Hi Everyone,
I am starting to line up some live performance gigs after switching to renoise a few months ago, and I am wondering what approaches you veterans out there are using for live performance in (primarily) renoise.
I haven’t experimented with live dive or duplex at all yet, so any and all tips, suggestions, etc. are most welcome!
Thanks in advance 
The only reason I know about renoise was seeing a guy play live with it probably around 2002! At the time I had no idea what the f he was doing, but it sounded great.
I still have no idea what he was doing
I’m just starting to play shows with Renoise – switched over to it as my primary DAW maybe seven months ago.
The setup I use is based around a MIDI mixer (Vestax VCM-600). I try not to use too many tracks in my arrangements, so I can usually map each track to a mixer channel. Obviously that’s good for fades etc. Other buttons and knobs on the mixer aren’t really designed for the way I use it, but I’ve reassigned most of them pretty easily.
My other main piece of equipment is just a MIDI keyboard. With MIDI filtering to control different instruments with different sections of the keyboard, there’s a lot that can be done. It took me a while to figure out the intricacies of assigning instruments to the right track at the right time, but now I’m all good.
I don’t use Live Dive etc. because don’t have that sort of controller, but you can do a lot with the Pattern Matrix. Renoise still has some pretty big holes in it for live use, but there is a shitload of stuff you can do, and every system has its drawbacks… I just keep using it because I’m productive with it.
Yeah, I use a separate soundcard. I come from a band background and find the idea of using a headphone cue kind of terrifying… stereo 1/4 inch jacks straight out to the monitors for me, I want to hear what everyone else is hearing.
The kind of set-up you’ve suggested would be cool, but I’ve come to accept that there’s a limit to how many parameters I can or want to control live, especially since I sing and play synth live. Mixers, sends, transport and effect controls is enough for me atm – I need one hand free for playing synth, holding the mic, drinking etc…
Just got a Launchpad mini and Live Dive for it.
So far, seems like a tenable way to build sets…
Thanks for the comments everyone, keep dropping knowledge!
I am going to use Grid Pie instead of Live Dive, since I like having the capability of switching patterns on the fly to generate fills without having to wait for the whole next pattern to cue… unless anyone knows of a way to instantly trigger patterns in live dive… Cie?
Having a lot of fun figuring out how this is going to work. God, I love renoise. so much more direct than reason.
At the moment my setup is a nanokontrol and a launchpad. I also have a trigger finger which I might be able to use as the sole control surface, or instead of the nanokontrol.
I hope to post up a version of the live set once I get all the kinks worked out and all the patterns wrote. Probably a few weeks.
To be more precise, I am using Duplex’s Grid Pie Full to interface with the launchpad. Seems to be working well so far!
I don’t think so, but perhaps someone with more experience knows differently…
I mean, you could always record the audio, which I intend to do, but I don’t think you can write/record into the pattern matrix with it.
I don’t think so, but perhaps someone with more experience knows differently…
Oh, but you can 
To record any change that you make, Grid Pie comes with a real time recording feature. To enable this feature, you need to enable playback-follow (SCROLL LOCK) and edit-mode (ESC) in Renoise (both are most likely mapped to your controller as part of the device configuration).
Quote from the Duplex Grid Pie manual
[url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/y04igbm7ut9jojk/DuplexGridPie.pdf?raw=1
Biggest difference between Live Dive and Grid Pie, AFAIK is that Grid Pie supports differently-sized patterns (for example, mix long melodies with short beats). It’s more complex to use, so you have to decide if it’s worth it.
Oh, but you can
Quote from the Duplex Grid Pie manual
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64271084/renoise/duplex/DuplexGridPie.pdf
Biggest difference between Live Dive and Grid Pie, AFAIK is that Grid Pie supports differently-sized patterns (for example, mix long melodies with short beats). It’s more complex to use, so you have to decide if it’s worth it.
Well then. This is good news!
