I recently started working with plugins for instruments with varied articulations. I’ve found it to be a pain to play any of them, because I have to manually stop and select another instrument to get a different articulation. For example, I may have two viola instruments loaded, one legato and the other staccato.
Typically in this situation, I set up a single track for the instrument (in this example, a “Violas” track) and simply set the instrument to the correct articulation. This is fine, but the problem becomes really annoying when I just want to play some stuff live and get ideas.
Is there some way to use MIDI mapping or keyswitching to toggle which instrument is in use? Stopping to grab the mouse and change instruments is a bit frustrating. Does Renoise have a MIDI-mappable command for changing instruments (I haven’t noticed one)? Better yet, is there a way to create a split where one half of the keys use one articulation and the other half use another?
Hm, I didn’t notice this thread before I posted. I’ll have to try some of the advice offered there. Sorry!
Still, some of my questions stand. Is splitting (as previously described) possible? Is there a way to send a MIDI command that changes Renoise instruments?
Isn’t using the keyboard shortcut to change instrument up/down one quicker and easier than grabbing and clicking carefully with the mouse?
I am guessing you’re using 2.6 yeah? Or are you registered and on the 2.7 beta? With 2.7 you can tie controllers to specific Instruments and Tracks. Although I haven’t connected a MIDI controller myself yet I hope this goes as far as same MIDI Controller using a different Channel, so you could just change the Channel your keyboard is operating on and thus change Instrument and Track from your keyboard like that. Hopefully somebody who uses MIDI more can confirm…
That was my idea as well.
This only becomes a problem if you have over 16 instruments and want to control over 16 instruments but only have one midi controller.
(if you have two, you can still keep one for the master device)
Whoops, I’m not sure what the keyboard shortcut is, but I’m sure that’ll be easier than using the mouse!
I’m actually using 2.7 beta. Is there a guide/reference for tying controllers to instruments? I’m not sure how to do this, or how exactly I can swap instruments from my controller after I’ve set this up.
[Numpad -] and [numpad +] always have been the default shortcuts for these for years.You can change them simply in the preferences → when clicking the keys button and enter “instrument” in the searchbox, the list is quickly filtered upon instrument related keyshortcuts.
With so many keyshortcuts this is the best tip i can give you if you need to find something quick.
Otherwise you can still click on the “Print” button on the upperright corner of the Key preferences and you get a nice webbrowser page including all your current shortcut keys that you can print out.