how do you compose in renoise? (its bleeping difficult)

Help, Support & Bugs Beginners Questions - Renoise
1

greets,

editing in renoise is such a major chore, the screen is either running too fast to see or the part im trying to edit is off screen. and i hear all this talk about zillions of lines per beat and venetian snares and aphex twin using trackers, when it has to be the most difficult possible way to sequence. how do you see or even access what youre editing in this thing with more than 64 lines? and what if you want to audition from the cursor? i forgot how to engage that obvious what i would think is a default behaviour.

when editing automation, the automation loop constantly runs away if you accidentally click the scroll bar, and getting back the focus takes 5 mouse clicks or gestures to get it back. stuff like that is just a drag because so many mouse clicks are ending up creating loss of focus from the editing at hand.

so much time is spent trying to click or not click in the right place to select or highlight notes on the editor. oops, accidentally move a note when i wanted to highlight a section, oops, the apparently highlighted note is not the note thats being changed, different shade of highlight my bad. the ‘change all in column’ button is still engaged and i forgot, damn, now whats ruined? i cant see the ‘change only selected’ button because that menu is scrolled to the bottom and i need to scroll it up and down every time i use it, just to see the vital options such as changing instruments on notes, etc.

lots of pain, and i really want to like this.

2

Using Renoise reflexively takes time. I’ve been using it on and off for about 3 years, and while I do have a few issues with the interface, my only frustration now is that my mouse compulsively double clicks, probably due to overuse. (It’s about 5 years old, maybe more) Some people just don’t click with the interface, and that’s perfectly fine. I started hating the Reason and FL interfaces, and when I came to Renoise, everything made sense to me. It might take time, or it just might not be for you.

In regards to your first paragraph, most of the way I work is by inductive sequencing. By that I mean that I hear what I want in my head, then I type the notes out, and then when I’m done I play it back to see if I did everything right. You’ll want to develop this ability, especially if you want to produce on a time schedule, as correcting notes is easier than typing one in, playing it back, typing another, playing it back etc. Left Shift + Space plays the pattern from the highlighted line btw.

You have a point when it comes to the automation. I’ve said that the best thing about Renoise is the automation, and the worst thing about Renoise is the automation, especially when trying to automate something fluidly across multiple patterns. (One of the reasons people like to work with so many lines.) I also agree that selecting things in Renoise can get to be a pain when you just can’t seem to get Renoise to understand what you want.

But like I’ve said, it all comes in time and working with the instrument. Just imagine if you were using something like OpemMPT.

Hopefully when I get better, I’ll start putting out videos of how I work in the program.

3

Stop using the mouse and learn as many keyboard shortcuts as possible. The mouse will only slow you down.

4

editing in renoise is such a major chore, the screen is either running too fast to see or the part im trying to edit is off screen. and i hear all this talk about zillions of lines per beat and venetian snares and aphex twin using trackers, when it has to be the most difficult possible way to sequence. how do you see or even access what youre editing in this thing with more than 64 lines? and what if you want to audition from the cursor? i forgot how to engage that obvious what i would think is a default behaviour.

It sounds to me as if you are trying to force renoise to behave like something else.

Obviously, it is highly functional for many people. The question is: how do they use it, to make it work well? Aphex Twin could certainly use anything he felt like using. Why would Renoise be his pick? Because it works for him.

It seems that what you’re trying to do is treat a tracker like a pianoroll, or even a conventional score editor. I suggest that you rethink your workflow a bit.

As for auditioning what you’re on: press return to play the current spot, and hold it down to keep playing, then let it go to stop.
If you want to start the pattern, hit the space bar.

when editing automation, the automation loop constantly runs away if you accidentally click the scroll bar, and getting back the focus takes 5 mouse clicks or gestures to get it back. stuff like that is just a drag because so many mouse clicks are ending up creating loss of focus from the editing at hand.

