I’ve just started using Renoise recently, and I absolutely love it! But there are a few things I’ve been struggling to work out. If anyone can answer any of these, that would be great. (If any of these things are not possible, I will add them to my list of feature suggestions!)
My questions…
Basic controls
What key do you hold down to make the song play temporarily while the key is held down?
What key do you press to toggle looping of the current pattern?
How to change scroll wheel speed so it only moves one line at a time? I find it really irritating how it jumps over lines!
When you enter notes in the editor, it always uses the currently selected instrument. How can you make it so it just changes the note, not the instrument?
I’m using a MIDI keyboard. When I use the keyboard to enter individual notes, it’s a pain having to press the down cursor key every time I want a rest. Is there any way to assign one of the keys on my keyboard as a rest? That would be really useful!
How can you select part of a pattern and play it in a continuous loop?
In the mixer screen, is there a way to adjust the relative volume of all tracks at the same time? I thought that holding shift while dragging a slider would do it, but that doesn’t work. (This might have to be a feature request?)
Samples
When looking through folders of samples and previewing them, how do you move between samples (other than using the mouse)? I would have expected the cursor keys to do it, but they don’t? Ideally it would be good to use the mouse wheel to move through the samples - that way I can whizz through all the different noises as rapidly as I like.
Previewing samples is a little slow on my computer. I want it to be instant but there are delays. I wonder, does Renoise use an index of sample “thumbnails” so that they can all be previewed quickly? (If not this may be a suggestion I’ll have to make.)
Important: Is there any way to create a ‘library’ of samples? I hate having to browse through folders to find my samples - switching between folders is very cumbersome and can easily take a dozen clicks just to get to the next folder you want. What I’d like is a library of all my samples, which I can assign tags to (eg “keyboard”, “organ”, “favourites” etc). That way I can see all my samples at once, and simply click on the tags to filter the results, like you can in other types of programs.
Effects
Is there any quick and easy way to toggle on/off all effects for a track?
12.Is there a way in Renoise to filter the reverb - eg remove high or low frequencies? (In Audacity’s reverb dialog, you get two sliders to control high and low frequencies.)
How can you do a multitap reverb in time with the beat? The control only allows you to set a delay in miliseconds which isn’t very helpful for the way I use it.
How to show the EQ full-screen? To me, EQ is one of the most essential parts of producing music and I want as much control as possible - so the small box is really not helpful in my opinion.
Automation
Let’s say I have three effects on a track and I want to treat them as a group and automate them as one. How can I do that?
Is there any way to quickly create an automation across the entire song, without having to create points for every single pattern? I would expect it to work like this: you create a point, and that point now runs across the entire song, until you add more points. To me it seems quite irritating to have to set up automation for every single block. I don’t really understand why it’s like that?
Window layout
Important: This is a major problem I’m having: how do you see the main editor window AND the mixing controls at the same time? I always want to be able to see what effects are applied to every track, and adjust the panning, without having to go away from the editor. It seems crazy having to switch to the mixer every time I want to do these basic things.
Is there a general way to customise the position of all the panels? I would have them in a totally different configuration if I could. For example, I would maximise the height of the editor so that there is nothing above or below it. I’d have the editor on the right and everything else on the left. etc.
For the list of patterns, I would much prefer a ‘left to right’ configuration. I really don’t like them running down vertically. Is there any way to change it to horizontal?
I also think it’s an unnecessary waste of space having two separate panels for patterns and automation - can they be combined somehow? (I’m guessing not so this will probably go on my list of requests.)
I hate not having a title bar - I like things to have clear titles at the top, and especially to see at a glance the name of the file I’m looking at. Can this be changed somehow?
Themes and colours
I’ve been playing around with the theme editor to get a color pallette I like. I have a big problem though - when I make the background a mid grey, I am unable to see the pattern numbers on the left! Is there any way to change the colour of that text?
I also can’t find a way to make the main body back lighter, as well as certain light-coloured background areas. (This might have to go on my request list.)
Also in the theme editor, there is an element called “alternate main back and font” - what is this? I can’t seem to see any difference when I change it.
For track colours, is there any simple way to return all the tracks to the default colours?
Is there any way to quickly toggle between two different themes? I’d like to have a ‘day’ and ‘night’ theme (I don’t want a dark screen in the day, or a bright screen at night).
I find the interface to be too small. Is there any way to make the whole interface bigger (including tooltips which are tiny)? Everything looks so small and I’m forced to lean in closer towards the screen. And bear in mind that I only have a low-res monitor so this should not be the case for me! It must look even worse on a 1920x1080 monitor - and I dread to think how it would look at 4k.
