Using Renoise Live In A Band

Hi,
I am going to play in a post-rock/shoegaze band where I’m supposed to do the drum and some electronic stuff (noises, synth…)

I’m trying to think a nice play to use Renoise in a live, without just pressing play and letting the tracks to go. I thought I could create the whole structure of the song with the tracks for the drum. For example, a track for the kick and one for the snare and so on. So, I create a drum pattern and then I clone it in the pattern matrix four times until there is a different pattern. I thought I could change, live, in real time, the loop (for example adding a snare, or a drum kick, or maybe some effects) so that the beat could change. To achieve this I thought to disable the follow of the position in the pattern, so that while in the pattern matrix it goes on, I could work easily in the pattern editor. The problem is that if I change something in a pattern this does not affect the cloned patterns.

Maybe it’s not clear, so I try to explain it better. I create a pattern and clone it in the pattern matrix four times. While the song plays, I edit just one pattern in the pattern editor and I would like to edit all the cloned patterns. Is there any way to do this or a good and reasonable alternative?

Thanks,
Carlo

I use Renoise live in a band as well… I use my step sequencer that I made in max msp with renoise… at the moment its quite limited because I use my launch pad which has 64 pads… but as soon as I build my 256 monome, I will have much more possibilities. You gotta keep in mind that since the sequencer turns on and off renoise tracks inside of 8 or 16 patterns, each steps can be more than a single sound like it is in regular sequencers, also, the content of each steps can be different… I like it a lot.

I think a similar set up as mine could help you.

I have a post about it: Renoise Based Audio-video Step Sequencer

Mh, yes. This would be really cool, but aside the fact that I don’t know how to use max msp (but I know a little Pd), I have no idea how to make them to interact.

Use duplicate instead of clone …duplicating a pattern means that all duplicated patterns are an exact duplicate :rolleyes: ( you can see that they all share the same number .so any changes made to one pattern gets automatically updated in all duplicates

Yes, thanks, that’s what I was looking for.

you don’t need to know how to write max/msp patches (or own max/msp) to use applications made by other people in this software. so its possible you might try JBLs patch without knowing how it is made (so long as the instructions are good enough and you have a suitable controller ;) ).

another idea you might consider is live effects processing of other instruments of the band, by having line inputs with DSP chains you could control live (perhaps with a midi controller). especially because shoegaze is often quite heavy on fx processing (hence the shoe observation), it might be interesting…though you may need a soundcard with multiple inputs, possibly a mixer too, and your guitarist may not want you messing around with his/her sound.

you can also just control fx of your beats live with a midi controller… thats a very simple way to be doing something more than hitting ‘play’. or use the looping functions to control when different sections are triggered.

thinking about stuff like MBV, the beats are actually very straight forward and repetitive. so an idea might be to focus on having droning sounds over the beats which you can tweak live, fade-in, fade-out etc. i made a max/msp patch which i use rewired to renoise to do real-time drones Page Not Found | Cycling '74

or set up a keyboard with some samples you trigger or noise patches…the principle is the same

I’d like to use some kind of beat slicer to control with the nanopad, but I can’t find any good one. Any suggestion?
I’ve found this: http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2349.html

But I can’t get it to work in renoise. I mean, it loads it fine, opens it, but then no idea on how to use it.

Yes, that’s an idea too, but I still prefer to mess with the beat.

you can slice your beats and samples in renoise then map them to keys (or in this case, pads) in the instrument editor. so you don’t need the vst. search the forum and help for more about this

Yes, I know, but this way I can’t have the loop playing and slice it in real time so that I don’t lose the time synch. Am I wrong?

it is impossible to quantize something in real-time if you play it after the beat when it was supposed to happen… i think you’d find it troublesome playing lots of rhythms in real-time ahead of the beat. i think JBLs method is a good approach. otherwise you need to learn to play in real-time and not lose time sync, otherwise known as playing the drums ;)

Maybe I wasn’t clear or maybe you’re just right. What I meant was a plugin or something that can loop a beat so that the drums is playing and there’s no problem with the synch. Then with a controller I can play different slices of the beat, but then again, when it can continues with the loop at the right time.

Anyway, doing this just in Renoise, how would you slice the beat? I mean, if I have this beat: TUM ta TUM TUM ta, I can have this slices:

  1. TUM
  2. ta
  3. TUM TUM
  4. ta

or I can have this:

  1. TUM ta TUM TUM ta
  2. ta TUM TUM ta
  3. TUM TUM ta
  4. ta

is the second a possible way to do it or it has no sense at all?

Yes, this seems really great indeed. I’m stillo not sure if it is worth buying.

the short answer is i don’t know of a vst that does that (which isn’t to say one doesn’t exist). the only ways i can think of to do this otherwise would involve different software. the thing is that real-time quantizing would be less like normal drumming and more like on the fly programming, because you have to press the buttons before the event occurs… in that sense the patch by JBL makes more sense as a way to do it, because you have more control of exactly what happens with the upcoming sequences, not just the next slice (which i think is what you suggest). i think you could do something like what you want with ableton live by triggering clips from your nanopad (the clips come in in sync). if we had midi control over triggering patterns in renoise it would be possible to do the same (but as yet, we don’t). another way is to build it in max/msp or PD… this is what those softwares are good for but it can be alot of work.

[center]Carlo… With playing in a band I think Renoise is DEFINJTLY an awesome appoach, I to use it. However, JBL has got MAD knowledge on this topic of MAX and maby you should learn it as it would be benificial. Not nec. making MAX patches yourself, as you said you are not familliar, but JBL is a guru and will help you on ANYTHING you need or ANYONE of his patches he makes im sure. Try adding max and renoise together into your preformances, you WILL NOT be disapointed… Altho MAX was very discouraging to me when I first started out ( I must admit I deleated and reinstalled several times) now that I have excepted that writing will come over time and that i can utalize others patches and shit MAX is AMAZING! I use it live all the time <3 …hope this helps turn you on to somewthing that may benifit you and help you have more fun int he future… pEace.

…::niNja_pWn3d::…[/center]