Granted that’s a bit of a pain, but maybe you would find it easier mapping a MIDI controller and using a slider or knob to control automation?

so much time is spent trying to click or not click in the right place to select or highlight notes on the editor. oops, accidentally move a note when i wanted to highlight a section, oops, the apparently highlighted note is not the note thats being changed, different shade of highlight my bad. the ‘change all in column’ button is still engaged and i forgot, damn, now whats ruined? i cant see the ‘change only selected’ button because that menu is scrolled to the bottom and i need to scroll it up and down every time i use it, just to see the vital options such as changing instruments on notes, etc.

lots of pain, and i really want to like this.

It’s really optimised for a keyboard-based workflow. I suggest that you figure out how to do what you want with keyboard and controllers, and give the mouse a rest for a bit.

5

A large part of the learning process when you’re learning Renoise is deciding what lpb and what pattern length you want to use. Everyone does something completely different. You are right though, if you use a high lpb, editing longer patterns is really difficult. You have to find the trade off that works for you. It also matters how large your monitor is and what font size you set.

I’ve changed my default pattern length and lpb countless times, so here’s a run down of a few combos with their ups and downs:

*4 lpb with whatever pattern length fits entirely on your screen (I’m using 32 atm)- easiest to visualize and compose with. Easy 16th notes, and you rarely need faster than that, and if you do you can always just use delay column. Compared to higher lpb’s this will also give you much better results with humanizing. Use this in combination with the fractional notes tool (a must have) so you can do triplets etc. Also remember the retrig command.

*12 lpb with 1-2 measures of pattern length - Easy triplets. Very popular due to easy triplets. I personally find it confusing to use. In most scenarios, 90% or more of my song will not make use of the easy triplets, so I personally decided it wasn’t worth it. I prefer to just use fractional notes tool when I want a triplet than to let my entire lpb revolve around occasional triplets. The main reason I don’t like 12 lpb is that it greatly inflates the wasted space in your patterns, while having the same nontriplet resolution as 4 lpb (still can only do 1/16th notes).

*8 lpb with whatever pattern length fits - If you use a ton of fast notes, this is a really good choice. Less wasted space than 12 lpb, yet higher resolution for non triplets. Can still just use fractional notes tool for triplets. Generally if you need faster notes than what these lines give you, you’re going into glitch territory and might be better off using retrig or the Repeater DSP. The only downside I feel from this is that it is slightly awkward to visualize/compose at 8 compared to 4 and 16. Still easier than 12 though.

*16 lpb with 1-2 measures of pattern length - This was my default for a very long time. Don’t do this, it’s beyond overkill. I did this for like, a year, and you know how many times I really took advantage of this resolution? Zero. It was completely pointless.

So experiment and find what works for you, but I personally recommend starting with 4 lpb. Combined with fractional notes tool, 4 lpb is imo the easiest to compose with. Also keep in mind you can set phrases to be a different lpb, so you can use that if you want to do something weird without changing your song’s global setting.

As others have mentioned, composing in Renoise is a keyboard based workflow. Less mouse, more keyboard, more speed. Learn the keyboard shortcuts. Once you have a lpb you feel comfortable with and have learned your way around the pattern matrix, getting an idea from your head to a track is lightning fast, a speed you just can’t achieve with a piano roll. It has it’s weaknesses, but this is why people who like trackers like trackers.

6

My view, but depending on what style of music you do:

I agree that it is relatively difficult composing in Renoise. There are tools that are a lot more “creative” and that actually help you get things done, quickly, like arrangers and workstations with sequencers and arp libraries. Tools like these will allow you to quickly layout or trial&error the parts, structure and arrangement of a song.

The reason to this is that Renoise is very much caught in the tracker paradigm with an interface begging you to get into details. Most feature requests are focused on refining features that are already there, or bringing even more control on a very detailed level. Other than the pattern matrix and phrases, not much have been done in recent years aiming at improving and speeding up the song making workflow. (Perhaps this isn’t true if you’re using Renoise in an ableton-esque way with midi, but that certainly isn’t a style suitet for everyone.)