Is there any way to change the font size/spacing on the main tracker? It’s all a little too vertically squashed for my tastes.
Misc
29. Do VSTs work with Renoise?
I’ve been using trackers most of my life - I have a bunch of old Protracker files (.pt3) and various types of Amiga files (the type found at www.exotica.org.uk) - is there any way to get these into Renoise?
I know that’s a lot of questions. If you see anything you can answer then that would be very helpful, cheers
Ok, I took the quiz while eating some spaghetti. Hope it helps in some way.
Basic controls
Not exactly possible I think. You can hit enter to play a single line though.
that would be ctrl+scroll I think. (Keybound buttons should also show the current shortcut in the tooltup) Also notice the patternloop column in the Pattern Matrix on the left.
no Idea, don’t really use a mouse. In the Preferences (ctrl + ,) -> shortcut settings there is an option to disable mousewheel acceleration at least. But patternnavigation with mouse is one of the weaker points of renoise.It tends to jump a lot if you use leftclick to navigate
there is an Icon below the instrument list looking like this: >I<, turn it on to switch the current instrument to that of the respective column. You can always change the instrument number of a note by hand. And then there is a tool called “convert instruments in track” or something like that. you should install that, so you don’t have to do this.
you can adjust the number of lines the cursor moves after entering a note with ctrl + number (or via the box below the patterneditor between the quantize and the vol button) Linking a midi event to the note off(A or capslock) or the down key - that I don’t know.
You cannot really set a start and end point for a loop inside a pattern. You can set a fraction in the transport menu right to the metronome button, pressing numpad-enter will loop that fraction of a the current pattern’s length, depending on where your note cursor is at the moment. Iirc there is an addon that will let you defione more precise loops, but I don’t remember its name.
No, I don’t think so. Again browse the tool section on renoise.com, there are plenty of little addons, that overcome some of renoise’s deficits and installing them is just downloading and dragdropping the file to your renoise window
Samples
alt-click the filebrowser or any other window to focus it (also go into the prefs->keybindings and enter focus in the searchfield to assign shortcuts) Only then you have access to all of the shortkeys available for that segment (middleMB click should do it too)
no thumbnails I think. Latency depends on samplesize
Not in the way of tagging files unfortunately. That would be pretty cool. Only thing you can do is selecting folders and right clicking on the numbers buttons right next to it, to set one of 4 shortcuts for each of the 4 tabs (song,instr,sample,other)
Effects
There is no simple shortcut. One solution would be to add a doofer device and drag all fx inside it, then just turn the doofer on/off. You can also stop a certain fx-device by using patterneffect 0x##, ## being the position of the device in the track’s chain.
Most effects are pretty barebone in renoise, guess it’s by design. To create more complex stuff, you are encouraged to stack filters, reverbs, delays, eqs… together. Make use of doofers and track grouping/send-tracks to split up signals. There is a pretty cool youtube tutorial on reverb creation by user achenar. Youtooble it. Also install “group selected tracks” tool. It’s a must have.
not easily possible. Maybe with a formula device, that would calculate the desired delaytime from bpm/lpb
sorry, not an option. Either use a vst or buy yourself a magnifying glass - I’d really like that as a feature in the futere…
Automation
A. combine them into a doofer (basically a container device with some neat sidefeatures) The downside is, that you cannot communicate with devices inside a doofer via patternFX. B. use the #hydra device to connect several device parameters to a single input. C. combine both
Curve automation in renoise kind of sucks. I use LFOs or the formula device and sometimes patternFX for most tasks. There is also a kind of hacky way to use a silent sample that is played on it’s own track, triggering a signal follower device. Works pretty good but you have to add another track and it is not as precise as the default automation
Window layout
It is crazy no detachable pattern editor/mixer for now. only the sampler window is detachable. I’d love it if renoise would be like blender GUIwise. But it isn’t. get used to the F-keys
not really.
no. Blasphemy.
you guessed right
That can be annoying. titlebar is only visible in nonfullscreen mode
Themes and colours
22,23. look for the item you want to change by using both dropdown menus
One that I find to be super useful is the Randomize Notes tool. Incredibly handy for sketching out ideas. Once you have a scale you like, you can use the shuffle option to create different variations of the notes within the pattern.https://www.renoise.com/tools/randomize-notes
Weizenkeim, thank you so much for the answers and links! So helpful! (You passed the exam with flying colours!)
