Renoise - how to

Someone needs to do a vid over using it w/ hardware as a sequencer. Still seems goofy to me, but it's likely because I don't really grasp the workflow that well.

Placing a compressor and maximizer in the master track will prevent peaking.

  On 11/21/2012 at 11:57 AM, ZiggomaticV17 said:

Placing a compressor and maximizer in the master track will prevent peaking.

 

But using a consequent compression on the master too early in the mix can prevent you from hearing the real dynamic nature of the tracks of your mix thus alter the relevancy of the further work you'll put into those. Deal with the dynamics upstream before to deal with them seriously into the master.

I don't know if it's by the books but lately I've been just putting a tape saturation VST on the master track.

Did some jams in this today. It's been a while. Forgot how fun this is for sequencing hardware, and how great the effects sound. I think it's about time I re-registered, being stuck at 2.5.1 I am missing out on some pretty awesome features

  On 3/16/2012 at 8:35 AM, Antape said:

My regular setup is Reaper rewiring Renoise and it's so smooth !.. You should try

I tried this today and forgot the audio is unidirectional from Renoise into Reaper. So no processing external synths through sweet Renoise fx in this setup, although I can still sequence them with Renoise. Also couldn't figure out how to use the bus outs - Reaper bitches at me when I try to duplicate the Rewire track. So it kind of felt like the purpose was defeated.

You have to output each Renoise track into a bus (instead of the master), then to create a track in Reaper which is dedicated to Renoise (with rewire in the FX) and which contains as much "subtracks" you need, multiplied by 2 (Renoise only send stereo tracks). Then you'll have to link the Renoise buses to the different subtracks in the Rewire : Renoise FX panel, and finally to output each subtrack of the big rewire track into a new Reaper track (using the sends from the IO panel).

 

God that's a quite messy explanation. Let me know if it wasn't clear enough and I'll make another one with the programs launched. I remember finding the technique by googling something like "Reaper Renoise Rewire" anyway.

 

I still use this setup and I'm really happy with it. It provides me a certain comfort that allows me to compose without being too much slowed down by the interface. And it allows me to compose and mix in the same time, which is very convenient (I don't like to mix in Renoise). Basically I use Renoise for all the beats and Reaper for the synths. It can seem somehow rigid but it really works like that for me at the moment and I think I'll stick a little bit more with it before experimenting with another setup.

OK, your directions didn't quite work, but neither did anyone else's. I got it working without subtracks.

This guy's directions didn't work either but they got me on the right track http://forum.renoise.com/index.php?/topic/36610-solvedrouting-renoise-audio-into-reaper/

 

I finally just followed taktik's post in that thread. Before loading Rewire, I clicked the "I/O" button on Master in the Mixer section, and selected "12" for Track Channels in the upper-right of the dialog box.

Then I did the same for the 1st track.

Then I set the Rewire Output is the corresponding Track Channel in the "Audio from Rewire" tab of the FX window for ReWire: Renoise, one for each L/R channel in each stereo pair, just like you said. I think this is the most important part.

Finally, still in the FX window, I right clicked on ReWire: Renoise in the FX list, and selected "Build multichannel routing for output of selected FX..." This automatically created a track for each output bus. From there I didn't have to do anything else, no subtracks, no arming, no fiddling with monitoring or recording.

 

I made another track and assigned it to an unused bus. After increasing the number of track channels, I had to assign the Rewire outputs to them.

 

It took me an hour to figure it out but it's starting to make sense. Thanks for the help :)

 

This is kind of a cool way to work. It makes Renoise feel even more hardware-like.

OK, nevermind, so if I record the output with effects on them, they get recorded with the effects. So when I play back the track the effects get applied twice. Ugh. I think I know a workaround but I'm kind of tired of trying to figure this thing out now. Oh well. It's good to know that it can be done.

dude,

 

You can ask Renoise specific questions on the Renoise forums.

