in the number with my keyboard. No need to do it with a mouse at a low resolution.

An other workaround is to include longer patterns for certain parts of the song. Example: Most of my song is divided into patterns of 40 hex, but maybe at some points I can double (80 hex) or quadruple (100 hex) these to get longer patterns / envelopes. You can accomplish this with the Join patterns feature (right click in the Pattern Sequencer)

Hope this helps.

This isn’t necessary! I don’t know if I have a special Renoise account :wink: , but double clicking the parameter name in the automation editor window automatically takes the value from the previous pattern!

EDIT: + +1 for automation over multiple patterns!

Damn… I learned something new!

Renoise simply has too many small unnoticable features, it is not something that was hidden though…

http://tutorials.renoise.com/Renoise/RenoiseAutomation

Well, it’s not exactly intuitive. And I would rather have it do that automatically, despite losing 2kB a song for extra node data, if that’s what it’s about. Anyway, close topic. Feature exists. Thanks guys.

Too bad it doesn’t interpolate between the first tick and the last tick of the previous pattern, so it’s not possible to make for example smooth volume fades that span several patterns.

Again bitching about this same thing :)

I think the Scripting API can be of help when 2.6 comes out. It gives lots of abilities to automate such kind of procedures even regarding curves overlapping sequence boundaries.
The only problem that will not be overruled is the interpolation between sequence position x and y if there should be a transition (expanding the pattern size instead is then still the only solution).

a tiny clarification:

this only works for the momentary parameter- position (e.g. when renoise is in play mode).
the play-cursor indicates the current state for the automated parameter value.
so, it doesnt work when renoise is stopped because the parameter
wont move to its destination value at the end of pattern.

double clicking the parameter name will copy the current state of parameter value.
sadly the automation node from the previous pattern isnt recognized.
but its a good workaround.

EDIT: yes it reads different in the manual but try it yourself … cut and doubleclick while playing and stop.

Previous sequence position!, not previous pattern, but that seems to be my error (Will rectify that ASAP)
documentation

I don’t know what you mean by the difference between playing and stopped mode, but i experience no difference between doubleclicking a parameter while playing or while being stopped…
In both cases the last node value is being taken from the previous sequence position without a problem.
Even with different pattern sizes.

“Previous sequence position” ?
hmm, not here.
the value is copied from the sequnce that plays when dblclicking.
maybe i dont understand the term “sequnce position”.
you mean the sequence editor on the left?

make a automation with many nodes (best is randomize it).
open the automation editor and look at the automated parameter.
when renoise plays a pattern, in the automation editor is a small line (representation of the playcursor).
let renoise play the automated pattern in loop. look where the last node- position would be and
create a new pattern. open automation editor and doubleclick the parameter… cut and double click again.
do you see it?!

btw. i decoupled edit- and play- cursor, maybe that has to do with it.
i dont want to complicate things here, just want to know what im doing wrong.
so ill try to make some kind of short vid or a gif.

Yes sorry, i notice, i had to add more envelopes in all patterns to make that obvious.
This is a bug though and i will file it as well.