So much energy is spent reflecting on the merits of different tools, or re-hashing tired debates like the comparison between analog and digital, often with the assumption that you can hear the tool in the finished work. But the real value of an expressive, creative tool is that it can produce wildly different results in different hands; it’s the measure of its versatility. And the measure of music is the music itself.

That makes it doubly satisfying listening to the results of the Efficient Music Competition CDM hosted with the Renoise production software and Linux-powered Indamixx netbooks and software suites. While tracker applications have been conventionally associated with certain styles, there’s music here from every possible genre. There are contributing artists at a wide variety of different stages in the development of their craft and creative output – just as all of us are growing and changing. There’s even a spoken word piece with a cow in a can (one of my offbeat favorites). I’m sure you’ll hate some of the music and love some of the rest; some will think the voting results were spot-on and others will be surprised and find the results upside down. Such is taste.

You can download all the entrants in the original Renoise file format, which you can play on any Mac, Windows, or Linux machine even with the free demo version. They’re ranked by popular-opinion vote.

http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/results.php

On the main competition page, most of tracks have SoundCloud players, which means you can also connect with artists you like at that community:

http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/

Remember that all of these tracks are Creative Commons-licensed, meaning they’re ripe sources of samples and sounds you can use freely in your work. If you need them for commercial purposes, you can contact the artists.

Taste aside, though, it’s fantastic to hear the range of activity going on. And keep in mind that the challenge of the competition, as sponsored by the software Renoise and Linux netbook vendor Indamixx, was to do more with less. As lovely as it is to have ever-growing computational resources, this is proof you don’t need them all the time. Even an affordable Atom-powered netbook is capable of real production, which says great things about the ongoing mobilization and democratization of computer music technology.

We have more than just a one-dimensional set of results. The contest judges offer lots to hear, including commentary on the tracks. And I’m pleased to share my own CDM pick and honorable mentions.

CDM Picks

Now, for my own personal Editor’s Choice selections. Keep in mind, these are governed exclusively by my own taste; your mileage may vary.

My pick: After a lot of listening, I’m naming the official Top CDM Selection dvoraktunes’ Tangeble, by Dave Smith-Hayes.

The track didn’t make it into the top popular selections, which is another reason to highlight it here. Sure, it sounds chippy, but it isn’t fondness for chip music and raw, digital sound that prompts me to give it honors. I thought some of the sounds here were the freshest in the bunch. It makes nods to breakcore but manages to parody it in an intelligent, inventive way. (“Chipbreak” is an apt name, as it’s something that, well, happens to chips.)

Catch it on its drop.io page:

http://drop.io/dvoraktunes8190

Here’s what its creator had to say about the track and the software:

It’s one of the first few tracks I ever made in Renoise, I decided it had the best breaks and best instrumentation. It’s a chipbreak track that uses two drum loops (the amen and a Ryan Gruss break) and two simple waveform tracks. Along with filtering, delay and chorus effects. Everything is native to Renoise, no use of VSTs or third party plugins. It should be more than adequate for a netbook.

Generating Drum Kits in the instrument mode is definitely something some one should look into if they’re slicing beats like an old school tracker (fast-tracker II? It’s before my time, that’s for sure). It’s definitely helped me plug in breaks super fast. And learn your effect columns! They can help you achieve some of the coolest sounds that I find are really hard to emulate outside of Renoise.

Honorable mention:

The work of Cornelius Noll (aka 84 Caprice) is easily one of the highlights of the event. It’s worth a visit to the Audio Cookbook site for the track and a lot of background on how it was produced.

http://audiocookbook.org/audio_news/84-caprice-featuring-prof-karma-the-uh-oh-beat/

[indamixx]_84_Caprice_feat._Prof_-_Karma_the_uh_oh_beat.mp3

It did (rightfully) make it near the top of the competition, but it’s worth mentioning that Atte André Jensen’s Længere væk (“further away”) made exquisite use of vocals on Renoise – even if vocal production is not normally associated with trackers or netbooks.

(Working on grabbing the MP3 file, but until then, it’s in the contest results.)

I love Transient’s self-described “abstract hip-hop” on Green Butter:

green butter by transient

ASCII Death Star is a thumping, tasty track:

http://drop.io/asciideathstar

Sometimes, what’s nice about these sort of contests is listening to a track and hearing a musical voice that isn’t your own, that isn’t expected. The cut “Mole” seems just wildly quirky to me, like soundtrack material, and I got to play it while auditioning tracks as I drove along the I-5 in LA:

Mole by aksn

There were many, many worthy tracks, and polish was clearly rewarded in the top five, but at least I’m able to note a few that might otherwise have been missed.

