I’ve searched as I’m sure this has been asked, but I found no answers. Can I record live instruments like my guitar with Renoise? I’m a newb, so please make any explanations dummy-proof 
Sure! Go to the ‘sample-editor’, press ‘rec’, select the input your guitar is in, ‘start’ and go rock on! 
I have a few more questions since this is much different than the other program I used. I was used to playing a whole song in one take on guitar, maybe 4 minutes straight to one track. That track would be panned 100% to the right. Then I’d play another guitar track panned 100% to the left, but it was recording while playing the song so I could sync up with the other guitar track.
Renoise seems to operate in a much different way with “patterns”, where as my old program just recorded until I told it to stop. Any ideas on how I can make this work in a similar fashion?
Also one other odd thing, but maybe not Renoise related. I have a new laptop that I just tried recording my guitar in to. It has no “line in”, so I bought a
, and the sound only comes through the left channel. I have the sample editor in Renoise set to L+R. This wouldn’t be a big deal, but when I go to pan my recorded track to the right side, there’s no sound.
Sorry for so many noob questions lol. Thanks a lot!
Renoise records to RAM. It’s like a very sophisticated sampler.
If you are recording 4 minutes of guitar, Renoise is not the best program for this. You will run out of room faster than in other apps that record to harddrive. Also, there is no recording timeline as you have already noticed. Renoise is better at recording small loops, then cutting/mashing/sequencing those.
That isn’t to say it can’t be done. Many Renoisers do exactly what you are describing. Have a look at the “Hunz - Soon Soon” demo track, for example.
You claiming “noob-ness” tells me you are going about this a bit backwards. You should explore your options before taking off on a journey Renoise is not best suited for.
If you have a Mac, you can record into Garageband, then ReWire Garageband to Renoise. On the PC try something like Reaper, or any multi-track recording app that has ReWire.
Renoise works great with other apps. It’s not a one stop recording solution. Not yet, anyway.
Well I actually used Reaper as my old program on my old PC. That cpu died, and I lost everything. Guess I could go with Reaper again and
-
record my drums/bass/other samples in Renoise
-
render that and put it in a Reaper track
-
record my live guitars tracks along with the rendered Renoise track
Best of both worlds in a way maybe?
Yeah, this is how many users work. Go for it.
Your guitar is monophonic and you plugged it in the Left channel of your… (you didn’t say what you bought, I assume an interface of some sort) so it has nothing to do with panning. Just put it to L, not L+R. Then after you recorded your piece you can pan the track you’re putting your recording in to the left or right.
Also, after you put your recording in a track and panned it to the left or right, you can go back to the sample editor and record again while playing your first take.
Good luck!
Thanks a lot guys! I loved Reaper, so I think I’ll use it in combination with Renoise 
Why Render when you can ReWire?
If you use Linux 64 bit version, you can put lots of memory in your computer and you won’t run out of memory so easily when recording long takes into renoise. 
Not sure what Rewire is, so I’ll have to look that up.
Is that an operating system? You’ll have to excuse me, I’m a bit computer illiterate. I’ve heard guys talk about switching to Linux, but never really thought I needed to (but I’ll admit being ignorant to it’s advantages).
After looking it all over, I think I’ll use both Renoise and Reaper, sometimes together, sometimes separately. Trying to do this cheaply, but still get decent results.
One more question about a recording I tried to do. I got a VST, DSK Drumz AcoustiK, which seems to have some decent drum sounds. But when I put say two bass drums close together, I get funky sounds (and they are random, sounds different every time when I play it back). It almost seems like the drum note needs to ring out before starting another note to have both notes sound proper. Any thoughts here?
Do you get the funky/random sounds when you put the second note in another column?
When you say another column, do you mean another track? I’ll try that, although it sounds like a bit of a pain to keep up with.
Hey 
No I did not mean another track.
I meant another column in the same track.
Simply press the + button on the upper left corner of the track, and you will be able to create more columns:
Thanks for the tip! I’ll try that out tonight.
I do exactly this. I’ll play one take of the whole song on guitar or bass. What I’ve found works the best for me was to edit the takes and make new instruments for each section of the take. Then, I just sequence them in order pattern by pattern. I record each track the same way except for vocal tracks which I cut out everything that doesn’t have signal in it. I do also occasionally use Renoise rewired to Reaper and record my live instruments in Reaper or just export my stems from Renoise and import them into Reaper. Any of those approaches will work.