Do you use Renoise in a live setup?

[Subvertive]

so, im interested in how one would use Renoise in a live setup. i’ve used FL Studio and Reason 5 in the past and know how those can be used in a live setup, but Renoise seems a bit different to me. im the type of person that likes to actually preform and re-play the songs instead of pressing play and waving my hands around ala skrillex style. if you use Renoise live, how do you do it?

[James_Britt (James Britt / Neurogami)]

Some previous discussion:

Controlling Renoise for live performance with multiple keyboard midi c

I would like to use renoise for live performance, but I am not sure if it’s viable. I would like to use two keyboard midi controllers, each one playing different instruments. How would I set that up? And what would be the best way to quickly select different instruments in this scenario, between songs or even during songs?

Live Performance With Renoise 2.8

Here’s a video of a live performance earlier this year at a small festival in Oslo. For my liveset I use Renoise as only software, and this time I used the beta 7 of 2.8, even though it wasnt a final version. I used a launchpad with duplex to control the pattern matrix/trackmutings/looping sections of the song. I also had set up my modified MPD32 to play samples to different songs, as well as a couple of drumkits to improvise with. The sliders on the MPD were set up for mixer control, and the k…

Using Renoise To Perform Live?

I’m not new to Renoise (or tracking) but recently I’ve been thinking about playing some of my newer material live. A quick bit of history, I used to do this in local pubs & clubs in the early/mid 90s with an Amiga, Octamed, two synths, and a guitarist. The Amiga would sequence samples and midi data, I would play some parts on the keyboards and would mute/unmute tracks as appropriate and a friend would play guitar. I currently do everything in Renoise, and don’t have any external gear apart from…

There are likely others.

What would be ideal is some way to consolidate all of the ideas and info about tools into a single location.

There’s a Renoise wiki but it does not seem user-editable (sort of rendering it not-a-wiki).

[Cie]

When I want to create a new track/pattern from scratch (or with given samples), or change given patterns with full flexibility I am using the tool Step Sequencer Lauflich.
When I want to remix the tracks of a given song (rearrange given patterns) without changing the content of the patterns, I am using the tool Live Dive.
Both in conjunction with two or four Launchpads; and a midi controller to mute/unmute the tracks.

[James_Britt (James Britt / Neurogami)]

@Cie

When I want to remix the tracks of a given song (rearrange given patterns) without changing the content of the patterns, I am using the tool Live Dive.

I wrote some Lua to handle custom OSC messages so that I could jump among patterns while maintaining relative line position. (I thought I had included this in my Github repo Renoise stuff but apparently not. Have to look into that.) That jump also includes setting loop points (I think; I haven’t used it lately).

The other trick I’ve been playing with is selectively muting one track while unmuting another. Technically I am getting the volume because of assorted behavior I get when trying to unmute a track after a sample has been triggered. The idea is to have pairs of tracks where each track in a pair is a variation on the on the other (perhaps one has more frills or something) and then periodically jump from one to the other to mix in some changes.

With these two tools I can jump around among a relatively small set of patterns and get some decent variety.

I suspect I’ve replicated behavior that can be found in existing tools but it helped me learn about the Renoise song API and Lua, and having a fairly small code base that I wrote makes it easier for me to and customize things to suit myself and to understand why something doesn’t do what I want.

[Subvertive]

@Cie

When I want to create a new track/pattern from scratch (or with given samples), or change given patterns with full flexibility I am using the tool Step Sequencer Lauflich.
When I want to remix the tracks of a given song (rearrange given patterns) without changing the content of the patterns, I am using the tool Live Dive.
Both in conjunction with two or four Launchpads; and a midi controller to mute/unmute the tracks.

hey, thanks for posting the link to the livedive tool. it’ll come in handy… as for what the other fella said about the Renoise data being in diff. places and not being able to edit the wiki gives me an idea… i would like to assemble as much data as i can about Renoise and publish it to a blog that is editable to anyone (that is a registered member to said blog). the only concern that i have is that Renoise 3.0 just launched… but then again, the info will be editable. if anyone wants to help, give me a message!

[hotelsinus]

NO. i use hardwares only.

[dby]

I use Grid Pie mostly. Curious about what can be done with Mlrx and the new phrases + input quantize.

[agargara]

I have experimented with using Renoise live in a large variety of ways! Monome control, midi controllers, as a Rewire slave or host, and so on. After a couple years of experimentation, however, I’ve finally settled on a greatly simplified setup. I export my songs into percussion/non-percussion stems, put them into Ableton Live (unwarped) and play with various DSPs using midi controllers. 20% live, 80% DJ, really. My music is pretty meticulously programmed, so I wouldn’t be adding much other than show if I tried to re-create it live, and I’d rather the focus be on the music more than the show anyway. I’m fine if people are not watching me while I play.

However, I have been thinking about improving my keyboard chops. It would be fun to play some improvised melodies and bump up my Live:DJ ratio.

[muckleby]

@Neurogami

I wrote some Lua to handle custom OSC messages so that I could jump among patterns while maintaining relative line position. (I thought I had included this in my Github repo Renoise stuff but apparently not. Have to look into that.) That jump also includes setting loop points (I think; I haven’t used it lately).

The other trick I’ve been playing with is selectively muting one track while unmuting another. Technically I am getting the volume because of assorted behavior I get when trying to unmute a track after a sample has been triggered. The idea is to have pairs of tracks where each track in a pair is a variation on the on the other (perhaps one has more frills or something) and then periodically jump from one to the other to mix in some changes.

With these two tools I can jump around among a relatively small set of patterns and get some decent variety.

I suspect I’ve replicated behavior that can be found in existing tools but it helped me learn about the Renoise song API and Lua, and having a fairly small code base that I wrote makes it easier for me to and customize things to suit myself and to understand why something doesn’t do what I want.

Hey could you share a bit more about your pattern jump code?
I’d love to play around with that setup.
Would it work with standard midi bindings or just OSC messages as you’ve written it?
And are the jumps absolute or relative (ie jump to pattern no 5? Or jump 2 patterns forward?)

[James_Britt (James Britt / Neurogami)]

@muckleby

Hey could you share a bit more about your pattern jump code?
I’d love to play around with that setup.

I will find the code and get it into a public Git repo. I have some Renoise code on GitHub but apparently the pattern jumping code is not part of that.

Would it work with standard midi bindings or just OSC messages as you’ve written it?
And are the jumps absolute or relative (ie jump to pattern no 5? Or jump 2 patterns forward?)

The code reacts to OSC messages but I don’t see why it could not be adapted to respond to MIDI (though I’ve not yet tried this.) Right now the behaior codeis tied into the OSC handlers; they would have to be broken out into separate functions callable from either OSC or MIDI.

The jumps are absolute. If you are in pattern 5 line 3, and tell it “/pattern/into 2”, then it jumps into pattern 2 and picks up on line 4 (in pattern 2) so the beat should be seamless.

Assuming Renoise Lua can tell you the current pattern number then having another function for relative jumps would be simple.

UPDATE: I added my OscJumper tool to my renoise-ng GitHub repo: GitHub - Neurogami/renoise-ng: Assorted stuff related to the Renoise DAW

I need to take another look and maybe clean up or fix a few things.

[muckleby]

Niiice thanks man sounds perfect for what I want to do (with a little tweaking). Will grab that soon as I’m in the studio.