Finally, I’ll shout out a couple of tracks for being especially topical:

chunter deserves recognition for inventing a name for this ("compact electronic desktop music") and then using an open-source, Linux vocoder to sing it:

Compact Electronic Desktop Music by chunter

And, of course, I have to give a special nod to the tune submitted as a CDM theme song. Give "You Know CDM" a listen:

You Know CDM by Subtracted

Podcast and Track Commentary

Ronald Stewart of Indamixx put together a full, hour-long podcast with his top tracks and commentary on his take on each of them:

http://www.trinityaudiogroup.com/EntireBraodcast.mp3

He also had some nice things to see on the Renoise forum:

I just want say I can agree with the comments about ‘competition’ being too restrictive. This was so much more than a competition. This was special. Thank you to all the Renoise producers!

Peter Kirn and I were talking at Dubspot Sunday night and we both agree that this competition BLEW AWAY any opinions of what Renoise sounds like, sounds, specific genre etc. That mold is officially shattered and I think we are all moving on to bigger and better with computer based music production. The fact that someone can produce this caliber of music on a netbook will redefine mindsets that we have yet to realize the benefit for years to come! Let’s cook this for 2-5 years and see how the dust settles (IMO it will be in all of our favor). Lastly, the incredible amount of global contributions to Indamixx (via Linux community) and all of the songs submitted has placed this contest in a new realm that I have never seen in a contest in the USA. This is the ultimate global collaboration that can never be taken away from all of us!

Rock on brothers!!!
I can’t wait for that Renoise Party

Indeed.

Thanks to everyone for contributing, and feel free to share your comments – including constructive criticism – below. (Key word: constructive!)

It’s nearly Election Day again here in New York. But it’s also Musical Election Day worldwide for the Efficient Music Competition with CDM, portable Linux-powered studio Indamixx, and modern tracker Renoise. In an age when technology tends to mean more, these artists are making music with less, carefully optimizing Renoise-powered tracks to operate well on lesser CPUs. Now’s your chance to hear the fruits of their labors, and register your vote. (And because these are Creative Commons-licensed, they’re free to share and share alike, too.)

Here’s what to do:

1. Head to the Renoise-hosted official competition site.

2. Sign in to your Renoise forum account, or register for a free account if you have not already. (This is just a forum account; the Renoise folks won’t be spamming you. Having the account gives you the ability to discuss the songs and pick up some Renoise tips, too.)

3. Give the tracks a listen. You can download them all at once in XRNS format and play them in Renoise – a free demo will do the trick. Alternatively, click the “plus” icon to expand the song for more details; most include an MP3 preview you can listen to on-demand (a good way to browse the tracks, especially on a machine that doesn’t have Renoise installed).

4. Drag and drop to vote. Drag the song from the list down to the voting box at the bottom, then reorder them in order of which you like best. You can vote for multiple songs, but whichever is listed higher in your list will be “weighted” better, so pick your favorites, then choose your favorite favorites.

5. Save your votes! You can adjust your list, add additional entries, and change your mind – just be sure to save each time.

6. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8 is the deadline for voting. Whatever you have listed as your votes then is final.

The forum will be the official venue to discuss these tracks. Of course, I’m also curious to hear on comments – what do you think of these entries overall? Those of you who worked on tracks, what was the experience like having to optimize for limited system resources?

Awesome as Renoise is, I also wanted a place for lovers of all trackers to come together, so I’ve created a new group on Noisepages:

I <3 Trackers [noisepages.com]

Sign up, join in, and we can talk about tracker technique and tools in general. (For instance, I’d love to get a workflow going working on a tiny tracker on the go, then bringing that work into a netbook or laptop running Renoise.)

A challenge to efficiency brings some terrific results. We’ve got tracks for you to hear, a few quick tips on production with Renoise, a place to go talk about the tracks and how to optimize them for netbooks, and a new extended deadline. And if you’re curious what kinds of music can be made with trackers, now’s a perfect chance to give folks from this community a listen. You may be surprised by the breadth of what you hear.

The forward march of transistors has led to maximalist ideas in music technology. The only problem: musical composition often benefits from efficiency. I remember in the early days of Cakewalk for DOS wondering what I would do with their thousands of promised tracks – and that was before digital audio, soft synths, 64-bit, and the like.

