Introduction And Questions

Hi all,

Just registered today. I have been using Renoise for just a bit more than over a week now and so far it has been a great joy. I have a tracker/sequencer background and have been using one since ten years to make musical impressions for my bands or just for fun, to make rapmusic. I downloaded the offline tutorial, downloaded some FLV’s to go along as well, and there I was, at three o’clock in the morning…

However, the MIDI tracker program I always used is a little bit different than any other tracker I have seen, and I am pretty much attached to the possibilities it offers me, such as the ability to use two different measures simultaneously, within the same pattern. Because of that I still use that homegrown program, which, by the way, has never been published. One thing I should mention about this program is that rather than keyboard-focused, it uses I simple GUI to ‘hammer’ in your notes. So, the whole keyboard-hexa oriented approach is somewhat new to me.

The reason to look into Renoise was that I got a little bit fed up with the limited sound possibilities that MIDI-only has to offer. I always build my music from the ground up, using MIDI. I than record everything by hand, each track seperately, into Cool Edit (or Adobe Audition as it is now called), add a little bit of flavor and color to them and than I’ll record my vocals in CE/AA as well. Because I have only a simple and cheap soundcard, the music that I produced had a distinguished sound. Renoise now, allows me to add some serious effects to those tracks which allows me to take the sport up to a whole new level.

I have a bunch of questions I’d like to ask, even though they might be obvious, perhaps even stupid questions, to some of you. I am not asking for thorough explanations, but rather some pointers, weblinks and the like, so I could learn more.

  1. The first strange thing I noticed about Renoise has to do with the measures. I created samples from the original tracker-pattern by recording them in CE/AA. Those I loaded into Renoise and when I applied them I had to bring LPB (Lines Per Beat) up to 85, in order to fit a length 64 4/4th beat as a loop. So, the question, I suppose, would be; How do Beats Per Minute (BPM) relate to Beats Per Line (BPL)? I had a look into the tutorials section but could not find anything that explained it.

  2. Can a note, for instance a right-crash from the drums, that sounds at the end of a measure/track, be brought over to the next measure/track, that is, make it still sound even though the measure/track in which it started has come to an end?

If not, is it possible to create tracks of different lengths, that sound simultaniously, which would be a more than sufficient workaround?

For an example, listen to the MIDI-original recording, I uploaded. At 1.11 minute, there is a right-crash sounding, and it continues to sound well into the next measure/track. With the Renoise Mix I made, that somehow does not work.

3a. Right now I use 32bit WAV samples, 44.1kHz and as a result the total size of the samples used is 125 Mb and the size of the song itself is almost 145 Mb. I noticed, ofcourse, the XRNI/flac files in the instrument browser. How would I go about to reduce the amount of Mb’s I currently need for my songs?

3b. Is there an explanation somewhere on the web, that goes into details about the filesize and what is included in a XRNS-file? I mean, from the size of the XRNS I’d say the original samples got copied into that file or is that incorrect?

  1. I am looking for a good (offline) mixing and effects tutorial. Are there any that could or should be recommended? Preferably one that goes into detail about what is happening on a WAV-form level, that is, one that does not just automate an effectsprocess.

For those who took the time to read and answer, thanks in advance. Your help is greatly appreciated.

For the curious amongst you I have included the renoise experiment and the original MIDI-version, recorded in CE/AA. Grab it here, if you like…

http://rapidshare.de/files/40818769/Renois…iments.rar.html

First off, ifrom what I’ve experienced, renoise doesn’t handle massive sound files particularly well. Indeed trackers are meant more for smaller clips, if your samples are 125mg, you might be better cutting them up to be a bit smaller.

  1. LPB is lines per beat, so how many lines does it scroll down to get to a beat.
    With bpm 60 and lpb 4, a second will be every 4 lines, with lpb 8, a second will be every 8 lines.
    Make sense?
    Also, keep in mind you can change the pattern length. if your sample is that long, maybe you need a longer pattern?

  2. I don’t think so, but you could trigger the sample again the point which it left on if you wanted using 09xx.

  3. You could convert the samples to ogg. There is a tutorial around here for that somewhere.

  4. I don’t know sorry, what I will say though, is that I learnt quite a lot from messing around with instruments in renoise, looping samples and playing around with effects and then. Take a look at foo’s song on this page and see what he gets from just one sample being manipulated in different ways, this is also an example of how renoise is more efficient with smaller samples.

I hope that’s some help to you, keep messing around with stuff, renoise is a real versatile program, and you can make some great stuff with a real intuitive process, especially if you said you like to build from the ground up.

Hi welcome to Renoise, I won’t answer any of your questions per say, but will recommend you read the following thread in regards to “long samples”

http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?s=&…st&p=119367

See ya.