I never really tried to record myself tweaking a VST instrument live from it’s own editor. Previously, if I needed to add effects to a VST instrument, I would convert it into a Sample and just use pattern effects and other VST track FX. Obviously, this isn’t ideal but it hasn’t been a major problem. Now this particular VST I’ve come across has built-in features which I do need to program in the sequencer or be ideally able to record live. It’s just a free turntable plug-in from some years ago.
So how exactly do I get this to work live in Renoise - for example when I alter the scratch amount, pitch, power on and any other settings live they’ll be faithfully recorded into Renoise? Right now I’ve tried just hitting the record button hoping my live tweaking will be recorded but it’s not saving into the sequencer.
I have attached the manual below.
I guess this question would ultimately apply to tweaking/automating all VST instruments with the Renoise sequencer using the VST’s internal effects and options, and having those tweaks to be played back live - that is something that I need to learn in general I just never got around to it.
If it is a vsti, you first need to add an ‘*instr. automation’ device in the ‘Track Dsp’s’ tab, if your vsti isn’t automatically assigned to the device, you need to link it yourself.
From the Tracks Dsp tab you can either straight right mouse click record the parameter changes into the pattern / or automation editor. There is a toggle for this, left of the ‘Q’ (quantization) icon underneath the pattern editor.
After adding the ‘*instr. automation’ device you can also go to the automation editor and draw envelopes/point values to control the vsti.
Djeroek - thanks bro, that helped a hell of a lot, I appreciate all the information and now the automation side of things is working very nicely. I still didn’t quite understand the part about “Q” - and I’m still unable to record live tweaking. Any idea how to do that? I mean, using the Turntablist plug-in as an example, I’d like to be able to mess around with the scratch slider while the song is playing and have Renoise record it at the same time. Do you know how I might be able to do that?
Thanks again bro, your post opened up a whole new world of possibilities that I never took the time to investigate before!
The next to the ‘Q’ thing was just a visual direction to an icon, an icon which lets you record automation to the pattern or to the automation editor.
Unfortunately you can’t record straight from a plugins gui, you need to add an automation advice mentioned above, and either right mouse click a parameter while having the song playing to record tweakage live, or first midi-map the slider from the *instr automation device and hook it up to a midi controller, to record controller twiddling.
You can link up the parameters to a midi controller through the midi map window (press ctrl+m to open it, read the manual for better instructions).
What you need to find out is what name the scratch slider from the vsti-gui has in the *Instr automation device, you can have the plugins gui open while trying different sliders to see what connects.