Hi there, just started using Renoise and I’m astounded I never tried it before. It looks like its shaping up to be my DAW of choice! I’m still learning it, so I’ve probably missed this, but so far, it seems that there are only 16 steps in a pattern, with the duration of each step being 1/16th of a bar. I was hoping to be able to try smaller step lengths, such as 1/32 etc, but so far, it doesn’t look like I can. Am I understanding this correctly? Playing around with Repeater, and assuming Automation, it looks like I can approximate the sound of finer grained steps by looping segments of the patterns waveform output up to 1/128 resolution, and while that is most definitely going to be useful, its not quite what I’m after. As a crap point of reference, I’d like to know how to program a beats worth of 1/128 duration steps (e.g. closed hi hats) directly into the pattern and approximate an exponential fade in volume curve by setting the volume of each step. All thoughts welcome - thanks!
Hi, the “LPB” which means “lines per beat” is the key option for this. The BPM is generic beats per minute, and the LPB says how many lines per beat you use. What that means in note lengths is kind of up to your own taking, but in general one could say one beat would represent a 1/4 note.
So in this thinking: raising “LPB” from 4 to 8 would allow 1/32 notes and double the number of lines for each 1/4 note, raising LPB to 16 would allow 1/64 notes.
You could as well use delay comands and multiple note columns in parallel to get shorter notes or triplets or such with lower LPB. Just like setting the LPB to values like 6,7,13 or so can result in pretty odd timings being the default in most lines. Yes, trackers work this way, very archaic and non-conventional in regard of the established ways to formulate music.
^ +1
You can also choose to keep the main lpb at a relatively low value of 4, and use higher lpb values inside of phrases. That way you can keep a better oversight for the song structure still use higher resolution patterns, or poly-rhythms through offsetting different lpb’s.
Lads - thats amazing. Thanks! Two great approaches - I could transform some existing patterns to phrases with a higher LPB to keep existing work and still get what I’m after, or just start out at a LPB that suits when I create a new project, or use both approaches… plenty to explore - I really really like its approach - thanks for the insights 
I often end up using this tool;https://forum.renoise.com/t/snippet-convert-song-from-lpb4-to-lpb12/30227
In which you can *N the resolution of an existing song. It automatically expands the pattern sizes and stretches the content to fit (also auto-adjusts patterncommand & delay values etc) + adjusts lpb values accordingly. The only limitation is it won’t expand beyond Renoise’s pattern size limit of 512 + it can mess up existing automation editor envelopes -> so I always do the automation drawing after using it.
It is great imo for if you have sketched the main song structure, then want to have more resolution/pattern lines for more intricate programming.