Position editor

In the Position editor you define in what order patterns of the song are played, which patterns exist etc.. The Position editor looks like this:

 

Description of the buttons and functions of the Position editor

• Top status line Audio VU (Volume Unit)

  A meter that indicates the played Volume. If the background color of the VU changes, that means that volume clipping has occurred (the digital volume is much louder than the maximum level and therefore sounds distorted). In that case you have to turn down the Master Volume.

• Top status line Panic

  This button turns off audio, stops MIDI and song playback. Use it when you over-tweak effects and they start ringing in your ears and you can't find quick way to stop this mess - the button name says it all - panic!

• Top status line meters

  
  They show Sync / MIDI in/out status, elapsed song time, CPU usage and buttons for minimize / windowed-full screen toggle and exit button.

• Master Volume

  Master volume of your song. Lower it if you experience clipping or digital distortion caused by too high volume.

• AD

  Auto Decrease master volume after distortion has been detected. AD always lowers the volume after clipping detection only. To increase the volume you have to do it manually with the given slider.

• Buttons with icons

  Play button, Loop pattern (if pressed), Stop, Edit/Record mode toggle

• Ins/Del

  Insert / Delete Pattern in current Song position

• < > between Ins/Del

  Change the Pattern number in current Song position. This can also be changed by clicking on the Pattern numbers directly with your Left/Right Mouse buttons (on each digit).

• Clone-Button (below Del)

  Copies the current pattern and pastes it into the next free available pattern. Further it inserts the newly created pattern below the currently selected play list row.

• Sequencer scroll bar

  Scroll through your Pattern Arrangements. You can also scroll by clicking on the Position Numbers in the sequencer list.

• Song Length

  The Length of your Song (number of Pattern Positions)

• Pattern Length

  Current Pattern Length in lines (default is 64 dec=40 hex - which gives 16 beats on 4/4 measure).

• Repeat Pos

  Indicates the Position which your Song should restart from as soon as your Song has reached it's end.

• Ptr-> [Cur] / [Song] / Sort

  [Cur] equals the current Song position to the current pattern. [Song] sets all Song positions to the current given pattern. The Sort option cleans up and rearranges Patterns in ascending order. (The Song Contents remain unchanged).

• Keyjazz

  Turns on/off polyphonic playback of pressed keys. Chords and single notes are always recorded in the currently selected notecolumn.

• Rec Note Delays

  When live-recording into the pattern, this feature will enable automatic note-delay-effect insertion, so the notes you played won't be quantized to pattern-lines but rather to ticks.

• Octave

  Currently selected Octave for Virtual Piano Keyboard keys.

• Edit Step

  Specifies the number of lines the pattern editor will move down when you enter or delete notes manually. For example: if set to 3, pattern editor will jump 3 lines down instead of only one line.

• Ptrn Follow

  This option can optimize Video redraw if your Graphics Card is too slow. It draws only a line which follows playback of your Song rather than scrolling whole patterns. Ptrn Follow On = FT2 like / Ptrn Follow Off = IT like.

• MIDI slave

  MIDI clock sync as Slave. MIDI clock is only accepted when the MIDI slave is checked.

• BPM/Speed

  Set song BPM (Beats per Minute). One beat is one bassdrum kick. Speed is a speed factor as known from Amiga trackers or FastTracker 2.

• Block Loop, 1/4 Pattern

  If your pattern cursor is located in the first 1/4 of a pattern and you turn on Loop Block it will loop only the first 1/4 of the pattern which is good for testing purposes. If you disable Loop Block, move cursor to 2/4 of a pattern and turn it back on it will loop this 2/4 of a pattern. You can use 1/2 to 1/8 of a pattern to loop this way. For regular playback again turn loop block off.

Description of the buttons and functions of the Position editor

If you are new to Renoise you might want to get familiar with Renoise's pattern editor. Using only the pattern editor you can compose simple 1-pattern songs without knowing anything about Renoise's Position editor.

After you have entered some Notes in a Pattern that is assigned at the beginning (pattern 00) to Song position 00 you can hear them by pressing the Play button. Then if you wish to add more Patterns to your Song, simply click the Ins button. When you activate AD, it will always reduce maximum volume to fit maximum volume without digital distorting the mix. Before you render your song to a WAV file, you should play the whole song once with (AD) Enabled, to let Renoise find the maximum volume peak and adjust the master-volume. You should also disable DeClipper (Master Track - Track DSPs) before doing that. You can use the Sort option to rearrange patterns in increasing order without affecting how the song will sound.

Key Jazz can help you in testing your chords or to record them. However if you wish to use only one note at the time or record only one note at the time, turn this option off.

A 1-pattern line has as many ticks you set up in the Position editor. You can use ticks for retriggering or note-delaying during one pattern line (there is an example for this in Tutorial 1 so hear how it works in practice).

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