Renoise’s scripting interface is something special, allowing people to build anything they imagine in a way that’s directly integrated with this production studio – no add-ons required. But whether or not you yourself want to code, that also means access to the imagination of the Renoise user base. And one of the most impressive shows so far is an ambitious process to duplicate Ableton Live’s mixer and clip launching interface inside Renoise. We first saw that effort at the end of the year, but it’s now about to reach a whole new level.

Now, in fairness, part of why people like me would like to see people use something other than Ableton Live onstage is to see different performance modes on laptops. And this absolutely doesn’t do that – you’ll see that the interface is more or less a clone of Live. (And I’ve been known to be critical of such interface cloning.) But there are two advantages. One is, doing this in a script in another host is a fascinating exercise in learning how to maximize the potential of Renoise’s scripting, one that could lead to other things. The other is, it’s possible that the familiarity of environments that work like the Live Session View could help performers ease into new ways of working with Renoise – without having to make the leap all at once. Renoise itself offers a very different way of working, built on tools of yore – basically, an alternative music-making path in software design entitled trackers. Like being able to go for a burger, fries, and ketchup in a foreign town, the availability of Cells could help those foreign to the tool moonlight between Ableton and Renoise in their work.

If nothing else, it’s something of an engineering triumph that this works at all.

In version 2.0, now in beta, a complete rewrite of the code vastly expands what’s possible with Cells. CDM readers took a lot of interest in this development when we covered it last, so it’s great to see what may be possible as the code matures.

And in some critical respects, Cells now does things in an integrated fashion that aren’t in Ableton Live. Pattern riffs, built on Renoise’s unique instrument paradigm, encapsulate samples and sample mappings together with your patterns. Bi-directional controller support, while eventually grafted atop Ableton (particularly for certain supported controllers), is part of the framework. There’s also integrated network sync support inside the tool, all implemented atop OSC; it’s still in beta, but shows lots of potential. (That’s possible in Ableton using existing MIDI and network tools, but seeing the server inside the tool is impressive.) And these are the kind of areas where it’s hopeful we’ll see new ideas in Ableton and rivals alike – another reason choice is a good thing.

From the forum post, forwarded to CDM by the creator:

Cells! 2.0 is a complete rewrite of Cells! 0.9. This has been based upon further code experimentation and user feedback. However, due to the improved approach and cleaner code, it has been possible to add many more features.

Thanks to Void Pointer (http://soundcloud.com/void-pointer) for kindly supplying the samples used in the demo video.

Realtime ‘Granular’ Timestretch

Cells! 2.0 allows realtime timestretch in a ‘granular style’. This allows full independant control of both tempo and pitch while still keeping playback syncronised to the beat. Granular timestretch applies to samples which have both a beat sync value and autoseek enabled but beat sync is disabled.

Realtime ‘Slice Based’ Timestretch

Similar to the ‘granular’ timestretch, Cells! 2.0 adds support for sliced loops with independant tempo and pitch control. Each slice will be played back at the correct time to maintain the overall tempo of the entire loop. Slice-stretch applies to samples which are sliced. The length of the cell is assigned through the beat-sync value.

Pattern ‘Riff’ Storage and Playback

Cells! 2.0 allows you to quickly save individual pattern tracks as riffs for use live in Cells!. The riffs are stored in compressed format within the instrument itself, so you can quickly and easily save all samples, sample mappings and riffs self-contained within a single XRNI file. Note that any Renoise instrument is be supported. This means you should be able to send note riffs to external instruments or VSTi’s.

Live Jamming Mode

For specific types of samples, Cells! 2.0 allows real-time ‘live jamming’ playback mode. Play your samples directly with either the mouse or a physical controller for improvising over your mixes to add that extra sparkle. Individual slices from sliced loops and plain one-shot samples can be played in ‘live jamming’ mode.

Bidirectional Controller Support

Cells! 2.0 now has its own native controller framework. This allows full bidirectional support for supported hardware controllers. Livid Instruments Ohm64 and Novation Launchpad (beta) are available with the inital release. If you would like further support for any additional controllers, feel free to either send them to me for development or contact me directly to work together and implement support.

MultiFX

Cells! 2.0 incorporates a simple ‘DJ style’ effects processor into the main UI. Effects supported are a low-pass filter, beat repeat, delay and phaser. All effects are controlled through simple common amount and rate controls. All time based effects are syncronised to the beat.

