Place the notes(Melody…Harmony)…Then sculpt them
Via ‘modulations’ and ‘fx chains’ triggered by velocity
Care to elaborate?
Velocity level in Renoise doesn’t really mean “velocity”…You can disable ‘Vel->vol’
You can assign MODS and FXs per velocity levels…
You can duplicate samples
So you can assign expressivity per velocity levels
An “expressivity matrix”
But I think You know that…Renoise team joke
Ah yes, assigning samples to different velocities is great — and of course, nothing new. Glad to see the Renoise team has a sense of humour. 
That said, I personally find filter modulation to be a much faster way to achieve what velocity layering is often trying to do — revealing more of the sound as you play harder. Unless you’re doing something more complex, like a glide, which could just as well be handled with a tracker effect.
Mapping a bunch of samples or modulation layers isn’t always the most inspiring task, at least for me.
Let me know if I missed your point.
I thought you were part of the Renoise team…I’m not from renoise team
@Logickin has talked about Modweel…Can be a a key (in realtime)
For non Tracker expert,Tracker commands are not so easy to master
The essential is that each person find his good workflow
Realtime and sculpting is different
But seriously,I think that for fun,some realtime is needed
(There is a problem…some modwheels are shit nowaday…“drift”…‘nektar impact’ for example)
(I don’t know if “optical modwheels” exist)(ALPS potentiometers are the best)
And it seems also hard to learn and not future proof because of its unique interface. Try to imagine what we could do if we got a seaboard and it broke, while it was no longer available (valid concern because roli did filed for bankrupcy). All the magic of expression through that controller will be gone, and there isn’t many other alternatives, besides perhaps the Continuum By Haken Audio which is even more expensive and requires to relearn the controller from ground up again.
I do believe MPE or Midi 2.0 are also possible in trackers, but we need to know how to hide those abstraction into tracker commands so that we can use it too, and I do think it might require us to rethink a new tracker format because many of the trackers base on their older ancestor, and many legacy stuff still remains.
Exactly, and I do also think there are quite a lot of cool theoretical features for tracker workflow yet we never seem to explore, like tuning system other than 12 equal temperament because we only need some characters to represents the pitches instead of sticking with a piano layout as pianoroll. It is possible to control things other than samples: VCV rack and SunVox (using GPIO module) can control the voltage to certain output. Or doing linear daw’s stuff in a tracker way, like: why don’t anyone think of slicing videos instead of audio, just like how other linear daws doing with their video clips? Why don’t we use tracker to control graphics to build some demosense-ish music videos, something like z-game editor in FL?
Every time I see opinion like this, I have some mixed feelings because while you are right, but… I am always thinking, do trackers always have to be in this hardcore for beginners?
The concept is actually simple because it is basically just a step sequencer playing vertically using keyboard as input instead of mouse. The hard part is actually getting used to the keyboard workflow instead of aiding with some visual feedback, but after all, because the rules are consistent, it is not that difficult to understand once we know how it works.
Perhaps, we might forget to explore music trackers in a more abstract and visual way. Instead of showing a bunch of number, I guess we could learn from notation software where most of the features and effect commands should be exposed as icons and sliders, while adding those effects should be available as a clickable button in a clear location:
In this way, the beginners can add their effect by clicking some buttons on some tool bars, without need to memorize all the fx command, and they can know what kind of fx at the current row by looking at the type of icon, and the sliders and texts to understand the intensity of the fx. For example, you could more and less know my mockup image has slide down effect applied from row 2 to 5 at the left track, while a major upward arpeggios all the way down in the right track with volume fading out. (I know my mockup art missed the instrument column, but you get the idea.)
Technically, we may add a button toggling between beginner mode and normal mode, which the beginner mode convert those sliders and icons into actual fx value, so that experienced users can still use their original tracker command instead without have to stick with the slightly more visual approach.
I don’t know; seems there are a lot of ways to explore the tracker workflow without destroying the spirit like adding pianorolls, while having some better quality of life features for beginners to use, but I really have a feeling that workflow in many trackers seem to stuck at late 90s and not much innovation ideas brought into them, while other daws are catching up with different standards and technologies.
It does! It is The Leap Motion Controller:
It is not cheap and a bit CPU intensive though, especially their second version.
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I’m not from the Renoise team. That was a fun misinterpretation. 
