Beside of simply being able to map a lot of more things in Renoise 2.5, there are also a bunch of advanced, optional features for the controls freaks out there:
* HowTo do mappings (the quick & easy way):
After opening the MIDI Mapping Dialog (Control/Command + “M”) you’ll see a dialog, and Renoise will highlight stuff that can quickly be assigned to MIDI.
Simply click on the highlighted frames, then press a note or hit a button on your controller to automatically assign the note or controller.
Thats it. For all basic scenarios that’s all you have to do.
* HowTo do mappings (more advanced and funky stuff):
Theres much more you can map in Renoise, than the stuff you see highlighted in the GUI with the mapping dialog. To see all available mappings, click on the “Available & Active Mappings” button in the dialog. This will open up a categorized and searchable list with a lot of items.
There are two main categories:
- Global Mappings: Transport Controls, like Start/Stop, Sequence Navigation, Context Sensitive, “Flexible” Mappings and so on…
These are the mappings that you can im/export, reuse/share between songs with the Im/Export button in the dialog.
If you always want a default mapping for every new song set, do it once, and save the song as template song -> “Song Properties” -> “Template Song”
- Parameter Mappings: Mappings to Track DSP parameter
This simply is a list of all currently available tracks, DSPs and parameters in your song. All those mappings are “hard linked”, which means, as soon as you add a new FX you would have to manually add mappings for the new FX as well. Basically this simply is what we had in older Renoise versions.
More about “Global Mappings”. Let me give you a small overview about those first, so you have an idea of the possibilities of the “advanced” mappings:
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“Seq Triggering” allows you to start playing patterns in the sequence, just as you do when clicking on the small play buttons in Renoises sequencers.
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“Seq Muting” allows you to mute single slots in the Pattern Matrix
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“Track Muting/Levels” gives you the ability to set up mixer alike mappings for the whole song. There you can not only explicitly map tracks, lets say “Track 01”, but also the one you currently have selected in the GUI. -> Context sensitive mappings.
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“Track DSPs” allows you to automatically focus your MIDI controller on the Track DSP that you currently have selected in Renoise. This means, once set up, you can control !any! DSP in Renoise with a small set of sliders & buttons on your MIDI controller, instead of mapping every single FX parameter over and over again in the song.
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“Navigation” lets you change the focus, selection in Renoise for the previously mentioned topics: Selected Track, Selected DSPs and so on. So you don’t even have to touch the mouse or keyboard to for example go to the next DSP to edit it…
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and finally: “GUI” Lets you simply control Renoises GUI, like showing the mixer, pattern editor and so on.
* [Trigger], [Toggle], [Set] and Note / Controller Settings
In the “Global Mappings” you often will find mappings which are doubled, only have a different postfix -> [Trigger], [Toggle], [Set]
Those define how Renoise reacts on the MIDI signals you throw at it. There are dozens of combination, message types that MIDI controllers do send. Also you might want to either use a button, note or a fader to control if for example the song is playing. To support all this, we’ ve added multiple types of targets in Renoise most mappings.
Lets say you have a button on your MIDI controller which sends a MIDI CC message with value 7F when its pressed, and a 00 as soon as you release it again.
[SET] will then
7F -> turn something on (lets say Start Playing)
00 -> turn something off (lets say Stop Playing)
[TOGGLE or TRIGGER] will
7F -> trigger something (Start Playing)
00 -> do nothing, ignore the message
In this case, you would choose TOGGLE or TRIGGER, because you don’t want the song stops playing again as soon as you’ve released the button.
Alternatively you can of course also configure your MIDI controller to send what you need it, but when the controller can not be configured, you can make Renoise learn to deal with this this way. .
Another example with MIDI Notes: Lets say you’ve mapped “Transport/Playback/Start/Stop Playing [Set]” to C-4 of your master keyboard.
In the lower part of the Mapping dialog, you can now tell Renoise what should happen when you press the note on your keyboard.
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Gate (Switch On and Off)
Hit the Note and the song will start Playing. As soon as you release the note, it will stop playing again -
Value: (Use Velocity)
Hit the Note hard, and the song will start Playing. Hit it softly and it will stop.
In most cases Renoise will already try to guess what “good”. For everything else, experiment a bit with your controller & the different mappings you have in Renoise and you should see the pattern…
* Share Your Mappings
If you think you’ve created a nice “Global Mappings” setup for your controller, then please share it and help/inspire others. All you have to do is:
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naming your MIDI Controller & Version + the setup you do use for this controller. Most controllers do have multiple presets, combinations of messages they do send
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describe what this and that controller does in your mappings
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export the mappings in the Mapping Dialog and include the file
-> put all into a post here on this board