In what things Renoise is better than other DAWs

Please try to answer 3 questions. It is really very interesting.

  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?
  2. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?
  3. What other DAWs you try?
  4. What music styles you prefer?
  5. What music styles you compose in Renoise?

Thank you!

1 Like

Why not.

I donā€™t know, better than what exactly?

When I first tried Renoise, no.

Almost all of them.

Good music in every style.

For me Renoise is a beautiful marriage between tracker heritage and modern software innovation. That ticks two big boxes for me: the ability to continue the DIY nerdy hyper-technical patterned vertical editing that I have grown up with, and love of the tracking culture; and the having the modern digital class with qualities and options you find in other serious DAWs. For me, itā€™s not a complete solution, so I use it very closely in conjunction with Reaper, using both attractive packages strengths (Reaper for recording, Renoise for sequencing, etc). I work hard. I get results. And why else Renoise? Iā€™ve got some friends here - itā€™s good to share experience with them, use our common language together, and remember the old days of tracking.

I had a lot of formal music education before even touching a tracker in the 90s. Iā€™ve continued that education outside of software. If I canā€™t play a part, Iā€™ll find another excellent musician to play that part. Whatever is necessary for the art. To me, the pattern editor and vertical editing make sense to me visually - much more so than a piano roll, or even scored manuscript. My point of view is biased because I grew up with tracking, so Iā€™m glad thereā€™s a product that allows me to express myself musically and have all the modern technical qualities as well.

I think Iā€™m like most people here and have had experiences with other software. For me, Iā€™ve had extensive experience with some expensive software during commercial production projects Iā€™ve done. Sometimes Iā€™ve been astounded at software that asks for a lot of money to use it, but has awful bugs and illogical feature restrictions. It is a breath of fresh air that software like Renoise and Reaper are very reasonably priced, offer great support, are largely bug free and continue to evolve. Those things inspire loyalty.

I think djeroek put it well, that weā€™re into good music from any style. The kind of music I want to make requires a blend between interesting audio recordings of instruments/voices/sounds, and interesting programmed sonic material. A balance between the organic and the mechanical. As Iā€™ve explained above Iā€™ve found a solution to meet those needs.

3 Likes

Much easier to judge harmonic and rhythmic relationships when you can see so much programming on one screen. It is similar to looking at a conductorā€™s score. Paging back and forth through each playerā€™s parts is what many piano roll daws will make you feel like you are doing.

2 Likes
  1. I just like it, I donā€™t know. Seriously though, itā€™s the workflow. No pop-up boxes and window management and goofy editors. Itā€™s simple and it works.

  2. Yes. Iā€™m reading books by Arnold Schoenberg and Schenker in my spare time.

  3. Ableton, Cubase, Fruity Loops, Garageband, Reason, Record (when it was a thing), Reaper, Studio One, Sonar, and some other choice trackers and odds and ends.

  4. Iā€™m more drawn to music that is not made substantial by the addition of lyrics. This can be anything, literally anything. As long as it works, itā€™s good.

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  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

For me, itā€™s better for doing a lot of micro-automation stuff. Doing very detailed automation is feasible in other daws, but itā€™s kind of a chore, you zoom way in, fiddle with quantization settings, drag the mouse around, then pick another parameter, repeat, try to keep everything in your head. Same with detailed note-by-note sample playback automation. You could pay $250 for a geist license to mouse through the various sample shaping parameters or do it in a uniform way with renoise.

None of this is impossible with other DAWs, but itā€™s not as fluid as it is in renoise (at least for me). Between the chaining LFOs together and pattern editing, detailed automation and edits is what renoise was made for.

There are some tradeoffs though. dealing with more than a few of audio tracks in renoise is still painful, for example.

  1. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?

some

  1. What other DAWs you try?

Iā€™ve used many, and I still use others in conjunction with renoise - flstudio, audiomulch (not exactly a daw, but I did construct full songs with it). Iā€™ve extensively demoā€™d live, reason, studio one. I own a ohm studio license but havenā€™t gotten around to using it (jumped on the early lifetime subscription deal).