The Creative Commons-licensed Indamixx + Renoise + CDM music competition we introduced last month returns to that idea of efficiency. You use a tool with a different creative approach (Renoise, a modern tracker), then work to conserve computer resources instead of squander them. The music can then successfully run on – and you can win – a lovely, ultra-compact Indamixx Netbook.

And while you’re doing more with less, we’ve decided to give you a little more … time. We didn’t want to exclude anyone from getting in entries, so the deadline has been extended – meaning if you submitted already, you have a chance to revise and polish or respond to feedback (including, importantly, CPU optimization feedback).

New deadline: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25

New full-blown entry + discussion site (with audio, full XRNS files, and plenty of chatter on improving production quality and optimization):
http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/

Need help with testing? Once you’ve got an entry in, Ronald Stewart of Indamixx has offered a free download of their Transmission OS (based on Linux), which you can run on your laptop for testing purposes. Contact him via the inquiry form, and be sure to mention you’re entering the contest!

And folks, so far, some brilliant work. The contest organizers (myself, plus the folks from 64 Studio, Indamixx, and Renoise) have been going through entries and are blown away.

Tips

We got some tips from users contributing I wanted to share:

Cmd+C, V, and P will help you a lot!

-subtacted aka Steven Nguyen

Generating Drum Kits in the instrument mode is definitely something some one should look into if they’re slicing beats like an old school tracker (fast-tracker II? It’s before my time, that’s for sure). It’s definitely helped me plug in breaks super fast.

And learn your effect columns! They can help you achieve some of the coolest sounds that I find are really hard to emulate outside of Renoise.

-Dave Smith-Hayes

I’ve used the effects columns to balance out the bass, midrange, and treble parts of the sound, it helps to give me a balanced sound in a quick-and-dirty fashion.

Vocoder is Vocov2, vocals recorded using Ardour.

-chunter

This contest has been a great learning experience. I wrote a quick summation on John’s site that approximates my account.

what else….hmmm… I guess that, as usual, the mp3 is not as great as the .wav or listening in Renoise. I recommend listening in Renoise.

Renoise is time and again the program that I really go to get my work done. I don’t feel like there are a lot of hip hop makers out here that use Renoise but it really has helped me do good work. If you don’t use Renoise yet, download the demo, open the tutorials and demos and restart your creativity!

-84 Caprice

This track for the competition I used Renoise as a Live improvisation tool with traditional and non traditional instruments. After many layers of improvised live piano, synthesis, and machines, Renoise allowed me to cut up what I wanted and used.

-Silent Strangers

Don’t rely too heavily on vsts, remember tracking all started by sampling. Also, if you enjoy vst instruments a lot but want to optimize for lower cpu usage, don’t forget that you can render your channels and turn that instrument sound into a sample – great for live play efficiency and great for techy edits. ;p

-K-Rai

Tips? Hmm… Just do your own thing and don’t give a f*k about what others are doing.. If it sounds right, do it. And always use the flux capacitor mixdown technique.

-Custard

See, every time I mix that way, I wind up back in 1985.

Also, don’t forget to make use of file optimization with this free, omni-platform utility:
XRNIRipper – Renoise XRNS/XRNI inspector, ripper and OGG compressor for Java

Blog Journals and Process

A couple of people were inspired enough to blog about their efforts:

These days I typically use a piano to work out ideas and then graduate into software to execute them. Renoise tends to be my favorite place to land as it loads up like butter and is quick for nailing down concepts. The implied constraints of this contest, however, had hoisted a series of difficulties in my process. The first being that while I like to use VST/VSTi’s in the process, non-native sound creators or effectors were not to be used in the final version. The second concern was the size of the Renoise file as the winning entry will be used as one of the demos within the program (I haven’t had to deal with file size since I turned my 1.44meg floppies into coasters). Third concern – CPU usage. I was shooting for a great track weighing in under 5 megs. My rough track was loaded with complex VST/VSTi’s and was well over 20 megs.

The process was actually more focusing than I imagined.

84 Caprice Featuring Prof – Karma the Uh Oh Beat [AudioCookbook]

Me being who I am had to enter. Not that I’m in it to win the computer, nor a Renoise license because I’m perfectly happy with my Mac and I already own a Renoise license. So why then? because it’s fun, and I should really start using Renoise now that I bought it.

The result is “Cow in a can”

Cow in a can, my entry in the Renoise-compo. [Johan Larsby]

The Music

In no particular order, I wanted to compile some of the latest tracks I’ve got. Of course, you should absolutely go vote and discuss these tracks on the official competition site.