Anyway, I agree — tracker commands can be hard at first. It took me years before I really got into it, but once I did, it was worth it. It’s still trial and error sometimes, but in terms of workflow, I think the alternatives are even harder. We’ve yet to find a worthy replacement.
I’d still love to have a MPE keyboard — and I’m sure we’ll see cheaper alternatives soon.
Absolutely, I agree. My idea for a future tracker takes a different route though. I’m skipping MIDI entirely and focusing on raw sample playback. The idea is to treat pitch, glide, velocity and delay as time-domain modulations — not performance data.
Instead of adapting the tracker to modern MIDI, I’m thinking of a system where expressivity is written directly into time and playback rate, using a delay pivot (0x80) and millisecond-based offsets.
So rather than expanding the tracker to meet MIDI, I’m simplifying the performance into something that’s both trackable and tweakable — especially for people who don’t play instruments but want full control.
Yeah — there’s so much unexplored potential in trackers once we let go of the traditional sample-player mindset. I really like that you brought up alternate tunings. The tracker model is actually ideal for things like just intonation, microtonality, or Scala-mapped notes — since we’re not tied to a visual keyboard or equal-spaced piano roll. A character-based pitch system is inherently abstract — and that’s a good thing.
Controlling other domains like video, voltage, or graphics could definitely work too. My current focus, besides actually making music with what’s available 
, is to build a solid core: writing expressive musical performance directly on a time grid — so people can compose performance, not just notes.
Realistically, this will start as an AU/VST plug-in (using Max/MSP). Since I’m sharing this on the Renoise forum, I clearly have no issue if Renoise gets inspired by any of it. 
Totally — and I’ve been thinking along similar lines. One idea is to offer a switchable view: vertical for tracking (note/fx input), and horizontal for waveform and automation editing. Each view optimized for its task.
This is the future! Imagine playing a melody in the air (maybe using neon-colored laser indicators 
), and using your hand to glide between notes. Then you simply go back and correct or finesse the result by editing the automation or typing tracker commands.
What do you think — am I being naive, or are these ideas for a plug-in actually doable?
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If I am not mistaken, is that means every row has a delay time, and it advance a row once it has timed out? That’s an interesting take for trackers, and using millisecond delay could be handy to do delay compensation.
This is because I really want a to have a music tool to write music in different tuning. I recently have addicted to 15edo, finding that this tuning have more and less aligned to the traditional 12 equal temperament yet it aligns to my world building idea. I also know there are quite a few SunVox users who write music in other tuning systems; however, I don’t really see any music tool good for writing such music if there are more than 12 notes per octave.
Me too, I guess it is time for some innovations in the tracker world; at least, those features are used to attract the new generation of potential tracker users.
Well, it is hard to know at current stage because I am still learning programming in lower level and audio programming stuff which I can’t give you good answers, but I am really interested how would a tracker look like if you use modulation and delays over a playback rate instead of a traditional fixed grid.
Thanks, and I really appreciate your thoughtful responses.
I can totally relate to your interest in alternate tunings and the expressive potential beyond 12EDO — and you’re absolutely right that the tracker format should be well-suited for those ideas.
To clarify your earlier question: the system I’m working on doesn’t wait for a row to “time out” before advancing. Instead, the host DAW (like Logic) keeps the global clock running, and my plug-in (GlideSync) listens and reacts in real time — sample-exactly.
Every row can hold a note event, and each event has a delay value from 00 to FF, giving 256 fine-timing steps per row. There’s a pivot at 0x80, which represents “exactly on the beat.” Values below 0x80 (00–7F) play early (push), and values above (81–FF) play late (drag). Internally it’s all translated into millisecond/sample offsets depending on BPM and LPB — there’s no tick system like in traditional trackers.
My AI friend (
) even calculated this for me:
delay_ms = ((hex - 0x80) × samplesPerLine / 256) × (1000 / sampleRate)
So basically, you’re composing relative timing, not just placing notes on a grid. This allows for grooves, laid-back notes, early triggers — all visible and tweakable directly.
GlideSync is being built as an AU/VST plug-in using Max/MSP. The goal is to let you program “artificial performances” — like a synth solo, a bass groove or fill — with full expression but no need to record live . Everything is editable in tracker-style, but designed to complement your DAW, not replace it.
