'Locking' instruments to tracks

I feel like I’m overlooking something obvious again… but…

–I have a MIDI keyboard going in.

–I want to switch the tracks AND instrument I’m playing simultaneously.

–But if I click on a different track, the instrument doesn’t change. I get the same instrument on a different track (with different FX, volume etc). So I have to remember to click each time first on the track and THEN on the instrument.

This seems like odd behaviour. How often will I want to keep playing the same instrument on a different track vs. playing different instruments on different tracks? Particularly playing live, it’s annoying. Maybe there’s a simple setting I’m overlooking somewhere?

(PS: I’m enjoying Renoise a lot. Played my first live show since switching to it last night and it sounded pretty good. Obviously I’m still a newbie with some aspects of it… but it continues to get more exciting to use as I learn more.)

It’s not possible. And yes, it is annoying. But Renoise is also not meant for live playing. Redux, the new product however is, so I assume it will be possible there. And if we’re lucky, they will port that functionality back into Renoise in the next version.

Please take a closer look at the MIDI tab, specifically the MIDI Input section.

When triggering from an external MIDI controller (or multiple different controllers), each instrument can be locked to a specific MIDI device, channel, note range, and even a specific track. Any incoming notes matching those criteria will automatically be routed to the desired track — you don’t even have to touch Renoise to change instrument or track, you simply make the necessary change on your controller.

I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re doing live, or what kind of controller(s) you have, but there’s actually a lot of potential flexibility here. Assuming you have a larger keyboard with some decent drum pads, then you could actually split multiple different instruments — bass, pads, lead, etc. — over the key range, while triggering completely different stuff — unique fx, sample stabs, risers, whatever — from the drum pads.

PS. A general tip to automatically select the appropriate instrument when changing tracks in Renoise: Main menu > Options > Auto Capture Instrument From Pattern

I`ve also written an autocapture tool that will scan the whole track rather than just the current track as the renoise native autocapture does.

See here for tool and further explaination:

http://www.renoise.com/tools/auto-capture-instrument-from-first-note

Do beware of fully empty tracks if you decide to use live though. i.e. best not to have them as the tool will end up taking time to scan the track and find nothing each time.

So I have to actually record some data in a pattern with the correct instrument selected before a given track will know which instrument to use?

What’s the best way to set up an effectively blank track for playing through live via MIDI (that will always select the right instrument for that track)?

dblue, thanks – I should look more closely at the MIDI settings – but part of the problem is that I want to use the same keyboard (its full range) for different keyboard sounds within the same track. It’d probably be easy if it were a more sophisticated keyboard that let me change its channel setting with a button push. It’s not a dealbreaker.

So I have to actually record some data in a pattern with the correct instrument selected before a given track will know which instrument to use?

What’s the best way to set up an effectively blank track for playing through live via MIDI (that will always select the right instrument for that track)?

If you want to use my tool for this, you can manually enter the instrument number in the very first note position of each track aswell. In the following picture you can see that instrument “02” is associated with “Track 04” and instrument “03” (circled in red) is associated with “Track 05”. This is all done on line “00” in the very first pattern of the song and you need not have actual notes recorded in each track this way. You can also change the associations by changing these numbers as you go along if you want to.

Now with the tool enabled you will see the selected instrument change accordingly when you change tracks.

Note: to avoid any possible conflicts it is probably wise to disable the renoise autocapture under the options menu too.

Auto%20capture%5B1%5D.png

You could also bind an instrument to a specific track in the midi tab. No matter where you play it, it’ll be routed to that track. It’d be the other way round then, you’ll select an instrument and it’ll play in it’s track even if you’ve selected another track.

I would think whatever you want to achieve, it could be done with some lua tool the way you want. But your post doesn’t make your motivations regarding the workflow clear enough. Like routing instruments to tracks might work in a live environment where no notes are being recorded or edited, but just jamming with the instruments would be going on. For editing and such maybe some tool might be useful to automatically jump to the track an instrument is assigned to (in the midi tab) when the inst is selected. Also other way round, you’d select not a track, but an instrument.

Thanks heaps Ledger, that script seems to do just what I want!

Thanks heaps Ledger, that script seems to do just what I want!

No problem