Help! Renoise, Timing, Quantization, And Resolution....

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
1

Hello there Renoisers,

So, I think I’ve fallen in Love with Renoise!

I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy it, but there’s one thing I still haven’t wrapped my head around. Forgive me if this is the mother of all renoise n00b questions, but I looked here in the forums, in the quickstart guide, tutorials, and I still haven’t been able to “get it”. I hope you guys can help me to this end…

So, how does timing, quantizing, and rhythm in renoise work?

For example, let’s say I have a drum pattern with some 32nd notes in the hi hat pattern, and some 16th note triplets in the kick drum pattern. Now, overall, my song is based on a 16th note grid, so I like having a view that shows 16 lines per bar. Let’s say the tempo is 100 bpm.

How would I:

-be able to program, see, and quantize my 32nd notes?

-be able to program, see, and quantize my triplets?

In other words, how can I add a fine level of rhythmic details to my tracks while still maintaining a nice view that isn’t too fast or busy visually?

If this is not possible, how do you renoisers work so that you have a nice fine level detail but also are able to see the larger pattern at the same time?

Also, is it possible to change the LPB on a track by track or per-part of the song basis? would this achieve better resolution where needed?

If I can get this one thing well understood, I’ll buy renoise without question. I’m SO amazed by this app!

2

single lines are actually divided into 256 slices internally; this becomes evident by pressing LCTRL+LALT+D when the cursor is on a track: this will reveal the so called “delay track”, which allows to delay a note of a specific amount of slices. By default, of course a note has no delay, hence the default value for a delay cell is zero. The maximum allowed delay value is 255, or FF in hexadecimal.

So, in the end, if you want to play a note in the middle of a line, put 80 (FF/2) on the delay column for that note.

About triplets, usually this means putting a note on a third of a line, so the useful values are 00, 55 and AA, while the quarters of a line are 00, 40, 80 and C0.

to change BPM, use the F0xx command, where xx is the new BPM value in hexadecimal; for example, F080 will set BPM to 80 hex = 128 dec.

to chamge LPB, use the F1xx command, where xx is the new LPB value

3

Awesome. That definitely helps to put me on the right track. A few more questions:

  • with a LPB of 4, would the above delay commands render 8th note triplets, or 16th note?

-how do I program rolls in rhythmic intervals, i.e. 64th, 128ths, etc? Do I need a high LPB to do this, or is there another way to keep a low lpb, but have detailed rolls?

4

with a lpb nr.8 …every line represents a 32th note

5

Thanks for clarifying that for me-- I really appreciate how awesome this community is :)

So, as far as rolls go… :D

6

I think the LPB thing is starting to click for me-- is it common to automate lpb for different sections of a song to change “grid” resolution?

7

you can use command 0Exy.

this requires another detailed explanation; I would like to point you to the online manual about it, but unfortunately we are currently under the process of putting it online again.

when above I said that each line is divided into 256 slices, I sort of lied :)
don’t get me wrong, it’s all true, but the pattern commands and values are not evaluated 256 times per line: they are instead evaluated n times per line, where n is the number of “ticks”, which is simply a legacy name to call a fraction of a line. The number of ticks is 12 by default, but can be changed using command F2xx.

well, the y in command 0Exy gives you the ability to say “play the note in this line each y ticks” so, if you have 12 ticks per line, and y = 3, your note will be played 12/3 times in a single line.

The x value instead controls the volume according to the following table:

  
1 −1  
2 −2  
3 −4  
4 −8  
5 −16  
6 *2/3  
7 *1/2  
8 No change  
9 +1  
a +2  
b +4  
c +8  
d +16  
e *3/2  
f *2

the first times, it is better to experiment a bit with it :)

it mostly depends on the style of your music and your composing style: many people never change LPB during the whole song, while others change it a lot.

I can say that, the more I get accustomed to LPB (which is a relatively new concept in Renoise, having been introduced at version 2.0), the less I tend to change it in favour of a constant usage of higher LPB values. It has to be said, however, that in compositions such as piano soloes, I tend to change LPB at almost each line…

8

I always work at lpb 8 ( it’s just the right scrollspeed for me ) , but that doesn’t mean you’re bound to an equal music measure …or strictly 4/4 etc…
It all depends on the the length of the pattern and the (user definable, pattern seq. highlight ) subdivisions …this way you can compose in every odd time signature imaginable

9

I think I’m starting to get that-- it’s taken me a bit, but playing with the lpb is really starting to make the whole thing click for me. Thanks to IT-Alien and Gentleclockdiver for your detailed explanations, it’s really helping!

One more question :)

is it possible to change the pattern seq. highlight in different sections of the song?

10

check the song settings tab.

11

It’s not possible to automate the 'seq highlights ’ …But like 'it alien said …you can automate the 'lpb’so when the lpb is automated , 'the highlight every xx ticks must be set to lpb ’ ( in song settings ) is changed according to the lpb .
Keep in mind that a lpb setting of 16 consumes more cpu power than a lower setting .
Just work at whatever lpb you feel most comfortable with ( like I said before lpb 8 =each line represents a 32 of a note )… play with the pattern lenght/seq. highlight and ticks per line ( TPL is more of an internal resolution setting for retrigger command etc…) A setting of 12 is more then enough in most cases …