I’m still very new to coding as well, but I’ve come a fair way for a beginner. There’s still a long journey ahead — and I’m balancing this with my other projects, including music-making. But I’m always open to collaborations or ideas.
Less faster than a modwheel and more energy consummer…But more precise
Not ultimate,but nice option (remind me Theremin)
Jean Michel Jarre done it with lasers(something like that)
neither is better…It depend of the task
I was talking about a modwheel wich rely on old mouse technology
Idiot modhwheels have no basic drift correction
A clock could verify little drift and correct it…a sort of ‘watchdog’
very very little amplitude=correction
OK… Well, Answering the topic starters question & it’s not gonna make me popular… There have been all kinda ways to obtain ‘musical expression’ and an actual ‘musician’ knows what they are & can utilize these techniques in any DAW or Tracker… The problem we face these days is that someone buys ableton or FL & instantly thinks “I’m a musician now”… Nope not hardly, can you decompile a song just by listening to it or do you need melodyne or some other ‘crutch’?…
Being musical has very little to do with what soft you are using, it’s your ability but yes, some are better than others, Renoise does clever things with samples, but so does Making Waves Studio, SVArTracker has an Effect Processor where you can draw as many param curves from as many different VSTi or VST you are using and then ‘pack’ all these into a ‘cell’ with a unique command ### that you then can apply anywhere in any pattern… BeRo’s Picatune2 has quite a few ways of being musical as well, impressive piece of code except for lack of line skipping for god’s sake….
You see nobody when they obtain a sequencer or DAW spends years training their ear, they just wanna ‘make cool whatever to upload’ thus we have a problem with many tunes just being very simple but FX piled ontop… If your tune is good you need hardly any FX at all in fact best way for anybody to ‘judge’ their own music is to boil it down to simple tones & take off all FX… Does it pass muster standalone or does it sound like playskool baby-poop?
About a week or so ago I had this conversation with Benedict Roff-Marsh, many of you might know of him by name… I was talking about what I said in the last paragraph & he said that he did a video on that 4 years ago but it wasn’t very popular… Well certainly because nobody wants to hear it, doesn’t mean it’s not true… He was actually quite diplomatic about it as it seems everybody now babies their viewers as to not offend… With me I tell it as it is-
I am still a user of Cakewalk Project5 as well as using all kinda strange trackers but I can pretty much make anything ‘musical’ inside it plus it still is best for DX-DXi plugs with full automation of them plus MIDI…
But as a tip here’s what’s wrong with many tunes nowadays & there’s more bad tunes than ever before because of power computers & piling of FX-
-Too much FX!… If your tune is good it will need very little…
-Too fast BPMs with no way to ‘shape’ individual notes… It’s not how many or how fast you regurgitate notes it’s how you shape them…
-Constant 5-10-15 minutes of solid wall of sound boring as hell… Your tune should have breaks & areas of less velocity to accent the ones that do… Mariachi bands used to play tunes 15-20 minutes long thus they would ‘lose’ their audience this is why they would just ‘stop’ the tune for a bar or two, this would jar the audience back…
-Start using triplets or pieces of… This breaks up boring 4/4 looping…
-Layer simpler synth sounds to obtain your goal… Today’s ‘power synths’ are way too upfront & modulated to fit in a full mix…
-Back off on the drums… Yes, it’s an instrument anyone can play but the overuse & loudness of drums is a novice technique, learn other instruments as well…
-Working on previous, Don’t start any tune by laying down drum tracks… You are allowing the least melodic instrument to dictate the tune… In most ALL my tunes the drums come last… never, ever with my being in many bands in the 70’s& 80’s did we all turn to the drummer & say “Ok, get started & we’ll follow along”…
-Train your ear by jamming to favorite tunes, pick them out on your MIDI keyboard or whatever, after a few years you’ll be able to pick out tunes by using the ‘melodyne in your head’…
-Start using compound chords… these are 4 note or more chords which add special texture-flavor that you cannot get with basic triads & the extra notes provide more flexibility for melodies or improvisation….
Well, I could go on but I think that’s a good starter list>>>
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Edit:
I think I have misunderstood the first half since I hugely caught your tones and points wrong, so I am going to focus on the tips which I start to get what you mean:
I think this is something do with the current trend of music production. Considering many of the “noobs vs pros” YouTube videos doing something similar, by stacking notes, synths and fx on top of one another because it is visually impressive to watch, looking like the producer can comprehend large amount of information and tools running at the same time, thus professional by their definition, while many people prefer louder mix and catchy melody. As a result, many people are into these kind of production techniques because they also want to write music in this kind.
