Opinions about Renoise

[Bulbizarre]

As a Live user, I found out about Renoise recently, installed the demo and it was a pleasant surprise.
Things I like so far is how fast it is to create drum patterns, creative midi effects, and navigation in project is super fast and satisfying since there is no need to zoom and unzoom like on traditional DAWs. I was worried about the midi limitations of the grid system but also found this plugin called Reform which can trick around and quickly create arpeggios and other complex midi stuff. On another hand, I'm afraid things get messy when adding various "extra" samples and layering them between sections (if that's even possible)
I'm diving more into the program but interested what you guys think about the workflow, viability for modern projects compared to Live, and what are your favorite resources for learning or using it !
Cheers

[mholloway]

I'm diving more into the program but interested what you guys think about the workflow, viability for modern projects compared to Live, and what are your favorite resources for learning or using it !
Cheers

The differences between creating 'modern projects' with a matrix-grid DAW like Ableton vs. a tracker-DAW like renoise will come entirely down to personal taste, workflow and preference. Nobody can tell you if YOU can make successful modern music in Renoise... just get to work and see what happens. If it fully clicks in, hooray. If it doesn't, back to Ableton...

The best resources are the official Renoise forum, and some of the many YT vids on using the program.

It's a wonderful program, albeit in recent years it has been very slow to develop. But the current state is very solid, stable, and excellent. But again, whether it's "viable" isn't some objective fact to be confirmed by groupthink here at KVR. It's personal. Will it work for you? Only one way to find out...

[questionaire]

Its a great program there are things i like, like the really integrated sampler. However i returned to Bitwig. For audio recording renoise is really basic and limited.

[El°HYM]

Switched from Renoise to Ableton a few years ago; now somehow Bitwig kind of fills the Gap in between. I think its still useful for creating loops, maybe similar to the old MPC workflow and sequencer. I was actually using Renoise since Version 2.0 if I remember correctly.

[VOODOO U]

I was worried about the midi limitations of the grid system but also found this plugin called Reform which can trick around and quickly create arpeggios and other complex midi stuff.

What do you mean by The Grid system?
Also do you have a link for this Reform plugin? I was unable to find it.

On another hand, I'm afraid things get messy when adding various "extra" samples and layering them between sections (if that's even possible)

I'm not sure what you mean by this either. Are you talking about key zones or playing notes between notes in the tracker (which you can do by just increasing the line count of the pattern)?

I'm diving more into the program but interested what you guys think about the workflow, viability for modern projects compared to Live,

For a few years I attempted to get a good workflow going using Live to do realtime "on the fly" performances.
I won't bore you with the details, let's just say I've tried just about everything and was never 100% satisfied.
Had someone told me what I was looking for was a tracker program named Renoise, a pie would have been slapped on their face.
Yet, Renoise was indeed what I was looking for.
It truly is personal workflow preferences along with what style of music one wants to do.
Anyhow, Renoise is perfect for spontaneous on the fly performances.
The great thing about it is I could do it all with a sturdy QWERTY keyboard and needn't bother with anything else.
Another huge plus is I don't need VST instruments for the performances being that Renoise has a plugin grabber.
Sure it can be done with Live as well but there's something more compact with Renoise that simplifies things.
No doubt Live has a dynamite workflow. It's just one of those things where after messing around with a tracker, I cant stand piano rolls anymore (with the exception of standard recordings requiring piano etc. and orchestral type work).

and what are your favorite resources for learning or using it !

I just plug and play. Thats the best way to go about it. When I have a question or get stumped I google and find (so far) that all are answered in the Renoise forums.
And I've had A LOT of questions. So far there was no need for forums posts as others have already gone through the challenges I faced.

[Bulbizarre]

What do you mean by The Grid system?
Also do you have a link for this Reform plugin? I was unable to find it.

I found it from the official website https://www.renoise.com/tools/reform
The grid is to me just what the tracker interface looks like.

I'm not sure what you mean by this either. Are you talking about key zones or playing notes between notes in the tracker (which you can do by just increasing the line count of the pattern)?

By "section", I meant what is actually called a pattern in Renoise. Let's say I have a long midi note playing a pad chord in pattern 1. Can the midi note extend through the next pattern or will it be "interrupted" as we're jumping on the next pattern; that was what I mentionned

Anyways, thanks for the input !

[VOODOO U]

By "section", I meant what is actually called a pattern in Renoise. Let's say I have a long midi note playing a pad chord in pattern 1. Can the midi note extend through the next pattern or will it be "interrupted" as we're jumping on the next pattern; that was what I mentionned

https://forum.renoise.com/t/continuous- ... note/27826

Thanka for the link to Reform. Looks like a good addenda.

[tha_man]

They say Renoise is a DAW, but it's actually more like a creative semi-modular sampler with sequencer and plugin support. For me it's the most fun I can have making music with a computer, but, depending on a genre, you might miss some features from typical DAWs, like audio tracks, linear arranger and live features a-la Ableton.

