I know there are most definitely Renoise artists that browse this forum that pull off live sets with their laptops. My question is: How?
I’ve seen video of a few prominent artists with Renoise running in the background while on stage… is there something I’m missing? How are they playing multiple tracks in one instance of Renoise?
Also, has anyone exported their Renoise multi tracks in pattern sliced mode for play in hosts like Ableton? If so, could someone detail the process on the Ableton side?
EDIT: oops… and then i noticed “no gear” in the title. bummer.
[s]i’ve been thinking about this as well, and for me and my needs i’d rather have two instances of renoise,
rather than to rely on one monsterous/dangerous file on one computer…
when i’ll do my first live show, i think i’ll go for this:
2 laptops, running one instance each
(each with it’s own midi controller and soundcard)
a 2 or 4 track dj-mixer (preferably with some effects)
a SAFE, fun and busy setup
(of course i’d need to buy half of this stuff, but… probably worth it)[/s]
It makes you wonder how much time you need to invest preparing something good & stable. Probably depends on your own ‘high’ standards and ability to be able to freestyle or want to travel through a more ‘pre-determined’ set.
I have an hour to fill in a couple of weeks and want to go Renoise too, as learning and using a shady Ableton version for the first time is to risky imo. I was thinking about choosing the ‘best’ tracks and their coolest sections to magnify live & block-loop/sequence-loop & vst midi control madness these.
The problem I run into is indeed, cross-fading Renoise with something else, to be able to load the next track or special live concoction in the meantime.
In the past I’ve cheated, creating a full set on cd, play that and mangle parts with a Korg kaosspad , while triggering samples on top in Renoise. Although the crowd has no idea what you’re doing anyway this didn’t feel right and most fun to me. Especially now with the pattern-matrix, midi control and more confidence with the program, I want to push it harder.
I’m thinking about cutting the selected tracks in parts and load these in a special live set-up track. I’ll sync the parts so tempo changes are taken into account. Have a bunch of cool loops set-up on muted channels to kick in or not. I’ll write comments as pointers on what sections are cool to loop and will have a bunch of midi-controllable vst on the master out as well.
For transitions, loading between these live set-up tracks I’m thinking about mixing it with cd’s, not trying to beat match anything (as I only have a normal cd player without pitch control), but rather have an easy ambient cross-fade. So it could be something like 15 minutes beats, crazy last minute manipulation, use the mixer to cross-fade in the cd track with pre set-up smoothness so I can load up the next track. I think this can work.
The only problems I can foresee is cd-skipping because of speakers bumping the lazer, my mental raving lol or a renoise/windows crash at the moment my cd tracks is almost ended.
I think choosing the right vsts are essential for a stable set as Renoise has been hard to crash on its own. Maybe just use native dsp and send-tracks?
I like to hear experiences with Renoise live as well, alternatives, what does work, what not? Which vsts are cool to use, which should be avoided etc
2 instances of renoise, than you won’t be using asio drivers, but direct-sound drivers instead? Mmm interesting, haven’t thought about trying to do it this way, would work with big files pre-loaded, wouldn’t want to load tracks in the background while tweaking the other Renoise instance. Something to try for sure, wonder if my BCR midi-controller would accept 2 Renoises though?
Truth, will have to experiment with load-times and song combo’s before I decide what’s best. Having some kind of long dance momentum or shorter sections. I have a bunch of new tracks I want to try out and do not want to completely fiddle them off.
Something I ‘worry’ about a little is the sound quality of running cut-up already ‘mastered’ i [/i]tracks, through plugins, mixed together with other loops. My tracks are too dense already , so it makes more sense to be able to mute portions out of tracks. The prospect of rendering each track into multiple segments however is not very tempting! A lot of work.
I can either run ASIO(4all) or DirectSound, not have both sounding at the same time. Depending on which service was started first, for example: DirectSound in Mozilla or ASIO in Renoise, this will decide which service plays the sound, the other is silent. Messed up asio4all also doesn’t allow you to record youtube audio for example,…
Hey,
so I’ve tried to show a demo of how i play live in this video (with gear)… It’s basically mixing between two songs live with two different instances of renoise open at the same time. Again, it’s with gear… sorry
I was uncertain so hooked up my bcf to check this out, and what you stated, that really should not be an issue for ya.
