Hi, thought I’d post this by way of introduction to the forums. I figured it might be interesting, as it’s a slightly unusual use of Renoise (at least, compared to most things I’ve seen so far).
I’m an audio engineering student (just finishing 2nd year of a 4 year degree). I do everything possible on a Debian Linux desktop and laptop.
I found Renoise last year, and was immediately impressed. But I didn’t get time to use it properly until this month, where I was trying to find a way to mix at home.
I recorded an EP’s worth of tracks on Pro Tools in two different studios at college. For my project, I was adding sampled drums to these tracks, as well as mixing them. So, I did the drum programming in Renoise, and really liked the results. After using Pro Tools and Cubase and Reason for two years, Renoise was a beautiful, inspiring surprise. Really fast workflow, and put the fun back into music. So nice not to look at the bloody waveforms all the time.
After creating the drums, I needed to mix the tracks. It’s pretty hard getting time to use the college studios, especially towards the end of the academic year, and I was running out of time for the deadline. So I had to mix the tracks at home, on my Linux machines.
I tried Harrison Mixbus, which is great. But there’s something wrong with JACK on my machine and Mixbus just kept dying. So, I turned to Renoise. Once I realised that Autoseek would allow me to import song-length samples, I got started, and was pleased to see that I could throw a lot of effects on the tracks without crapping out the machine.
I managed to do nearly all the mixing on Renoise. I did a little mastering in Mixbus when I realised it actually worked fine on my laptop, but 90% of mixing/mastering was Renoise. Mixbus just added some tape warmth and EQing and automation (which I could have done in Renoise).
Here’s the EP I handed in for my assignment - I didn’t get to iron out all the kinks because I ran out of time (we got messed about with the deadlines). But you can get the general idea. It’s pretty dark lyrically, kind of a gothic rock based sound. If anyone’s interested, I can post screencaptures of the Renoise sessions, which I handed in too.
(Note: ‘[euchrid]’ is another pseudonym I use).
I’m using Renoise for everything now. Definitely the best program I’ve used in two years of audio engineering. Mixbus is still great too, but I have more fun in Renoise. Can’t wait to start my next project!
