What About Tracking With A Gamer Mouse?

I’m thinking to buy a new mouse.
I know they are some gamer in the renoise community.
Is it worth the value to buy a gamer one? (NB: I don’t play video-games).
How do you use it (shortcuts)?

Gamer mice have the advantage of higher polling rates and usually more programmable buttons. I use a Logitech G9, it’s good for games but I don’t see how it would make tracking easier.

Perhaps doing some midi rerouting and mapping for some of the unavailable buttons if there exists such functionality.
Or actually if you can combine it…
http://www.bome.com/midi/keyboard/screenshots.html

Yes, I was thinking about midi mapping or using keyboard-shortcuts with the mouse.

Most gamer mice include a software to reconfigure the mouse buttons and allow you to fire key chains instead, which could be used to navigate the pattern sequence for example (internet browser back and forward buttons). Renoise doesn’t seem to detect the additional keys by it’s own currently.

I highly recommend QuicKeys (os x & windows) for mapping midi controls to keyboard keystrokes AND any menu items of a software (including contextual menus) that don’t even have keyboard shortcus assigned, plus all sorts of powerful system-wide automation of your computer. For OS X users, controllermate is amazing for customizing keystrokes and command sequences on devices like keypads, joysticks and mice.

This sounds pretty cool! Can you give an example how you use this and how it has sped up your Renoise workflow? I’m a little hesitant when it comes to these kind of progs, because they always have to be running in the background and take up resources & cause overhead, no?

Actually, QuicKeys really is the answer to all those concerns. I have it set to always be on in the background while staying out of the way and the cpu activity says only 0.1%.

I use it for mapping my midi controllers to keyboard shortcuts and other menu items, and for automation like closing and quitting any number of different applications when you launch just one, with powerful controls like setting delay times for actions and recording sequences of actions, automated launching of scripts, making a certain application come to focus x seconds after applications launch, make commands that are dedicated to a specified application/specific midi controller…etc.

Do you use a mouse with more than 2 buttons in renoise? I don’t know how it could sped up my Renoise workflow. Yes, maybe to navigate between the pattern sequences but it will certainly not be a revolution… Use renoise 100% with the keybord should be better… <_<

Yes. The middle button scrolls up and down as well as sideways. It has a few more buttons but I use them for system functions.

Well, to be honest, I haven’t used either QuicKeys or Controllermate with renoise yet. I use them with Ableton Live and it definitely has sped up my workflow there. I use them to customize nanokontrol and a usb keypad and I use paper tape for labels. I’m thinking a korg nanokey might be a good choice for renoise if I decide I want 25 more buttons that are assigned to shortcuts and/or menu items without shortcuts. That’s one really good thing about QuicKeys. It allows you to map ANY menu items (or a sequence of actions of several menu items) to a midi controller button/knob/slider or a keyboard shortcut, even for menu items where you would otherwise HAVE to use a mouse to access. At the moment I’m very happy controlling renoise with NI Maschine in addition to a computer keyboard and mouse.

I would probably agree with this. The charm of renoise (and trackers in general i guess) is that it’s the only software I’ve used where using the computer keyboard and the mouse does not seem like a hindrance to workflow. It’s actually designed so that the computer keyboard can be used like an instrument, and faster than even using midi controllers. However, I can see how the two tools I mentioned can help others. For example, if you have a netbook or some laptop without all the necessary keys, then I can see how something like an external usb keypad or a nanokey can add to the renoise workflow.