Um, isn't this a Renoise thread on a production subforum of an electronic music forum? Anyway, point taken.

ill reignite this one

 

having a play around with renoise again after a while

 

anyone having problems with gain staging/mixing...there is a default track pre gain feature in song settings that will help prevent clipping...i use -15 generally

 

i hate rewire and wish this was a catch all program but I'm missing the ease of use in cubase...guess its just habits

 

i totally get the whole mechanical thing someone mentioned and the cheap sounding thing too

 

i wonder why

  On 12/21/2015 at 9:35 AM, bendish said:

i totally get the whole mechanical thing someone mentioned and the cheap sounding thing too

 

i wonder why

Cos it's a big step sequencer and they have really rigid timing by default maybe? Couple ideas:

- Delay some steps a little, or use groove templates to do it for you

- Vary your drum samples a little, like use 2, 3, 4, or 5 nearly identical hats/snares and alternate them irregularly

- Use an LFO on some subtle filtering or EQ to vary that. Try it on the envelope decay too if you're using Renoise 3

 

Also I finally started messing with the Lua scripting a little and you can do some pretty legit MIDI processing with it, you don't even need to use the sequencer if you don't want to.

cheers i have no idea about scripting but ill have a look

 

10 years to feel fluent in a daw

 

10 years to unlearn it

The Lua thing was a big aside, I should have made a separate post. But it is quite nice. Reaper has something similar but it's awful.

  On 12/21/2015 at 9:35 AM, bendish said:

i totally get the whole mechanical thing someone mentioned and the cheap sounding thing too

 

i wonder why

shit man, I've never thought this—trackers are the most expressive electronic music software tools available, imo. It's definitely possible to make super mechanical, sterile music in a tracker (which I do love as well), but I think the strength is being able to have such fine control over all parameters using commands.

 

As for cheap, well it's cheap in cheap out, tbh; it's only as good as the sounds you use in it. Having said that, everything I've ever made in Renoise has been a pastiche of early 90s Amiga music, but that's by choice.. and I still don't think it sounds cheap anyway :P

yea sure i mean in terms of my use rather than those who are experienced

 

i should have said i get the whole I CAN ONLY MAKE MECHANICAL MUSIC WITH IT thing

 

I'm coming from other software so I'm daw prejudice right now....

Yeah I agree you can get very expressive with a tracker. You can sort of approach it like a set of monosynths, only they can sample too. Once you start getting a feel for the commands it'll click.

humanisation is one thing i wanna get...humanising breaks for example

  On 12/21/2015 at 10:12 AM, bendish said:

10 years to feel fluent in a daw

10 years to unlearn it

I've come from the other way round (tracker for 15 years then to DAW), took me about 2 years to move over to the 'new' way of working

  On 12/21/2015 at 12:52 PM, sweepstakes said:

Yeah I agree you can get very expressive with a tracker. You can sort of approach it like a set of monosynths, only they can sample too. Once you start getting a feel for the commands it'll click.

 

Why monosynth? I mean you can play multiple notes at the same time on the same track in Renoise.

There a million ways to get a more humanized sound in a tracker, from actually playing the notes live, to iteratively tweaking delay offsets (In Renoise you can use the block loop feature, or press Return to reset playback from a given point while you tweak the values), to messing around with sample start points and loops.

 

I find wave editing to be an important part of the tracker workflow, so stuff like swapping out samples in a breakbeat is pretty fundamental (in this case, you are basically sampling a groove). There's an argument to be made for using an external editor, but I don't often find it necessary. Anyway, the SXX command is a lot more fun when you are using your own sounds.

 

Some people will just suggest using a higher LPB, but I must say that going higher than 4 LPB has rarely worked for me, even for complex breakbeat shit. In Renoise you have cut/delay (C/Q) commands and infinite note lanes at your disposal, so use 'em.

 

Final tip: Renoise's wave editor can show you sample offsets in beat values and sample offsets at the same time, which is useful for synchronizing hits with the sequencer.

 

Sorry for the beginner q

 

Using effects commands:

 

Am I right in saying you can enter sample effect commands in vol column but this has less resolution e.g. G5?

 

As opposed to in the fx column e.g. 0GFF

umm, I think so? I'm not sure. I never use the volume column, you can add extra sample effect columns though?

Some effects commands in vol column are different from effect column commands. Retrig (0RXX and RX) for example.