im curious - thats got to be the only thing that i have trouble with in renoise - playing melodies. I like to quantize my stuff usually, and i hate going in later and re - editing my stuff, so i tend to program a lot of stuff by hand - entering notes in manually.
I suppose a piano roll would help me, and thats a separate topic, but how do you all enter in melody data?
i normally play the melody/rhythm on the keyboard first and when i have it “in my head”, i try to program it “dry” into rns, meaning not live.
but sometimes the patters can get quite confusing and i don’t know exactly where to rhythmically place a note, then i usually record one or two notes live to reduce this confusion.
hm, but actually i did that most of the time for the same reasons as you: i don’t want to have to reedit my “live” recorded stuff. and until recently my latency made “live recording” of pattern data rather frustrating. in linux that’s actually way better now, dunno. perhaps i’ll switch to recording more things live in the future.
I do the same, maybe if it was possible to move the notes easily like in this idea, i’d try record live.
Enter melody data: 70%
Live:30%
Especially for piano-stuff, I prefer to grab my midi-gear and play live. but usually, I’d use “enter note by note”
note by note, but then again my stuff is hardly melodical 
Occasionally I’ll plug a midi keyboard in to play a few chords but I usually just ENTER THE DATA DIRECTLY INTO THE PATTERN</robot voice>
manually. i’ve been using trackers long enough to be able to see where the notes should go, so it’s just easier than buying and learning to play a keyboard to a decent standard.
i spent 100 quid on a midi controller for dnb bass lines and melody work - then found renoise and haven’t touched it - or dnb since
Both, with QWERTY. :-]
edit: LAPTOP…
90% live, midikeys&padkontrol
5% data
5% accidents
I sure could use some kind of quantize, or piano lessons, I hit the right keys, but never at the right spot, and playing 2 hands leaves a lot of notes to reedit . Sometimes I make some fast melody’s in cubase or live and then load them as midi but mostly I am too lazy for that.
programming only. no way in hell will I play my melodies live and waste the tightness of a tracker.
EDIT: actually, I learned to play actual KEYBOARD… not keyboard, but KEYBORAD… that’s right, that thing that comes with a puter… I play it
just entering data… melody is in my head, there’s no need of MIDI keyboard for me…
I only just enter programming data.
I would like to be able to use a midi-keyboard but it doesn’t work that well in Renoise.
I’m going to dig up one of the bundled cubase sequencer and import the MIDI file into renoise.
One thing that is rather nice with a keyboard is that you also get the “personal touch” since each key don’t get the same velocitity etc. in one go.
I enter all data in manually. though I have a (very old) midi-keyboard, I’m not a keyboard player and I find it much easier to just program in the notes.
trackeresque-step-sequence with alphabet, numbers, down arrows, caps lock, ins+del and backspace
I also use blocking alot
i have a midi piano, but i know qwerty much better 
it doesn’t matter what you use! pick the melody your ears like, and put it in whichever way works best for you 
Entering manually: 95%
Entering with MIDI keyboard: 4%
Importing as MIDI from other tools: 1%
Mostly plain tracking.
Occasionally playing chords on my nylon.
And it’s a long time since I touched the keys. I’m not very good at it anyways.
I need a PC-keyboard with velocity sense and aftertouch.
…for music you thought? No, I need it to humanize the size of the letters and spaces while I’m writing texts.
hahaha