Austin isn’t generally associated with electronic music, but from bands to strictly electronic acts, you see lines blurring all over the place. And amidst the many, many things happening here in Texas in the coming days, we’re fortunate at CDM to help support two events.
Tonight is the Allies Electronic Lounge – 416 W Cesar Chavez, 9-2, no badge and free, with Two Fresh, DJ Vadim, Eskmo, and Mindelixer. I’m especially excited about Eskmo’s music, and wherever you are in the world, you can take a listen, free. (Topspin just launched their if you want to do the same with your music, and they’re naturally partying it up here in Texas to celebrate.)
There’s some of the crackly clap sound that the kids love these days, to be sure, but Eskmo has some serious sound design chops, and a vocal style I love, very often reminiscent of Matthew Dear. I’m told Eskmo works with Native Instruments’ Maschine drum sampler instrument live. If you have any questions about how he works, let me know; I’ll be doing some research. Eskmo, aka San Francisco’s Brendan Angelides, has been on Warp and Ninja Tune, but he also has a mean mix of Brainfeeder music:
Friday night, it’s another free event on a rooftop in the heart of downtown Austin. I’m playing at 9pm on the spot to warm things up, so come say hello. Lots of free tech to win. No downloads yet, but again, if you’re not in Texas, let me know if you want any tips or information from these folks — I can sum it up by saying they’re all a bit insane with Ableton Live automation and sound design with Operator and NI’s Massive.
As a guitar, the Rock Band 3 Mustang is a bit unusual – there are strings, but an array of buttons replaces the frets, and it is intended as a game controller. But with all those buttons, strings, and sensors, it makes a remarkably flexible, surprisingly inexpensive controller. Our friend nay-seven puts it to good use with . And talk about a budget-minded setup – one that could put platforms like the iPad to shame. Usine costs just EUR90 for a full license, with discounted educational pricing and a version you can try for free. The Mustang runs just over US$100, which could put it in the category of must-buy for anyone who loves experimenting with alternative controllers – guitarist or not. Add an inexpensive Windows laptop and audio interface, and you’ve got a pretty terrific setup.
Previously, with the help of Harmonix engineers, we documented how the MIDI spec works:
nay-seven writes:
I’ve discover this guitar with this article Peter, so thanks for this ! it’s a quiet cool guitar and cheap for the possibilities . I’ve made a little patch in Usine to add some features like open tuning, x/y visualization, and you can also use most of the buttons to run effects or samples.
Your mileage may vary, but it sure looks promising. Keep in mind, this is the cheaper Rock Band controller with buttons. As such, it’s a good choice for people wanting some cheap experimentation and people who aren’t guitarists. As for the real guitar controller for Rock Band 3, the , I have a writer working on documenting its more advanced MIDI features. It’s more complicated, and I can’t endorse it just yet – wait for the full review and details.
Images from Bleep Labs (top), Livid (bottom) — that’s a SxSW-only edition of Livid’s Block controller, complete with a Texas star. Not pictured: lots of insane analog modules and other audio gadgetry, because I couldn’t get good images. I’m quite excited about those, too, so stay tuned. I’m guessing a lot of gear is showing up later today.
Analog and digital, gadgetry and module, DIY and ready-to-play, today in Austin we’re blessed with a get-together at the insanely-amazing Switched On music store. Austin’s noisiest manufacturers are dropping in to show some of their wears.
If you’re not in Austin, have a look at the lineup below and see if you have any questions for these makers, and I can bring back those answers to our readers around the world.
The event is free, 4:00 – 7:00 pm. It’s very informal and intimate – just sound geek boys and girls hanging out.
The Victory Grill Cafe
Across from 1111 E. 11th Switched On
Austin, TX
: a place where your money goes to die, but vintage synthesizers and circuit-bend video machines and other goodies replace it
I’ll kick of the proceedings with the MeeBlip, our fully open-source synth – which, now after several months of use and creative users, I can now say quite a lot about.
Then…
Bleep Labs is a locally owned & operated manufacturer of some of the most creatively unique sound toys, some of which can be interfaced with CV supported hardware. His Thingamagoop 2 light controlled Analog + Digital Synth Friend is a hot item in every store who carries it. Please come check out some of his other gadgets that will blow you away!
Livid Instruments has been crafting controllers for electronic music in Austin, Texas since 2004, and offers a line of commercially available control surfaces and DIY products through dealers and distributors worldwide. Livid will be demoing it’s product line with software tools like Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Reason, ArKaos, and Traktor.
Dann Green of 4ms will demo synthesizer modules, including the Rotating Clock Divider, Shuffling Clock Multiplier, and the soon-to-be-released VCAMatrix. The RCD and SCM are hackable microcontroller-based timing generators for creating complex rhythm patterns, and the VCAMatrix is a 4×4 CV-controllable analogue signal mixer/router.