Should I say it is wrong? No, I shouldn’t since at least for many people, these kind of formats are sonically and visually impressive right in your face, so this is the reason why some of the loud EDM genres being popular and successful. (Sometimes I also listen to these music as well) Even though you made a lot of good points in these categories and I am a fan of keeping things simple, I think this matters what we want for our music and what kind of audiences and purposes are targeted into.
I agree with the drum part. I usually start my music from melodies first, following with bass or chords. Starting from drums are simply hard to think about the story since it is mostly about transients for your music, rather than the story itself, usless we are doing a drum solo or some percussive orchestral works. The drums will eventually come once the melody and bass are set.
And if you do that long enough, this also could give you a superpower of composing music in your head since if you have listened and study so many song and pieces in details with different genres, you could able to decompose any melodies or sound designs of any song, mixing and matching with any other similar songs, all in your mind. This can also let you get inspired with more possibilities and getting less likely to hit the artist block.
On top of that, I think the progression and combination of chords also matter. I know many people start their music by defining chords progressions and loop them, but I find it hard to fit a memorable melody from an set of existing and repeating chords since there is a great chance I will keep thinking if my note is dissonant and clash to the chord, ending with a restricted and conservative melody.
Thus, I usually start with the melody or any ostinatos that motivates me, then let my chords flow in so that this will make chord progression less predictable. You will be forced to use less common chord in this way too since there might be some uncommon melody twists that a normal major or minor can’t fit.
btw, I have been seeing you around in many forums, would you mind to share some music from the trackers you used? I have been interested what you have made with AXS trackers.
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As always it appears Logickin has well thought-out eloquent responses… Yes, the power of modern machines & ease of applying FX have not helped much in many actually learning to make things musical, but any of the techniques I mentioned can make any genre sound better & that’s the point, to get BETTER, improve the craft….
OK, here’s most recent WIP which is only about 1/3 of tune in SVArTracker-
That is not gonna be the final name, it’s just a play on words….
Previous actually completed around Xmas in Protrekkr-
The loops were done in VirSyn Soft Synth & brought in Protrekkr, everything else inside it…
Previous in AXS here-
Then before that I was on soundcloud but got tired of them screwing with me so I closed account which is still up… So before AXS Jazzmonger there was Pulp Friction…
Here’s an unfinished WIP that shows what I talk about using your ‘ear’ to make something you like your ‘own’… In AXS I wanted to see If I could get a ‘reasonable’ phase-shift between the two chords in Jean-Luc Ponty’s ‘Don’t Let The World Pass You By’ which has been a fav of mine since 1978 back when I was a quite active bassist… So I then proceeded to make a bit of it ‘my own’… You will hear the similarities but it’s not a copy & no I didn’t keep listening to the tune, It’s already in my head for many years… I wanna finish it but I need to make the bass more ‘human-fluid’ it’s too mechanical & disgusting-
Here’s the original, way better than mine but they DIDN’T use AXS… Wonder why (haHAH!)
hopefully that’s enough… I’m sure you’ll figure out who I am by this point!!!
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That’s why I like to hearing different people’s view about music and performance, and this is the point of art for me, to know how different musicians see and feel music, and I do find that there are always some good points in their perspectives that can help me understand music in different ways and apply them accordingly. Your ideas and tips really help me about a drafted blog post how to improve composition of an old SunVox Compo Entry of a simple piano piece, and help for me messing around orchestral stuff in SunVox and Renoise. Let’s see how far I can go with that.
I think we could both agree that craft and constant improvement are really the keywords here, and there is no shortcut, and that even applies outside music making as well.
I like this one, showing how smooth of the jazz piece trackers can made. These tracks do inspire me to test jazz genres in SunVox, but I know they will be tough due to the complexity of these genres, so I will experiment them from time to time.
I can hear the reference starting from 1:24, I think the last few notes of the bar a bit delayed (it is a bit much by humanization understanding), and the bass sample is a bit loose compared to the original track which has a tighter attack. I am not sure if the tempo of the tracks matter though, but at least when I was learning piano, I have found out that playing a piece too fast or too slow could change the overall feeling of the piece, while there are tempo difference between your track and ‘Don’t Let The World Pass You By’.
