hey sorry if this is a really stupid question but I can’t figure out how to load samples into renoise. am I just supposed to manually put each instrument in its appropriate folder or is there an easier way to do it?
The most easiest way is dragging and dropping them from the explorer, but in that case, each sample gets its own instrument slot.
If you want to load them into the same instrument, drag and drop them from the Renoise diskbrowser (to where you have browsed to your samples folder) to the sample area in the instrument settings tab in the bottom area.
Rightclick any of the preset boxes in the diskbrowser to store your sample folder location if you want to quickly jump back later.
Isn’t there something about this in the manual? 
Or toggle the Create Multi Samples Instrument setting in Preferences. 