I didn’t see an “introduce yourself” topic in particular, so hope it’s ok that I’m posting this here (sure someone will let me know if not :-)).
Mainly, I just wanted to say how absolutely grateful I am to both the creators of Renoise and the community here. I’ve spent a long time dabbling with music, and have always restricted myself to more “traditional” DAW’s. Started off in Cubase and then fell in love with Digital Performer (best midi drum editor ever IMHOP for a traditional DAW). Then spent a long time using Reaper, played around a bit with Ableton, ping-ponged back to DP. Anyway, in all that time, I had heard about trackers, but never really investigated then. About two years ago, I downloaded the demo for Renoise and just could NOT get my head wrapped around it.
About three weeks ago I decided to give it another try. I’ve spent a lot of time looking through the posts on this forum, downloading some of the wonderful XRNS files from the folks kind enough to share, and I really can’t express how grateful I am to find a community of musicians/beat manglers/audio mulchers who are so giving and supportive with their knowledge. The past three weeks have probably been the most excited, invigorated, and inspired I’ve felt to make music in a very, very long time. What’s more, now that things have started to “click” I’m finding that I like Renoise, organizationally, much more than any other DAW I’ve worked with. Things just “make sense” now that I’ve broken through the first few walls. Frankly, I’m in love :wub:
So, next time I have a drink, I’ll be raising a glass to the Renoise community. 3 Cheers for facilitating the 2015 mass re-programming of the brain to congruence w/tracker methodology! Thanks ya’ll!
I use Renoise full-time professionally for what I do, and I can tell you once you get used to it, your productivity will skyrocket. It’s just so fast at everything. It’s also rock steady - it gets a thorough beating everyday here, but has never once even spluttered… always there, always reliable, always inspirational.
Hi! I’m new to the whole Renoise thing as well as I barely use it for 2 months, but for the entire time I get the same feeling that you have It’s a phenomenal workflow. Coming back to normal DAW to compose music would now for me be a total nightmare.
The best thing is that besides the program being so deep with all its nooks and crannies, workflow skillceiling does not end with user knowing Renoise inside out. Reprogramming keyboard shortcuts to find that perfect config is probably a neverending process - ie. once someone gets a hang of new techniques, previously ignored shortcuts which operate them quickest will now have to find their place on a keyboard. And if everything is known and utilized inside out, everything can be done faster!
The same can’t be said about mouse - I’m sure even Counter Strike world champions don’t twitch-shot buttons, they navitage with moderate pace. Even if someone would hit 100% accuracy, it’s a lot more tiring than executing keyboard shortcuts. With keyboard-focused apps like Renoise the whole thing can be as fast as brain processes what needs to be pressed next and how fast those keys can get pressed. And that is a developmental process that is not capped.
TL;DR There should be a lifetime achievement award dedicated to Renoise users.
Yeah, it’s been striking how, once past the initial (fairly steep for me) learning curve, things have started to open up in a way I really didn’t think possible. Yes, and rock solid to boot (I work on things at home, but will take a break at work every now and again on this aging dinosaur of a computer and it works just fine).
Tonberry! Nice to know someone else is also feelin’ the love - yes, I think if I evey try (but, honestly, not exactyl sure why I would) going back to normal DAW’s will seem very strange, if not totally non-productive.
And, of course, your post now has me thinking about novel key-bindings and shorcuts and increased efficiency - there goes my weekend
Maybe a simple piece of basic advice will help you see more sun during this weekend
single key shortcuts - good for the most important stuff / key + key less important / key + key + key is basically pointless with the exception of left ctrl + left shift as it’s very easy to press and convenient (ctrl + shift + a for example is a very natural feeling shortcut even though it’s 3 keys)
most important keys close to where hands reside, ie. if left hand rests at ctrl+shift then caps, tab, ~, first two letters from left, f1-f4 etc. are good catch. middle of the keyboard is the worst area for good shortcuts as it’s unnatural for hands to rest too close to each other and most of this area is dedicated to midi keys and unbindable anyway.
grouping shortcuts with similar purpose is very good for the brain. for example, my right hand mostly does navigation inside pattern which occupies the majority of the right side of my keyboard. it rests at arrows, but right ctrl is edit step down, right shift edit step up, home and end are set to default - top and bottom. numpad 0-9 select edit step values - takes a lot of space but really makes for crazy navigation combos etc. etc. having all the navigational stuff in one place makes things easier to remember, makes for quicker reaction times and produces less errors. same with everything else!
Still, with all that being said, I think the best approach is to just work and see which shortcuts are most important in a workflow and bind them to those major keys like enter, escape, f1-f4 and push the less important ones to worse keys and longer shortcut combos. While tweaking shortcuts to get that perfect creativity machine going is as fun as fun can get, I’d still consider it a waste of time to spend more than 10% Renoise time doing it. Working hard with Renoise is the only way to really find out which commands are how important to the way each one of us makes music.
Of course there probably are people who just push rebinding away until that time comes and, like you they spend the weekend with the sole purpose to get that perfect config and that works for them. Who can blame us, there’s so much depth to it all!
Have been meaning to circle back here and thank you
Maybe a simple piece of basic advice will help you see more sun during this weekend
single key shortcuts - good for the most important stuff / key + key less important / key + key + key is basically pointless with the exception of left ctrl + left shift as it’s very easy to press and convenient (ctrl + shift + a for example is a very natural feeling shortcut even though it’s 3 keys)
most important keys close to where hands reside, ie. if left hand rests at ctrl+shift then caps, tab, ~, first two letters from left, f1-f4 etc. are good catch. middle of the keyboard is the worst area for good shortcuts as it’s unnatural for hands to rest too close to each other and most of this area is dedicated to midi keys and unbindable anyway.
grouping shortcuts with similar purpose is very good for the brain. for example, my right hand mostly does navigation inside pattern which occupies the majority of the right side of my keyboard. it rests at arrows, but right ctrl is edit step down, right shift edit step up, home and end are set to default - top and bottom. numpad 0-9 select edit step values - takes a lot of space but really makes for crazy navigation combos etc. etc. having all the navigational stuff in one place makes things easier to remember, makes for quicker reaction times and produces less errors. same with everything else!
Still, with all that being said, I think the best approach is to just work and see which shortcuts are most important in a workflow and bind them to those major keys like enter, escape, f1-f4 and push the less important ones to worse keys and longer shortcut combos. While tweaking shortcuts to get that perfect creativity machine going is as fun as fun can get, I’d still consider it a waste of time to spend more than 10% Renoise time doing it. Working hard with Renoise is the only way to really find out which commands are how important to the way each one of us makes music.
Of course there probably are people who just push rebinding away until that time comes and, like you they spend the weekend with the sole purpose to get that perfect config and that works for them. Who can blame us, there’s so much depth to it all!
Hey!
Been meaning to reply - really appreciate the advice here. Particularly #3, because agree that grouping shortcuts doing similar things to similar areas of the keyboard works well (at least for how my brain works). I actually haven’t gotten too far down the rabbit hole there, because I’m still in the process of learning about how Renoise itself works. Which is to say, this definitely got pushed out of the weekend in favor of actual sound mangling. But, this is still great advice and insight - definitely bookmarked for later consideration, and very much appreciated!
It’s a phenomenal workflow. Coming back to normal DAW to compose music would now for me be a total nightmare.
