Full version: how flexible is the user interface and scripting?

Hello, everyone! New user here from Montréal, Canada =)

I’ve been using trackers since around the early/mid 90’s and have used trackers based on the ScreamTracker 3 interface - at first ST3 itself, then Impulse Tracker when it came out, then years later i was involved with the development of Schism Tracker, which mimics and improves upon the Impulse Tracker interface.

Now i’m looking into getting the full Renoise - dabbling a bit with the demo version, i can see that the default keys can be redefined, but there are several behaviours that can’t (easily) be changed, for example i’d like soloing and unsoloing a muted channel to un-mute all channels, or both alt keys to behave exactly the same (just examples) Are such things possible to configure via scripting?

Thanks for anyone who can provide helpful information :D/>

Welcome,

there are options in the preferences (edit/preferences/plug/Misc) where you can set the mute & solo modes.

Be sure to also check out Esa Ruoho’s paketti script if you’re looking for impulse tracker like shortcuts:
http://www.renoise.com/tools/paketti

Also note that the demo version has all the scripting capabilities of the full version (obviously the rendering capabilities are excluded, I’d assume). So you can familiarize yourself with that too! :)

The other guys have already covered most stuff, but just to reply to your main points:

  • From a user interface point of view, nothing is crippled in the demo version. All such features found in the full version of Renoise are available in the demo, so you should definitely spend all the time you need in order to get comfortable with everything before you make any decision to buy.

  • Track mute and solo behaviour can be changed via: Preferences > Plug/Misc > Misc.
    Changing the Solo setting to “Mute Others” will give the desired result.

  • Modifier key behaviour can be changed via: Preferences > Keys > Global Keyboard Options.
    Changing the setting to “Modifiers Only” will make the right Ctrl/Alt/Shift keys behave the same as their left counterparts.

  • Our Lua Scripting API can indeed be used to control many aspects of Renoise, including things like track muting, soloing, etc. While not every tiny aspect of Renoise is available in the API, there’s still a huge amount to play with, and it’s really quite astounding to see the amount and quality of tools that do already exist.

Awesome, awesome… thanks for the info! Yeah, i found the mute/solo thing just after i posted my previous question :D

How about a “step” value (normal up/down movement moves “step” rows instead of 1) and keys for moving up/down 1 row regardless of step setting?

By default the arrow keys are assigned to move up/down by 1 pattern row.

To move up/down by steps (ie. the current edit step value), look in Preferences > Keys > Pattern Editor:

  • Move to Previous Row with EditStep
  • Move to Next Row with EditStep

You can of course reassign these to whatever you like, in order to make the keys more comfortable for your personal needs. Some people reassign the basic arrow keys to move by editstep, for example.

Got it… this is becoming quite usable in fact!

I downloaded esa’s script (i know him from the schism tracker IRC channel) …but how do you load .xrnx files in renoise? i’ve been fiddling around for about 20-30 minutes and can’t find it - except for loading it as a short white-noise sample.

It seems to be in .zip format and containing lua code files…

/* EDIT */

Never mind, i was able to load it by simply passing it to renoise on the command line :D/>/>/> :D/>/>/>
i aer stipud :3

Other question: is it possible to remap the COMMA (,) and PERIOD (.) keys to something else than the defaults (extensions of lower octave notes)??

dblue: did you write the demo song “synthetic sugar”? i really like it! especially slower part entitled “beat change”, it sounds heavy and dominating, but dreamy at the same time…

Yeah, watching the tutorials on youtube and fiddling a bit more with renoise, i can see this program is very powerful and flexible. Is there a tutorial that covers the sequence matrix and pattern/channel “aliases” in more detail? For example, if i want to use the same beat on patterns with different chord sequences and basslines, without having several copies of the beat, etc etc…? This way of structuring a song seems to be exactly what is missing in most other trackers.

matrix/aliases: http://www.youtube.c…2C451A756#t=47s

Drag ‘n’ drop.

That is impossible, almost all letter keys and most number keys (non numpad) are taken by ‘pc keyboard’. Of course you can still use 1, a, 4, f, 8, k, -, ’ for shortcuts (e.g. I use 1 for solo and a for mute)

I think if you come from any other tracker you will be astounded by how much you can accomplish with the lua scripting api. I have never used any other tracker, but since I bought renoise some 2 years ago I’ve made many tools (list of tools I made: link) many of which handle GUI stuff / controlling stuff with keyboard instead of mouse etc. I also keep the code for all of my tools on git so anybody can clone and/or post comments, suggestions etc. For instance, check Best Views if you want, apart from my abbreviations the code is simple and it does simple things with the gui. I agree with dblue, not everything is possible in the API but they’re very close :).

Another nice thing about the keyboard shortcuts: if you look at them in the prefs window there is a “Print” button that will take you to a PrettyPrint xml/xsl page in a webbrowser so that you can look at the mess you’ve made of all the thousand shortcuts renoise already comes with :).

Thanks again for the help everyone =) So far i am very impressed with renoise.

I’ve watched most of the tutorials on the learnrenoise youtube account a few times, and (as of yet) a good portion of the user manual on the main site. A few things still aren’t quite clear:

  • Why are orderlist entries different shades of yellow?
  • What do the numbers and “infinity” symbols mean at the bottom of some blocks in the pattern matrix?
  • What are all these different select/highlight modes? Yellow outline, grey dotted outline, etc…?

Sequence highlighting. See song settings tab, 2nd box, last two values. You can turn this off by turning the first of the 2 values down to zero (‘Highlight every xx blocks’).

You probably see this in a demo song, because, if you’ve made it yourself you would know what they mean :). Infinity symbols come from the setting “Visualize repeating slots” visible only in the right click menu of slots in the matrix. The numbers indicate that a slot (think of it as a Pattern-Track) either is aliased from another pattern, if the number is in the lower right corner, or is aliased elsewhere, if the number is bigger and in the center of the slot. This means if you change one track in one pattern (slot), you change all the aliased slots at the same time. It’s practically the same as repeating a same pattern number, but with a deeper level of control.

In Pattern Matrix? In the PM you can only see 2 different things, I believe, namely the current selection in pattern matrix (grey, thin, dotted outline) and which pattern&track the CenterBar (edit position) in the pattern editor is located.
Almost all operations in Pattern Matrix you will want to first turn off Follow Pattern, or turn of Playback entirely.
Selection in the PM does not ‘go away’ in any way, so yeah, that’s something to get used to for some people e.g. myself. Selection in the Sequence is nullable by clicking somewhere where there aren’t any patterns.

You’ll get used to all the options, just click around a lot! :D

Yellow outline is where your edit cursor is in the pattern editor (so where notes would go if you hit the keyboard and edit mode was on.) The broken lines, whether grey or yellow, is what is actually selected within the Matrix.