Who says we should have only one set of assumptions when it comes to how music software should work? Renoise remains a vision of an alternate reality where mod trackers – musical editors with vertical, pattern-based views instead of horizontal, linear piano roll views – are our present and future. And Renoise keeps getting better and more modern, demanding less of a sacrifice from those coming from other music production tools while strengthening the unique elements of its musical workflow.

We get a first look at the new features here for Mac, Windows, and Linux users, as well as the inside story from the developers.

The new 2.7 release, released in beta this weekend, adds some changes that could dramatically improve working with this tool. Renoise 2.6 was all about hacking and developers; 2.7 is focused on musical utility. (Of course, that means the two combined is a nice one-two punch.) The new features are detailed in the video above, but here are the highlights:

• Smart sample slicing. It’s about time – you can now easily slice a sample using markers or transient detection, and instantly map them using either a keymap or Renoise’s pattern slicing. Yes, other tools have similar features, but slicing is actually more of a natural fit in Renoise, because of its emphasis on pattern triggering, integrated sampling, and fine-tuned edits. DIY instruments did some of this, but having it as an integrated feature is invaluable.
• Better sample keyzones. Renoise’s sampler now acts more as you’d expect a sampler, with the ability to map samples to velocity, key release and not just key press, and to stack and overlap sections. Again, a “traditional” feature takes on new meaning in the context of Renoise, because of Renoise’s advanced mixer routing and pattern triggering capabilities.
• Automation snapping and other tweaks. You can now adjust zoom, snap, and whether or not the edit position follows playback. I actually wish Ableton Live’s automation envelopes worked more like Renoise’s now do. It’s also very accurate, now with 256 steps of precision for each line of the pattern view.
• Multiband sends and more track DSP improvements. Multiband send — oh, yes, indeed, hello. I’m not sure why this isn’t more common, but this feature alone could make Renoise editing wortwhile for effect-loving users. There’s also better DSSI support for Linux users.
• MIDI input routing to individual instruments and tracks.

There are many other improvements, too: pre-count metronome (’bout time), undo/redo that doesn’t view each note played live separately, real-time rendering if you want it, new Lua bindings, and lots of usability tweaks. I’m also quite fond of the phase meter spectrum view you see at the beginning of the video.

Renoise requires some learning and adjustment if you’re used to more conventional editors, and it’s still better suited to production than it is to live use, though people are working on that. But to me, the sample slicing and sample mapping alone could put a lot of people over the top; they’re what has personally held me back from doing more production in Renoise instead of elsewhere.

Don’t forget, as the press release observes:

Renoise boasts full ReWire and Jack support, FX and instrument VST/AU/LADSPA/DSSI plug-in support, automatic plug-in delay compensation, multi-core load balancing, MIDI I/O, OpenSoundControl, audio recording, flexible audio output, graphical & numerical parameter automation, modular parameter routing, and much more.

I think it’s now probably the most complete music tool available on Linux, and even on Mac and Windows, has the most sophisticated native, built-in API for manipulation and customization and OSC control. On both Mac and Linux, by the way, powerful Jack control means that Renoise, Ardour and Harrison Mixbus, and Pd (Pure Data) can all play nicely together – an insanely-powerful combination of tools that you can get, incredibly, for under a couple hundred dollars.

If you’re a registered user, you can grab the beta right now. Release notes and download link:
http://www.renoise.com/release-notes/270

But the developers also have some reflections on Renoise that they wish to share with CDM. They actually did this, much to my delight, unsolicited, and they offer real insight and even usability tips. It’s great to get this right from the people working on the project.

Kieran Foster (dblue)

Known to plug-in enthusiasts for his fantastic, free Glitch plug-in for Windows, dblue has now joined Team Renoise.

Hi, my name is Kieran Foster. I was born in 1979 in the North East of England. I grew up with computers like the Sinclair Spectrum 48k and Atari ST, and have been fascinated by sound, graphics and programming since a very early age.