I’ve concluded that Renoise is an awesome tool when you need timing, control and for sample editing. My advice for most people is to rewire it for those needs, but find another tool with less thresholds in the song writing and arranging process.

7

how do you see or even access what youre editing in this thing with more than 64 lines?

I’ve been known to mention Deluxepaint on these forums for various reasons. It’s a pixel-painting program with great keyboard support, and used to be the de-facto standard in game development back when pixels ruled the gaming world. Here’s what I find relevant about it as an analogy:

Most DAWs today work like a vector-based painting software, such as Illustrator: they are great creative tools that allow you to do broad swashes of editing (squeeze an entire recording by a small amount, no problem). But the downside of this approach is that they get tricky once you go into detail. I see people struggle with setting up their grids and making things align nicely etc. Especially once you want to ‘offset the grid’, it becomes very hard to manage.

Renoise, on the other hand, is a pixel based program. The grid is baked into it right from the start. Pushing notes around inside the grid while maintaining the “snapping” (think delay column), subdivide and select in many ways, and manipulate notes within those ranges.
The downside to the tracker approach is the same downside you have in pixel based painting programs: when you are composing, you are doing it through a magnifying glass, and it’s not easy to stretch and squash note data without some loss of precision (I’d recommend checking out dblue’s excellent Pattern Resizer tool, and learning about obscure Advanced Edit features such as Nudge).

This is of course a rough generalization… but since Renoise is forcing us to compose through the aforementioned magnifying glass, it’s a good mental exercise to really work on visualizing (eh, “sonorizing” ?) the song in the head, sketching out the melodic and rhythmic structure without paying too much attention to the details, or even what you hear while sketching. This is the hard part - it takes a lot of concentration to stick to the idea…we are so easily distracted. And depending (too much) on the mouse certainly detracts from keeping this focus.

8

great replies.

now im wondering why not lose the mouse interface stuff that most people use keyboard shortcuts for? this would force users to learn to use the program the way it’s meant to be used.

im just wondering how to make selections just using the keyboard… time to RTFM again. see, i have this selective memory where i forget things i don’t think i need to know since i have a mouse.

9

https://forum.renoise.com/c/renoise-tools

I can’t imagine renoise without them.

If you have a multi button mouse I suggest you bind them to ctrl-alt-something and then have ctrl-alt-something1 and ctrl-alt-something2 bound to stuff like delete/insert previous row in current column.

Also in recording mode when you single-click it will jump to the clicked line, there’s more stuff, but, regardlessI think there are plenty of reasons not to dump the mouse.

im just wondering how to make selections just using the keyboard

renoise preferences>keybinds>search for ‘select’

later search through the whole keybind list and see what you need

10

wow thats so crazy. keyboard based. shortcuts (yikes)

need a laminated card with these keybindings in big letters to tape on my computer screen.

slooooow curve there.

11

slooooow curve there.

I’m in the same boat trying to learn more, every time you go to use the mouse try to look for the key command for it. It is slow learning but try to use them when you’re actually making a tune, it will stick more that way. There’s also an anki deck on the forum somewhere, I haven’t started with it yet but will be soon.

12

yeah, so trying to reduce a pattern thats 64 beats down to 32… would like to select all, and halve that selection with a shortcut,

so i search the shortcuts for “move selection” or anything that halves or doubles a selection, and not finding anything.

is there a function to “split pattern” in two? searched the forum and no results for split pattern.

13

getting an idea from your head to a track is lightning fast, a speed you just can’t achieve with a piano roll. It has it’s weaknesses, but this is why people who like trackers like trackers.

