0.9.4 — .rbs songs play right in ReBirth's song mode

Fixed

• Songs saved as .rbs play right in ReBirth's song mode: ReBirth's song mode takes every knob from the song's track, not from the machines' saved settings, and a knob the song never sets starts at ReBirth's factory value. Re-Rebirth wrote only the knobs you had automated, so a song saved as .rbs played in ReBirth with the other knobs at their factory values (a different cutoff, drum levels and so on). It now writes every knob's starting value, as ReBirth's own files do. Pattern mode was already right. Thanks to Reto Senn for spotting it (#2).

0.9.3 — Pattern chains and ReBirth-like accents

New

• Pattern chains: Shift-click patterns in the pattern picker (or on a machine's 1–8 buttons in the rack) and the machine plays them in turn, then goes round: A1 → A3 → B2 → A1… A quick way to sketch a part longer than one pattern without writing the song. Each machine has its own chain, starting from the pattern it's on.
  • The picker's header shows the chain with the pattern playing lit, and each chained pattern carries its place in the chain. The rail and the rack's pattern readout show where the machine is ("2/3").
  • Picking a single pattern, CLEAR CHAIN or ⌫ in the picker ends the chain.
  • Chains play in pattern mode (PATTERNS, or the rack in PATTERN mode); song mode plays the song. They're kept in Re-Rebirth's own session files; a .rbs has no room for them, and saving one says so.

Changed

• Held notes show as you make them: a rest right after a note with SLIDE holds that note (that's how ReBirth stores held notes), and its step now shows ⁀ straight away, lit like a note. It used to show as a rest until the song was saved and opened again. The PATTERNS hint says so: SLIDE + REST HOLDS. The pattern picker's piano rolls draw these held notes too.
• Double-click a pattern in the pattern picker to play it and close the picker.
• ARRANGE's toolbar buttons (DUPLICATE, DELETE, INSERT, UNDO, FIT) are now the same size as AUTOMATE's, and the song's rows get the room they gave up.
• Accents at high resonance sound like ReBirth's: an accented note no longer jumps straight to its full brightness. The accent now swells in over a few milliseconds, more slowly the higher the resonance, and its filter sweep shrinks as resonance goes up, as in ReBirth. Squelchy lines with lots of resonance lose the harsh, fizzy top they had on every accent. Unaccented notes sound the same as before. Thanks to Reto Senn for finding it (#2).

0.9.2 — smaller stage frame, solo switches others off

Changed

• Smaller bar and rail in PATTERNS, ARRANGE, AUTOMATE and MIX: the stage bar on top, the instrument rail on the left and AUTOMATE's timeline take three quarters of the room they did, and the instrument gets the rest. The gaps around the instrument and the rounding of its corners now match the bar's and the rail's in every stage (they used to differ from stage to stage).
• The rack's metal side rails now frame every stage, not only the rack, at the rack's size and with its margins above and below, so switching stages no longer shifts the frame.
• Picking an instrument on the rail no longer switches it off by mistake: a click anywhere on a machine's strip shows it, and its ON switch is now a small, darker button of its own at the top (it used to take the strip's whole top edge).
• Solo switches the other machines off, instead of being a hidden listening mode: their ON lights go out, so what you see is what you hear. Solo again and the machines it switched off come back (the ones that were off before stay off). SOLO in MIX, Shift M and the new Option/Alt-click on a rail strip all do this. Because it uses the machines' ON switches, a solo during recording is recorded like any ON switch.
• The orange dot on a control now means the song actually moves it. ReBirth songs record a starting value for many knobs that never change after it; those no longer get a dot (in KiloMix '98, 55 dots instead of 110).

0.9.1 — Song Information, SAVE writes .rbs

New

• Song information: ⓘ at the end of the song display's title line, or ⌘/Ctrl I, opens it.
  • Edit the title, the text, the web page and the copyright. Each field counts down what a ReBirth file holds. In the text a line break counts as two, as in ReBirth's own dialog, so ReBirth won't cut a full text short. The web page has an OPEN link.
  • It also shows the file name, the mod it was made for with the mod's web and FTP addresses, the file format, tempo, mode, loop, shuffle, and the bar of the last recorded event.
  • SYNTH SOUND switches between ReBirth 2.0 and Vintage, which songs could only bring with them before.
  • Saving as .rbs keeps all of it, including the copyright and a mod's addresses.