Why Renoise: I’ve used trackers exclusively my entire life, so Renoise definitely doesn’t feel like a niche product to me; it’s simply the only way of making music that I feel comfortable with.

As far as what attracted me to the project, it was a completely organic process that just kind of happened on its own. When I first became a registered user in 2003, I simply enjoyed using the software and felt proud to help support it. I later joined the community forums in 2004 and gradually became more and more active there, and found myself completely caught up in it all.

After using Renoise for so many years now and watching it grow, it’s obvious to me that’s there’s something very special and unique going on here, produced by a small team of very smart and creative people. It’s impossible not to be attracted to that and want to be a part of it somehow.

Ideas for the future: I’d like to see a more flexible clip-based approach to arranging chunks of pattern data and automations on a global song time line, making it easier to get an instant overview of your whole song, as well as quickly rearranging sections and experimenting with new ideas. This is one of the few remaining things that really bugs me about working with trackers these days, since it’s often a total nightmare to work with fixed patterns and keep track of where everything is. I will always love the tracker style of composing, but there’s definitely a lot we can do to modernise things and make it more friendly.

I’d also like to see a more modular approach to handling internal DSP effects and signal routing, with the ability to take complex, unmanageable chains of devices and combine them together into self-contained modules or ‘racks’ that are easy to use and only expose the handful of important parameters you actually need to tweak. It’s possible to create some truly incredible DSP chains in Renoise, but managing the huge number of devices and parameters involved can be rather daunting – especially when trying to share your creations with others.

Tips for new users: Don’t judge a book by its cover; Renoise may look insanely complex at first glance, but it’s really not that difficult to get to grips with. Be patient and you will soon fall in love with the incredible low-level approach to making music that only trackers can offer.

Become a master of the LFO Device!

Erik Jälevik

An early member of Last.fm’s development team, Erik is now a core Renoise developer.

Hi, my name is Erik Jälevik. Born and raised in Sweden, moved to the UK at a young and impressionable age, now in Berlin since about a year. Music has always been my main passion, but once I realised I wasn’t going to be able to make a living from making music or DJing, I decided to get a degree in computer science and embark on a career as a software developer. I’m in a lucky position in that I get to combine my passion with my profession.

Why Renoise: Last.fm certainly wasn’t mainstream when I joined, it was just a handful of guys in a rundown 2-room flat in east London. What it grew to become was part of the reason I left however. But what attracted me to Renoise really had nothing to do with its mainstream or niche status, I really knew next to nothing about the people behind it before starting working it. It was simply a case of thinking it was a great piece of software, and getting in touch asking if I could get involved.

I don’t think Renoise will ever be the perfect solution for everybody. And neither should it. It occupies a certain niche and provides a refreshing alternative to other computer-based music production software. Rather than heaping on shiny, new, big bang features, I’d like to gradually refine what we have, getting rid of all the little annoyances and limitations that are still there, and really make Renoise shine at what it does best, i.e. being a modern tracker.

Tips for newcomers: I’m all about workflow so here’s some (perhaps somewhat boring) tips that make life easier for me:

• Take advantage of the vast keyboard shortcut customisation options so you have everything at your fingertips. I have keyboard shortcuts set up to open all of the major tabs inside Renoise, for example.
• Forget about reusing patterns in the pattern sequencer, just always add new patterns into the sequence so that each pattern is unique, it saves a lot of headaches later on.
• Always set LPB to 8 and enable quantization to 1 line for new projects. I find that the most comfortable way to record with Renoise.

What think you, users? Those of you Renoise users trying the beta, we’d love to know what you think, and if you have any particular tips to share.

Those crazy Amiga artists were ahead of their time. The lightweight real-time music engines and formats they began were uncommonly efficient, and allowed the exchange of elaborate electronic music using a minimum of resources – with some accompanying compositional and sound design ingenuity required, as well. As a result, getting a phone handset to reproduce their work today is a pretty manageable task, and some of the music available is concise and clever. Pop on some headphones, load up some tunes, and you may feel you’re starring in your very own Amiga point and click adventure the next time you hit the grocery market.