Speaking of the sampling problem, I am actually in the similar boat since after I have submitted my SunVox Compo Entries, I decided to replace a set of synth with orchestral instruments (because of size limitation of the event), but I have been fighting with the string samples since it sounds dark yet thin and it doesn’t have that “soaring” and lush quality as many people talking about cinematic strings. That will probably takes long time to address.
btw, thanks for your sharing “Don’t Let The World Pass You By”, and I have been enjoying the track so far. I think I have a new musician to explore in the later days.
Edit: Listening to “Egocentric Molecules”, that’s another awesome one.
Originally, I just wanna say: I know who you are, since I have mentioned AXS tracker, but:
I know there are something I haven’t know yet since I am much younger than you that lived in different cultures, but I know something cool await. This also explains all your posts about old music trackers and 3d software.
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I really like Renoise, but I think there are better alternatives for really “expressive” sequencing, like pianorollers with note expression support. I am also not a hexcode wizard like some of you, I would like to have every automation, even note expression as a paintable graph. Much faster IMHO. Hexcode is a (very oldschool way) representation of the actual engine command, and it should be hidden from the user with a nice UX.
So I like to scaffolding with Renoise, but its benefits, like note expression for Renoise instruments only, are not available for me, since I mainly use plugins.
Also midi recording in Renoise still is very basic, and has its little flaws. If I then getting used to Bitwig 6 for example, this seems to be much more comfortable. WYSIWYG, quite intuitive. This is not the case with Renoise instrument hex code automation.
What I really like about Renoise and its classic tracker approach is to be able to see each track next to each other. In this way I quite easily can already see rhythmic patterns, and so composing related to the context is easy. The other pianorollers really lack of concept here. You will get a layered pianoroll, which is really counterproductive, e.g. as soon as layers are covering up each other… I never understood why nobody comes up with the idea to place at least two pianorolls on next to each other. Studio One at least can align the pianoroll to the arranger, which helps me a bit.
In the end, finetuning a lead is still much more precise in Renoise (for internal instruments) than in a pianoroller, but it could be much better, too. Hexcoding definitely does not help with the workflow. It seems to me that a fully keyboard driven workflow still is not possible in a pianoroller, while editing a lead melody… Maybe I am wrong, Renoise is so much more direct here. It utilizes the whole keyboard! Wow, ingenious… I end up with a mouse clicking orgy in a pianoroller usually, but I guess because I don’t know the shortcuts…? If there are any, the workflow with those seems to be indirect, inconvenient.
So my goal is to finally really use Bitwig more, not Renoise. Even only saving a lot of time with mixing in Bitwig is worth it, IMO. I am just so lazy… OMG.
Also I don’t see MPE coming to Renoise anytime soon. Maybe I am wrong. It would require a lot of rework. So I try to use Renoise for what it’s good for, and I am amazed by your hex wizardry.
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Nice to see some occasionally getting out of ‘Grandma Renoise’s Basement’ & you are quite correct on the piano roll issue… I have talked about that on many forums that trackers are MUCH better at editing across whole or just sectors of multiple tracks as the ‘multi-piano roll layers’ does NOT work as colors all about provide more visual confusion than anything…
However bliss has passed everyone by as BUZE Tracker does side-side piano rolls with any can be hidden or unhidden as well also parameter curve lanes as well can be added inbetween or at the end & they can be sliders, curves or hex readouts…
All this being done vertical which is best way for ALL things to line up… I don’t have a side-side piano roll screenshot handy but you see the param lanes & note lane can be moved elsewhere or not be there at all-
Also CTRL-Rtclick on an FX lane produces an immense list of commands that makes even the FL users touting their piano roll to shiver as their genitalia shrink-
Here’s a tut GIF I made awhile back on just the echo command, many of the commands have sub-dialogs-
Also as far as ‘expression’ I think if one has program change ability for any row/note pretty much is a must… In SVArTracker that is the case… Here I custom made a SF2 bank with all the different instruments needed then simply change program at any note… SVAr’s anti-wave handles large banks just fine, I have gone up to 600 MB size no problem-
This is what I have loaded up in the new WIP in previous post… SVAr also convenient as you can keep looping pattern while editing, scrub & edit cursors different, no need to ‘TAB Over’ either just place edit cursor with mouse anywhere…
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