Mickey Delp will be demoing several Delptronics products including the Guitar Meister, which plays real guitar sounds on a PS2 guitar controller; and the Bender Sequencer, a step sequencer designed for DIY synth builders and circuit benders. Mickey will also be showing his custom synthesizer created for Dorkbot’s SXSW event. The synth was sponsored by, and built with parts from Radio Shack.
bubblesound is proud to be joining this line up a month after we relocated from NYC, and we will be showing off our new oscillator: the VCOb. This is the first time the VCOb will be demo’d in public, so come on down. The VCOb will be joining the rest of the bubblesound line; the SeM20, the uLFO, the cvWS and the LvL+rm. It starts shipping in April.
I was saddened to learn this morning that earlier today, Tsutomu Katoh, founder and chairman of Korg, passed away. He was a rare visionary, not only the founder of one of the great electronic instrument manufacturers, but – unlike the vast majority of his counterparts – someone who stayed at the helm of the business he created. Founded nearly 50 years ago, Korg, started with Tadashi Osanai, was one of the first businesses to popularize electronic instruments as we now know them. Kato, a veteran Shinjuku nightclub owner, bet on the legendary DoncaMatic drum machine – an innovation that recently earned him a cameo with the Gorillaz – and the rest is history. One of the fathers of modern electronic music making, he will be sorely missed, and the news is even sadder in this difficult week for our friends in Japan. Our thoughts are with you, as with the former founders’ friends, family, and colleagues, as his vision lives on.
From a letter circulated earlier today:
Dear Sirs and Madams,
I would like to inform you that our founder and chairman Mr. Tsutomu Katoh passed away early this morning (March 15, 2011) after a long fight with cancer.
Since he founded Korg Inc. in 1963, Mr. Katoh has led our company with great talent, vision and leadership. He was loved and respected by all the employees, all Korg family members and made a huge contribution to the lives of countless musicians around the world.
Plans for a memorial service will follow very soon.
I would appreciate your prayers for him and hope he can rest peacefully now.
Sincerely,
Seiki Kato
President
Korg Inc.
Remembering Tsutomu Katoh:
, a three-part series by Gordon Reid for Sound on Sound; ,
I welcome your memories and thoughts here, and any other obituaries you see; we’ll do a retrospective soon.
Matrixsynth has an especially nice story with more images and video and stories:
Sometimes things look interesting even before you can fully grasp just what they mean. Such is the case, I think, with what’s happening with SoundCloud’s on-the-go tools. Now, back in the beginning of this service, I predicted it’d become the Flickr of audio, and I wasn’t alone. But it’s becoming something else, something that really involves mobility.
The SoundCloud crew are out at South by Southwest, as good a gathering as any for the intersection of Web nerd culture with music and film. And they have something to show for it, too: they’re unveiling new Android and iOS mobile apps, among other updates – and location, with FourSquare.
Android phone owners certainly no longer need to feel like second-class citizens, with bug fixes, track commenting, and Twitter and Facebook sharing. You can also add widgets to your homescreen, a feature that iOS lacks. (I have to say, for all of iOS’ sophistication, the one thing Android does very well is make apps integrate with one another, and with data and the cloud.)
There are updates not only for Android, but iOS and desktop, too, detailed in a blog post geared for South by Southwest:
Both Android and iOS users get Foursquare interaction. That could mean … well, something. The ability to make recording a sound an event, to tie it to a place in the real world, is theoretically compelling. Exactly what you’d do with this data I think has a lot to do with the content itself. Might this be a way to tie, say, a live set to the venue at which it was played, or sound samples of an interactive art gallery installation, or an open mic night that has recordings and not just pictures? Possibly – although there’s nothing saying you really need a fancy tool to do those things, either.
With the Interactive portion out of the way, SoundCloud now gets unleashed on South by Southwest’s Music Festival, which has grown to an extent that it feels like all musical output has collided on one point. It’s a quantum singularity as much as a music festival. So we’ll see if SoundCloud does something interesting at those events – or if it’s just another eager Web name against the backdrop of a lot of booze-drenched music parties. And to me, it’s an open question how to use these tools to get more people in person, in the flesh, at live events, which I think for many musicians is the goal. (That is, you’d use SoundCloud to encourage people to get off their computers and go hear some live music!)
SoundCloud isn’t sitting around hoping you’ll figure it out, though; they have some tips:
Any of you in Austin or elsewhere in the musical world, if you do catch cool stuff happening with SoundCloud or other Internet-enabled audio, we’d love to hear about it.
We continue our 3.14 celebration with a round-up of circular logic.
There’s no reason apart from the printed score to assume music has to be divided into grids laid on rectangles. Even the “piano roll” as a concept began as just that – a roll. Cycles the world around, from a mechanical clock to Indonesian gamelan, can be thought of in circles.
