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| i picked this plugin up a couple weeks ago and im enticed by the possibilities.
id like to suggest something that might sound strange at first: there are two kinds of users... people with classical training who are writing orchestral arrangements and people who make patterns with primarily sampled phrases or indeed any type of sample data.
shall we call them 'high brow' and 'low brow' users respectively? ok.
i feel the need, as a low brow user, to let you know what kinds of tools might be useful to me. i make no representation as to what will be useful to a high brow user.
i think i have read somewhere that making the number of ticks fixed to 4 per beat is the way it will stay. i implore you to reconsider the idea of variable ticks per beat. if we must force our VST hosts to tempos near 400 or 800 just to get the proper resolution for tricks, we are needlessly using up processor resources, making the technique counter productive at best.
i love the idea that a pattern can be played via a midi note. it was one of the key ideas that intrigued me at first glance. i would love for this idea to be expanded to its logical best: multiple patterns playable over midi, with perhaps cursory control of some type via controllers... ?
i love the idea of a tracker as plugin since it opens my studio up to some flexible configurations. certain effects are achieved best with a tracker.
thanks for making such a cool plugin! |
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| im wondering if you read this? and what you think of it?  |
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Location: Netherlands | id like to suggest something that might sound strange at first: there are two kinds of users... people with classical training who are writing orchestral arrangements and people who make patterns with primarily sampled phrases or indeed any type of sample data.
Yea, I'm with the first group myself.. :P
i think i have read somewhere that making the number of ticks fixed to 4 per beat is the way it will stay. i implore you to reconsider the idea of variable ticks per beat. if we must force our VST hosts to tempos near 400 or 800 just to get the proper resolution for tricks, we are needlessly using up processor resources, making the technique counter productive at best.
The high-BPM issue has been mentioned before by others and by me, it's on the todo, of which I hope it'll be read soon again.. :P Meanwhile, the best would be to solve the lack of detail with:
- step delays (SDx) and retriggers (Qxy iirc)
- the VSTi you may be controlling. If -for instance- you could 'record' speedy stuff into a single sample, then any sample player (Halion etc.) would be able to deliver what you wanted. It's a workaround, it's not ideal, it's not what you *really* want, but it's at least solution until there's pattern-zooming.
i love the idea that a pattern can be played via a midi note. it was one of the key ideas that intrigued me at first glance. i would love for this idea to be expanded to its logical best: multiple patterns playable over midi, with perhaps cursory control of some type via controllers... ?
Multichannel triggering has been on the todo for a while afaik. I once suggested to use this structure to ape the auto-arranger stuff you find in consumer keyboards. Not because I'm a lamer who can't type :P but because it speeds up prototyping (which becomes relevant in complex orchestral mock-ups).
Edited by CS_TBL 2009-02-10 8:30 PM
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Location: England | Hi alien_brain,
As CS_TBL points out, the two modifications you mention are on the list of features I am keen to implement. For the last month or so, I haven't been able to work on reViSiT, as I've been in the process of moving to Germany and my main development computer has taken a while to catch up with me! Now that I've got it, I can get back into the code...
You'll both be glad to hear that some form of fine resolution feature is earmarked for the next minor update (1.1). I'll have to refresh myself with the intricacies of the host synchronisation code, but I'm currently favouring a rows per beat setting, to be placed in the Pattern Settings dialog. Should per pattern resolutions prove too ambitious, a global setting should be very simple to implement. Polyphonic support has always been the ultimate plan for MIDI-triggered patterns, and a considerable amount of work was put in to ensure the current monophonic system is extensible. However, there still remains quite a bit of work to be done before it's ready, and so this feature is likely to appear later, in a more major update (1.5/2.0). Thanks for your feedback! 'Have fun with reViSiT while I take a dip in the 1's and 0's... Tschau,
Chris |
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Location: Netherlands | Where in Germany are you located btw? |
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| Chris,
thats awesome news. thanks for your reply. i will surely hang around for the good times to come. keep up the good work! |
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Location: England | Hi Fellas,
I've been thinking about the fine resolution support and what's possible given the synchronisation engine. Sadly, it looks like a rows-per-beat setting will be very awkward to implement on a per pattern basis - as the engine currently relies on a constant duration for every row.
