I’m new to the program and to music production in general. I am just playing around with this prog for the simple enjoyment of sitting in front of my computer and making some noise enjoyable to me. However I can’t figure this prog. out for the life of me. I’m getting the hang of loading samples and what not, but what’s the deal with instruments. Like having a keyboard to play or a sax or bass or trumpet that can be played with the keyboard? How do you people get your sounds into REnoise? Look at it as a chance to brag about how smart you are about renoise and really spoon feed me how to get started playing around with this prog. the tutorials don’t help for jack for me.
The instruments are formed by the samples you load into it or just by the VSTI you select for it. (Or even when you select a MIDI instrument)
An instrument slot is the key to defining your instrument type and compilation. You can even combine them (A VSTI with samples and possibly with MIDI, but you will experience delay issues between the various types as well)
The controls of your instruments can either be done from your PC keyboard
or your MIDI keyboard if you have configured a MIDI or Master-keyboard device in Renoise.
If you use just one sample, then it is fairly easy to use it in your song.
If you have a more complex instrument like a saxophone or an electric guitar, it is better to use more samples of the same instrument on different key-notes. The more different sample snippets you use (different key-recordings) the more realistic your instrument will sound.
The place how to load multiple samples and define their usage to the key-ranges you want them to be played are described here:
http://tutorials.renoise.com/?n=Renoise.UsingSamples
Some sampler devices that you can use as a VSTI also support different layers which is a bit more complex sample configuration method since with this matrix, you can assign also the different ranges of velocity data to different samples and this gives you the ability to load samples that also have a different sounding or effect according to how hard a key is being pressed. The harder a key is being pressed by the user on the MAster-keyboard, the louder an instrument will sound and the more different it will sound e.g. when pressed soft, a soft blown sound from a saxophone is being played while when pressed very hard, an angry sound will be played instead.
But since a PC keyboard does not support velocity neither aftertouch, this kind of support has not be applied to Renoise it’s internal sampleplayer either.
But who knows what the future will bring.
If you use samples, then you can also apply the instrument envelopes:
Which is more detailed discussed here: http://tutorials.renoise.com/?n=Renoise.In…rumentEnvelopes
The instrument envelopes set the global effects for your instrument, which means that every sample you have loaded into your instrument, will have those envelope effects applied.
If you want to have different envelope settings for different samples, then you should load each sample into the first sampleslot of different empty instruments.
Good samples can take some time to find.
I would recommend you to go to kvr and download all the top rated free vsti’s.
A vsti is a software synthesizer, which can contain many different sounds, they often sound from quite okay to very good.
So this might save you some time in getting instruments…
Install them under the same base directory and in the renoise config chose the directory to which you installed them.
In the instrument settings select one of the vsti’s from the dropdown meny, now you can select any of its sounds…
Then its just a matter of playing and recording into the track you want it to be.
Btw vsti’s are a standard and can be used by many other music software too, so you wont regret downloading any of them…
If you are willing to spend some bucks, I suggest you to go for Native Instruments Kontakt 2 VST sampler, which has a comprehensive set of over 9GB of samples of every kind.
also check out some Kontakt-based drum samples collections:
- Stormdrum, now available at 50% off the price (see here).
- Studio Drums, bu Native Instruments, which I use all the time (see my signature for some music with these drums)
this song by me has been nearly 100% made with Kontakt and its samples collection, plus Studio Drums.
think twice before buying these stuff! try out the demos, look around, it’s costy stuff!
in the tips&tricks forum section you can find free samples sites
There are also some great free VST plugins. I will name two of them, because otherwise the list would really be too long:
- RGC Audio Triangle II a mono synth with great sound
- RGC Audio SFZ, a free sampler capable of loading SF2 format.
Well there is the pinned sample thread in the tips & tricks section as It-Alien mentioned. Regarding free VST’s there is a pinned thread in the general section, but many VST’s might not be available for Mac though.