Live

Renoise Live Sequence Player

What is it?

This is a tool to use Renoise as an advanced sequencer that you can use for live performances. It's heavily inspired on sequencers from existing grooveboxes, which means it's always a pattern on loop. You can set different conditions on how a pattern behaves in a loop with the Lxxx-effects, that both apply to columns and tracks.

How does it work?

The plugin is accessible under Tools > Live, and basically does the following:

• The only pattern that is every playing is pattern 0.
• The tool copy/pastes the source pattern the pattern 0 every time a loop has ended or when a fill / transition is triggered.
• It is during this copy/paste event that some Zxxx-effects are processed and your pattern is mutated.

This basically means that you need to use Renoise in a slightly different way than you're used to:

• Don't put stuff in pattern 0: it will get overwritten by this tool.
• It's pretty useless to play a pattern outside of the live tool, because the Zxxx-conditions are only triggered when you start your project from the Live-tool (e.g. all notes will be triggered at once).
• It is possible to live edit: just start the live tool, navigate to the pattern you want to edit and start editing. Just be aware that at all times it's pattern 0 that is playing, and your work will only be copy/pasted/processed to pattern 0 the moment the pattern has finished a cycle (e.g. played it's last note and goes back to note 1).
• For a complete list, see known issues and limitations

Features

This tool adds the following effects to the pattern editor:

• The following effects are applicable to both columns and tracks:
  • Note triggers (ZR and ZI)
    • ZR01 : Only play the first run of this pattern.
    • ZR00 : Don't play the first run of this pattern.
    • ZRn0 : Only play the nth run of this pattern.
    • ZRyx : Play every xth pattern after y runs. Some examples:
      • ZR21 : Play the note on run 1, but not run 2 (2:1)
      • ZR33 : Play the note on run 3, but not on 1 and 2 (3:3)
    • ZIyx : Inverted trigger (Don't play every xth pattern after y runs). Some examples:
      • ZI41 : Play the note on run 2, 3 and 4, but not on 1 (4:1)
      • ZI33 : Play the note on run 1 and 2, but not 3 (3:3)
  • Fills (ZF)
    • ZF00 : Only play when not having a fill/transition to another pattern
    • ZF01 : Only play when having a fill/transition to another pattern
  • Muting (ZM)
    • ZM00 : Start track muted
    • ZMxx : Unmute after xx runs (in dec)
• The following effects are applicable to only tracks:
  • Automatically set next pattern (ZN)
    • ZNxx : Set pattern xx (in dec) to be the next one in the queue.
  • Set pattern play count (ZP)
    • ZPxx : Set pattern play count to xx (transitions will be triggered in the last count). When a next pattern is queued, the current pattern plays a full xx runs. For example: a 16-bar pattern with ZP04 will always play in sets of 4, but you can already queue it on the first run. Fills will be triggered in the last run.
  • Cutoff pattern (useful to generate polymeter / polyrhythms) (ZC)
    • ZC00 : Cut off (and repeat) the pattern from this point. This is up to but not included, so a cut on line 4 would repeat lines 1,2 and 3; effectively creating a polyrhythm.
      • Triggs (ZR) and inverted triggs (ZI) are supported when a track uses ZC
      • Fills (ZF) and muting (ZM) are not supported when a track uses ZC

Keyboard shortcuts

• arrow left : queue previous pattern
• arrow right : queue next pattern
• f : trigger fill
• esc : close dialog
• 1 to 8 : mute / unmute track 1 to 8
• q to i (upper keys on a qwerty keyboard) : mute / unmute track 9 to 16

Ideas

This is a rough lists of ideas that I want to add to this plugin in the future:

• Get text from song and translate to instructions per pattern
• When queueing mute, do play the first note before muting
• Add trig condition that only plays on the first pattern after a fill
  • suggestion: ZF02
• Add trig condition that doesn't plays on the first pattern after a fill
  • suggestion: ZF03
• Alternative fill
  • suggestion: ZF04
• "Break" mute / fill (mute (a group?), do a fill and then unmute again)
• Force unmute
• Stutter / randomize track
• Muting Groups - where you can mute/unmute multiple tracks at once
• Track playback speed (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64)
  • Also stretch delay column
  • suggestion: ZSxx
• One tap on stop should not reset pattern, stop while stop should
• External midi syncing / queueing
• More optimizations (any help is welcome)

Known issues & limitations

• Things break when loading a new song while the Live dialog is open. Close the dialog before opening a new song.
• Line effects are only measured on effect column 1
• Fills don't work in tracks that are cut with the ZC command
• Muting in tracks don't work in tracks that are cut with the ZC command
• When live-editing a track with a ZC command, funky things will happen due to the virtual counting.
• Transitioning between patterns of different lengths not yet very stable. Using ZB00 on the end of your pattern helps when the next pattern is longer, but when transitioning from a longer to a shorter pattern it's not really stable yet.
• The Mute buttons of the UI only apply to tracks. So when applying on columns, it makes sense to make use of the timed muters