There are a number of trackers and mod players for mobile platforms from iPhone to Windows Mobile, but Android is now in on the game thanks to Xmp (Extended Module Player). Using Android’s JNI-based NDK interface for accessing native code from Java, the “experimental” queue up some files and play back on your SD card. My sense is that this hasn’t been widely tested, which is where you come in: got an Android phone? Ideally, got some obscure models of Android phone? Load this up and see if you’re getting the retro tracker music love. Let us know in comments how it goes.

Full downloads and code for Xmp, a command-line mod player for Mac, Windows, Linux and pretty much every OS every invented, along with the experimental Android port:
http://xmp.sourceforge.net/

Thanks to Dan Galpin, developer advocate at Google, for pointing this out to me.

Now, this brings me to my open question. Suffice to say, someone could build a pretty player interface for Xmp, with playlist support and the lot. But what about actually editing files on your Android device, as you can on iPhone, PSP, GamePark, PC, Mac, etc.? It’s possible that the Xmp code could be used as a template for porting the engine of something like LittleGPTracker. But looking through quickly, I wonder if Xmp itself might serve as a real-time engine? It’d also be interesting to design a tracker interface that took the UI patterns of platforms like Android to heart, rather than just reproducing interfaces designed for other platforms. If you’re interested in such a project or have some insight into what might be practical, let us know in comments.

SunVox, the quirky and cool modular music creation software, already runs on a ton of platforms. Starting now, most of those platforms can run the tool for free. (The one exception: iPhone/iPad.)

That means you get a rich music creation environment that can run on everything from an ancient PDA to a desktop computer, complete with FM, virtual analog, and sample-based synths, effects, modular routing, musical arrangement, and even tracker-level detailed editing, all for free. SunVox works on Mac, Windows, and Linux, plus mobile platforms Palm, Windows Mobile, and iPhone. In fact, it’s an ideal choice to resurrect one of the now-nearly-worthless yet still-very-powerful used PDA devices. Seriously: hit auction and used sites or ask someone for a device, or perhaps search your own closet, and you have an extra music-making device that costs you nothing. (I’ve heard some arguments about the iPad and value, and ditto $300 or $400 netbooks, but I’d like to see the iPad or new netbook compete with $20 or free.)

SunVox

That said, if you do own an iPhone or iPod touch, SunVox is a no-brainer at US$4.99.

And developer Alex Zolotov tells CDM he’s submitting an iPad version of SunVox for Apple’s new platform, as well, plus working on new features. Stay tuned.

So, you’ve seen lots of interesting looking iPhone apps, but most of them strike you as gimmicky. Others have interesting workflows, but limit you to working on the mobile device, not switching back to a computer. And maybe you’re perfectly happy with a phone running Windows Mobile or Palm OS.

Enter SunVox. This is not a mobile music making app for the timid. It’s a powerful suite of soundmakers and sequencers, baked together into a modular environment that lets power users tweak to their heart’s delight. It’s small, it’s fast, and it looks – and sounds – a lot like early computer music programs. It’ll run on iPhone now, but also on Palm, Windows Mobile, Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’ll run on your netbook, your MacBook, and your ThinkPad.

Incredibly, all this goodness is yours on all those platforms for ten bucks and on iPhone for $5, easily making SunVox the biggest steal in music software I think I’ve ever seen:

• Flexible architecture that adapts to slow and fast CPUs
• Synths and generators: FM, virtual analog, FFT-based “SpectraVoice”, Kicker
• Effects: Delay, distortion, filters, LFOs, reverb
• Sampler with WAV support
• WAV export when you’re done

http://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

And for fans of computer music in the 90s, it’s a chance to get back to some of the no-nonsense, powerful creation of that era, without some of the distractions you may find in modern apps.

