I can’t really put my finger on it and from a distance it even looks a little paradox, but the bottom up approach of composing in renoise manages to solve a problem I am having with other DAWs:
Never . finishing . a . song.
In ableton live or reason/record (wich are awesome tools, I really love), I tend to end up with thousands of ideas I never finish. My song folders for those tools are cluttered with files I’ll never touch again, but neither can delete, because they are all worth “keeping for rehearsal”.
Not so with renoise. In my renoise folder, I even sort my songs in handy EP/LP folders, because after jamming I more often end up with an arrangement ready for finetuning, instead of “just an idea worth looking at again”.
I now see this effect again after playing with the new (awesomesauce) beta. I start to play around with one of the new features and end up with a new song. After a few nights playing around I am even considering releasing the results on my page as a new EP, because it’s so refreshing having new release-worthy material after tinkering around with so much ideas in other tools for over a year (no kidding!) without real results.
I am happy being back at productivity.
This is so paradox for me, because the tracker approach usually screams for micro management of ideas, little scattered patterns laying around. But in practice, it is the opposite.
Whatever it is: thank you renoise dev team for providing a tool, that constantly brings me back to creativity and productivity. \o/
With other DAW I tended to do a song and finish it. But when a song is finished, what you do then?? Yes, in my case, loose the interest for the song …
With Renoise I go more and more into looping and live creation of a song using the patter-matrix. Now, everytime I open one of my songs, it’s like playing with music and funfactor is back again
i myself have started using renoise more and more for all my breaks work,and alot more for sound design,i then do all arranging mixing and mastering in studio one pro
Good for you I have over 10 gigs of unfinished Renoise projects. Thankfully I’m slowly getting more and more of them done but the ratio of started vs unfinished songs is still something like 5:1
It’s funny, I felt like this with Renoise during 2003, when version 1.2 was out. And I feel the same way now after all these years! Maybe I’m easy to please, but long live a good thing that’s getting better all the time.
Most of my music is noisy, freeform “fuck you ‘musical elements’” type stuff, and I have no problem finishing that kind of thing in a standard DAW.
But I swear, I just can not finish a sequence based track. The workflow just does not work for me. But when I do that kind of thing in Renoise, it just makes sense. It’s much easier for me to put together all the little fragments I have into an actual song.
This makes me think Renoise community needs an unfinished songs bank. You upload unfinished RNSX songs with specified tags and info, anyone else can download and continue the work. Then the file, version and credits gets updated by uploading the new RNSX. I think any Renoise musician could find a couple of such files to donate
I have the same experience. For me, one important factor is that in comparison to most popular DAWs (except maybe Ableton Live), Renoise has a less visual approach. It doesn’t give as much visual information about the structure of track or about individual notes as do most DAWs with their graphically represented tracks, piano rolls, automation curves, etc. This forces me to actually listen to the song, and prevents me from being distracted by what I see. It helps me focus on what sounds right rather than what looks right.
Of course, Renoise gives plenty of visual information in the wave editor, pattern matrix and automation editor, but I only use these when I need them, whereas in other DAWs this visual information is much more prominent. By providing so much information on individual notes that it is way too much to take in while a pattern is playing, Renoise makes me pay less attention to individual notes and more to the song as a whole.
wow. for me trackers give much more immediate information about harmony relationships and stuff. to each his own, i guess… the major problem for renoise with me is it makes me want to drink much more beer than other daws. i don’t know what the devs could do about this, though.
maybe set up a ‘Renoise-related addictions’ sub-forum. you could discuss both your Renoise-addiction as well as alcohol, marihuana, LSD, peyote, speed or horse-sedatives addictions you developed as a result of what has come to be known with addiction-therapists as ‘the Renoise effect’. a online counselor could provide feedback on how to manage your addiction, or how to disable side-effect and focus on making music.
that would be nice! i’ve somehow managed to dump my other addictions (if you don’t count reese’s peanut butter cups). but, trackers and beer to the grave, man!
i do find an odd correlation between renoise users and drug abuse though, compared to other daws (but i live in texas, so…take that for what it is). also, it is very weird to hear any musician say ‘man, you use a lot of drugs…’
I can see how having the actual note names at hand can be convenient if you’re used to thinking that way, and I do use this info sometimes. But I work mostly with sampled phrases and non-pitched sounds, and the vast majority of ‘notes’ in my songs have no relation to the pitch of the sounds they trigger.
Also, I never drink beer while writing music. I prefer whiskey, gin, or cognac (though I never noticed that the DAW I use has any influence on that). As you said, to each his own…
marv > i feel ya! same effect is happening overhere. another one reason this effect is happening is that with most other daws you need to set a lot of shit up before you can start… midi channels / plugins / kontakt / mixer etup blablabla…
renoise doesn’t have all of that you can almost instantly start producing!
though i actually find myself quite often still doing that “Ctrl+F4 → Ctrl+F5” thing…
some old (FT2-)habits are hard to break…
so true. it took me hours (literally) go get a vsti to make some noise in Reaper. And when I finally got there, i just thought:
"naaaaah… back to my renoise! "
though i actually find myself quite often still doing that “Ctrl+F4 → Ctrl+F5” thing…
back to my renoise! 
"