Renegade Jazz by Custard

Void Pointer – Rampensau (192) by Void Pointer

AcrossWorlds by fengland

Compact Electronic Desktop Music by chunter

Tangeble by dvoraktunes (on drop.io)

Persecution Theory by phila (on drop.io)

UNGHpsycho2009-140bpm by megadrives

Space Shuffle by ASCII Death Star (on drop.io)

I think this track is Renoise-based, if separate from the competition.
The Love Affair of Man and Machine (Synthesizer Quartet and Solo Piano) by SilentStrangers

Oh yeah, and I do love the title of this track:

You Know CDM by subtracted

Seeing a tracker interface for the first time can be intimidating. But dive in a bit deeper, and you’ll discover what’s actually a very efficient interface for programming in musical sequences and working with samples. With just ten days left in the Renoise – Indamixx music production contest, there’s still time to get up and running using even the demo version of Renoise (into which you can import samples). And this could be a great excuse to learn a new tool.

Dac, who’s a big part of support and community for Renoise, has put together a nice tutorial showing off the workflow in the tool. It’s nothing all that unusual: bring in samples, assemble patterns, make music. Some of the voice over is hard to hear, but this is a good start. Now, I still like reading and writing better than video just in terms of how I learn, so I may try to work on a written version for the end of the week; feel free to shout encouragement.

For more Renoise inspiration, forum regular djnick sends along a PsyTrance video made in Renoise – so, yes, you can make PsyTrance with a tracker, too, if you like. He samples Peter Jennings talking about ecstasy. Yeah, whatever – as if you can make Peter Jennings any more trippy. Watching Jennings is the ultimate natural high.

And here’s the original jerk beat tutorial. (Hey, who are you calling a jerk beat? Sorry, that just can’t sound not strange when I hear that phrase…)

Enjoy. Got specific requests for how-to’s, other tips or tutorials you’ve found useful, or questions you’d like answered? Do let us know.

The tracker is back. Piano rolls and fake multitrack tape turn out not to be the only way to conceptualize how music is put together in digital form. And Renoise is a terrific way to learn a ground-up approach to production, because you get the quick workflow of the tracker without having to sacrifice so many of the “comforts of home” we’re used to in modern DAWs. So we’re pleased to have our Renoise + Indamixx contest going, not only for existing users, but newcomers, too.

Renoise users have one way of evangelizing why they love their tool, which is to show off, as seen in the excellent video above. But what if you’re new to Renoise, or new to trackers in general, and want to experiment? You don’t even need to make a cash investment: you can start to experiment with a relatively full-featured demo version on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The time investment is the likely barrier. So I asked Montreal-based Dac Chartrand of Renoise, who is also the man who keeps tabs on the community, to share his tips. Here’s what he suggests:

1) XRNS files are source code. Find one you like, load it up, press the spacebar and start clicking around. Renoise will happily chug along as you explore each and every facet of the sequencer. When you get bored of clicking, try remixing. Move some notes around, press the escape key and jam on the QWERTY keyboard. Anyone familiar with trackers will tell you that this is how it’s always been done, this is how it always should be, file sharing since the days of Amiga. PRO TIP: Tutorials and Demo Songs are in the Help menu.

2) YouTube is your friend. Go there, type Renoise, watch and learn. Enthusiastic users show off their tunes, some even make "Do It Yourself" tutorials for good measure.

3) Download the "Pattern Command Quick Reference Card" PDF file. This DIY reference was created by a user in the Renoise forums. It’s a cool print out that folds up and sits pretty  on your desk. Pattern Commands are special columns to the right of notes; lets you take sample manipulation to the next level.

PDF: http://paulmerchant.com/downloads/RenoiseReferenceCard2.pdf

4) If you don’t know trackers, then forget everything you learned about other DAW workflows. You must unlearn what you know in order to be a jedi master. For example, other sequencers  have a very strong relation between track and instrument. In Renoise, instruments go anywhere,  tracks are what you make of them. Other sequencers have a timeline, Renoise has patterns that you chain together to make a song. A newbie mistake is to try to make one gigantic pattern.  Instead, make several smaller patterns and sequence them.

5) Documentation. Yup, it’s thee copout tip. But seriously, there are tons of documentation on the Renoise website. Not reading them is kind of stupid.  When all else fails, browse the forums or see if anyone in IRC chat can help.

DOCS: http://tutorials.renoise.com/
FORUMS: http://www.renoise.com/board/
IRC: http://www.renoise.com/community/chat/

Thanks, Dac! Now, I’ll also be working on some stuff for CDM soon, as well, but this should get you going in the meantime.