So, instead of trotting down that avenue, I've been going over the ol' Pattern Zoom feature that's been on the cards for a while, as I reckon this'll give you what you want... perhaps more. Forget that ancient screenshot - whatever happens, they'll be no separate popup window; rather a more tightly-integrated tool within the pattern. What I like the sound/look of, is simply an option to directly access the ticks/frames, providing control over pitch, instrument, volume and spatialisation at the tick/frame level. Indeed, rather than a "Pattern Zoom" feature, this'll be more like Row Expand - a space will open up between the rows of the pattern, where you'll be able to edit the frame events, just as you can the rows. Here's an illustration of what a trill might look like: ··· ·· ·· .00 ··· ·· ·· .00 ··· ·· ·· .00
··· ·· ·· A06 D#5 01 64 #00 ··· ·· ·· .00
E-5 01 32
D#5 01 32
E-5 01 32
D#5 01 48
E-5 01 32
··· ·· ·· .00 F-5 01 64 .00 ··· ·· ·· .00
··· ·· ·· .00 ··· ·· ·· .00 ··· ·· ·· .00 Initially, there probably won't be support for sub-row effect processing, but it should be possible to add eventually. In this mock-up I've pictured a #xy effect, which might be used to enable the feature for each row. If I settle on this approach, I also have a few ideas about how to use the x and y parameter - e.g. perhaps enabling you to save sub-row phrases as presets (#x0), then recall them later (#0x), so as to provide user-programmable musical ornament effects. There are lots of options, which I'll be exploring in due course. In the meantime, I'm working towards an imminent "micro" release (v1.00.3), concentrating on a couple of fixes, and also graphics performance and memory handling improvements. Since the v1.00.2 release, I've had a handful of crash reports, but they seem to stem from only two distinct bugs in reViSiT, so I'm hopeful that this coming update will be the start of the bulletproof platform I've been working towards. At which point, naturally, I will be obliged to add some new bugs for v1.1! Gruß,
Chris PS: CS_TBL, I'll be in Hamburg for the next 6 months, with the exception of next weekend, when I'll be in Den Haag. |
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Location: Netherlands | Oh, would that be the weekend of 28 February? Any special occasion?
While I'm located over two hours away from The Hague (train) I've family @ 10 minutes with the train from The Hague, would be fun to meet a bit if that's possible :P
Have to think a bit about the zooming option. This currently looks like catering for fast notes, ornaments, run-ups, quick percussion 'n stuff. It'd be nice to zoom *out* as well. So that one could make an adagio without having the notes scattered around patterns with large voids between them (painful navigation). With this I mean having quarter note rows instead of 16th note rows (while still be able to zoom in for the occasional harp glissando and such, and to move to a faster pace later on in the same tune). As for effects: would midi effects still be possible? Think key switching (articulations)..! |
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Location: Netherlands | so, what I mean is 'row collapse', but then while not using a whole block o' text ^^ |
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| i personally would much rather have a constant number of rows definable... the reason is that the trick im trying to facilitate involves retriggering a sample very quickly while interpolating the sample offset for a 'time stretched' effect. trust me, low brow users all over will only be interested if this is the approach you take. i realize you can render a phrase while the tempo is raised and then use that sampled phrase but rather than do that, i would like more tactile control of the effect at normal tempos. |
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Location: Netherlands | You're talking about granular synthesis. Aren't there VST's out there which offer this functionality? |
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Location: England | If I read you right, I think your talking about re-synthesis, producing a vocoder-like effect. Unlike more general granular synthesis, you play overlapping *sequential* slices of a sample, manually time-shifting the playback, without changing the pitch. If that's what you're after, then the described row-expand feature will still suit you just fine, but only once I've extended it to support sub-row effects. Indeed, since you can change the resolution on the fly (and thus the number of frames-per-row) with Axx, this'll be a much more powerful and flexible tool for you. If you want to set a global "sub-row resolution", then the Default Resolution setting in Preferences should suffice.
Chris
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| CS_TBL - 2009-02-26 12:30 PM
You're talking about granular synthesis. Aren't there VST's out there which offer this functionality?