Sample Preparation Tools

Cells! 2.0 incorporates simple methods to quickly create and prepare samples for use. Both the sample editor and the sample list box contain a ‘Cells! menu’ from which the sample can easily assigned to a specific playback mode and length. A ‘sample report’ feature is also available which allows you to quickly identify how the selected sample
will play within Cells! 2.0.

Additionally, Cells! 2.0 allows quick rendering of either entire patterns or specific tracks within patterns from your existing songs. Only the instrument of the first note within the pattern track will be saved. It will automatically assign the correct beat sync values even if the original song is not written at 4 LPB. All rendered samples will be contained within an ‘Unsorted Cells! Renders’ instrument within the song to easily allow saving of all samples to disk. This menu is present in the pattern editor context menu.

Multiplayer Networking (beta)

Cells! 2.0 has built in support for up to four machines to link together over a lan (via OSC) and keep in sync. Make huge mixes across multiple machines or get some friends around and all play together. Setup network connections on the master and ensure Renoise OSC servers are running on all machines.

Minor improvements

- Variable channels from 4 to 16.
- Variable cells per channel from 4 to 16.
- Variable cell height and width (for touch screen usage).
- Automatic sample selection option (for waveform view in the sample editor).
- Safe cueing option to automatically mute cue output if set to the
same as the main audio output.
- Single output mode (splits the audio so master output on one
channel and cue output on the other).
- Slightly tweaked user interface to cater for the additional features.
- Better audio routing (A/B crossfader or crossfader bypass (M))
- Various other optimisations (too many to list)

Downloads

Download the updated 2.0 beta manual here (http://www.box.com/s/evt2vnpb51hzj6kic1zg). The XRNX tool will is attached to [the forum] post. Please ensure you read the manual, most questions will probably be answered within. Cells! 2.0 Beta requires Renoise 2.8 beta 7.

Download and forum post:
http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/33947-cells-20-for-renoise-28-beta/

Let us know if you put this to use; we’d love to hear how it works (particularly network-synced jams). And, hey, there’s nothing stopping you from using this alongside a machine running Ableton Live – even on a Linux laptop.

Look at a music software interface – particularly a tracker-style interface – and you might easily see something resembling a spreadsheet.

So, why not gaze into the cells of a spreadsheet and begin to imagine music?

Karlsruhe-based electronic artist and programmer Patrick, cappel:nord, had just such a flight of fancy about office software. He explains:

A spreadsheet could be used as a music sequencer. If you know your spreadsheet software well, the built-in functions can be used. I don’t! I also struggle with the interface The last time I used spreadsheets is 10 years ago or so.

This was the second time trying this, so I make a lot of mistakes. It’s more a proof of concept. This was a 3-hour hack so don’t expect much from the source code. But here it is:

http://www.cappel-nord.de/files/libre-jam.zip

You have to figure out how it works for yourself. I don’t give any support .

I did it for the lulz.

Lots of similar brilliance, sounds, and geekery – like a pixel matrix for Processing, audio players, code, and music – at his blog (not recently updated, but worth plumbing anyway):

http://blog.cappel-nord.de/

Thanks to headchant for the tip!

As it happens, in the first few months of CDM’s existence, I wrote up a little story on what people were doing with Microsoft Excel:
Microsoft Excel for Music: Applications Bizarre and Useful

Applications: building a drum set, a drum machine with sequencer, databases of music, music library tracking, and even a tuning calculator. I’m sure there are more.

I hear these spreadsheets also do something with numbers and finance, but where’s the fun in that?

In a marvel of DIY engineering, one intrepid user of the tracker-made-modern music making environment Renoise has reconstructed the basic elements of the Ableton Live interface. With quantized clip launching on channels and even a crossfader, it’s unmistakably a copy of what Ableton does. I don’t think you’d dump your install of Ableton for this; the whole reason you’d want a feature like this is really if you prefer other elements of Renoise that are different from Live. But as a proof-of-concept, it’s pretty extraordinary. (Ableton users, the ball’s in your court: someone want to make a tracker in Max for Live?)

mxb has more information on the Renoise forum:
Cells! Preview

We love the bleeding edge, but as mxb notes, “this is still at a very early beta stage; if anyone has any suggestions or feature requests, [they should] make them in the thread on Renoise forums.”

All of this is possible because of Renoise’s powerful scripting environment.