Must-Have Renoise Utility

Bantai at Renoise also shares (via comments) an excellent tool for sharing your work in Renoise, compressing files, and – aprospos of Dac’s suggestion – inspecting existing XRNS files.

Another tip: you can get the filesize of your song down by up to a factor 10 if you use lossy compressed samples instead of the default 32-bit stereo FLAC file format. I reckon a small filesize wins you bonus points in a tweaker’s compo.

Since Renoise songs are basically ZIP files containing song data and samples, it’s almost trivial to run the extracted contents of the song through OggDrop or a similar application and zip it up again.

It can be easier: I have written a Java tool that takes the work out of your hands and compresses your Renoise XRNS song automatically:

XRNIRipper

(Java geeks, he also writes me: “I’m using vorbis-java lib from xiph.org and a modified version of jFLAC to support Renoise’s custom 32-bit FLACs. There are also several libs included to convert sample and bit rates. Curiously enough, I couldn’t find any other Java apps that encode files to Ogg Vorbis.”)

More Videos, Tips?

It’s a couple of years old and based on an earlier version, but I especially liked this tutorial for demonstrating what the workflow is about:

And if you Renoise-using readers have tips, or if you find a YouTube video you think is especially awesome, please do share. I’ll get back to working on my basic guide.

If you’re ready to show your skills creating digital music, we want your work.

UPDATED! New contest entry page, new deadline (10/25):
http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/
Plus tips, tracks, and more to give you additional inspiration:
More with Less:”Efficient” Renoise Music Tracks and Tips

Renoise, the "bottom-up" music production tool that makes brings modern comforts to the tracker interface, and Indamixx, the turnkey Linux-powered mobile music rig, are working with CDM on a contest to produce a new song. You’ll need Renoise to make your track, but the software now runs natively on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and you can even finish your production on the free demo version if you’d like to give the software a taste before committing to it. (Really – you can even save your file. The demo won’t let you save a wav file, but we’ll judge the xrns, and the only other restrictions are some nags – Renoise is a rare return to the old “shareware” model of development.)

Here on CDM, we’ll also be featuring some tutorials on music production using Renoise, using Linux, and using free and open source software, as well as the commercial offerings. So, this is a chance not only to compete, but to learn some new tools. Rather than just feed off your work, I’m really eager to make this competition a chance for us to work together and share knowledge, to give to you. So I’m pleased to have some of the experts in the Linux audio community and Renoise community helping us do just that.

The competition will also be fully Creative Commons-licensed, to make sure you’re free to use our tips and tutorials, and that the track you make is free for others to remix – without abusing your work. (This is not officially CC-affiliated; we’re just making use of their license.)

Aside from the prizes, I’ll be thrilled to have the chance to promote your best work here on CDM, and the winner will become a demo song available via Renoise and on the Indamixx Linux-powered USB flash drive and pre-configured netbooks. (The USB stick means that if you already have a netbook, you can get a stable, pre-configured Linux rig on your existing machine.)

Above: The grand prize, the Indamixx Netbook. I’ve just gotten one in the mail from Indamixx to try, and I’m already hooked on the thing. Based on the MSI Wind, the rig is pre-configured with Linux software, set up in advance for you, with energy XT, Renoise, and ArdourXchange for converting sessions from software like Pro Tools – plus lots of free and open source software, of course. Win the contest, and you get one of your own – and your track will ship as the Renoise demo on this laptop and on the Renoise site.

How to enter:

Here’s how the competition will work:

1. You’ll make your track in Renoise, saving as an .xrns file. (Don’t want to start from scratch? Renoise imports MIDI files and many tracker formats, so you could, for instance, bang out some beats on your PSP using LittleGPTracker, then finish up in Renoise.) You can use any samples you like, but make sure they’re your own recordings or samples you’ve cleared for this purpose, and that you properly attribute them.

2. Make sure your track will play on a netbook – so go easy. For reference, here’s a file used for benchmarking systems. Figure that your track should have a similar task on your CPU.

CPUBenchmark21.xrns (nothing special musically – for testing only!)

3. Post your music somewhere (audio + xrns) – put it on your blog, use drop.io, sign up for CDM’s own in-development blog platform noisepages.com, or whatever you like. If you put the sound somewhere like SoundCloud, of course, you get an instantly-embeddable player.