Don't think so, with the original impulse tracker was really funny to play with the "Oxx" effect and the song speed, if it is easy to implement and funny to play with, why not ?
Referred to the resolution, i prefer the "rows per beat" solution, but if it would be done with zoom editing coulb be nice that when you return to the normal zoom, the color of this row is changed a bit, meaning that is something between this row and the next. |
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| chrisnash - 2009-02-26 4:28 PM
If I read you right, I think your talking about re-synthesis, producing a vocoder-like effect. Unlike more general granular synthesis, you play overlapping *sequential* slices of a sample, manually time-shifting the playback, without changing the pitch. If that's what you're after, then the described row-expand feature will still suit you just fine, but only once I've extended it to support sub-row effects. Indeed, since you can change the resolution on the fly (and thus the number of frames-per-row) with Axx, this'll be a much more powerful and flexible tool for you. If you want to set a global "sub-row resolution", then the Default Resolution setting in Preferences should suffice.
Chris
That's it! It also removes the need that if the rest of the song is playing normally, you had to write adapted to the new song speed (with tons of empty rows between notes) . |
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| yes plugins exist that will give a similar effect, but not with the degree of control programming in a tracker provides.
im not sure i fully understand how the proposed method will work. if for example i want to make this granular trick work over a period lasting many bars, will this method allow it? also, how easy will it be to write into the sequence?
believe me i appreciate the plugin especially since it has been given for free, and am not trying to step on your ideas. in the end it is your project and as such should grow to be what you envision.
Edited by alien_brain 2009-02-27 5:09 AM
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| I'm not Chris, but something looks wrong int the picture/illustration with zoom that Chris posted as example, it seems like the extra in-depth edited lets call it "frames between rows" doesn't have the effect column, if they haven't this fix wouldn't be enough for the old granular like IT trick because for all the expanded rows you would be applying the same effect, but enough to insert 1/32 and 1/64 notes to do custom arpeggios, or to work with extra-low tempo.
In all cases is a front step. |
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Location: England | "... the described row-expand feature will still suit you just fine, but only once I've extended it to support sub-row effects." |
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Location: Cape Town | Just wondering if there has been any movement on this one Chris?
I desperately need 1/64 1/32 resolutions to be able to move all my midi "tracking/sequencing" into ReViSiT, and I am keen as nails to do this. As I attempt (With varying degrees of success) to make PsyTrance/Goa I often use very short notes for stuff and well if I can get this I will be so freed up from working in a linear sequential mode into a real time looping mode of working (I am not classically trained and really approach composition from a DJ live mixing point of view and well revisit is allowing this to happen inside Reaper which has saved me trying to learn C++ to write something like this)
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Location: Netherlands | rest assured: even classically trained people use reViSiT...
*cough*  |
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Location: Cape Town | Continuing from this, was wondering why some synths I use just seem to hold a note until I add a note cut. Is there not a 1/1 mapping of note length to note in the pattern editor? |
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Location: England | Just wondering if there has been any movement on this one Chris?
http://www.nashnet.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=3127&posts=6&start=1#M14784 Continuing from this, was wondering why some synths I use just seem to hold a note until I add a note cut. Is there not a 1/1 mapping of note length to note in the pattern editor?
What do you mean by 1/1 Mapping? Note cuts should be automatically issued when the note is replaced by another in the same channel (unless NNA Continue is set) or when playback is stopped (e.g. F8). Otherwise you have to do it manually, as a note in the pattern only triggers a Note On - it says nothing about the length. When actually typing in notes, the Notes will also be triggered, and must be somehow off'd (by another note, a note off/cut or by pressing F8), though when auditioning samples and instruments (in F3/F4), the notes only last as long as the key press. If this doesn't seem to answer your question, use the Feedback/Comment feature in reViSiT to send me a screenshot showing the offending passage in you pattern, with a description of what does (or doesn't) happen, and I'll see if I can work out what's going on. If it only happens with specific instruments/VSTi's, be sure to let me know which. Cheers,
Chris |
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Location: Netherlands | I was thinking about that whole zoom thing, here's a case to solve:
row 00 - 07 has the usual 6 ticks per step
row 08 - 15 has 7 ticks per step
Now I'm going to place notes 'n things on every tick in the first 8 rows (so, 48 things)
Now I make a block of this area, I copy, and I paste it on row 08. What happens with my 48 things? Same question for situations where a copy buffer may go to a resolution which is less than the copied resolution.