The Cells! video above is a bit primitive – mxb says it’s a result of poor screen capture software, which is also responsible for sync disappearing – but you get the idea. mxb has also built a four-oscillator synth called ReSynth, and previously-mentioned sample import.

http://tools.renoise.com/users/mxb [all of mxb's creations]
http://tools.renoise.com/tools/resynth

If you just want to fire up Renoise, the modern tracker/music production app, and not worry about the fact that its innards are hackable, you can. But for a reason why you might at least want to explore customization of this music tool, give the video above a look. It starts sleepy and slow … and then, part of the way through, as creator Dac Chartrand starts demoing the tool, something really special happens. (Anyway, that’s what I think. See if you agree.)

Dac explains his work, completed at the recent Montreal Music Hackday:

My Renoise hack was Grid Pie. One of the new trends in our community is the concept of a meta-interface. In essence, programmers use the Lua API to transform Renoise into something else, hide the Renoise window, and work with hardware interfaces connected to their own scripts. Three current examples: MPE, Step Sequencer Lauflicht and Duplex. Grid Pie is “yet another meta interface.” It turns Renoise into a live performance audio recombination machine. Still in alpha, but people were into the demo I gave. I got a lot of handshakes and positive feedback.

It’s an alpha, so your mileage may vary, but I’ll bet this whets some appetites for people who hadn’t yet realized the power of the Renoise API.

http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Grid_Pie

God Bless Russian engineering. As of this summer, it’s the only ticket to and from our space station, via a capsule that Just Works. It gaves us the very first electronic instrument (thanks, Professor Theremin). And it gives us an insane music tracker slash production tool slash soft synth selection slash modular hosting environment that runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, Windows Mobile (yes, you’re reading this list right), and now iOS and iPad.

Well, don’t just thank Russian engineering. Thank Alex Zolotov, who sends along his latest work. Highlights:

• Waveform drawing
• A drum synth
• Sample recording
• Side chain compression (top)
• iPad MIDI keyboard support (second from top)

Fortunately, if you’re not a mad scientist, we’ve got a lineup of videos that show you what all of this does and how to get started with this eminently affordable, insanely powerful tool. (Cue someone complaining in comments that they can’t read the interface, etc. Uh… well, you can’t have everything, eh? Bifocals?)

And in case you don’t believe this is a music tool, we even have some music created in it. (Actually creating digital music – interesting.)

Now, let’s Crash Adobe Flash(TM) with a bunch of videos:

More New Features

Where to Start

And yes, even where to start performing live on an iPhone / iPod touch:

More video tutorials:

SunVox Video Tutorials @ warmplace.ru Forum

Official SunVox page:
http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

Renoise 2.7 is now available, following some eight weeks of testing by the community. The update, which the developers describe as “back to the beats” in reference to focusing in this release cycle on musical workflow, delivers plenty of features that make the modern tracker more modern. I wrote about them back in March, with some detailed Q&A from the developers – including tips on where to get started:

Renoise 2.7 Adds Sample and Slice Savvy; Tips and Inside Info from the Developers

The short version: better automation, sample slicing, and sample keyzones, plus improved DSP and audio routing and MIDI routing, make Renoise more usable. For people slicing up and sampling audio, even, I dare say, MPC-style, it’s a huge release.

2.7 Release notes

But that’s not the only story here. Renoise are also announcing 500 MB of free sounds designed by Puremagnetik, all in the native XRNI file format. That’s from a sound house better known for Ableton Live sounds than Renoise. And, at the opposite end of the spectrum from preset soundware, Renoise is involved in a Berlin Music Hackday that could bring new DIY features to the tool – plus tooling that makes it easier to grab and update tools from the community.

We’ll start with the Puremagnetik news. Rather than just tell you about the sounds, Puremagnetik’s Micah Frank shares how the sound set was built, and what they learned about making soundware for Renoise. That includes some valuable tips for anyone interested in programming sounds in the environment, as well as insight if you’re just curious to try the resulting sound pack free. Micah shares:

About Puremagnetik: Puremagnetik is a sound development company that I founded in 2006. I had freelanced as a sound designer with Ableton for some years and didn’t see many 3rd party choices for that platform. Puremagnetik was launched as an affordable subscription service offering new “Micropaks” every month, with a focus on Ableton Live content. That was 5 years ago and we are continuing to produce new packs every month. As of this writing we have almost 60 Micropaks in the catalog, a number of bundles, standalone libraries and Max for Live content. We have close to 40k registered users and are working with a number of developers (desktop and mobile) to help realize their sound libraries. By the time you read this, we will also be offering content in Renoise’s XRNI format.