Imagine an alternate universe in which Raymond Scott’s circle machine – a great, mechanical disc capable of sequencing sounds – became the dominant paradigm. We might have circles everywhere, in place of left-to-right timelines now common in media software. Regardless, it’s very likely Scott’s invention inspired Bob Moog’s own modular sequencers; it was almost certainly the young Moog’s exposure to the inventions in Scott’s basement that prompted that inventor to go into the electronic music business, thus setting the course for music technology as we know it.
See:
For more background: [as reprinted from Electronic Musician]
,
Scott’s creation was shaped the way that it was partly out of mechanical necessity. Now we’re gifted with the ability to make any form we like for our electrified music tools. Circles can have appeal not because they’re somehow novel, but for just the opposite reason: they’re ubiquitous, intuitive, and geometrically elegant. So, let’s first consider these in their most abstract, in software.
Euclidean Rhythms
Incredible things are happening to our understanding of music theory as the gap between fields is shortened. Say what you will about the state of communication in our modern society; for the self-motivated, the trip “across the quad” (between academic departments) has nothing on the trip across the Internet.
Godfried Toussaint, a computer scientist with a strong math background based at Montreal’s McGill University, has a whole body of fascinating writing linking math, geometry, and music. One research paper has had a big influence on many of us, myself included. Here’s the beauty of math: an developed by Euclid in Alexandria around 300 BC also works for calculating timing systems in neutron accelerators and makes nice poly-rhythms for music. It’s rather amazing we don’t talk to each other about math more often.
Toussaint’s paper:
[PDF, 2005]
Our friend wesen wrote about the technique, suggesting it could be used to generate new rhythms, and included code in Lisp:
wesen even made code for his amazing MiniCommand sequencing box, which I hope we’ll see more of this year. (I should have some time to work on it myself.) The actual demo is part of the way through the video:
The algorithm – the recent Bjorklund reinterpretation of Euclid’s millenia-old work – has in turn found musical life in other languages:
Python – [astomo.us]
Ruby – [Aleksey Gureiev]
More Ruby –
Java – [Kristopher Wayne Reese]
Pure Data + Java –
Flash/ActionScript (pictured above) – [Wouter Hisschemöller]
Max for Live (pictured below) – [Robin Price]
I’m implementing a touch interface for it now using Pd, Processing, and Android; I had hoped to share it by now, but I’m still fleshing it out – I’ll give it away when it’s done.
You’ll notice in these, too, the similarity to the original Scott Circle Machine, down to the sweeping arm. But that’s a benefit: glancing at them on paper, Mozart and Haydn look the same, and they use the same musical technology, but think of the musical variety that results.
A Few Circular Sequencers
Circular sequencing interfaces are plentiful – indeed, I hope that this story prompts lots of people to say “hey, what about …?” Here are a few examples.
dial uses drifting circular geometries to control musical patterns. Created by Hiroshi Matoba, a young designer/DJ, it’s one of a body of work this student creator is building:
17 Dec, 2010
at ImageRama in Kyushu University(Fukuoka/Japan)
dial is a software sequencer using circle to control loop sequences in real time. I imply “speed sync” circular notation system which differ to “angle sync” in my past work “Overbug”.
Now under developing with openFrameworks and Bullet Physics. I use ofxConsole for custom CUI in this version.
*ImageRama is one night event hosted by Genda lab. in Kyushu univ., we setup surround sound(5.1ch) and 1 full HD projector. thank you for all stuff!!
See also Matoba’s earlier Overbug, which assembles polyrhythms in lacy, overlapping wheels, like some strange, elaborate clockwork:
You can download it for yourself for the Mac; it even has Snow Leopard support.
Also from Japan, Nao Tokui has taken these ideas in another direction, still, with “mashup” application and, in three dimensions, his original Sonasphere. The latter was one of the first interfaces to really fire my imagination as far as alternative user interfaces and three-dimensional sequencing.
For an instance of a commercial application, see the iPad Loopseque, the development of which we profiled extensively here on CDM in August:
The one shortcoming for me of that application is the inflexibility of the grid, which is why the Euclidean ideas above interest me, but it’s still a lot of fun.
Dan Trueman (on the faculty at Princeton) built his own Cyclotron for experimentation with cycles, with work going back to 1996. The clever invention here is the use of the spokes themselves as musical information. Quite a lot more detail and code in Processing and ChucK:
Rui Penha and Polygons
Rui Penha deserves his own category here, I think, as he’s done a great deal of research. He has worked with polygonal shapes as a way of displaying evenness in rhythms, and he’s built not only novel interfaces, but entire musical compositional environments using these paradigms. They’re all downloadable, too.