Having done many all gear/any DAW compos, seeing what others have done with their programs, seeing a lot of other tracker modules that were from OHCs, and using FL, Renoise, and modplug myself, I have to disagree. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that trackers are actually faster than all piano roll software. This has been a thought in tracker mythology for a long time but I don’t think it’s substantiated, I think that danoise’s theory is closer to the truth, it’s why Renoise is very popular for genres like breakcore in which microscopic editing is needed, and isn’t that popular for composers that are up against deadlines constantly. If you want to put every beat of your song under the magnifying glass, Renoise might be the best thing out there. If you want to finish something as fast as possible, it’s probably FL or Ableton

I do think there’s something to be said for the feel of using keys vs using a mouse though. It isn’t necessarily faster, but it seems to lead me in different directions also. It’s kind of the middle ground between playing something and sequencing

14

yeah, so trying to reduce a pattern thats 64 beats down to 32… would like to select all, and halve that selection with a shortcut,

so i search the shortcuts for “move selection” or anything that halves or doubles a selection, and not finding anything.

is there a function to “split pattern” in two? searched the forum and no results for split pattern.

Open the advanced editor, little expand button on the right of the pattern editor. You can just choose whole song and click shrink if you’re just lowering the lpb. If you’re only splitting the pattern, don’t know of a way, but there may be a stray script or tool that can do it.

15

it would be cool if you could split a whole pattern in the pattern matrix, so the first half would be a pattern, and the second half would be a pattern,

16

it would be cool if you could split a whole pattern in the pattern matrix, so the first half would be a pattern, and the second half would be a pattern,

There is a tool that does that

http://www.renoise.com/tools/pattern-split-plus

However, you will need to manuallyupgrade the tool, it was created for Renoise 2.6, but I checked and it works for 3.0 as well

Instructions on how to upgrade a tool:

https://forum.renoise.com/t/lua-api-changes-for-2-8-how-to-upgrade-tools/34432

17

I had a sudden insight:

I don’t really compose in renoise , and I doubt that the original poster really should (although it’s possible to do it with tools such as noodletrap).

What do I mean by this?

I think, based on the discussion in this thread, that we are confusing two different stages: creation , and representation.

Creation is where you come up with musical ideas. What you really want is a very low friction way of approximating what you’re thinking, musically, but the details of representation are mostly irrelevant.

Representation is how you actually pin down what you’ve come up with, and make it real.

Let’s take as an example an aria I wrote recently. The process is different, to a point, because my final product was sheet music, not a recording, but the principles still apply.

I did not start out with blank staves and start scribbling lines. Instead, I sang some ideas to myself, and to flesh them out I picked up a guitar and strummed chords. (I’m a fair guitarist, so it was low friction for me. Other people might prefer to set up an instrument in Renoise and use a MIDI keyboard to noodle things out. Your mileage may vary, but the principle remains the same.) Only after I’d hammered out a meaningful series of tones did I start writing actual musical notation. Composition first, then representation. However once I had written my ideas down I could go back over them and look for things I could update and improve - after which I would improve the representation.

I think that the same thing applies with any DAW, and Renoise in particular. Renoise is not a good tool for just coming up with ideas. It forces you to get too detailed, too early. Come up with ideas first, and then use Renoise to present those ideas. Renoise will then play it for you and if you want to use that and harmonise with Renoise while deciding what your bassline, or top, or chord progression or whatever should be, then Renoise will be a reliable partner, telling you what you did before.

Finally, once you have all your tracks laid down, Renoise will let you tweak and balance and add effects and go nuts.

Maybe this helps? It’s a view on the workflow which might be relevant.

18

I had a sudden insight:

I don’t really compose in renoise , and I doubt that the original poster really should (although it’s possible to do it with tools such as noodletrap).

What do I mean by this?

I think, based on the discussion in this thread, that we are confusing two different stages: creation , and representation.

Creation is where you come up with musical ideas. What you really want is a very low friction way of approximating what you’re thinking, musically, but the details of representation are mostly irrelevant.

Representation is how you actually pin down what you’ve come up with, and make it real.