To see SunVox in action (and start to make sense of how to use it), check out the YouTube videos from Alex Zolotov (among others). They’re not the best video quality (I wish we had iPhone screencasting software, darnit), but they will give you a sense of what the app is about:
http://www.youtube.com/user/NightRadio2007

The videos made their debut on the excellent PalmSounds Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/palmsounds?hl=en
CDM isn’t exclusively about mobile apps, so check out PalmSounds the blog, too, if you like your music making handheld – the site has been on fire lately with updates.
http://the-palm-sound.blogspot.com/

Here’s an example of how SunVox can be used for live playing:

Here it is being used to produce lovely FM synthesis noises:

If you’re new to trackers, especially, you’ll want to brush up on the tracker workflow in SunVox:

As seen in the video from last month’s Music Makers event, LittleGPTracker is a tracker for Linux-based GP2X and GP32 systems. The GP-series boxes are terrific little game machines that, unlike proprietary commercial game systems from Sony and Nintendo, are completely open. (Well, even if there is a certain pleasure to hacking PSPs, Game Boys, and DS machines to play homebrew anyway.)

LittleGPTracker’s interface is modeled after LSDJ, the cult favorite tracker for Game Boys. That interface can be archaic at first if you’ve never seen trackers, but with adjustment, many swear by its unique approach to structuring patterns — it can push users in less linear directions than more conventional sequencer interfaces.

Because the GP isn’t a Game Boy, though, you get some major extras. There’s sample playback, in the form of 8 monophonic 16Bit/44.1Khz stereo sample playback channels. And you can drive external hardware (or even computers) using MIDI.

If you want to try out LGPT before you buy a GP, or if you want some tracker action at your desk as well as on the go, you’re in luck. There’s a desktop version available for Windows, and now even one entering testing on Mac; Linux might follow. Of course, you get made fun of by the developer for running the Windows and Mac releases instead of the mobile versions.

LittleGPTracker Home
LGPT on the GP2x Wiki

There are two basic ways to approach computer music making: work with a system that’s already built for you (think traditional sequencers), or build your own, modular, unique way of working. Both approaches can be valid, but for a small but dedicated band of hard-core computer musicians, only the latter will do. The Buzz project for Windows attempted to merge modular capabilities with a tracker-style sequencer. (Buzzmachines.com isn’t working for me at the moment; see also the Buzz Wikipedia entry.)

There’s a new hope, however. Linux-native but build-able on Windows, free, and intensely powerful, early versions of the new Aldrin software for Windows look very promising. Formerly called Mute, Aldrin offers tracker capabilities, modular features, planned “1:1 compatibility with Buzz,” and integration with the Freesound creative commons sample library.

I can do better than a static screenshot here. The developer has just posted a video of the program in action. Let the techno commence:

Heck, you can even use DSP sources directly in your projects. Andy Selby writes with more:

… You should mention Aldrin (another clone of Jeskola Buzz – but only for Linux), because the latest version shows off its potential really well. It’s already been Computer Music’s [Linux] software of the month. It’s now got the promised Freesound integration and does many of the things that are difficult or impossible using Buzz under Wine [Windows emulation] on your Linux setup (audio input, MIDI control, JACK…)

To top it all off, you can extend the interface using Python and it lets coding-people include DSP sources in their song modules. The only downside is not many Buzz plugins are ported yet (for generators there’s only one synth and a tracker so far). I haven’t started using it in place of Buzz as some of my favorite plugins for Buzz aren’t ported yet (not many plugins are so far) but I’ve been testing it for quite a few versions and the host is developing really fast.

Looks interesting; as more modules appear, this could be reason to boot into Linux.

Aldrin wiki
0.10 Release Announcement, which could be considered the first major mainstream release (beta-wise, anyway)
Leonard Ritter blog [developer]

Elsewhere:
The Buzz About Aldrin [Linux music guru Dave Phillips, in Linux Journal]