Greetings, I’m new to renoise. In Logic, I like to open up a favorite mp3 and mark where important transitions happen. This let’s me ‘abstract’ the structure of the track and use this structure in a track that I creating. Is there a way to do this easily in renoise? Thanks
Yeah, it’s called “composing music” 
just kidding…
actually, this reminds me of many years ago… my music teacher in high school always said we should listen to any piece of music with a “macroscopic” ear, that is, to identify where these transitions happen between parts of a song.
In trackers (such as Renoise) songs are arranged in “patterns” which are played in a certain sequence - this sequence, often called the “order list” is a global “macroscopic” view of the song, if you will. Patterns can represent a single bar, 2 bars, 8 bars, half a bar, etc etc… or even a single note or single beat, depending how you arrange notes within them, their timing, and so on. You can easily repeat parts of a song by referencing the same pattern(s) more than once in the orderlist. As for Renoise, it has even further control over the global, overall process of composing a song.
Anyway, i’ll let you try it out by downloading the demo version and experimenting for yourself =)
Don’t know if there is a more convenient way in Renoise, but I once tried it along these lines:
Figure out the BPM of the song and set Renoise to that.
Load the mp3 in an instrument slot.
In Instrument Settings activate Autoseek.
In Song Settings set Default Pattern Length appropriately, depending on the song and your Lines/Beat.
In Sample Editor, set one of the rulers to beats (right click) to figure out how many beats your song lasts.
Roughly calculate the number of patterns from this.
Add this number of patterns in the Pattern Sequencer, maybe some more to make sure the complete sample will play.
Adjust the length of the first pattern if needed.(*)
In Sample Keyzones find out the Basenote.
Put this note in the very first line of the very first pattern to trigger the sample.
Now hit play and use the Pattern Comments and Sections in the Pattern Sequencer.
*You can also use this if the mp3 doesn’t start on a bar, shifting the later patterns back or forth in time.
(To be honest, I’d rather do this with Reaper+Rewire+Renoise…)
Edit: Obviously this won’t work as easy with tempo or time changes. 
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You could do a ghetto version in Renoise by manually adding slice markers yourself by ear in the sample editor, placing them at the start of chorus, bridge etc…but I’m not sure how this would help you?
Maybe a script could be made, that translated the time between added slices to amount of patterns in the sequence list, and automatically name the marked patterns?
autoseek the waveform, and make little notes on the arranger at certain parts?
Just an idea… I doubt there is some, “exact rule,” for doing what you wish.
Hi, I have used trackers before way back in the day like Fasttracker 2. I was hoping there was a plugin that would display the waveform of an mp3, let me place markers at key points in the wave, and then translate these markers into renoise pattern lengths & number of patterns or something. Anyway, thanks for your responses.
PS – Using Reaper+Rewire+Renoise to accomplish this sounds promising. How could this work? thanks
If transients are very clear, Renoise has a transient detection algorithm if you use the slicer… You can toy around with the sensitivity (it defaults to 50%) until you get feasible results
http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Sample_Editor#Slice_Controls
dude, no matter what sensitivity you set the slicer, it wont automatically detect stuff like chorus, verse, bridge etc. Like was said earlier, he can slice-mark these manually.
Now we need someone that can create a tool which translates the set slices to the amount of patterns and name them (numbers or letters?).
I thought the slices to pattern tool does already quite half a job here…
Get one, get the other for free…So if someone else can mess with dBlue’s code, who’s stopping the other enthousiasts?
bumping this thread…
I think your suggestion is perfect. I’ve never designed any Renoise tools. How hard is it? Would anyone else be interested a tool like this as well?