How to split your midi keyboard in Renoise?

So… I realize that I might be asking an totally amazingly idiotic question now, but I tried to look the answer up for myself and alas, I can only quote Winnie the Pooh at you all now: “I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me.” :stuck_out_tongue:

I have only used smaller keyboards before, but I just got myself an 88 key one (M-Audio Keystation 88es) so now I find myself wanting to split the keyboard and have one VSTi for the lower octaves and another VSTi for the higher octaves. Tinkering with MIDI is one of those things that baffles and confounds me, so I’m resorting to bothering you with it instead. I did read up on things like Polysher (which I cannot seem to get to work) and some complicated routing involving something called Copperlan but… isn’t there some rather simple way of just assigning a keyrange to a certain VSTi in Renoise? What would be the best way for me to acchieve a split keyboard in Renoise? Or failing that, is there something other out there that I could try? And nope, the M-Audio Keystation 88es can’t do splits on its own. It’s very basic.

proceeding to stare intensly at screen, in anticipation of your illuminating answers

Please take a look at the instrument’s MIDI input properties:
http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/MIDI

Within each instrument, you can assign a specific MIDI device that it should respond to, as well as defining the note range.

Setting up splits is a simple matter of defining different note ranges for different instruments.

You can optionally assign each instrument to a specific track, so that any recorded notes will end up in the right place within your pattern.

edit: dblue explained it really well.

Please take a look at the instrument’s MIDI input properties:
http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/MIDI

Within each instrument, you can assign a specific MIDI device that it should respond to, as well as defining the note range.

Setting up splits is a simple matter of defining different note ranges for different instruments.

You can optionally assign each instrument to a specific track, so that any recorded notes will end up in the right place within your pattern.

Yessss, thanks! This was exactly what I needed! :smiley:

Hi! I would like to use Renoise live, with a couple of Instruments in each song, some of them splitted.

dblue, if I split the VSTis this way, I can’t change Instruments quickly because I have to set the selected Instrument’s (or Instruments’) Input Device to my MIDI in device and all other Instruments to something else (to avoid all instruments to be played together).

Is there a way to use splitted VSTis live?

I can’t change Instruments quickly (…)

It is possible to have each instrument in Renoise respond to a different MIDI channel.

I wonder if your external MIDI controller has some convenient way of changing channels on the fly (that isn’t buried too deeply behind menus), or a way to set up different templates that you can quickly flip through while performing?

Thank you dblue! I’ll try it!