In my current flat, I don’t have internet access and can only get online at the library - that’s why I haven’t replied sooner. It’s also why I can’t really read the manual right now, because it’s online and you can’t download it. Though I’m trying to download the videos as we speak (slowly)!
I do hope to get stuck into the manual sometime, but Renoise is generally quite straight forward to use and I’ve been able to start making great-sounding tracks very quickly! Having my questions answered has really helped me a lot, thanks!
With that said, I have 20 more questions!… (Please don’t feel you have to answer them all.)
General editing
When recording a part, how can you make it start playing when you hit the first note? (Ideally with the metronome playing prior, to let you get the timing right.) Otherwise, how can you record a part which starts at the beginning of the pattern?
I wonder, is there any way to adjust effect command values_with the mouse_(by dragging it?) Instead of always having to enter numbers? For parameters such as velocity and delay, I would love for a slider to appear so you can visually see exactly where it’s set, from lowest to highest. To me, this would be more intuitive than having to always think about numbers.
When I hold down enter, it plays really fast. Any way you get this to play back at normal speed?
34. What’s the quickest way to delete a block of pattern data? - Just seen the answer to this in the forum!
Important: Is there any way to control the ADSR of each note (especially the ‘release’ - how quickly the notes fade down)? Using trackers in the past, I’ve always just used the volume function to fade notes down, but this is quite a crude way of doing it which doesn’t work on slow tracks. I’d really been hoping that a modern tracker will allow proper control over a note’s release. That’s really why I opted for Renoise instead of the other DAWs - because I like fine precision.
Samples
I can’t seem to get NKI sound fonts to load? Doesn’t Renoise support them? If not, does anyone know a way to convert them to sfz format? (I don’t want to have to use a Kontakt VST just to play samples!)
How do you slightly adjust the pitch of an instrument? (ie tune it)
How can you make a sample play backwards?
Vocals
For a vocal track (sample) - is there any way to make precise timing changes? For example, say you want to slightly nudge the words of the vocal so they all fall precisely on the beat? Or match up a vocal with another instrument? I don’t like conventional DAW “timeline” views, but some kind of “timeline” view would be useful for adusting vocals.
Does Renoise have anything like autotune, or Cubase’s amazing VariAudio? (Probably not, but I’m just asking, LOL!)
Does Renoise have a vocoder function, or will I need a VST for that?
Mixing
Important: How do I group tracks, so I can mix them as a group?
Important: How do you create an effects track based on a different track? For example, I might want 3 copies of a track - one central, one left, and one right, each with different delays and effects. I know that I could just duplicate the track, but that would be a very sloppy way of doing it as I’d have to edit the notes in all three tracks!
GUI
Is there any way to get Renoise to automatically name tracks based on the most common instrument on the track? (If not, I’m going to suggest this as a feature as it would be SO helpful.)
Small detail, but on the editor, is there any way to hide leading zeros from numbers (eg from sample numbers) - I find them distracting
Just a thought really but I don’t think the ‘currently selected track’ is very clear - just a few lines in the corners. I’d rather the whole track light up. No way to do that is there?
Also, is there any way to make it so that the editor background is ‘coloured in’ wherever notes are playing? - So you can visually see where notes start and stop? This would be particularly useful for long samples such as vocals, so you can actually see they’re there!
Misc
How do you generate white noise?
Important: How do you change the playback transpose? (Not the actual notes, just how it sounds.)
My keyboard sometimes randomly stops working (suddenly no notes will play any more), so I have to unplug and replug and it works again? This seems to happen when I’m playing more notes at once. Not sure if it’s a problem with my keyboard, or a Renoise bug, or my PC?
For the record, just to introduce myself… most Renoise users would seem to be dance/techno producers. I’m quite different… I’m a pop musician. Been making pop music for years, in an amateur way, but wanting to go “pro” now! I’m also into orchestral/classical music, and in the future I’m hoping to use Renoise to do soundtracks - though I’m aware it doesn’t currently support video playback, which is a shame!
Use SPACE, ALT GR, ENTER and NUMPAD ENTER. Test it!
There are several keyboard commands, other than the selection within the pattern editor. Learn to differentiate between track, pattern and pattern-track and use the Matrix Editor for clear pattern-tracks or delete patterns…
Use the Note-OFF. Press A or Block Caps for insert this in edit mode.Renoise has an extraudinary precision of the time.Note-OFF also works with delay parameter (delay subcolumn).
For NKI use Kontakt Player VSTi inside the plugins to a instrument.
