Suva Blog

Great news arrived about a week ago when Renoise finished it’s another development cycle. This time the release bears the version number of 2.1 and as most important feature, brings rewire support. Those who are not interested in rewire, including linux users where rewire is not available anyway, won’t be left dissapointed either: amongst other things Renoise 2.1 brings cool new live performance features, which are also extremely useful for arrangement development and idea testing. Real creativity booster in my case. Linuxers are also given JACK transport support, which replaces some (before missing) features from the Rewire support on other platforms.

So I thought to look into the software for a bit and give my opinion about it.

Rewire

Really wanted feature amongst Renoise fanatics. This allows the user to interconnect several different audio programs with Renoise. Basically, allows you to exploit the benefits of different programs while saving lots of time and frustration by avoiding the neccesity for bouncing tracks and importing and exporting the projects. So technically you can track music in Renoise, and record vocals in Reaper for example or even control the synths in one or other program.

I am no expert on rewire unfortunately, as linux user, I have never actually used it, but looking the community reaction to the implementation of the technology, I assume we can safely say it’s a good thing!

Live features

Renoise implements a new technology known as “detatched pattern sequencer”, which allows user to play patterns which are not currently edited. Although the feature is nothing new, and was present in Impulse Tracker as well as many other trackers which have spawned on the earth, it is really great new feature addition to Renoise.

The technology offers several workflow improvements, which some of them are really transparent and intuitive. For example, when editing a pattern and playing it, and the playback advances several patterns. Now, when stopping playback you are still on the pattern you started the playback from, so you don’t lose the track of your work and when recording vocals or guitar solos, you can start the playback from the pattern you wanted to with only one click, without the need to scroll back.

As for live features, the new detached sequencer offers several, small yet extremely useful, features:

First is pattern queue functionality. Pattern sequence view has little playback buttons on next to the track number. By clicking on one of them you add this pattern to playback queue, which means that after current pattern finishes, the marked pattern will be played instead of the next pattern in the sequence. Ofcourse you can mark the next pattern in sequence as well as currently playing pattern aswell. This sort of queuing also overrides “loop pattern” toggle, so you can have full control over the sequence playback order.

By clicking on other pattern while the queue jump hasn’t yet taken place you will replace the queued pattern, so the last clicked one will be played next instead. It is possible to queue multiple patterns, effectively creating on-the-fly pattern sequences, but that feature isn’t actively advertised as it doesn’t yet have indicators for showing the queue numbers. But in case you don’t care about the indicators (most likely you don’t, cause when you need to queue multiple patterns they are flying too fast anyway) you can have much fun with it.

Beside the pattern queue few other cool techniques become available with the detatched sequencer. For example, jump to row functionality (by pressing enter key on default keybindings) is useful for finer grained access to pattern contents and rearranging. You can now jump to certain row on certain pattern while in playback. This does not only let you rearrange the song, but create totally new and unique rhythms, chord progressions and melodies out of existing material. You just have to be fast enough to go through the patterns and rows to make it happen. But as challanging it may seem, it’s extremely fun.

And let’s not forget the ability to change patterns while other patterns are playing. The benefits of this feature are ofcourse obvious to everyone.

Hydra device

Renoise 2.1 added three new metadevices. The one that got most attention was obviously the new allmighty Hydra Device. It might have been it’s mystical name which caused some of the attention, but nevertheless, the beast has some amazing abilities which make it stand out.

By definition the device is very simple signal divider, it has one input and 9 possible outputs with transformations. You can connect several devices to the hydra and control them with one slider. What’s the benefits of this? Basically, you can create complex sound changes which are controllable with single slider and are held together by Hydra transformations. Guys who are crazy about their sound design surely know the situations when they have created complex device chains, but to alter the sound they have to move several sliders or else the sound breaks apart. This metadevice fixes that problem, you can connect up to 9 devices to one hydra device, and if that’s not enough, you can connect one hydra to another.

I have had quite a bit of fun with the hydra device, it definitely both improves workflow and gives the courage to go after complex and inspiring sound designs, which previously looked too scary to handle and hold together.

Other features

Not to forget other cool features that got implemented. Midi CC device got renamed to Midi Control Device and now includes pitch bend controller which is really great news for those who love to make fluid music. Now making pitch bends is easyer than ever and you can do it with lot less pain than before. You can use both automation and pattern commands for pitch bend now, and the latter requires you to fill in only the effect field not bunch of the commands.

Keytracking device lets you make filters behave more sensibly to have clarity in notes that are higher while leaving bassy notes as bassy as with fixed filter. Ofcourse it’s not only limited to that, there are lots of things you can do with key tracking device.

And last but not least, the JACK transport for linux users allows them to sync renoise with other Jack clients. The audio routing between jack clients was possible before and midi syncing with some clients worked aswell.

Overall impression

The release isn’t too big this time, as it came quite quickly after 2.0 release and was intended to be smaller one, but the benefits it offers are totally revolutionary and offer many many many new things to artists and will surely help the world to become ritcher by several great tunes out there.

The stability is still like it used to be: rock solid. On all platforms renoise is offered on. The default theme got bit dimmer and bluer, not sure if it’s better or not as I still use the old, customized theme most of the time.

So another great release by Renoise team!

Download the demo version or purchase the full version here: http://renoise.com
Official press release here: http://www.renoise.com/indepth/renoise-news/renoise-21-gives-you-rewire-jack-transport-and-pattern-queuing/