well… ive been trying to figure out the demo of renoise (for mac) on my own, for a few days. i must say its a little overbearing, but totally has the depth i want. the only problem is i really dont understand the effect commands. now, im not a newbie to music. ive been creating music on the computer for years. mostly samples, cool edit pro, and playing my organ over beats ive created. if youre ever curious as to what bachrodi is… take a listen.
back to trackers…
like i said. im amazed by trackers. i never even really knew they existed, until about a few months ago. thats sad comming from somone who has been listening to dance their whole life.
so… effects. this is greek to me. i have some tracker manuals for FT2. but, they only show 3 digits for editing. renoise has 4? i understand how to input them (that took me 20 minutes), and some of them make sense. ive used the delay effect on the panning column to make the beat hold a few ticks. i liked that. but as far as volume slide, pitch slide, and MOST of the other ones… im lost. whats retrigger REALLY do? and play sample backwards never really works out for me.
im glad i have the default list… ive DLed the online manual (cause im OFFLINE at home). but it doest really explain HOW TO DO the effects, it just gives the commands…
thanks guys. i promise once i get this down, the songs will be worth it.
(now i understand how Boards of Canada made “telephasic workshop”)
The first is built upon the herritage of trackers manipulating samples played in the vertical sequencer. The second is new (hence the four digits xxxx) so you can control slider positions of your channel effect plugs (eg. vol/pan or say the cutoff of a fiter2 plug), or use the code to switch the plug on/off during the song.
The effect commands will be highlighted in more depth over time, for instance, the slide commands (1xx and 2xx) are explained in more detail.
Lots of these commands (like pitch / volume / pan slide and glides) have in common that you can set an initial value for instance a slide up 0104 and then on the next line sliding again by entering 0100 because 0x00 value is being interpreted as “add another amount of the previous set value”. so:
0104
0104
0104
would be the same as entering
0104
0100
0100
The effect commands come from the very old tracking history so to get a good sense of what they are and why they are working in a certain way i can highly recommend you the Trackers handbook
Specially if you have never worked with trackers before, this is the first testament of the bible to read before examining our second testament.
Note that the handbook only works with three digits, but you should actually take the Renoise effect column minus the first digit, because all the static effect commands that relate to your question are actually based on the three digit variant of the basic tracker effect command structure.
The first digit is only part of the deal if you want to control DSP / VST plugins of that particular track, or you want to send specific MIDI commands, from within the pattern.
But there cannot be given much in-depth explanation of that area because it all depends upon the possibilities of the effect you want to alter.