4. Be sure to apply a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. I’ll be doing the same with CDM’s tutorials and such. This leaves others free to share your work and to remix it, while ensuring they can only do so if they attribute you properly and if their work is just as free to share. (It does not preclude you from selling it later on, either.) See the details of the license, then sign up.

About the license

License your work 

Choose “yes” for commercial uses – because any commercial use must still share alike, which discourages commercial abuse. Select “yes, as long as others share alike” for modifications. Choose “unported” for jurisdiction. And make use of the other fields to attach metadata to your work.You should get a CC-BY-SA license as a result, which allows maximum flexibility for your work while protecting you from people exploiting your work without also sharing the results.

5. Tell us about it! Point CDM, Indamixx, Renoise, and the contest judges to your track by signing up here:

Contest entry form [Google Docs]

6. Judging will evaluate whether tracks are relatively CPU efficient xrns files, but – most importantly – are original, terrific music. There will be categories judged by producer/remix artist/DJ Ron Stewart of Indamixx and Peter Kirn of CDM, and a user’s choice judged by you via public voting.

Prizes:

An Indamixx Netbook MK II SE, to the Indamixx choice

A registered version of Renoise, to the CDM choice

4 Indamixx USB stick versions, to the user choices

DEADLINE:

October 15

We’ll have updates through the competition.

Stay tuned for more tips and tutorials on Renoise and Linux audio alike, plus a look at the Indamixx Linux-powered netbook rig (I’ve just gotten one for testing – it’s deliciously compact).

Questions? Thoughts? Shout out in comments below.

Renoise has already earned a passionate following among lovers of trackers. The once-forgotten alternative to conventional sequencers, these music editors were beloved for their quick workflow and vertical, atomic approach to assembling beats and patterns. But Renoise is increasingly poised to appeal to other kinds of music makers, too, not just tracker purists.

2.1 you can sum up pretty easily: now you can integrate Renoise with other stuff easily. There’s ReWire support (appropriately enough for a tool beginning with “Re” in the title). And if you’re on Linux, you can pipe control and audio through the ultra-elegant, ultra-powerful JACK. (If you’re not on Linux, you may have just gotten a good reason to give it a try.)

http://www.renoise.com/

This is on top of a rapidly-growing set of features like multi-core balancing, automatic delay compensation, audio recording (cough, Reason), and MIDI inputs and outputs. In other words, this is a tracker you can use without giving up modern luxuries. Maybe it’s like the difference between having a tent in gorgeous mountainous wilderness, and having a mansion with a hot tub and a T1 Internet line.

ReWire is the headline, but some of the live performance tools may make an even bigger difference. Live control tools and live pattern sequencing could make Renoise a lot more useful in performance, even without just ReWiring into Live and recording clips. The pattern triggering looks especially nice, because it brings a feature Game Boy trackers have often used live. (Add JACK on Linux, and you could add your own custom instruments.)

And, oh yeah, the whole program runs on every OS, has an incredibly responsive and involved community that impacts the direction of the tool, and is distributed on a shareware model rather than with painful copy protection.

Full disclosure: I’m slightly biased by enjoying a couple of beers with Renoise’s Dac, and by the fact that I think this looks completely delicious.

Here’s the full changelog.

Full ReWire Slave & Master support (on Windows & OSX)

ReWire allows you to connect and synchronize multiple software applications, so that you can run them side by side while passing Audio/MIDI information between them.

For example, you could connect Renoise to Logic, program your drums in Renoise, while arranging the bulk of your song in Logic. Or you could connect both Reason and Ableton Live to Renoise, arrange your track in Renoise, control Reason’s built-in synthesizers, and play around with loops in Live. All it takes is some ReWire enabled software and you are good to go.

ReWire has two modes, both of which are fully supported by Renoise: *ReWire Master* (ReWire Mixer) and *ReWire Slave* (ReWire Synth)

Jack Transport Support (Linux only)

Similar to ReWire, Renoise now supports the Jack transport protocol. Jack transport allows Linux users to start, stop and reposition multiple audio programs, all connected/running through Jack. 

New Pattern Sequencer Features:

Decoupled Sequencer Playback Now Possible: This new feature allows the user to detach the current playback position from the edit position. This lets you edit a pattern while other patterns are playing.

Live Pattern Triggering:

Patterns can now be "scheduled" for playback via a new column in the Pattern Sequencer. Without stopping playback you can now trigger new sequences in the song "in real time". 