Let’s take as an example an aria I wrote recently. The process is different, to a point, because my final product was sheet music, not a recording, but the principles still apply.

I did not start out with blank staves and start scribbling lines. Instead, I sang some ideas to myself, and to flesh them out I picked up a guitar and strummed chords. (I’m a fair guitarist, so it was low friction for me. Other people might prefer to set up an instrument in Renoise and use a MIDI keyboard to noodle things out. Your mileage may vary, but the principle remains the same.) Only after I’d hammered out a meaningful series of tones did I start writing actual musical notation. Composition first, then representation. However once I had written my ideas down I could go back over them and look for things I could update and improve - after which I would improve the representation.

I think that the same thing applies with any DAW, and Renoise in particular. Renoise is not a good tool for just coming up with ideas. It forces you to get too detailed, too early. Come up with ideas first, and then use Renoise to present those ideas. Renoise will then play it for you and if you want to use that and harmonise with Renoise while deciding what your bassline, or top, or chord progression or whatever should be, then Renoise will be a reliable partner, telling you what you did before.

Finally, once you have all your tracks laid down, Renoise will let you tweak and balance and add effects and go nuts.

Maybe this helps? It’s a view on the workflow which might be relevant.

Agree with most of it, but there are certainly DAWs where composition and representation merge nicely. All DAWs which allow you to “jam” and play around with arrangements (e.g. Live).

Most people are drawn to Renoise because people tell them that trackers are “fast” in getting you from your ideas (composition) to their realisation (representation), but I have yet to see someone putting together a track (with melodies and chords, not C-4 Techno!) faster in Renoise than in another DAW :slight_smile:

19

Agree with most of it, but there are certainly DAWs where composition and representation merge nicely. All DAWs which allow you to “jam” and play around with arrangements (e.g. Live).
Most people are drawn to Renoise because people tell them that trackers are “fast” in getting you from your ideas (composition) to their realisation (representation), but I have yet to see someone putting together a track (with melodies and chords, not C-4 Techno!) faster in Renoise than in another DAW :slight_smile:

It’s possible I’ve been doing it badly in other interfaces, but trackers have always been fast for me, once I’ve decided what I want. Type in the notes, done. Certainly faster than sheet music, even in electronic form. I actually find trackers faster than pianoroll, because I keep clicking the wrong note and then having to go back and undo what I did, and fiddling with note length in pianoroll … well, it hasn’t been good.

And you can jam around in renoise, as I said. Go to the sample window, set up a sound or instrument, bang away on your MIDI keyboard. And noodletrap lets you save what you’ve been doing, so it’s even better. I am just faster at expressing myself on a guitar, so that’s what I do. If I were a pianist, I’d have a massive USB keyboard in front of me and do my composing straight in Renoise, using simple sine waves. It just isn’t part of the workflow at which Renoise is particularly efficient, that’s all. If the original poster was trying to compose by guessing and typing in notes, that’s probably not an efficient workflow - that’s what I was trying to point out.

20

It’s possible I’ve been doing it badly in other interfaces, but trackers have always been fast for me, once I’ve decided what I want. Type in the notes, done. Certainly faster than sheet music, even in electronic form. I actually find trackers faster than pianoroll, because I keep clicking the wrong note and then having to go back and undo what I did, and fiddling with note length in pianoroll … well, it hasn’t been good.

Don’t know how it works with other software so much but FL’s piano roll is basically like Renoise, when the song isn’t playing drawing a note in the piano roll will cause the instrument to play that note so you can just hold the mouse button and drag it around until you hear the pitch you were looking for. I actually run into this problem more in Renoise if I forget to set edit step back to 0. It’d be cool if there was something like a pause step key so you could just hold it until you’re done auditioning different notes and then it would jump on release. I think the bigger downside to sequencing in a piano roll is note length, it’s much more intuitive to type in a note and it plays indefinitely until you place another note or note off