Are you using 2.5beta?
I added the bcf to both renoise instances in midi prefs as in-device A, in my case the driver shows as BCF2000[1]
I guess yours would be shown as BCR2000[1]?
so then I went to each instance and assigned different faders to different dsp fx, that worked.
Then remembering we can use 1 CC for multiple parameters now, I tried assigning 1 same fader in both instances, it worked.
***So try doing what I did, if it doesn’t work maybe something is interfering.
So now I’m just confused on how to sync the 2 renoise’s together without needing some external bridge/routing handling things.
I just realized I helped continue this in a thread about no-gear!
After reading over what I wrote, that probably doesn’t help at all.
Maybe consider starting a thread in the help section with what OS is being used, and any possible external (outside of renoise) midi routing.
this isn’t really helpful for practical purposes, but i think an ideal scenario would be to have a special version of renoise intended for this purpose. like “renoise mix” or something. the idea being that its a stripped down version of renoise in terms of UI which plays 2 song files simulatenously and allows you to crossfade (midi assignable) between them. you can save the song files saved in a special format with additional data, so you can highlight specific effects or controls which you want to have available to manipulate live (rather than everything), and the rest is pre-rendered or embedded. likewise these specific controls you highlighted are saved to static midi parameters… so e.g. you have say 5 different live parameter slots which you can control live on each song, and you assign those 5 slots to midi controls, which remains the same when you switch between songs (making a standard midi mapping for an entire set easy - you predefine the controls you want live to a slot). then to make things even cooler you can control the playback speed and sync using existing time-coded vinyl technology (if you have it, if not then you just hit play/pause/stop). you would also have a sync lock button which matches tracks to the same tempo/sync and stuff like that (or not if you prefer). and you could still move between patterns within tracks as you would normally.
okay so i’m getting carried away, this would be masses of work and will probably never happen but it would be cool. more realistically though, i wonder if it is possible to have 2 instances of renoise rewired as slaves to an audio mixer patch (like a quite simple max/msp patch) which allows you to crossfade using only one ASIO driver, and have perhaps some basic control over sync, tempo etc? i might try this out when i get time, as i already have a dj style mixer i build in max/msp and it might not be so hard to do, assuming you can have to renoise instances rewired as slaves in the first place. the next question is how does sync usually work if you run two instances?
Yes… now we’re talkin! That would be absolutely perfect… two synch-able “xrns players” with efx parameter slots and an assignable crossfade. That would be f@# amazing. Plus the additional “external” synching ability you mentioned would open it up to involve other toys. Sounds like a great idea.
I can’t remember how to do this in OSX and Linux. (should be easy)
But, for wxp & previous I just remembered midi-yoke. http://www.midiox.com/myoke.htm
(I don’t yet know anything about 7 or vista)
I used this a lot a few years ago.
This midi routing software device allows master/slaving instances of renoise together.
After installation ‘requiring a reboot’ it is accessed through the control panel if you need to change anything to it.
Was Super fun! Earlier tonight I had 2 of my latest songs uploaded to soundcloud synced together.
Just designate one instance as master and any others as slaves in midi prefs.
They are pretty light songs so this config ran magnificently on the old thinkpad in my sig which also has wxpsp3 on it.
In my case I need to be using directsound on both instances.
I got share this too, it is weirdly awesome, and has nothing to do with really anything, except that I stumbled upon it while looking for a midi master control program. (it’s fun & very creative) http://www.wizardmaster.com/bludgeonsoft/wmcp/index.html
I would post the real image but the image on the site is not really what it is.
this might be a silly thought,… but i recall a semi-serious thread during the beta testing for 2.1 where someone suggested rewireing renoise to renoise.
it didnt really come to much from what i recall so maybe it was just a silly thought.
yep, that was me.
As funny as it may have seemed at the time, I still think it was a great idea.
I maybe shouldn’t have used the Flux Capacitor Image to denote what I was talking about.
…made perfect sense to me though.
Reading Bantais post here on Vaccine’s live set ( 
this didn’t feel right and most fun to me. Especially now with the pattern-matrix, midi control and more confidence with the program, I want to push it harder.
, so it makes more sense to be able to mute portions out of tracks. The prospect of rendering each track into multiple segments however is not very tempting! A lot of work.
