"sending Notes To Vst" Feature

OK, I read the list of new specs for Renoise 2.0 and was particularly interested in this…

“+ Sending notes to VST (AU) FX is now supported. Simply create a FX alias
in the VST Instruments pane to do so (link an instrument to an existing
FX).”

I have a few questions;

  1. How can I actually get this working. The explanation is pretty much nonsensical.

  2. If I am right in thinking, this would allow the signal of one track to be sent to the VST effect of another track.

If this is correct (as it insinuates in the description), then this is effectively Sidechaining.

If it ISN’T that, can someone tell me what this could be used for?

Cheers

probably the explanation is nonsensical because you assume you 2. statement is true, which is not: it’s not the signal of a track which is being sent, rather it’s the notes of a fake instrument:

if your VST effect supports sending notes to it, you will find the added effect in to the VST instruments list as an alias.

if you then assign this alias to an instrument slot, you can trigger its notes to send them to the corresponding VST effect. This is mostly used to control vocoders.

Whole explanation here

OK I kind of get it.

Thanks for the input.

“probably the explanation is nonsensical because you assume you 2. statement is true, which is not: it’s not the signal of a track which is being sent, rather it’s the notes of a fake instrument:”

This is amazing. So you are saying that I find something nonsensical because I misunderstand it…

Hoho

Anyway, I will try to figure it out with the link you gave me.

More uses:

  • Ohmicide can morph fluently through preset states using notes to trigger them.

  • Audio Damage had even a playable reverb effect (Deverb) not available anymore though

  • i think even dlbue’s Glitch supported this to change patterns, also various gates allow one to change the patterns that way

probably more i can’t think of atm …

Vocoders, most prominently.

Antares - Harmony Engine
Yamaha - Pitch Fix
destroyfx.smartelectronix.com - some plugs

and Vocovee - g200kg is very nice vocoder. :)

and don’t forget the marvellous native instruments ‘fm7’ as an insert effect …nothing sounds nicer than frequency modulated drumbeats

Could you make a simple example rns file, and post it ?

I have made a very basic example which does not produce any sound; I needed a freeware VST effect which could receive notes, and I found MIDIMonitorFX, which can be downloaded for free here.

  1. download the example from here.
  2. go in the Track DSPs section and open the Ext. Editor of MiniMonitorFX
  3. play the “song”

you will see that MidiMonitoFX receives note signals from instrument 00, which was choosen in the Instruments Settings tab, amongst the availalbe VST Instruments, in the VST FX Alias section of the instruments list; this list will contain any VST effect which is present in your song which is capable (or which claims to be capable) of receiving MIDI note data.

if someone knows of a freely available VST effect which can receive note data, I could make a more useful example, but this at least shows what the feature is about and how to make it work.

The GSnap pitch correction plugin is free and able to work with notes:

http://www.gvst.co.uk/gsnap.htm