New Tool: Keyboard Jammer

Renoise Tools
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Edit: it seems that this tool doesn’t work properly with the 2.7 beta, especially when edit mode is enabled. So for now, I wouldn’t recommend using it for any other purpose than for testing.

Here’s a tool I made to trigger separate instruments on separate tracks from the keyboard, so that you can use Renoise as a drum sampler with different effects on each sample.

It creates a temporary keyboard mapping using the first four keys on each row of the keyboard. ‘z’ will trigger instrument 0 on track 1, ‘x’ will trigger instrument 1 on track 2, and so on for keys c,v,a,s,d,f,q,w,e,r,1,2,3,4. (In Renoise, track numbers start at 1, instrument numbers at 0.)

The triggered note is always C4.

To send a note off event, hold Shift while pressing the key. (I couldn’t find a way to make it respond to a key release)

Holding Alt when pressing the key will mute/unmute the corresponding track.

“” closes the tool.

Backspace undoes the last action.

As it is now, you have to arrange the tracks and instruments in order to use this tool. However, the midi routing options in the 2.7 beta open up possibilities to make it more flexible in the future.

To use this tool the Renoise OSC server has to be running in TCP mode on port 8000.

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Nice one! Will test it.

edit:

Am I right that it always takes the first multi-instrument and splits this across channels? If I select a second instrument in the instrument list, click the script window, and than play across the computer keyboard, only the first instrument is playing, not the one highlighted.

Because in your description you mention separate instruments, I thought this meant linking instruments like in Renoises new midi-input functionality…or maybe I’m doing something wrong here.

Also important to note, that the script only works if the little gui window is ‘active’ (when the letters ‘keyboard jammer’ are white, not grey). Whenever you minimize Renoise or click away, you’ll lose the scripts power :) .

Maybe you can make it visually more clear when the gui is active or not?

edit 2: when I’m jamming a beat in live, all tracks are fully expanded to 12 columns! Is there a way to minimize this?

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hmmm, it seems that this tool doesn’t like the 2.7 beta. :unsure: I’m sure it didn’t expand all the tracks into twelve columns before, but I forgot to test recording in 2.7. Very strange… Not sure what’s going on here, I’ll look into it, because this makes it pretty unusable.

I know that it only works when the window is active. This is a limitation of the Renoise API (as far as I know, anyway). Good call on making it more visible.

I’m not sure what you mean with a multi instrument, but the way the tool works is that it takes the first 16 instruments and assigns each to a key and a track, and plays them regardless of the instrument that is selected. That is why you have to rearrange the instruments and tracks to use it properly. If it only plays the first instrument in the list, than there is something wrong, but I can’t reproduce this behavior. If I have a snare in instrument slot 0 and a kick in slot 1, then ‘z’ plays a snare on track 1, and ‘x’ plays a kick on track 2.

With the midi routing in 2.7, I think it should be possible to assign any instrument to any key without rearranging the instruments, and this is what I want to do next. But first I’ll have to sort out the recording issue.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback! Seems like I have some work to do.

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I think there is a misunderstanding on the word instrument :) .

When you say: ‘it takes the first 16 instruments’, you don’t mean 16 instruments out of the instrument list in the top right upper plane of the Renoise gui (next to the disk op), but you mean the first 16 slots/samples in the instrument settings, right?

  • good luck scripting!
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No, that is exactly what I mean. I am talking about instruments, not samples. I was kind of hoping it would be a misunderstanding because then I’d know what the hell was going on!

At least I think I know what is going on with the columns. The way notes are recorded when chord mode is of seems to have been changed in the new version. In 2.6, if you played a note before the previous one was released it would be written to the same column as the previous one. In 2.7, the second note is written to the next free column. Because this tool doesn’t record note off events, it makes Renoise register successive notes as simultaneous ones.

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could this be used to actually modify what comes in from the pc-keyboard? so that one press of a keyboard note would output 3 notes, for instance? or the same note with a delay?

press C
out comes
dun…dun…dun

for instance

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Interesting idea, but I don’t think it would work. I mean, it’s possible, pretty simple even, but the timing would be horrible. The reason is that I’d have to use the timer included in the API which has a resolution of approximately 0.1 second, as it’s not designed for this kind of thing. Add to that the fact that this tool is pretty slow to begin with, and I don’t think it’s worth the effort.