ATTN: Buzz users

I'm thinking about testing the tracker waters. I think i'm going to give Buzz a go, but I'm curious about midi device support in Buzz. Is there a decent amount of knob twiddling one can do within Buzz using a midi controller? do they expose a good amount of parameter for midi, and are they simple to assign?

also, how do you rate buzz? what tracker do you recommend? is ReNoise great or bloated?

Its especially easy to bind knobs in buzz because everything shares this common slider interface. I can't really explain it, but its flexible. The VST loader is (imo) the best VST loader ever written.

I really like buzz a lot and still use it for occasional stuff... mostly for fancy drum programming. I will load my song as a VST in buzz, and then write some drums, and record into it.

I really prefer how buzz has "sub-patterns" in comparison to Renoise, so I could set up a hi hat pattern or a melody and not have to worry about copying and pasting it over and over. I think it makes too much sense however, because now I have a real hard time working in regular patterns.

  acid1 said:

I really like buzz a lot and still use it for occasional stuff...

Out of curiosity, what do you use primarily, if not Buzz?

i wouldnae start using buzz now - it's too buggy and broken and a giant pain in the ass. most of the folk using it are those who started way back and are too used to it to change to something else (there's nothing quite like it i suppose but its crashy bastardness is too much of a problem for beginners i reckon, certainly i had huge problems trying to do anything).

i use modplug which has an amazing interface but is a bit dodgy on some vst support and lacks a couple of things like a better way to route vsts etc., i still use it for all my tracks pretty much though. dodgy vst support can be cirumvented most of the time by using a plugin wrapper like VB FFX or chainer. it's only a fairly small pool of plugins that have issues though with the newest builds. it's free and open source but development as far as new features are concerned goes fairly slowly as a result. there's a great community over at modplug.com on the forums and bugs reported there get fixed pretty frequently.

renoise is popular and pretty good but i find the interface horrible, i just want to click where i want stuff to go and enter it! it's maybe a bit bloaty in some regards too since they've wacked on a bunch of graphical wiggly bits that aren't that necessary or useful. it does have pretty good vst support though and development seems to be going on at a fairly good pace.

As a 10 year buzzer i'm probably slightly biased, but yeah, i'd give it a go. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but once you're going, you're, well, going. There's also tons of docs out there, if there's any problems in setting it up, you're likely to find a solution on the internets. also, www.buzzchurch.com

ive also been thinking of rocking the buzz. my question is, before i spend 3 months learning this thing, is there anything this program can do that other programs cannot? i dont want to waste my time learning all this crazy shit when i could have just done it in ableton or some other common DAW

  blicero said:

  acid1 said:

I really like buzz a lot and still use it for occasional stuff...

 

Out of curiosity, what do you use primarily, if not Buzz?

I use a combination of stuff. At the moment its mostly Ableton Live. But if I need some of those drill and bass drums I will bounce it to a wave, open it in energy xt, and load into Buzz as a VST.

On the subject of crashing buzz, i don't think its as bad as people say. Yes I've lost a few songs, but never was unable to not repair something that got corrupted somehow. As long as you save lots you are fine. If you mostly just use it for a sampler, a few fx, and vsti's and vsts you will be fine. Just dont' be surprised if you are knee deep in a track and decide to load some "experimental" machine that crashes your song when you try to re-open it.

  ET said:

ive also been thinking of rocking the buzz. my question is, before i spend 3 months learning this thing, is there anything this program can do that other programs cannot? i dont want to waste my time learning all this crazy shit when i could have just done it in ableton or some other common DAW

I think to a specific degree most programs can do what all other programs can do. I mean I could make a autechre sounding piece in Microsoft word, but that wouldn't be fun.

The power of buzz comes from its modular routing, open source community, sub patterns, and the quickness you can achieve with it. Once you start getting good at Buzz, you barely have to ever touch the mouse, and you can jump around and insert patterns for different instruments and edit them really fast.

the ability to move fast via keyboard shortcuts appeals to me greatly... hence trackers.

but i also would like support for decent effects (either a good built-in fx libray or good vst support), and good midi support (i like the keyboard shortcuts, but i would also like to be able to play key on my remote25 and have that work as well).

so far it sounds like ReNoise is the safest bet (even though it is he priciest). if i can procure it, i may go that route. otherwise, buzz sounds like a good free alternative. my first impressions of modplug aren't great. looks too barebones. the less music apps i have to open to make music the better.

thanks for all the advice everyone.

