@noisetoys : Thank you for your positivity and encouragement I could get the versions translated in German I suppose (let me talk to the publisher first!).
@raul : "
I think you should do a lot of research, contrast, and talk to a lot of people who know and use Renoise before tackling such a project.Be very patient with the accumulation of data.And somehow it will be necessary to be impartial as far as possible.It should not be a “personal” book of what you think is Renoise and what is around.Here you will have a challenge.
It is also advisable to learn LUA, the Renoise API and make tools. Then you have a different idea of what Renoise is.Without doing this step, it is as if you only used half Renoise.
"
I know where its going You see I can invest the next 5 years in becoming a ‘big mastah member’ or something (would love it!) and THEN write the book, putting in all the forum knowledge and all the tools I wrote in Lua etc. and think I did a fantastic job and sell just one damn copy. That would be a great proposition and I am looking forward to using Renoise the rest of my life, BUT not at the expense of losing time in the process. Hear me out, if I go that route, then honestly what is different about me THEN and all of you guys who have already invested a decade to this community? If so then why has not even one publication come out? Or at least a pro video series. You see a number of homebrewn Youtube videos, while having passion and energy, the presentation is left wanting in my opinion, and its not like they have even spent 1 year with the tools or something - composing_gloves videos which you sent in the link, I think he is terrific at explaining something, but his approach is very wishy-washy, neither the demos sound good as in musically nor did I find those too engaging - I mean the way he say “what is this D00 command and all this hex stuff, I had to get my head around it etc…” it just sounds very off to me. Watch any well produced video and you will see what I mean. In fact I like Andrew Schellman’s Macshine series and how he uses it and the way he explains it on video. Its not like either NI sponsored him, not its like he is looking to work for NI or anything like that. But while knowledge is being made and preserved and intercommunicated, disseminating it is not your strong suite, that is for real.
Renoise is not about using each and every feature, neither I plan to make it an encyclopedia of under the hood circuit bending and hidden god mode functionality. For those kinds of ‘authoritative’ tomes, I think you guys can do that for yourselves since I actually have a different vision for this book. Just like many others I have my own tastes and tools and techniques that are unique to my genres of choice, also many other things I plan to include in the book that include music theory and history etc. From my own experience a LOT many electronic guys are very weak in music theory, sight reading or genuine instrumental skills (not LaunchPad). For Renoise I see a diversity - lots of talented coders, musicians, plugins devs etc. so that is obviously something I want to share with everyone. I honestly feel Renoise is the most simple of DAWs out there and I want to sell that feeling to new comers. I specialize in reverse engineering so if I spent a 6 months time in Lua I am more than sure I will churn out my share of stuff, also maybe hack into the Renoise binary and patch some functions in place etc…trust me on this one - no new user would bother to even open Renoise in debug mode.
In fact the Renoise community can come out with RENOISE: RENNAISSANCE CHRONICLES-THE COMPLETE VERSION on your own time cos for now, we guys don’t even have 1 single publication on the market. Also look at from the other side : Beatmaking is taking the world by storm, not Lua programming. Most guys who make beats now are using FLStudio or regular Logic Cubase in addition to hardware like MPC and Maschine. I plan to combine this niche with the popular demand (not short term, beatmaking is a huge topic with its own kind of history). There are not many books that are doing what I plan to do. No book for Renoise, very few books on sampling and beatmaking(written by you guessed it Black American producers, cos they own it I suppose!) - how many books that do both. My answer is NONE. Lua programming books, many, VST dev a couple (Will Pirkle, good stuff and deeeep), CSound etc (Richard Boulanger, really good stuff for C programming), books by Gareth Loy (detailed digitial audio and physics) not related to Renoise cos that works everywhere. Think about this - Beatmaking, Tracking, Sampling, Music theory, History and commentary, production techniques and a daily audio production recipe list and lots of other cool stuff as the meat of the book. I do not even see a competition and judging by the quality of time I will put in, it should pan to a very wide audience as you might imagine.
So yes, I might not be very popular after I get it done out here, but on the bright side, the popularity of Renoise will take its first proper publication step. That is all I care about - and life is short man, I ain’t got time to be master specialist of 20,000 things before I get ONE piece of output done. I already am a professional (I never say that btw :)) in what I do for a living and as far as I can see, I have not found any plugin of that much use besides some genuinely useful tools like the slicer(now integrated in the sampler) and rubberband, and very useful f_ind and replace_ from very talented devs that are basically expected features that have been in hardware and software for ages. MPC has sampling and timestretching and per sample layers etc…so I am not too keen about getting in so deep, so fast and for so long. Quick and dirty but wide also has a very strong place. Also Renoise is kinda slow in terms of development - the worst thing that I can imagine after 5 years is that by then my mind becomes like everyone else and I procrastinate even further, damn easy trust me on this one.
In the cracking scene or white hat security scene, people share code on a daily basis, tools are developed, annotated, inventoried and distributed as AIOs, plugins made etc. There are multiple conferences and bodies that deal with the standards that we work on like the IEEE, we have BlackHat, Defcon and just like that the Demoscene has its own share of festivals. One of my friends runs Malcon in India, India’s largest security conference where I used to do the behind the scenes admin work earlier at its inception before I branched out to consult on my own. I can understand the spririt and protective idea behind all this, and research I will of course do as due diligence. But whether I see it as my way to do things or his/her way is upto me really. Depending on the tone and instructional style of the book, I will have to adjust accordingly. It must be very inviting and entertaining to the user. That is my first priority.
Secondly, I understand ackowledgements and that will be included for sure, don’t worry about all that. But I don’t see any one handing out certifications about how to use Renoise. In fact at my current ‘knowledge level’ I am more than happy to do without extra plugins and just make use of the ‘vanilla’ Renoise features and I suppose I get 99% of what I want the way I want. That is the beauty of this tool anyways so until I see a university like +RHU (Renoise Hacking University) I dont really have an incentive, many others made masterpieces with less. (I used the +Orc handle format for those who remember what it means long live 1997)
One thing I can say for sure - I am not going to make amateur instruction videos or post casually written blogs about something I care about - to each his own. I have my own take on things and I can deliver a professional product and it will help open a lot of doors for everyone involved.
Renoise is a German piece of high art (I love Germans, my first gf was German, also I travelled extensively in Germany). I suppose Goethe would talk the following if he ever got his hands on Renoise (sadly never happened, though he certainly had the chops to possibly write a Booker prize winning book on Renoise that also illuminates the deep nature of man and its purpose!!)
All my life I have been known as the guy with balls (yeah funny I know, but my closer friends know better :)), not to mention lazy as hell… Personally I really love Goethe’s line :All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.
Goethe quotations:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
I love those who yearn for the impossible.
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.