Why Renoise: Always on the lookout for products that break away from conventions, I became interested in content development for Renoise soon after the 2.6 release. It’s obvious that Renoise is created by a small and dedicated team of developers backed by a strong, supportive community. To my surprise, I couldn’t find many resources for Renoise format instruments. All of the above reasons factored into Puremagnetik’s conception in the first place – to fill a niche within a community of dedicated individuals that are passionate about their work. Once the Keyzone Editor was introduced, it was clear to me that someone had to make content for this innovative product.

What it was like making the 500M sample pack: The first thing we did is comb through our entire catalog and pick a well-rounded selection of kits and multisample instruments. We are working with an independent developer (Renoise user MXB in building a tool to translate our libraries to XRNI. [That tool is now released; see comments. -Ed.] So this was a huge asset in efficiently building this library. After importing the sounds they were fine tuned and tweaked with modulations and envelopes. The final step was exporting the monolithic XRNI files. Throughout the entire process we worked alongside the Renoise team to ensure that Q/A standards and selection of sounds was spot-on.

Thoughts on the latest XRNI format: Despite its simple interface there is a lot going on under the hood. I personally love the “point” setting in the envelope params. And the selection of filters really kicks ass (my favorite is the Low Distortion). Just in coupling these two things, one is presented with vast sound design possibilities, and that’s before you beat sync pitch envelopes!

For the most part, editing is very intuitive if you have previously built multisample instruments. The instrument editor is still in its infancy so there are some parameter persistency issues that need to be ironed out. It is somewhat cumbersome to save variations of the same instrument as it saves each one as a single monolithic (flac compressed) file.

Overall, it’s easy enough to dive into the editor, tweak the available settings and resave the instrument however you like.

Room for improvement in the format: The most valuable thing for us from a development standpoint is sample grouping capabilities. Our instruments really become 3 dimensional once we can program group modulations based on user events. Our TeeBee instrument for example is heavily dependent on groups of samples to create a realistic emulation of the original TB303. So this is a feature I would like to see implemented.

I would love to be able to save track DSPs with the instrument but perhaps that could conflict with Renoise’s native architecture and workflow. However, this capability when combined with Renoise’s effects and Meta Devices could open enormous possibilities for sound design.

More LFO waveforms with an even slower frequency would be very welcomed into my Renoise sound design toolbox!

Each parameter setting has 4 envelope preset slots but these are currently shared between parameters and are only session specific. It would be really cool to have independent preset buttons per parameter that save with the instrument. That way, the user can load it up and call any number of combinations for instant sound shaping variations.

Velocity crossfading.

Visit Puremagnetik at http://puremagnetik.com/ — you’ll see new Renoise-format sounds starting to appear.

Included in this pack:
Analog Synth Basses
Circuit Bent Drum Kits
Buchla Drum Kits
Mellotron Strings and Flutes
Glitch, Toy & Lo-Fi Sounds
Fender Rhodes Mark II
Model-C Clavinet
Electric Guitar
Upright Bass
Classic Analog Synths
Grand Piano

And there’s more soundware free with this release, too, I see from the Renoise site:

Additionally, Berlin based artist and longtime user Beatslaughter has blessed us with a touch of evil in his sample pack “Beatslaughter SoundPack Volume 1″.

Those two sample packs total over 800 MB and let producers jump into all the latest sampling features of Renoise 2.7. The packs are free for all registered users new and old, and are waiting in the Backstage.

Get Your Tools Faster

It’s like an App Store for Renoise hacks: tools.renoise.com has gotten an upgrade, and there’s a new automatic updater called the Tool Updater. Combined, this should make it easier to keep your tools fresh, and customize Renoise to do what you need. I’m a huge fan of the lightweight hacking mechanism they’ve built into Renoise, and the fact that it’s an integral part of the software.

Hack Renoise

As a mentor at Music Hackday Berlin, if you happen to be in Germany later this month, you can learn how to hack Renoise from the developers. I’d love to see some new projects. (I may even try to see if I can drop by, if I’m in fact in England around the same time!)

Renoise will be mentoring at Music Hack Day Berlin. The event takes place on the weekend of May 28th in the MTV Network offices located at the Spree river. Erik, dblue and Taktik will be on site to discuss Renoise, the Lua API, drink beer, and give out high fives. Check our community forums in the upcoming days for more details.

Background/info:
http://musichackday.org/
http://vimeo.com/7129735
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/music-hack-day-nyc/
http://fuse.tv/music/music-hack-day/
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/midem-2011-can-hacking-save-music-1005009032.story
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/02/03/48-hours-31-hacks-stockholm-music-hack-day/

And yes, I’ll happily, happily share any interesting hacks or creations here on CDM.