Or can't one copy all these sub rows? |
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Location: Cape Town | chrisnash - 2009-08-24 1:19 PM
What do you mean by 1/1 Mapping? Note cuts should be automatically issued when the note is replaced by another in the same channel (unless NNA Continue is set) or when playback is stopped (e.g. F8). Otherwise you have to do it manually, as a note in the pattern only triggers a Note On - it says nothing about the length. When actually typing in notes, the Notes will also be triggered, and must be somehow off'd (by another note, a note off/cut or by pressing F8), though when auditioning samples and instruments (in F3/F4), the notes only last as long as the key press. If this doesn't seem to answer your question, use the Feedback/Comment feature in reViSiT to send me a screenshot showing the offending passage in you pattern, with a description of what does (or doesn't) happen, and I'll see if I can work out what's going on. If it only happens with specific instruments/VSTi's, be sure to let me know which. Cheers,
Chris
Ok that is what I was wondering, I am used to piano roll editors where the note duration is pretty much there based on what I draw/play into the piano roll editor. I hadn't seen the f8. Clearly where I have something like a trance bass line things are fine, due to a rapid succession of notes but had already found that I need a note cut at the end of the loop. This whole tracker thing clearly is subtly different from sequencing and piano rolls
Methinks there is scope here for a guide to help us piano roll editors get into the nuances of tracking
BTW was over looking at renoise yesterday, and someone there mentioned something about buzz tracker being able to loop pattern lanes independently of their parent pattern if that makes sense. Would something like this be possible to implement, currently I am having to duplicate a whole pattern just to change my kick drum from a 4x4 to a drum roll, it would obviously be cool to just be able to change up the kick drum pattern without having to change the whole pattern (not sure if I explained this clearly) |
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Location: England | CS_TBL:
You're right - resolution changes have been something I've been thinking about a lot, but I believe the way I've settled on is relatively intuitive:
The way the clipboard works is that subrows each belong to their normal row, and copy/paste will still be limited to copying whole rows, which will include all its subrows.
In your example, copying a row with 6 full subrows, to one with 7 subrows will fill up the the first 6 rows, and leave a row blank at the end. The other way around is even more interesting though. If you copy from a row with 7 full subrows to one with only 6, you'll see the first 6 of your 7, but the 7th will still be there. It won't be played or displayed, but if you now change the row's resolution to 7 you'll get it back. Alternatively, you could delete any one of the first 6 subrows, moving each subrow back one, and also reclaim your 7th subrow.
The case is similar if you insert subrows, which naturally move all subsequent subrows forward. Since subrows are a bit different from normal rows, and can't easily be interchanged, any data on the last subrow will disappear, rather than being pushed into the row below it. But, again, a subsequent subrow delete will get it back. Furthermore, these invisible/unused subrows will still be stored when you save, so you can always get them back later.
'Hope this gives you an idea of what's coming. Yesterday, I got the audio engine code up and running and it works well. I've decided to include subrow effects, and they are already working, but there are some special cases that need more attention.
Chris |
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Location: Netherlands | mm, subrows being some sorta child of main rows wasn't something I expected..
How about this:
M = mainrow, S = subrow
M
S
S
S
S
S
M
S
S
S
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S
2 steps o' 6 ticks, right?
M
S
S
S
S blockstart
S
M
S
S blockend
S
S
S
Can I paste this block (*if* a block like this is possible) to another subrow, on another channel for instance? Odd example? -> traditional echo channels with subrow offsets! What if the first mainrow used to have 8 ticks, now has 6, but still has 2 unused notes on the hidden rows? Are these copied along?
Far fetched questions perhaps, but I just *know* that irregular stepdistances are the only real design-functionality trouble with pattern editors. We asked for it, and you've entered the snake pit. ^^ |
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observations