Yeah it was a bit slow to develop lately in terms of new features, because developer focused more on getting it modern "under the hood" with VST3, hi-dpi and native apple silicon support. It got it even before some bigger DAWs, not to mention it now runs even on Raspberry pi, besides Windows, Mac and Linux. I think this is more important that new features, but now that it "got there", I think next version might be again more feature oriented. At least I hope so

[apoclypse]

As a Live user, I found out about Renoise recently, installed the demo and it was a pleasant surprise.
Things I like so far is how fast it is to create drum patterns, creative midi effects, and navigation in project is super fast and satisfying since there is no need to zoom and unzoom like on traditional DAWs. I was worried about the midi limitations of the grid system but also found this plugin called Reform which can trick around and quickly create arpeggios and other complex midi stuff. On another hand, I'm afraid things get messy when adding various "extra" samples and layering them between sections (if that's even possible)
I'm diving more into the program but interested what you guys think about the workflow, viability for modern projects compared to Live, and what are your favorite resources for learning or using it !
Cheers

If you want the best of both worlds get Redux instead so you can use Renoise inside of Live. I really like the Redux plugin.

[xbitz]

My problem was with the automation that runs across multiple patterns, like risers; uplifters, downlifters, those are only awkwardly manageable, need extensions >> found a forum entry about this: https://forum.renoise.com/t/automation- ... erns/69463

but can see Ableton Link support in the latest release so https://forum.renoise.com/t/renoise-3-4 ... ased/66685 can work parallel with AL

[spoontechnique]

You have to adapt to Renoise and start thinking in a Renoise way.

Renoise is amazing for rhythmic music, since you can change tempo and meter so easily. Having multiple tempos in a pattern is a piece of cake.

In other DAWs, I miss Renoise's pattern sequencer the most. Trying different song structures on the fly is easy in Renoise and hard in most other DAWs.

[VOODOO U]

If you want the best of both worlds get Redux instead so you can use Renoise inside of Live. I really like the Redux plugin.

It actually wouldn't be Renoise inside live. The obvious would be no pattern matrix and the other would be capabilities of the pattern editor that are unavailable in the phrase editor which Redux uses. Makes sense from a business standpoint.
Unless a Live user wants the workflow of a tracker there really isn't much need for Renoise or Redux since Live, coupled with Max, could do everything Renoise does.
On another note, I really don't see the purpose of the phrase editor. I've watched vids of users utilizing it and didn't see anything worth diving into. Renoise itself should just be made available as a VST/CLAP plugin that way we can have multiple instances of the full program as oppsed to a stripped down version.

[mholloway]

In other DAWs, I miss Renoise's pattern sequencer the most. Trying different song structures on the fly is easy in Renoise and hard in most other DAWs.

Ableton and Bitwig's matrix grids do everything renoise pattern sequencer does, and far more (see below)...so I strongly disagree with this statement.

It's great that renoise has the pattern sequencer, sure, but it's got nothing on the scene based clip-launchers of Ableton and Bitwig, and is far less powerful. In those, you can have different length clips all looping together in a single scene. in Renoise, every track is forced to have the exact same length within the current pattern, which means in the pattern sequencer, you can only arrange 'sequences' in which the content of every track is exactly the same length. Which, for someone coming from the grid workflow of Ableton, is a massive, massive limitation -- and why I strongly disagree with your assertion above. If you're just comparing to Cubase, Studio One, etc. then sure; but compared to Live / Bitwig, the Renoise pattern sequencer alone offers little to nothing.

I tried to type in an illustration of what I mean but the text editor undoes all my formatting, I'll share it as an image below...

Screen Shot 2023-11-12 at 10.04.41 AM.png

obviously the number of bars is arbitrary, but the point is that in the renoise sequence, every track is locked to a single length for the given pattern, whereas in the grid matrix of the other two, every track can be looping a clip of a different total length per scene -- absolutely common, everyday behavior for using these kind of sequencers, e.g. having shorter drum loops playing along with much longer synth passages, etc.

[VOODOO U]

Its a bit more work but you could just copy and paste pattern blocks on the tracks you want to repeat certain notes.
Say in Live if you got one clip looping 2 bars and another looping 8 bars, all you're doing is repeating specific notes/portion of an audio file.
So just copy/paste to accomodate the length of the pattern.
Again, it's more work but it can be done.

[mholloway]

Its a bit more work but you could just copy and paste pattern blocks on the tracks you want to repeat certain notes.
Say in Live if you got one clip looping 2 bars and another looping 8 bars, all you're doing is repeating specific notes/portion of an audio file.
So just copy/paste to accomodate the length of the pattern.
Again, it's more work but it can be done.

That's not even close to the same, since the whole point of Live working this way is that while a scene and its (varied length) loops are playing back, you can record a new clip into the scene, of an arbitrary length. You're not constrained by the length of any one of the clips in the scene, because they are all looping, regardless of their length. Your workaround requires deciding in advance exactly how long you want everything to be, copy+pasting all tracks shorter than that value up to that max length, then recording a new part, which is of course constrained to that max length ...and thereby failing entirely to recreate the behavior of the Live scene.

Whereas the whole point of Live's behavior is that 'max length' for the new clip is arbitrary: you can record a new clip into a scene and play for as long as you want, stopping any time, and it all fits together when you hit stop: the new clip could be shorter, equal to, or longer than the longest clip in the scene -- you don't have to decide in advance. Your workaround does not recreate this, it's just a lot of manual copy+pasting to create a predetermined total length.

I love Renoise, it's a fantastic program, but suggesting that this workaround makes the pattern sequencer the same (re: "it can be done") as how Live / Bitwig behavior behave is disingenuous. It's a totally different, and far more constrained, matrix workflow.