  1. What music styles you prefer?

good music.

@DrumanDaBass:

  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

Iā€™m new to Renoise, and havenā€™t actually used it to make too much music yet. Iā€™ve been spending a bit of time with the manual to get acquainted with how it works. So far, I like the tracker concept better than the MIDI/piano roll approach, particularly because of the hexadecimal precision. My intention is to use this in conjunction with AudioMulch and analog hardware for realtime improvisation.

  1. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?

Yes, many years learning various instruments, and a couple of years in a university music program (until I figured out that Iā€™m really just a hobbyist).

  1. What other DAWs you try?

I used CubaseAI for a bit, and then switched to Reaper. But Iā€™ve spent more time working with AudioMulch.

  1. What music styles you prefer?

As others have said, good music. For me, that includes Nikhil Banerjee, Stravinsky, Gentle Giant, Thomas Newton, Akira Kiteshi, Philip Glass, AfroCelts, AR Rahman, Chris Whitley, etc. No particular styles, I guess.

@revo11:

Nice to see another AudioMulch user here. Iā€™d be very interested to hear how you use AM and Renoise together. I like your algorithmic tracks on Soundcloud.

Please, I need you to be more specific in answers. I have some plans about advertising Renoise in my country so try to answer. Imagine that your friend who is new to Renoise ask that questions (expecially cause you tried many DAWs). Thank you!

But in some DAWS you can put together all tracks in one screen (different colours) and look at all harmonic relationships. Why it is not suitable for you? By the way,it is very interesting to here about rhythmic relationships. I feel it also but cant explain. Why the rhythm in Renoise looks visually more comfortable than in other DAWs? Can you explain this?

TO ALL
I add question 5, cause sometimes we record different music to what we listen

  1. I feel the same about harmonic and rhytmic relationships - the rhythm is easy, because you have those lines which are way MORE visible than in traditional DAWs, so you see the 4ths, 6ths, 8ths so easily and place them so easily - you canā€™t miss it :D/> For repeating sequences this is incredible but for natural or swing feel I see itā€™s harder to do in such a way. As for the harmonic relationships, I know the notes and can read them very well so itā€™s natural for me - I can immediately tell the interval between notes and see their scale because of the names (I was learning and using notes, their names, scales etc. for years ;)). When you have for example 2 piano roll sequences one above other, itā€™s really harder to tell how the individual notes from the sequence are related to the ones at the otherā€¦

  2. As I already told, yes, I know all the basic scales, can read notes, intervals, rhythms and timing, I learned classical piano for some years and for me Renoise way of creating patterns is more intuitiveā€¦ IDK why, it has something to do with the vertical point of viewā€¦

  3. I have the Podium free, which I havenā€™t used, and also Ableton, which I use primarily for recording (sorry but recording in Renoise really suck) and maybe for final mastering when I have all tracks and groups bounced to audio tracks as it is CPU lighter and working with samples and especially long ones is really a pain in the ass at Renoise. But for composing, arranging, sound design and early mixing stage I use Renoise exclusively. Mainly because Renoise was my first DAW (I needed something cheap and versatile when I decided to buy it)

  4. I listen to Trance, Electro, Electronic Rock, Power Metal, some exclusive Dā€™nā€™B and Dubstep, and lately Iā€™m getting into the classic Hard Rock from the 70ā€™s and 80ā€™s :)

  5. I compose Electro, and tried some Dubstep and Tranceā€¦ Iā€™m still not that experienced to dare creating some rock-electronic fusions that I want to create till my first day with music prodution :D

1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?
Many many things, but of note are:

  • Sampling - It has a built in wave editor and if you are into sample based music it is really easy to do everything in one program instead of having to use a separate wave editor. - Timing and accuracy - It is rock solid and beat programming is the best I have come across in any DAW, its the only thing that I have come across that beats the Akai MPC series for ease of beat programming and tightness of sound. This is probably why there is so much Glitchcore made with it, Renoise makes intricate beat programming much easier than any other DAW. - Pattern based sequencing - I prefer this way of sequencing compared to the linear timeline approach of Logic/Cubase etc. it makes experimenting with arrangements much easier as you can easily switch to any previously used section of a song and reuse it. - Sound Design - This elevates Renoise to whole new dimension. Pattern commands such as Glide, Offset, Pitch and Retrigger on their own make Renoise better at sound design than many DAWS but if you combine these with the range of available DSP effects and all the Meta modulation features like Signal Follower, Keytracker, LFO and Formula Device then you have unbeaten sound design potential. It transforms the whole thing into some kind of pattern based semi modular sampling synth and in my view nothing else comes close (except maybe Ableton with Max for Live but at around 10x the cost). - Tools and customisation - Want a new feature? You can program your own! No other DAW software allows you to do this. The amount of thought and effort that has gone into the scripting API is astounding and it continues to get better, scripting really is an integral feature and much more than a tacked on afterthought. - The price - If cracked versions of all the major DAWS werenā€™t available then I think Renoise sales would be higher. When I was younger I learnt all the major DAWS through cracked versions and used them often but then I found a conscience (and also a job) and decided to pay for the software I used. Renoise looked like the best value for money and looking back I wish I had made the transition sooner as my song writing improved massively after I had chosen one tool and stuck at it. - The sheer elegance of the software - I seriously cannot fault the way this thing has grown and developed and the overall software design philosophy.

2. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?
None whatsoever, I came from a sampling background and Renoise just fits my mind better than anything else. In my view it is true computer music in that it does not rely on conventions about how music should be described such as piano rolls, notation and beats/measures. I have found this to be liberating and when I did want to learn about music theory I was able to make my own tool that helped me learn how scales and chords worked. Making a tool helped my understanding of music theory grow much more than reading about it, most literature on music theory is targeted at people who can read music notation which is an instant barrier for people like me. Renoise helped me overcome this and I would say it is a great tool for people who donā€™t know or care about music theory.

3. What other DAWs you try?
Pretty much all of them, I used to work in tech support for a music technology retailer so got to know all the major DAWS as part of my job. These days I mostly use Renoise along with Ableton and Melodyne (for track recording and time/pitch shifting). I will probably ditch Ableton the day Renoise gets native timestretch and pitch shift. I am also starting to use more and more tools on the iPad.

4. What music styles you prefer?
I like all styles but find myself listening to mostly electronic/sample based music.

5. What music styles you compose in Renoise?
Mostly electronic/ambient noodlings and dance.

1 Like
  1. Because Renoise is better than a barrel organ, itā€™s going faster, and you can record more notes in it, the music storage is far better.
  2. I had a musical education before using Renoise, when I was 6 years old, I took piano lessons, for 2 yearsā€¦ after that I replaced the piano by a qwerty keyboard.
  3. I tried Music Maker 1, Music Techno Studio 2004, eJay Dance, well all the great softwares with great marketing plans.
  4. I like electronic ambient music, d&b, dubstep, horror and action film music, demo scene music, experimental, digimetal, grindcore, computergame soundtracks
  5. I try to compose the music I prefer.

Like someone already said, I needed something cheap and versatile when I started. Renoise really excels at these 2 things. CV signaling is awesome and in the ā€œspartanā€ way Renoise is set up makes it an awesome production learning tool for me. Itā€™s also got everything in one buy, itā€™s not everything you can do with sound you know but it gets close especially for the money Renoise cost meā€¦ You donā€™t have to shell out extra for the full-fledged more advanced sampler, lowpassfilterbassexciter, or anything. Secondly, Iā€™m a programmer too, and renoise can be scripted. I didnā€™t think of this when I bought Renoise but by now I think I have a pretty extensive list of handy tools on the tools page. Third, Iā€™m using Linux most of the time, and Renoise is one of the very few music apps that run natively. Fourth like many others said, I have seen Renoise crash sometimes, but not just in the middle of music production, only when I was really phreaking it out with scripting stuff or some other stuff that ā€˜could be explainedā€™. That said, I donā€™t think Iā€™d buy software for a way higher price that is ā€œknown to crashā€
Before I bought Renoise Iā€™ve demoā€™d a lot FL, Cubase, and a little bit Live, Reason. Next time Iā€™m buying music software it might be Reason though because I love the setup of it. Wouldnā€™t like needing money for extra devices though but they can also be demoā€™d and they rock too. It would be very different in setup thoughā€¦ even if you buy the LFO device, you canā€™t really route it to shit since when the average number of controls on a Reason device is 25 the average number of modulation inputs is probably aroundā€¦ 5? And here on the renoise forum we are whining cause we just canā€™t automate/modulate bypass, Keep Source on #Send and Filter Type on the Filterā€¦