Depend of the instrument type. Sampler left column, Transpose & Finetune | Use VSTi/ VST controls.
I do not understand well.Unfortunately, Renoise does not have a timeline marker, use the vertical sequence on the left.You can use positive or negative delay to adjust different tracks, Pre Device (in + - 100 ms), inside DSP pane.
Insert a group, CTRL+G. Drag with mouse…
Learn the duplicate options for tracks and groups. right clic menu and track /duplicate…
No.You can color the tracks, but do not highlight the selected track in any other way…
^_^Blocks?Learn how to visually detect the Note-OFF’sand the ear.
Very strange.
32, 39, 47They are very good suggestions, already commented many times. Really Renoise does not understand genres, only shoots sounds …I also use Renoise for orchestral music …
first I wanted to answer some questions, but then got distracted by something else, now comming back to find it would be some serious self-punishment to dedicate the time to this. you should learn about “divide & conquer”.
I am offended by your avatar .
I dislike religious symbols , especially in a public forum .
yes, true, but can’t you see the force in action - the lord grants him the power to achieve mastership by absolute dedication to workflow details. I mean, both of us, it probably took us lazy bitches months to grasp how renoise works for us in&out, yet this guy finds the shortcut by disciplinated meditation. please have respect for the insane, I am too, you probably also, in a different way but still…
Hey chaps not make fun out of someone having faith in something that helped out of the dirt. Its just…a thread with not two or three but 50 questions will be a bit…unwieldy, and people will lose overview… RTFM, use the forum search, then ask the questions in the beginner section with one topic per thread and title that represents the question well. Only few people are insane enough to read through this thread to look for questions already answered.
I think there was a tool offering a scripted shorcut to keybind, that would toggle all DSP in a track on/off at once. Ask in a single (not fifty!) question thread, maybe someone can point you to it.
Put the reverb 0% dry 100% wet onto a send channel. Then you can pre/post filter, delay or process the reverb tail, or even stack reverbs. Using sends also enables you to send multiple tracks into the same reverb, and fine tune the dry/wet levels individually.
In the upper right corner of the multitap delay there is a button with a triangle pointing right. Click it, to reveal additional options for the currently selected tap. There you can choose linesynced operation, fractions can be dialed in with the delay sliders that will now switch from ms to percent offset.
Cannot be done yet
as said, hydras can make you control/automate 9 other devices in sync with a single slider (also additional hydras), and those devices can be in different tracks. A doofer might be an option to control multiple fx in the same track.
Yes but with limitations, only vst 2.4 modules, no sidechaining (no multi in, no multi out other than for vsti)
I think renoise can load .xm (“fast tracker 2”) modules, you might have luck with a seperate convertor program that can convert your modules to .xm - every conversion might cause some glitches on the final song though, but you should be able to extract note data and the samples via this path.
To the left of the sample waveform view in the sampler should be a sample options panel, it should feature transpose and finetune buttons. Finetune works like a semitone has 127 cents, not 100, be aware of this. The spectrum analyser might be useful, and musically trained hearing, I sometimes calculate tunings by reading the width of a wavecycle in the sample editor.
reverse the sample in the sample editor, or use the reverse pattern effects command, or use reverse or ping pong loop, whatever suits the sound your are aiming for best.
40+41 use vst, be aware that vst effects in renoise are only supported with stereo in, so vocoder needs to be one that works with modulator/carrier left/right split action.
45 we are all nerds, we love our trailing zeros and prefixes and stuff
48 load a white noise sample or generator vst, or there is also some renoise tool that can generate noise samples I think.
I dislike religious symbols , especially in a public forum .
OK I’m sorry you’re offended. I also am offended by a great many public things - but what can you do? But please, let’s have a little perspective here. The entire history of the United Kingdom, and most European countries is based on that symbol - the Cross has been upheld for millennia as a symbol of our national faith. It’s what everyone has always believed in. Everything that is good about modern society is thanks to that symbol. To me, that symbol represents my friend and Saviour Jesus, the man I owe everything to, who changed my entire life. He is everything to me. I don’t really see what is offensive about a symbol representing the kindest, nicest man who ever lived? So I’m sorry you’re offended, but you may not realise how much good that symbol can do for hopeless people and how much it can change their lives.
Check this out, it’s pretty cool, 232 pages of answers.
But there are a few things I’ve been struggling to work out. If anyone can answer any of these, that would be great. (If any of these things are not possible, I will add them to my list of feature suggestions!)
