Ok so I know i labelled this as renoise tricks but i think you could do this in anything with a sampler (including more normal trackers). I'm just gonna demo it with renoise because it's the one I know how to do it in.
content warning: Video examples, and they are WILDLY all over the place volume wise. probably don't wear headphones.
ok so I've got a breakbeat sample, like so:
But because I'm not a BASIC BITCH (lie) I want to chop it and add some modulation to it to make it more interesting.
Easy trick #1: dblue glitch lol:
This works, fine? i guess??? but I'm stuck using the built-in effects, which don't sound great to me. And I don't have super good control over the sample chops.
And in particular, because I have a bunch of folders like this:
I have a lot of options for samples, but if I pick just one of them I get stuck with a single chop with a lot less internal variety to it.
so... what if I just used all of them? all at once?
⚠️VOLUME⚠️
ok that was fun but seriously
now, every time i retrigger the sample, the next sample I have loaded in the instrument will be run, creating a deterministic "cycle" of samples. now let's do a bit of cleanup (changing volumes to be a little bit closer and splitting out longer breaks so each sample is only a single measure)
ok now we can do all the normal sample chopping stuff renoise is already good at. for faster cycling, we can throw in more, smaller chops, or just use the normal volume/glide/etc. commands
Since the Renoise sampler also has per sample FX chains, I can even loop back to dblue and give each individual chunk of my loop a different effect.
⚠️VOLUME⚠️
This is all 100% deterministic, but switching from 'cycle' to 'random' can turn this into a stochastic process too, just like dblue.
so yeah! make cooler music than me with this trick 🙏