Nope, I really went from music fan/listener (and ill collector looking at my TB of mp3s still) to producer. Just tried a lot of stuff and only lately got kind of serious with figuring out what scales exist, how chords work, etc.
random quote

See [1] - funny thing is, like i always say, if you can excel at making awesome music in renoise you instantly master all the other apps too (as in, they become childsplay or like you can learn it in a few days). I have yet to prove that to myself tho itā€™s just my idea :D

Busta Rhymes (he always has the WORLDs illest beats somehow), DJ Shadow, Nas, Redman, Talib Kweli, the Roots, lots of Dutch hip hop (24 hour beattape!), DJ Premier, stuff like Kraak&Smaak, stuff like The Prodigy, list goes on n on

Hip Hop beats, sometimes a little DnB/dubstep electronic things.

1:Known territory, plus it works pretty precise, have not been capable of getting this precision with any non-tracker like software.
2:Mediocre level at best, but do know basic stuff.
3:Quite a lot, but the majority of the league are tracker based. Tried some PR based sequencing, those were the worst and tried some sample recorder DAWā€™s.
4:classic
5:What i feel like, but currently the preferred style.

  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

Itā€™s intuitive to me. I donā€™t really have a good answer here, I just prefer the workflow I suppose.

  1. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?

Yes. 13 some odd years of active mostly first-chair trumpet. Admittedly, Iā€™d not practiced for many years by the time I got to renoise, but the theory basics stuck.

  1. What other DAWs you try?

Acid, Reason, Ableton, in that order. I put something in the range of 3 (really light!) years into each.

  1. What music styles you prefer?

Jungle/DnB

  1. What music styles you compose in Renoise?

Almost exclusively jungle I guess.

  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

I donā€™t remember how exactly I got in touch with Renoise. Trackers have always fascinated me as an alien tool where other people create awesome sounds with. It was like watching assembler language (I am a computer scientist) sing. Since it strikes my programmer heart, I fell in love with Renoise the instant I tried the demo and I bought my license two days afterwards. It runs natively(!) on Linux which is a very big plus for me - although I use it on my windows laptop roughly half the time I spend with it.

It is a very well programmed piece of software, responsive, thoughtful and contains depths I havenā€™t even heard of yet. I am convinced that this is the tool where I can make music and grow both in experience, quality and creativity.

Anything else was very expensive with heavy UI and no real linux support.

  1. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?

Little to none, I have had one year of piano lessons when I was young.

  1. What other DAWs you try?

Rosegarden (Linux software, piano roll style). I was able to get it to work but it was slow and clumsy on my machine.

  1. What music styles you prefer?

Electronica and good music of any kind. I judge music on a track by track basis.

  1. What music styles you compose in Renoise?

Well, so far everything is highly experimental but I want to educate myself and bring it to a new (read: full length song) level.

1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?
Itā€™s fast, intuitive, reliable, and elegant.

2. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?
Lots. Lessons on various instruments as a kid, numerous ensembles, several bands, was studying music/audio in college, etc.

3. What other DAWs you try?
Pretty much everything. I commonly use Ableton for live performance and some production and REAPER for multi-track recording.

