Hi! I started making music with trackers more than 15 years ago. I used them until their capabilities couldn´t catch my needs in music making, then I moved to sequencers like Logic 4 in those days and Cubase 5 nowadays.
But we all know that you can make music really fast with trackers, and no actual sequencer gets even close to good old trackers in this. So thinking about a comeback to trackers, (at least for composition), just discovered Renoise and liked it instantly. So I´m trying to make some Metal with the renoise 2.5 demo and it really rocks, and I dare to make you some little sugestions to improve its workflow, with some simple but effective things I´ve seen in other sequencers and trackes I used.
I´m not asking for big things like video, audio tracks, DFD and stuff like that, but some key commands, checkboxes and a couple of buttons would speed up renoise´s workflow
Mixer:
- When you solo a regular track, if it has sends enabled, these send tracks are soloed too. OK, but when you solo a send track you get silence: Its source tracks should be soloed too so you can audition a bus with all its inputs with a single click.
GUI
- in instruments box: move the division between samples and instruments, up and down: It´s very uncomfortable to work with samples when you can see only 2 lines.
Instrument/sample editing:
- read note names from samples like in IK Multimedia´s Sampletank. Almost always, samples have their root key in its name, like “sustain a4.wav”. When pressing “generate drum kit” you should have the option to read these notes from samples´ names, and map them automatically across the keyboard.
- Key command: “select next/previous sample in current instrument” would save time when making new instruments or editing large quantities of samples
- MIDI (and/or keyboard) learn in instrument editor: select a sample and play a note. it assigns that split to that note.
- two buttons: “move all split assignments to the right/left” if you want to remap all samples in an instrument.
- when “generating drumkit” you should be able to select the starting note instead being fixed to C-4
VST(i)
- “send devices” should be able, if you want, to send a track´s output as MIDI to any loaded VSTi, whatever instrument it is playing. Instrument changes should be done via patch change commands. If you use multitimbral samplers or synthesizers you will be very happy.
- in track effects, select with a checkbox which parameter of each effect you want to be shown in their minimized view in the mixer. for example: compressors show the “makeup” parameter.
Pattern editing
- in advanced pattern editing, instrument remapping should have the option for “any instrument” in the “source” field. Many times one has lots of articulations spread across lots of instruments, and if you want to replace them with a single VSTi like an advanced sampler, for example, it will save you lots of time.
- I would like to save individual patterns (or tracks in patterns) as text files, then load them in another song. I do it copiyng and pasting to/from windows notepad. OpenMPT (ex-Modplug Tracker) can do this.
- Also, import single patterns from other songs in the browser like you do with samples.
- key command: “set instruments in selection to current one”.
misc.
-“Tap tempo” button. clicking it four times starts playback at tapped speed