Renoise has all the main features you could expect from a tracker like Milkytracker, but it brings some features and FX you usually find in other DAWs such as advanced Digital Signal Processings. DSP : this is a whole world ! If you want to explore this world, and understand how each FX work, you’ll have to load each DSP, to test all sliders, and to carefully hear the results, and see this result, using scopes and colored spectrum views, using a method. First you’ll have to optimize your listening conditions, and make your experimentations with good speakers and also good headphones, in a quiet and calm environment.
Then load 5 or 6 SIMPLE CHIPSOUND SAMPLES and record a simple muscial line in your Track 1. Use
- A Sinewave
- A Saw
- A Tri
- A Square
- A Noise…
In your musical line. Why chipsounds ? Because the impact of a DSP on them is simpler to understand and simpler to read with eyes.
Then, play your simple line, and start to experiment, loading one DSP at a time. If you want to understand a bit things : don’t start with presets first. While music plays in the background, just drag each slider from left to right then doubleclick on it, to restore its initial position. Check alternatively scopes, and spectrum viewers. Take notes on a notepad about what you’ve understood. Then make combos, drag 2 different sliders, and continue. With this method, you’ll be able to organise DSPs, you’ll understand that some of them deal with similar things, example, the *reverb and *mpReverb, then The *delay and the *Multitap delay, the *Stereo Expander, the *Ringmod, all of them could globally affect sound position in space & time. You’ll see that you can group DSPs in your mind, for example, the *Bus Compressor and the *Compressor and the *Maximizer, have something in common. The EQ5 & EQ10, Mixer EQ, Filter, for example, can be grouped. There are some DSPs that just change the sound quality, such as *Cabinet simulator and the *Lofimat, *Distorsion, and the *Scream filter. After than you’ll have the *Chorus, *Flanger, *Phaser, and … *Comb filter in some ways. Well you’ll take a week but in the end you’ll have a more pratical idea of what those names mean and their common usage. When you’ll need the sliders to move in regular and logical ways, you’ll start to love some meta devices like the *LFO. And you’ll realise that most of the time, lots of VSTis are made with simple sounds going through racks of different DSPs controlled with LFOs.