Changed

• SAVE now saves a ReBirth song (.rbs), and Shift-click saves the Re-Rebirth session (.json); they used to be the other way round. ⌘/Ctrl S and ⌘/Ctrl ⇧ S swapped too. The session file still keeps the two things .rbs has no room for, the bass lines' volume knobs and the delay return, and the save notice names them when they'd be lost.

0.9.0 — mod songs, pattern tools, stems, live MIDI bass

New

• Songs made for ReBirth mods open now, instead of being refused. A mod only swaps in its own drum samples and graphics, so these songs play with the standard drums: their bass lines, patterns, mixer and automation are all there. Opening one says which mod it was made for, the library lists them as playable under their mod, and saving one as .rbs keeps the mod's name, so ReBirth plays it with the mod again. About half the songs in the ReBirth archives were made for a mod.
• More pattern tools in every instrument's header, next to COPY, PASTE, CLEAR and RANDOM:
  • SHIFT ◂ ▸ moves the whole pattern a step left or right, wrapping around.
  • REV plays it backwards. A held bass note stays a held note, and slides stay between the same two notes.
  • ×2 repeats the pattern after itself and doubles its length (an 8-step pattern becomes 16), ready to vary the second half.
  • TRANSP ◂ ▸ moves a bass line a semitone down or up; Shift-click for an octave. It won't push notes past the 303's range.
  • In PATTERNS: Shift ← → shifts, Shift R reverses, ⌘/Ctrl D doubles, Shift ↑ ↓ transposes (⌘/Ctrl Shift ↑ ↓ an octave).
  • ⌘/Ctrl Z undoes them, and CLEAR, PASTE and RANDOM too. Undo now works in PATTERNS as well.
• The typing hint in PATTERNS sits under the step grid, where it has room.
• Export stems for mixing in a DAW: STEMS in the EXPORT window renders one WAV per machine (each with its effects, without its echoes) and one with the delay's echoes, all the same length, in a ZIP. Machines that stay silent are left out. Played together, the stems add up to the mix, unless the mix was loud enough to hit the safety limiter or the compressor sits on the master.
• Play the bass lines from a MIDI keyboard like a synth. A note sounds as long as the key is down (it used to be a fixed blip), legato playing slides from note to note and back to a key still held, and a hard hit (velocity over 100) accents. It works with the song or patterns playing too: while a key is down the bass line follows you, and the pattern takes over again when you let go.
  • Record into the pattern: in PATTERNS, press R and play along while the pattern loops. Each note lands on the step it's nearest to, a note held over several steps becomes a tied note, and legato notes become slides. Steps you don't play keep what they had, so you can build a line over several rounds. ⌘/Ctrl Z takes back the whole take. The hint under the step grid turns red while recording.
  • Stopped in PATTERNS, the keys still type the line step by step.

Changed

• Every render of a song is now identical, down to the drums' noise, so stems line up with the mix. Exported files are named after the song's file, like saves, rather than its title, which is often a credit.

0.8.5 — closer to ReBirth's engine

Sound

• Closer to ReBirth's engine, following OpenRB-338's documentation of how ReBirth works inside:
  • Pan no longer makes a channel louder: the side you turn towards keeps its level and the other one fades, as in ReBirth. Panned channels were up to 6 dB too loud, so songs with panned parts now play quieter and closer to ReBirth's balance (bass line 1 of KiloMix '98 now matches ReBirth's export to within 1 dB).
  • The delay is mono, as in ReBirth: what goes in is the channels before their pan, and the echoes are panned with the delay's PAN knob.
  • The tune knob moves in semitones both ways (it used to bend smoothly below the centre), with a flat stretch around the middle and an octave at each end.
  • Bass lines play rests and slides the way ReBirth does: a slide into a rest bends to the rest's note as the note dies away, and after a rest that has its slide set, the next note glides in without restarting its filter sweep.
  • The channel faders and the master fader follow ReBirth's level curve exactly. Masters above 100 are louder and below 100 quieter than before; at 100 nothing changes.
  • Songs saved with ReBirth's "Vintage" sound play with it: the bass lines' notes start and stop more abruptly, and their resonance moves in eight steps. Saving a song as .rbs keeps the setting.