4. What music styles you prefer?
I purposely expose myself to as much as a I can. For electronic stuff I tend away from 4-on-the-floor EDM and more toward brain dance, IDM, breakcore, etc.

5. What music styles you compose in Renoise?
Iā€™m often thrown into the brain dance, IDM, and chiptunes categories. I donā€™t really enjoy straight 8-bit style stuff though.

  1. When I first tried Renoise I hated it. A friend of mine who is an electrical engineer showed it to me. I downloaded the demo and gave it a shot. I didnā€™t get it. I called it a tech-nerds Fruity Loops. I really didnā€™t sit down with it for long. It was just a bit too over whelming for me, so I stuck with REAPER. At the time I didnā€™t really see myself as doing anything with electronic music. I just wanted to play jazz. One day though I realized how much time I had spent learning about Synthesizers. I remembered that one of my first musical instruments was a Boss DR 202. I flashed back to my first DAW, Fruity Loops and I realized that a part of me was an electronic musician. Whether I was any good at it was irrelevant, the point was that I had invested so much time into it that it had progressed a bit passed a mere hobby. I decided then that I wanted to pursue it more seriously and find a way to combine it with my bass playing. I really wanted Ableton but it was too expensive for me. Eventually stumbled across some videoā€™s of Hitori Tori and Venetian Snares. I was really blown away by what they were doing, espeacially Hitori Tori stuff. It wasnā€™t exactly that it was the type of music I wanted to pursue, but it showed me a way that I could do some live electronic music on my own. I downloaded the demo started learning the basics. Eventually I bought the full software and a Novation Launchpad. I recently purchased Maschine. Recently Iā€™ve been experimenting with running both Maschine and Renoise through REAPER so that I could more easily track audio. Really REAPER is just the host and I do all the sequencing in either Maschine or Renoise. However I still prefer the Renoise environment. To me it appeals to imporovisational nature. There are times where I just want to experiment with some samples and using effects. I can make a quick pattern in less then 2 minutes (even faster when combined with Maschine). What started as a simple effects pattern exercise soon turns into a full blown usable pattern. Next thing I know Iā€™ve been working for over 4 hours. The truth is I find it comfortable. It really feels like home now. It isnā€™t really that complicated. I feel like it works with my scattered brain and my improvisational approach to song writing.

  2. Yes

  3. Fruity Loops, Reason, Cubase (briefly), Pro Tools and REAPER.

  4. Mostly Jazz, classical and schizophrenic electronic music. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

  5. Sounds.

  1. Why Renoise? In what things it is better for you?

i use renoise as a natural progression from impulse tracker ā€”> modplug tracker ā€”> renoise ā€¦ itā€™s good for me becuase of
the fast ideas writing from your head to actual music in minutesā€¦

  1. Do you have musical education (know traditional notes, harmony etc) when you first try Renoise?

no musical education , but i listen to music few hours a day, everyday , i guess it gave me some knowledge and understanding , i tried renoise first at 2008 , but finish actual track only in 2011

  1. What other DAWs you try?

i tried other trackers which i didnā€™t mention in question 1 and didnt like them ā€¦ i also gave a shot at fl studio, cubase , reaper but i just love & prefer to make my music in trackers ā€¦ with keyboard , no piano roll , barely touch the mouse, keeping it vertical :lol:

  1. What music styles you prefer?

im looking for everything that has good beat that can goes from dnb,jungle,breakcore to glitch-hop and future garageā€¦ also im looking lately for stuff with organic feel like the artists teebs and detz (soundcloud) produce ā€¦
in non electronic i listen mainly to funk and soul and also to math rock

  1. What music styles you compose in Renoise?
    drum&bass , jungle , breakcore , and instrumental beats

Thanks! I havenā€™t used AM that much recently, but there was a period when I used it as my primary DAW.

I think a lot of people tend to use AM for generative ambient sound collage type things, but I used it to make fairly structured tracks. This track was done in audiomulch (written about 10 years ago nowā€¦ damn):

https://soundcloud.com/revo11/track-6-story-ep-2001-2003