Of course, there’s plenty here to enjoy in Renoise even if you don’t hack – you can grab some free sounds and go play! Let us know what you think.

MilkyTracker, the free and open source GPL tracker tool, is now available on Android, thanks to some cross-platform goodness. (Developers: see SDL-lib, which brings a flexible multimedia library to Android and enables a host of multimedia and games, and the NDK, Google’s JNI-based toolset for C/C++ on the platform.)

So, what does this mean? It means a tool already available on an absurd number of platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, Windows Mobile, and even Amiga), and build-able on more, gets one additional platform. Whether it’s actually useful to have a traditional tracker on your mobile phone is another matter, and that I suspect comes down to whether you’ve either got a) an integrated physical keyboard on your device, or b) an incredible amount of patience. (Or, maybe c) you’re a magician, and have fingers that can operate this interface with touch.) But I do have to try it; I currently run a Droid 2, so the keyboard’s set. I’m curious if someone has a tablet if that works.

Updated: Hearing some feedback that touch may actually work with this UI, so, hey, I’m open to anything.

The freedom in free software, however, means you’re free to try things out regardless, which I think is a good thing. (The experimentation here is not possible on Apple iOS and Microsoft Windows Phone stores, which forbid software with a GPL license. It’s essentially a legal/political obstacle, not a technical one.)

Anyone, if you’re on Android and love trackers, go give it a try, and let us know what happens:
MilkyTracker for Android
http://www.milkytracker.org

Via two sites dedicated to chips and mobile: True Chip Till Death / Peter Swimm and Palm Sounds.

Speaking of which, I don’t know of another fully-functioning tracker on Android. SunVox could be a possibility in the future, but it’s not here yet. A ground-up mobile tracker for Android would be welcome, however.

I think the first time I really understood handheld music making was when I first tried Nanoloop on Game Boy. While the more-popular LSDJ tracker is powerful, Nanoloop’s interface was unlike anything I’d seen before: aggressively minimal, it embodies in its interface design the feeling of a blank sheet of paper. Adding an idea feels like composition, like genuinely exploring open-ended possibilities and discovering what melodies may result. Now, Nanoloop – already on iOS – is available for Android, too.

It remains simple stuff, the sense of what a music maker looks like when designed for your hand rather than translated to mobile from desktop, studio-style workstations. There are six fixed channels, each assignable to a synth (FM, noise, or filtered wave) or a sampler. Then, each channel takes eight patterns. There’s a step sequencer, the ability to resample, and song editor with loops. The sampling capabilities are especially nice on Android, as you can now sample from the mic or load samples right onto the SD card. (The mic you can use on iOS, but not the SD card, of course.) You can export OGG files to your library, turning your Android device into a DJ-set-ready pocket music library, or send and receive projects via email. Via iTunes, you can even exchange files with the iPhone version, in case you have an Android phone and an iPod touch or some similar arrangement.

This isn’t a port of the Game Boy nanoloop, developer Oliver Wittchow is quick to note. It’s not for chip music, or emulating game consoles. It’s for … well, Android music. But make no mistake: while the tool feels fresh and native to the new platform, it also carries the spirit of the Game Boy version. And that spirit is handheld music making, not just the aesthetics of the chip, but the feeling of using a minimal device scaled to your hands, something you can use on the go.

Oliver tells CDM that he has used a lot of native code (via the NDK), as he did non-object-oriented C (not Objective-C) in the iOS version. He says it’s about 1:1 C and Java: “I could use the iOS code almost unmodified and get the sound engine and touch input to work immediately. I had an almost fully working nanoloop within few days – without any graphics though.
Now I ‘just’ had to write Java code for GUI, file access, recording functions and the different menu structure.”

The results, he says, are a little strange if you’re looking at the code (lots of getters and setters, C mixed with Java), but it works well.

Android owners, I’d love to hear how this works on your device. Let us know – just be sure to fill out a bug report. As the Market page notes:

Nanoloop works on a variety of devices, including HTC Desire, Motorola Droid and also midrange phones such as HTC Legend and XPERIA X10 mini. However, this is the first release and of course it has not been tested on all Android devices yet. If you experience crashes or other problems, please report them via e-mail or the anonymous bug report form at www.nanoloop.com. Thank you.

Now if we can just have some luck with Bluetooth MIDI at our hacklab tomorrow, this could be another candidate.

