Nooooob

So i understood the video tutorial until the bit where it sudenly goes from just showing the pattern sequencer to suddenly entering a load of stuff into it withour explaining how you were meant to do that. Ive read through the manual and everything but i just dont get what im meant to be pressing to enter the information. I m using a computer keyboard although do have a midi one somewhere if that would be easier?
I get that randomly hitting buttons on my computer keybroard makes a sound, but only some of the buttons, and i dont know how its worked out which ones and for what sound.

Also, accidentaly highlighted some of the row numbers brown and now it just loops round that. How do i unhighlight them?

The manual is your friend.

Once you have an instrument loaded, you trigger it using your computer keyboard (or a midi keyboard if you want to use that. stick to the somputer keyboard for now, until you understand the basics)

The computer keyboard is set up like a piano, so not all the keys will work. Have a look in the manual for keys which work and which dont. When you see it laid out it will all make sense.

As for the looping issue, look at the top left of the screen and uncheck the small box which says “block”

this section of the manual shows how to use the PC keyboard to input notes.

the z key is the base ie as you move from z to x to c to v etc, then up to the next row,… your sample gets higher. or your vsti note goes higher.

as far as entering stuff onto the grid, open renoise and i’ll try and explain :P

1- see the PLAY button? ok, next to that you have the LOOP, STOP and RECORD.

2- to record the notes, you need to press record or press ESC key.

3- then look down at track one and you’ll see this lil orange box.

4- with RECORD on, now when you hit a key on your keyboard you’ll see a note value come up in that slot where the orange box is.

5- also you’ll see that once you enter a note, the orange box jumps down one slot. i’m assuming you havent fiddled with the EDIT STEP button yet,… basically, you enter one note, then renoise jumps to the next slot to enter your next note. if you hold down a key you’ll see it fill all the slots with that note.

you can turn off EDIT STEP: see where the title of track one is? above that is the AUTO SOLO, and above that is EDIT STEP. turn that to 0 and you’ll see that the orange box now stays put, but the note changes when you press different keys.

you can then move up or down using the arrow keys.

hit the RECORD button again to stop recording,… or press ESC key again.

i too spent a good hour going WTF?! the first time so i thought i’d type this all out for future noobs :P

also check out the youtube videos by kaneel and bytesmasher.

@sknk - this brief tutorial was exactly what I needed. Thanks!

no worries man, if you have any questions dont hesitate to ask.