Renoise's main areas

The Pattern Sequencer, Pattern Matrix and Pattern Editor are probably the areas in which you will spend most of the time.

The Pattern Sequencer and the Pattern Matrix are shown on the left half of the screenshot above. They are intended to view and edit the song structure. The Pattern Sequencer is a playlist for Patterns. You can also use it to navigate around the song. The Pattern Matrix gives you a more detailed view of the song and speeds up the workflow by letting you copy/paste blocks.

On the right is the main editor, the Pattern Editor. It displays notes and effects in a grid that can be navigated and controlled with the computer keyboard. The Pattern Editor takes the best things about text editors and brings them into the audio world: they are perfect for precise, repeating operations. Constructing a beat just makes more sense when you can punch in the drum hits with a keyboard rather than clicking and dragging lines with a mouse.

On the bottom of the screen is the effect chain of the selected track. Renoise comes with a large set of built-in effects, but also supports VST, AU, DSSI and LADSPA plugins.

Renoise ReWired

With ReWire you can harness the combined power of trackers and sequencers. In this picture each track in Renoise is linked to a track in Reaper. By the way, also notice how the pattern sequencer has a new column with triggers.

Renoise for Mac OS X

Renoise is also available for Mac OS X, which comes with a decent collection of Audio Units created by Apple. Another type of plugins that Renoise supports are VST's made for Mac OS X.

If you prefer to run Renoise in sync with another audio application, you can take advantage of ReWire or the IAC Driver.

Renoise for Linux

Renoise for Linux is capable of running native Linux VST plugins. The screenshot below was taken in the 64-bit flavor of Ubuntu 10.4, with 64-bit versions of Loomer Aspect and Manifold loaded into Renoise. The Preferences panel shows that with proper configuration you can get latency down to an ultra-low 1.0 ms or even better.

The Editors

Renoise has no floating windows, each component stays where it belongs. There are 4 fullscreen tabs, each of which represents an editor.

Sample Editor

Renoise has 3 types of Instruments: sample-based, plugin-based, and MIDI-based. The Sample Editor allows you to modify samples as you would in a wave editor. Besides the regular functions it has some features that are unique, such as running the waveform through a chain of effects used in a track.

The pencil tool lets you draw in waveforms for precise editing and creative sound design.

The Sample Editor transforms Renoise in a software sampler. You can record external line-in audio to a sample and use it in your song. It is also possible to run the audio through a chain of effects in realtime.

To help you with chopping up breakbeats the Sample Editor is capable of detecting the various hits in a sample and cutting it into slices that are manually adjustable. You can set it up so each slice can be referenced from the Pattern Editor or is mapped to a key.

Pattern Editor

The Pattern Editor is the main attraction of the program. This particular type of editor, the tracker, has a long history. Originally a tool for game programmers to efficiently add music to their products and later on becoming the defacto standard in the demoscene, the tracker within Renoise has evolved and expanded to an inspiring and hands-on alternative to the nowadays prevalent piano-roll type editors. Just listen to cutting-edge electronic artists such as Venetian Snares, ASC and Enduser to hear what Renoise is capable of.

Actually, the Pattern Editor is kind of like an abstract piano-roll, with the notes being represented textually instead of graphically. The benefit is that in a lot of situations,
textual notes are faster to navigate and record than lanes of blocks. Also, the pitch dimension of the piano roll has been translated to alphabetic character and numbers to represent the octave. That allows Renoise to display multiple tracks at the same time.

The Mixer

Mixing is an important, perhaps even underestimated aspect of music production. While traditionally outsourced to mixing engineers, bedroom musicians and digital studio
aficionados have taken matters into their own hands. Especially in electronic music genres, mixing has become part of the composition rather than of post-production.

Renoise`s Mixer panel has been designed with a non-traditional approach. For starters, there are no default EQ strips: you build your own effect chain from the ground up.
Moreover, the Mixer panel also functions as a speed dial to access and manipulate effects.

Sample Keyzones & Instrument Editor

Trackers and piano-roll sequencers have a different interpretation of tracks and instruments.
In piano-roll sequencers you think from the perspective of a multi-track recorder, in which each track is linked to a single instrument. Not so with trackers. Tracks are much more flexibel, allowing multiple instruments to be used in the same track. This way you can have a dedicated multi-column percussion track.

The Sample Keyzones Editor makes Renoise a formidable replacement for your old sampler. The editor supports overlapping, velocity, and key release mappings.