"Fading" between Renoise Instances

I was wondering if it was possible to use a MIDI fader (say from an AKAI APC40 or Livid OHM type controller) to essentially fade two instances of Renoise. I am pretty new to MIDI mapping in general, but I was wondering if there needed to be some kind of external MIDI routing to achieve this, maybe assigning one Renoise app to always be the “left” and one to always be the “right” and just assigning the controller accordingly?

Even better would be using the fader, bringing the level up from one instance to the other, all the while, the controller basically assigning itself to the next instance so you don’t have to touch the computer as much. That’s probably extremely far-fetched, but would be awesome to achieve. I’m trying to use Renoise to do some live sets, but switching from one instance to another is extremely tricky. I’ve seen those Hitori Tori videos, but I’m not really sure how to achieve what he’s doing.

Anybody have any experience with something like this? Thanks!

Hi serv!

What do you mean by the word “instance”?With the MIDI input you can easily switch between patterns, tracks, lines, note columns, instruments, or move between different tabs (pattern editor, matrix, mixer, instrument editor…). Even with a specific tool you can change the VSTi presets, if he is compatible.Can you give an exact example of what you need to do?

By two “instances” I mean two “copies” of Renoise open, here’s a video demonstrating having several open at the same time:

And basically, what I want to do is use these two copies of Renoise so I can transition smoothly between songs in a live set by say, fading out and muting channels from one instance and bringing in channels and patterns from another so that they flow together, touching my keyboard and mouse as little as possible.

If the driver for your MIDI controller allows multiple running instances, it’s not a problem to map Renoise songs to it.

So you could have the master level for each song mapped to two sliders, A and B

Notice also how Hitori does it in the video: certain songs have certain reserved spots on the controller

(mapped controls are saved as part of the song).

If you controller does not support this, you could feed your controller to some virtual midi port (of which there are several…

I personally tend to use loopMIDI by Tobias Erichsen) and split the controller input into multiple outputs (one for each Renoise).

If you need to fiddle with multiple Renoise configurations, this is possible too.

Very interesting the theme of using several separate Renoise windows to play each other. Maybe you can do something similar by firing phrases from a single instance.

I have not tried this, but maybe you can use the same MIDI channel without changing A / B in your controller, if you have correctly mapped each control for each instance. For example, the play of instance 1 could go on pad 1, and the play of instance 2 could go on pad 2. I think that the MIDI signal that is sent does not need the window to be in the foreground. It would only be necessary that there were no conflicts between the 2 instances when using the same MIDI device.

Neither have I tried this, but maybe it is possible to control 2 instances as if one were a mirror of the other, using the exact same MIDI mapping. And although the MIDI mapping setup is saved in the song, you save the MIDI mapping XRNM file to load it into the instance you want.

Anyway I wonder if it is necessary to have several open instances to play in this way, as in the video. Could not the same thing be done with phrases and not speed up reproduction so much?

…interesting theme.

Thanks for the help guys, I’m going to look into all these suggestions.

I’m also wondering if having Duplex running on both instances would cause confusion for the program or the MIDI controller. I’m wondering this to make setting up each song a bit easier and save some steps…

Yeah you can map the same controller to multiple instances of Renoise at once, it works like a charm. That’s what hitori is doing in that video.

I’m also wondering if having Duplex running on both instances would cause confusion for the program or the MIDI controller.

Again, if your MIDI device driver supports multiple instances this is possible. But we are venturing into advanced territory here…one way would be to run a “Renoise launch script” (as in the example linked above) that will enable Duplex for instance A (possible because you can specify which tools are active in a config), and then stick with “traditional” mappings for instance B.