A Beginer's Guide to Electronic Music

Hi, My Name is Ben and i am a musician since i was a little thing. i learned to play guitar, bass and drums and had a couple of bands. At some point i wanted to make some electronic music so i sit and learned and learned and learned and i will still learn. But now i feel like i begin to Like my production but if i had this Guide that would have saved me a lot of time !

First : Find a daw that you like

Here i suggest you renoise all the way but if you prefer other software for specific things then you could also rewire renoise with other daw !

Second : Find Vst that you like

If you never heard of Vst, vst are “Virtual Machine”. There are three type of vst : Instruments Vst, Effects Vst, Midi Vst ! What is really important is do not try to build you the biggest collection of vst because it will consume a lot of precious time that you could be spent on making music instead ! While some vst can cost a lot of money, a lot of Vst are free and there i will suggest you a few :

Vst Intrument 1 : T-Force Alpha Plus

This is my all around Synth that i use For everything ! It is very simple but very strong too !
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Instrument 2 : Trance Drive

This is my second all around Synth ! It is very simple but very strong !
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Instrument 3 : Phutura

This is a beast. It is inspired by the Alpha Juno ! I use it for Big lead !
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Instrument 4 : MauSynth

Mausynth offer very very rich sound ! I use it for leads and pads
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Instrument 5 : OatMeal

Oatmeal is very complex, it has a lot of feature and it is skinnable.
Download It Here - For Windows

I suggest you to use the tron legacy skin !
Download It Here

Vst Instrument 6 : SQ8L

A Little complicated synth but its wort it for vintage sound as its an emulation of the Ensoniq !
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Instrument 7 : Phenome

For me Phenome is the best Sf2 Player out there !
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Effect 1 : DBlue Glitch

One of the best vst effect made by one of the Renoise Team : Dblue
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Effect 2 : LePou Le456

The Best Distortion effects Out Here
Download It Here - For Windows

Vst Effect 3 : Renoise Built In Effect

Renoise have a wide range of Built in effect wich are incredible ! Learn to use and master them they are fantastic !

Vst Patches, Presets, Bank, Ect…

Usually Vsts come with factory presets. It is a good way to show the strength of the vst but it is also very usefull to learn how they work. I suggest you to look at those factory preset and how they are made to tweak them like you really want, that way you will learn and with time you will be able to make your own bank and even share them ! But if you want more patches you could also download new ones, Again some free and some are not. Here is some sites that you can download them freely :

http://www.kvraudio.com/banks.php
http://patcharena.com/downloads/

For other instrument Please refer go on the renoise Forum Recommended Freeware Vst-plugins

Third : Samples

One big suggestion that i can tell you is try not to stop making music to look for a specific sound. Get prepared and go look for samples that you might need in the future before anything !

Samles Site 1 : Music Radar

For all Around Samples Music is a good place to start i suggest you to pass through the whole library and look for what you might need !

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/sampleradar-13154-free-sample-downloads-217833/1

Samles Site 2 : Dsk Music

Wow this is one of the best thing i ever bought ! For a 25 $ Donation they give you access to 446 High Quality Instrument in Soundfont Format. Wich you can use with the Phenome Sampler !

http://www.dskmusic.com/high-quality-instruments/

Samles Site 3 : Kb6 Samples

The largest drumkits library that i know ! You can download a lot of them free on there site but i suggest you to give a donation of 10 Euros This will give you access to 304 Drum Sets of 27.986 WAV Samples / 4.06 GB

http://samples.kb6.de/downloads.php

Samles Site 4 : Renoise Resource

For the downloader or the uploader. There you will find a xrni paradise constantly growing !

http://www.loopproject.com/

Samles Site 5 : Renoise Backstage

When you buy Renoise it give you access to great samples ! Do not forget to take them :

PureMagnetik Essentials [528MB XRNIs]
Beatslaughter XrniPack [281MB XRNIs]
Renoise2 Loop&Samples Pack [75MB WAVs]

http://backstage.renoise.com/

For other samples Please refer go on the renoise Forum Free Sample Sites

Fourth : Tutorial

Look at those great tutorials video ! They are well construct and very straigh Foward !

http://www.renoise.com/tutorials

Keep The help in your favorites and try to be better everyday by learning something new in renoise.

http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Main_Screen

Fifth : Do Not Play It Solo !

Do not be shy ask for help if you need or if you discover something post it on the forum ! We all want to hear your music creation even if it is your first song ever ! Just Post it on the Renoise Song Forum We will listen to it and try to help you to become better and better !

Sixth: Expand your horizons !

Found there is a feature you need or that you could benefit from a different workflow? With Renoise’s extensive scripting language and API there is an almost unbounded degree to which the core program can be expanded. You might find the tool to do what you want already exists, otherwise there might be somebody willing to take on the challenge or at the very least some experienced coder to help point you in the right direction should you have any questions on how to proceed.

http://www.renoise.com/tools - Official site
https://forum.renoise.com/c/renoise-tools - Forum link

Seventh : Stay Tuned !

There is plenty of site and forum to stay up to date !I Suggest you :

http://www.kvraudio.com/
http://www.pluginboutique.com/
http://createdigitalmusic.com/

and of course the renoise forum :

https://forum.renoise.com/c/general-discussion


Thanks to Kazakore for section 6 + New Links !


I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of any of these synths except for SQ8L.

Didn’t know about MauSynth, thanks for the tip!

Add to the Samples/Instruments section. Maybe before Backstage as they can be downloaded and used by demo users.

http://www.loopproject.com/

Before your 6:

And although I don’t read it as often as I sometimes feel I should I would recommend this for your Stay Tunes section.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/

Thank you for this !

Perhaps make this an article on the main Renoise page? That would be awesome and certainly attractive for newbs on Renoise website… ;)
Anyway, thanks for the synths, Mausynth, Phenome and Lepou looks amazing! :)

Definitely. Peter Kirn tends to know what’s up.

Since we’re giving out tips’n’tricks for beginners, let me divulge this little piece of advice that I just recently learned/realized:

Don’t use ReNoise’s EQ for shelving. Use the Filter—it has the Butterworth settings. So when you need to take a meat cleaver to part of a synth/sample/voice, Filter is what you use…

Indeed. A lot of my EQ-ing involves two filters and a EQ on a good deal of the tracks.

That is my default DSP chain for every track. How much they actually get used depends though…

This is good stuff, thanks to MetalThrix! Please stick this thread.
I cannot stress enough how much indeed you can accomplish if you get to know a bit what all the different built-in effects in Renoise do. The variations of sound you can get with a simple chain of Filter=>Distortion=>Filter is already enormous, let alone when doubling a sound with send tracks to mix crazy sound effect chains together nicely!

Also: if you’re a visual oriented guy, like myself, look at your rendered samples a lot, zoom in and out, do microchops (select, then Ctrl-T in the sample editor) and loop them… get the eye ear coordination :D