Midi Suggestions

A few suggestions for the MIDI part of Renoise :D

  • Multiple MIDI clocks

I currently use MIDI-OX and MidiYoke to send the outgoing MIDI clock to serveral other ports. It might be useful if Renoise had some internal feature in which one could ‘mark’ the ports the clock should be send to.

  • Initial Volume slider in the MIDI instrument box

I would like to have a slider in the ‘MIDI insturment’ box where i could change the MIDI volume for that channel. It’s lot of work to alter the volume for each note if you only want to in-/decrease that channel’s volume a bit.

  • MIDI port in / out configuration

It would also be helpful to have an option to select to the MIDI ports you actually -want- to use instead of all the ports and software ports that appear in the midi instrument box.

  • MIDI patch/bank configuration

I suggested it before, but i didn’t get too much responses about this. But it really would be cool if Renoise would support instrument defenitions. I currently have to keep a list of all the banknumbers which my hardware supports, and i have to search a lot before i have found the patch i need. It might an idea to create support for some sort of instrument defenition files, so one could simply pick out his/her MIDI device, and click on actual names instead of entering bank/patch-names by number. It also may define the CC’s the instrument accepts, so it would be easy to automate certain controlllers instead of keeping a big pile of documentation on your desk with all the CC’s your instruments support, which can be -a lot- :)

It might be an idea to import the script files from Cubase, or the .ins files which cakewalk uses since a there are already a lot of these files written for a lot of gear.

These features are mostly taken from other sequencers and i think they could be very useful in Renoise too.

Please let me know what you think!

Best regards,

Dennis

Yes, I’ve thought about this aswell, would be very useful

I’ve suggested this a couple of times before aswell ;)
To write such an editor that can read .ins-files from Cakewalk wouldn’t be very hard at all… the good thing is that you can download all the .ins-files for free from the net and they are only text-files so they are very easy to read.

Ok. Are 2 people enough for an entry in the W.I.P page? :D

No seriously. The basic MIDI support is nothing but awesome. It’s why i mostly stopped using other software as a great tracker with MIDI support is a thing i long dreamed of.

With the upcoming arranger/pianoroll, real-time recording and the ‘zoom’ function the gap between Renoise, the tracker (well, it’s more already), and conventional piano-roll based sequencers is getting smaller and smaller.
I imagine that Renoise one day will be -the- production tool with all the good things from both worlds. The ultimate tool for both MIDI and Audio.

But i don’t know for sure what Renoise will look like within a few years. I just hope the MIDI part won’t be left behind to much. I guess i shouldn’t worry about it to much. When i think of the upcoming features, wow…

Best regards,

Dennis

Ok i admit it! I’am a -bit- frustrated about the lack of responses on the MIDI part of Renoise. I feel at least some of features (volume slider) are pretty important for about any program supporting MIDI. Renoise seems to be dominated by the VST users? :)

I wonder :

  • There are just a few users interested in the MIDI features of Renoise
  • My suggestions (of course shared by some others) totally suck

Can anyone shed a light on this? I’am confused :)

Best regards,

Dennis

Your suggestions dont suck, they are now part of the enourmous todo list. We might maybe add for the next WIP, if we should concentrate more on MIDI in the next releases in general or not. I have no idea how many Renoise users actually use MIDI, so this would be good to know before starting with details.

About the channel volume :
Yo can already do this with a “*MIDICCDevice” or with pattern effects :

With a “*MidiCCDevice” : manual link

Setup a MIDI instrument with the channel you want to control. Add a MIDICCDevice in a track of your choice and set it up to control the MIDI instrument. Then choose CC number 10 (this controls the volume if I havnt mixed up something now) and move it in realtime or record it as usual.

With a patterncommand : manual link
— 01 … 90 1066 (volume and pan column visible)
will send a the CC message with Instrument 01 on controller 10 with a value of 66

edit by It-Alien:
the Send CC Change command is 90, not 91 as mentioned by Taktik.
Corrected it in bold