New meta devices (Modulation / Automation Device fun)

• Hydra Device: Automate/change/broadcast multiple FX parameters with a single parameter. Think of this as a magic slider, which connects itself to up to 9 other parameters – allowing you to change multiple settings with just one slider or automation.
• Keytracking Device: Modulates parameters depending on an instruments key (note) value. Like what the "*Velocity Device" does with Velocities, the Keytracking device does with Keys/Notes.  
• MIDI Control Device: This device replaces the old "MIDI-CC Device", finally offering Pitchbend, Channel Pressure, Program Change & regular controller (CC) in a single device.

I hope to check this out in June when I can sit down and get back to production.

What happens when you put all the digital and electronic tools you love together into one groove session? I expect it probably looks something like this video. Welcome to the new digital music age: DIY electronics, vintage digital tech (Game Boys), and modern computer tech (Monome as Arduinome clone, Max/MSP, and shiny MacBook) all coexist. And a fair bit of what you see if a modern hybrid of old and new paradigms, like the thoroughly modernized Tracker Renoise. Thomas Margolf says “Greetings from Rotterdam” and writes,

We made a first Jam using the new GorF step-sequencer, Arduinome, max msp patch ‘Soyuz’, a Gameboy running LittleSoundDJ, LSDJMC2 Gameboy Midi-Interface, Renoise, Ableton Live and a Nord Micro-Modular. It’s the first session with a fresh soldered GorF.

Lovely stuff. Keep on soldering and jammin’, folks. Okay, tagging this story is going to take … a lot of tags.

Ever feel music creation apps are too similar? Imagine an alternative universe in which music making software evolved along different lines. In this universe, the “tracker” isn’t some arcane novelty, but the detailed, bottom-up music editing approach that becomes the basis of music construction tools for any genre. Now imagine a breakthrough software release in that alternate universe.

Maybe it’s the Large Hadron Collider, but the release of Renoise 2 means that this is actually our universe: we have a cheap, community driven, unique app that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And it’s getting a big update Thursday – almost in time for my birthday (Tuesday).

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you picked the right moment to tune in. Renoise always had potential as a unique tool for music making, and with the shipment of Renoise 2, some very key pieces are falling into place. I’ve just gotten an exclusive look at what’s coming in the final release. Dac Chartrand has shared some details that weren’t previously public.

You heard it here first:

• Renoise 2.0 FINAL launches January 15, 2009, “8 years in the making, 4 months of beta testing.”
• Launch details on January 15 will be at http://www.renoise.com/launch/
• It’ll work with netbooks. Dac tells us: “Renoise can now be resized to fit on small Netbook screens. Here’s an interesting thread where a user reviews Renoise on his new MSI Wind U100:” http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=19175"
• Additional tweaks and bug fixes made it in, including Universal Audio UAD2 DSP support and latency compensation.
• Renoise 2 will support fraction BPMs, like 127.56.
• It’ll have new demo songs. “Two of the songs were selected from submissions by the Renoise community in a competition called "Beta Battle, Round 1 & Round 2". The developers chose their favorites and have included them in the final release of Renoise 2.0. More info here:” http://www.renoise.com/indepth/category/competitions/
• New native DSP effects: RingMod, Scream Filter

Read on for more details, plus tips on making this work with the tools you already use…

Renoise 2.0 New Features

Here’s the rest of what’s new in Renoise:

• Automatic plug-in delay compensation for everything – effects and instruments
• Latency compensation and fixing when recording
• Improved audio performance, lower-latencies on multiple CPUs on Mac and Linux
• Channel and polyphonic aftertouch
• Note quantize options, real-time quantize on record, nudge, and keyboard shortcuts

Plug-in improvements, including one big one:

• Mac AU support, removing the big obstacle for Mac users
• Multi-output VSTi/AU (that’s good news for Kore users, among others)
• Send notes to VST/AU effects (instead of just instruments
• Plug-in management improvements, including info, custom sorts, sort by manufacturer, hide, move, rename (and that was listed under “minor features”)

A lot of the best features are related to timing improvements. You will need to update old songs, but for new songs, there’s a lot of power. And this really gets into the significance of Renoise as a tracker, something I hope we’ll cover this year:

• Custom track delays for audio and MIDI to offset an entire track
• You can now set time via “Lines Per Beat” – how many lines in the pattern make up a musical beat. (That’ll make sense to tracker users and not to anyone else, but until we whip up a demo, just trust me that that’s a good thing.)
• There’s a delay column for fine-tuning specific grooves at up to 4096 parts per quarter (PPQ).
• You can set pitch and volume glides, independent of the “tick” of the sampler.
• In the future, Renoise will support “zoomable patterns,” piano roll for those who want it, greater timing accuracy, and other new improvements.