Thanks for enlightening us, and I hope to take advantage of this feature soon. Also good to know about being able to mix patterns of different lengths. That could open up some very interesting polyrhythms… O.o
I use a Launchpad S with Live Dive to trigger the pattern blocks and the Launch Control XL to do some FX stuff and fades etc. It isn’t bad, but it still needs improvements. I would also like to record my performance, which is possible with Live Dive as long you only record the pattern changes, but i have problems to record the FX stuff done with the Launch Control.
You can record fx like the following when having opened LiveDive:
click on the buttons “Live recording” and "Record everything"in the live dive window
Activate edit mode in renoise
in the pattern, click on the track and the effect row column of the track you would like to record the fx changes in
use your knob of launch control to change the linked fx parameter (I assume you have linked the knob via midi to a effect parameter on the specified track)
the changes should be recorded.
to delete the effect row column press Ctrl+Shift+F3
Well this might be not the optimal solution, because recording with good transitions could be quite difficult, but you can record the parameters and after the recording of the song you could finetune the song.
I am going to use Grid Pie instead of Live Dive, since I like having the capability of switching patterns on the fly to generate fills without having to wait for the whole next pattern to cue… unless anyone knows of a way to instantly trigger patterns in live dive… Cie?
No, every change is made within pattern sync. This means if you trigger some tracks they will be heard on the next pattern change, not instantly. I would recommend to use mute/unmute tracks for this scenario.
Is it possible to record a live sessions like with Live Dive?
If you click on the buttons “Live recording” and “Record everything” in the live dive window, on every pattern change a new pattern will be appended to the end of the song, regardless if there was any change made or not. So you can build up a raw song with it.
Anyone using a launchpad mk2 in combination with renoise/tools? Can get a secondhand for around 70 euro’s, but not sure if it is worthwile. Looking for different workflow using the available live tools, but I think these tools support older models?
Triggering phrases from keys or drumpads,
muting / unmuting tracks with touchscreen / mouse,
setting next pattern to play with touchscreen / mouse,
live finger drumming on pad controller with live midi keyboard bassline simultaneously,
fading tracks in and out with touchscreen (one at a time),
using the x/y device by touchscreen / mouse,
assign knobs to filter cutoff and resonance…or anything
The main thing I want to be able to do next is to use one controller to switch instruments while playing the instrument on the other controller.
Instant instrument change. To play the whole track live MPC style, using the midi keyboard or a second drum controller to switch instruments with a single hit…so you can keep in time…I know it can be done but I didnt get round to it yet…assigning
I tried lunch-pad 2. The velocity sensitivity is not great for live drumming though.
Is anyone still actively using renoise as a live tool? What are you using these days (as most tools are deprecated)
I did a live set a couple years back using just a nanocontrol and two instances of renoise, bouncing back and forth between pre-written tracks, and effecting them with some doofers on select tracks bound to the nanokontrol. It was a fine way to work, but not super “live” feeling. I never did get gridpie to do what I was wanting it to, but tbh, I kinda gave up on it. I think it is a viable live tool, I just need to put in the time, I’d wager.
here’s that set, all songs written in renoise, maybe 95% of the synthesis and sound design was done in renoise, too:
Heyo, old topic but it was just what I wanted to post about. 
I’ve been using Renoise live in combination with vocals and other live instruments. Basically mapping pattern on/off using drumpads and putting effects and volume on knobs/faders. It works quite well, but I’d love a way to have a seperate live-mode where one could trigger tracks and patterns individually like a live looper. I’m planning to work around that by setting the note quantisize to trigger notes on the beat, and programming the patterns as instruments.
I’ll probably do a video on my method when I’ve figured it all out.
sweet. definitely do. I’ll post a video on my method at some point, too 
I am toying with that idea myself. Right now I have a pretty simple Ableton and Max set that (I think) can be done with renoise.
One thing that I like is to have one file with everything in it, so it could be a quite big file. Is there any way to play a sample from HD?
Waiting on your thoughs!
Hey, we should talk about Renoise + live performances more often. Looking forward to these tutorials 
@slujr @sagosen
You can’t AFAIK stream samples from HD natively, but you can use VST samplers for that purpose. I found one called VSampler by SpeedSoft, but it’s kinda old and unavailable.