  ET said:

is there anything this program can do that other programs cannot?

complete automation of every single parameter through precise numerical values. no graphs, just numbers on a grid. ohh yeah. but that's the deal with most modern trackers anyway.

  blicero said:

but i also would like support for decent effects (either a good built-in fx libray or good vst support), and good midi support (i like the keyboard shortcuts, but i would also like to be able to play key on my remote25 and have that work as well).

buzz has possibly the most extensive effects library i've ever seen for a single program, it's all open source and there are new effects and synths added all the time - however sometimes you might stumble across something that crashes. also, the polac vst loader is great.

the midi support is pretty good, most generators can be controlled by midi, and all vst instruments can. i've plugged my electronic drum kit into it, using ezdrummer and it was flawless!

i think generally if you don't overload it with machines you can get a stable setup, my current minimal setup works fine! i've moved all the machines i didn't need to another folder so it doesn't crash on load.

  acid1 said:

Its especially easy to bind knobs in buzz because everything shares this common slider interface. I can't really explain it, but its flexible. The VST loader is (imo) the best VST loader ever written.

Yeah, I love that interface. I used that vst loader in FL studio quite a lot.

i love my buzz.

this is a pretty good thread -> http://forum.watmm.com/index.php?showtopic=22537

i got the grip of trackers with modplug (thanks greenbank), then fooled around with milkytracker (thanks chris moss), and with all the shit i learned there, i went for renoise and stayed.

personally... i don't like the automation on renoise, so i just export to wav and fuck around in ableton. but word of advice: bpms in trackers are a fucking pain in the ass if you switch to ableton, i mean, like setting the bpm to 700 in ableton to synchronize.

would somebody kindly explain how the speed+bpm setting work on trackers?

At least 40% of the Jonas posts on WATMM are links to the Renoise tutorial pages.

  qnio said:

bpms in trackers are a fucking pain in the ass if you switch to ableton, i mean, like setting the bpm to 700 in ableton to synchronize.

i've had no problems synchronising buzz with reaper, for example something at 150bpm in buzz will fit nicely with a 150bpm metronome in reaper.

i've also played livesets with another buzz user, synchronising only by ear, and it only went out of sync when adding complex machines, which isn't too much of a bad thing.

  Jonas said:

  qnio said:

would somebody kindly explain how the speed+bpm setting work on trackers?

 

read this: http://tutorials.renoise.com/?n=Renoise.RenoiseSpeed

lol so i'm fucked. i got used to like 800 bpm w/speed 3. damn vsnares youtube video

news from official buzz site:

  Quote

Original Buzz being rebuild by Oskari!

Yes, it's not a very late aprils fools joke, it's true. Oskari, the developer behind Buzz is rebuilding Buzz from his old backups. Check out his beta site here, which contains a changelog and a downloadable beta of buzz.exe. You can follow or participate the discussion at buzzchurch.com here. Leave your comments here at buzzmachines.com!

wow wtf :omg:

Quick, someone page Satan and find out if hell has frozen over!

  qnio said:

news from official buzz site:

 

  Quote

Original Buzz being rebuild by Oskari!

Yes, it's not a very late aprils fools joke, it's true. Oskari, the developer behind Buzz is rebuilding Buzz from his old backups. Check out his beta site here, which contains a changelog and a downloadable beta of buzz.exe. You can follow or participate the discussion at buzzchurch.com here. Leave your comments here at buzzmachines.com!

*falls off chair*

NO FUCKING WAY !!!!!!!

wow this is seriously the craziest shit I have ever heard

awesome news. i wonder how it'll affect the progress of buze, buzzle and aldrin!

buzzle died basically when Buzé was released, the updates on the page are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay slow (he seems more interested in making pretty little spectral graphic equalisers instead !). Aldrin I reckon will do pretty well being the only real clone to specifically target the Linux users. And Buzé is pretty dang awesome but the initial uber long load time and some specific nuances put me off switching.