Oh, and most of all, I’d love to hear the music you make.

nanoloop on the Android Market (a stunning EUR1 … that’s a no-brainer. Better than an espresso shot!)

nanoloop.de [iOS, Android]

See our previous Android music round-up

For the historical record, here’s nanoloop for Game Boy on CDM – from 2004. It’s actually come quite a ways since that release, but the spirit is the same.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2004/11/updated-nanoloop-20-game-boy-instrument/

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.

Retro chip music appeal and the occasional Super Mario Bros. game aside, you probably think of the Nintendo NES and Famicom system as something collecting dust at garage sales. You probably don’t think of this NES running as a self-contained music production workstation, syncing to MIDI and Android, or exploiting new software for producing elaborate musical sequences, drum and bass lines. Think again.

What might to outsiders seem like the nostalgic draw of video music has become something else entirely – the NES is taking its place as a serious, studio synth.

Via Keaton Shurilla (Theta_Frost) comes a number of helpful updates on recent developments for the NES.

Your NES, a music workstation

Pulsar is the next-generation successor to NTRQ, a tracker for sequencing and synthesizing sounds directly on the NES. You don’t use a computer; you do all the work directly on the game system. (NTRQ image above; see the video of Pulsar at top.) Full details:
Pulsar: Audio at NTRQ blog

Your NES, a drum and bassline machine

PR8, from the creator of Pulsar and NTRQ, turns the NES into a groovebox. It’s almost like having an NES take on ReBirth, complete with bass and drum pattern generators. Again, it’ll run directly on the NES system, making an NES a silly-cheap instrument you can add – and as the video hints, the results may not sound anything like retro game music if you don’t want them to.

Rihanna Rude Boy NES 8-Bit Cover from thefox // Kalle Immonen on Vimeo.

Your music, on NES cartridges

PornoTracker is the latest PC-based tracker solution. Here, the idea is a bit different: sequence your musical ideas from the comfort of your computer (in this case, Windows-based), then export to a format that can be played on cartridges. PornoTracker as a result has some powerful musical features, but it still lets you repurpose vintage NES systems for playback. If you think about it, that’s a pretty great deal: you save toxic hardware from the landfill, and at an absurdly cheap price.

PornoTracker (the Finnish developer has other crazy projects, like custom libraries and his own NES game engine)

PornoTracker write-up from our friends at TRUE CHIP TILL DEATH (ed.: Peter Swimm)

DIY cartridges for antique game systems? In case you’re wondering how all of this is practical, you can thank the…

Flash memory on a cart

…PowerPak. This custom cartridge allows you insert convenient Compact Flash memory so you can run anything you can load from a computer onto an NES, no special hardware required. An upcoming update for the popular NES tracker Famitracker will mean extra sound expansions that the Powerpak can play, on top of those already supported. Updated: You can also play directly through the NES using the Arduino interface and Famitracker; now with the Powerpak, some Famicom cartridge soundsets can be emulated, too.

Retro USB product page

Your NES, connected via MIDI

Arduino NES-to-MIDI is an Arduino-based project for MIDI communication with the NES, and it’s open source (GPL). The result: connect your NES via MIDI without the need for proprietary hardware. This mercifully stands in for the abandonware MIDINES project. (Sadly, I regularly get comments on a years-old story with people wondering what happened to that.) I’d love to see the use of a dedicated, open source USB-MIDI project so that you wouldn’t necessarily even need a full Arduino board, since it’s overkill for the project. But as it stands, it’s already a terrific step.

Updated: For more on connecting to MIDI, don’t miss Andrew (Batsly Adams’) site:

batslyadams.com

Your NES, connected to an Android

Not music-specific, but it could be: there’s an Android project that makes use of the Arduino bridge, too. (Could be a good starting point for a wireless, Bluetooth-based solution.)
android-arduino-nes-controller

Game Boy? Game Man/Woman

The NES gives you some seriously grown-up, fun sounds on a dime. I think it’s an encouraging return to basics, all for the cost of some of those iPad cases. So, while the NES and PowerPak didn’t make our inexpensive holiday list, they sure could — or they could be a 2011 New Years’ Resolution. I’d love to hear what you do with them.

More Projects – Updated

Be sure to check out:

A build-your-own NES synth design, ready for live performance, by Jarek Lupinski, interfaces directly with 2A03 synth chip.

http://skrasoft.com/blog/ Dev Blog covers modular synth modules for using vintage synth chips, including the Pokey — brilliant!