There are also tons of other improvements, performance tweaks, shortcuts, and other little features:

New in 2.0: Complete Feature List

Integration and Tips

Of course, the hype that usually accompanies software launches at NAMM and elsewhere usually has to do with convincing you the tool is the One True Tool you need, replacing everything else. That’s nonsense, of course. Just as in the pre-computer days, what made a studio productive was the right combination of gear and easy ways of connecting it, software lovers find combining software to be what makes them happiest and most expressive.

Dac passed along a few ideas for integrating Renoise. These immediately make me think of other possibilities, but here are a few gems to get you started:

Guide To Connecting Reason To Renoise: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=15683

A workaround for sending SYSEX to your synth: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=11777

GarageBand in conjunction with Renoise: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=12590

Convert Renoise files to MIDI files using PHP: http://xrns-php.sourceforge.net/xrns2midi.html

How to use Windows VST on Linux: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=15347

If you can’t wait until next week, there’s a release candidate available for download in demo mode right now:

See also:

Renoise + FM8 Drum Kit, Free Download: FM Meets Tracker [our own kore.noisepages.com]

Renoise 2.0 Public Beta Amps Up Popular Tracker for Windows, Mac, Linux

Wallace clued us in back in summer 207 that this would be big

And for pure, absurd fun:

Renoise Tracker Made Into Animation

While better-known software names may get the attention, Renoise, a music making tool in the mold of a tracker, has long had a lot going for it. It runs on every platform you own (Windows, Mac, Linux) with just one license, applies a unique approach to musical arrangement and composition with a more modern interface, and allows speedy production with lots of keyboard shortcuts. As a tracker, the pattern editing in Renoise allows a “granular” level of control, for quick editing in textual views instead of visual blocks as in a piano roll. Whereas some retro-styled trackers don’t support modern features, Renoise has multi-core support, MIDI, VST instruments and effects, ASIO, audio recording, built-in effects, and flexible routing and mixing. It also has a built-in sampler and sample editing, so you can do audio manipulation from within Renoise as well as make use of your suite of instruments and effects. And the whole thing costs EUR49.99.

Renoise is about to get a major 2.0 update, with support for:

• An overhauled engine with better timing and precision
• Plug-in delay compensation — although what’s interesting here is that this promises to impact more than just hardware DSP platforms like Universal Audio; it also “also compensates your MIDI gear and midi cables wired to other hosts.”
• Audio Unit plug-ins on Mac, plus improved VST support

The AU plug-in support alone could help Renoise crack the Mac community. I also like some of the other features, including new plug-in browsing, drag-and-drop, new filters, and quantization.

Renoise 2.0 Product Page (note: there’s no public beta as such, but if you’re an existing, registered Renoise user, you can access the beta releases; everyone else will for now have to try the 1.x demo)

Discussion on Renoise Forum

Because Renoise is a bit different from the music tools to which you’re probably most accustomed, and because this is an important release, I had some quick questions for main Renoise developer Eduard Mueller (aka Taktik)…

PK: For those who may not have tried trackers before, how would you suggest getting started with Renoise? What should they do once they’ve grabbed the demo in those first fifteen or thirty minutes?

EM: Beyond the manual and the tutorials, the best way to get started with Renoise is to go to YouTube and search for the word “Renoise.” Many proud users show many aspects of the sequencer and “tracking culture” on there. Of course not everything you will find is an epic masterpiece, but the enthusiasm is there, and you get a good vibe for what Renoise is all about.

What was important to you for this release?

EM: The most important feature is the engine overhaul which introduces precision and timing. It allows for level of quantization and accuracy never seen in Renoise before. Moreover, this massive engine overhaul is essential for behemoth features in later releases, such as Zooming, the Arranger, Audio Tracks and maybe even a Piano Roll.

Ed.: Wow — putting a piano roll in a tracker would be a new development, for those who occasionally want the best of both worlds!

What would you suggest to Renoise users wanting to get the most out of Renoise?

EM: Learn the shortcuts. Renoise is like an instrument. It’s like learning a guitar, or a trumpet. You have to get a feel for your QWERTY keyboard to get the most out of it. Of course you can use the
mouse, and that’s not wrong in any way, but the shortcuts allow you to get the most out of the workflow.

CDM: We’ll have more on Renoise soon as the 2.0 release launches, including how you might integrate with workflows in other tools. Stay tuned.