, pictured below, uses sampled sounds and pre-composed loops which you can then assemble into a layered composition.
, in the video at the top of this story, uses cyclic, circular notation to make interlocking parts of music more visible, in the style of an Indonesian ensemble. I was struck by this myself as I’d constructed a (much cruder) demonstration of the same idea for a talk in Ireland; here, Rui builds it into an entire interface. Also, there’s a meaning to the symbology of the circle: Gamelan looks for other networked players with which it can interact, making this a communal experience – and it can even be used to play a real gamelan ensemble, via robotic apparatus controlled wirelessly.
is perhaps the most sophisticated of all of these, mapping those shapes into three dimensions and making the evenness of rhythms more apparent. See video, top, and the same ideas below.
Hardware and Kinectic Art
No discussion of circular design would be complete without the legendary synthesizers of FutureRetro, which uses a cyclical interface to divide patterns and even arranges synth parameters around the rotational theme. You can now pick up an Orb for $550.
It’s worth coming full (cough) circle here and revisiting the mechanical ideas, as I think part of what grounds these abstractions is the progression of time in physical contraptions. That’s what inspires the rotating arms above and so on. Because it’s so fundamentally tied to a motor, there are too many rotating soundmakers to name, but here are a couple. They’re inspired by a discussion following our post last month:
Invisible Rhythm worked from the notion of a music box to make their analog drum machine Rhythm 1001.
See also the Conspiring machine – thanks to an unfortunate use of Flash, I can’t link directly easily, but head to , choose work, and then select Conspiring Machine (or some of the other, related ideas) from the left-hand column.
I’m going to turn loopy if I keep going, so I’ll leave it there. But have you found circular sequencers to be musically useful? Are there hardware or software designs you appreciate that I missed here? Research worth checking out? Or are you committed to the rectangle – and if so, can you explain why?
Happy PI day. May your oscillations always be in phase.
We celebrate 3.14, PI day, with some selections of mathematics, music, and visualization…
Sometimes the results resemble scores, sometimes toys, and sometimes – more rarely – real musical instruments. But part of why I love computing as a window into music is its ability to visualize music’s mathematical beauty.
I happened across this image from Flickr. It’s a chalk pattern on pavement for a children’s game (I’m not actually sure what game). But the math-compelled photographer found in it musical, harmonic intervals. I’ll have to sketch a little Processing and Pd design that plays with this idea. I put it here because someone out there might be inspired to do the same, and this is just ambiguous enough that it could easily lead in dozens of wildly-divergent paths.
I know some of my own students are literally on a beach for spring break and the nerd elite is busy partying in Austin, but, uh, maybe someone out there will file this away for later.
The photographer explains the math:
Also not sure what this game is called, but it contains some interesting mathematical properties. Can you see the oblong numbers (2,6,12,20,30…) in this representation?
Per :
Readers who are familiar with the theory of music will recognise the list of oblongs as the intervals in decreasing order of consonance: Octave (1:2), Perfect Fifth (2:3), Perfect Fourth (3:4), Major Third (4:5), Minor Third (5:6), etc. It is Pythagoras who is credited with discovering this mathematical relationship between music and numbers.
This discovery, that the pitch of a note is related to the length of the string which produced it, is credited as being the spark which ignited Pythagoras’ imagination and philosophy. It allowed Pythagoras a glimpse of a whole new order in the Universe, one governed by intellect and logic and capable of the sublimest of pleasures. And a glimpse was all that he needed.
With this discovery, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans set in train a way of investigation which has proved to be one of the most productive ideas in human history – that mathematics can be used to unravel the mysteries of the Universe.
Now, after those deep thoughts, who’s worked an appetite for some PI pie?
To celebrate what in the US we call 3.14 or PI day, today I’m offering stories that deal with mathematics and circles. First up, an app named for the great philosopher who is credited – even if perhaps ahistorically so – with finding that ratio and ratios in harmonies.
Technology has long introduced innovations that make playing easier for specialists and non-specialists alike. Just ask anyone who plays an instrument like the guitar – frets, and the simplified notation that went with it, go back centuries as a means of allowing more people to make music.
Developer Rob Fielding wants to rethink frets, to bring their disposition and playability closer to the way harmonics work in sound. The creator of the microtonal iPad app Mugician, his next app in development, Pythagoras, offers some fascinating ideas. Forgive me getting a bit theoretical in the prose for those who do speak that language; the videos are always the best way of understanding what’s going on. (The vast majority of even untrained ears have the ability to perceive pitch with astounding accuracy, so you don’t have to be an expert. Usually when people claim to be tone deaf, the problem is that they can’t sing, not that they can’t hear, in my experience.)
I’ll let Rob explain:
Pitch
Pythagoras’ fretless mode uses geometry to mark the harmonically relevant points, not fixed frets. Where the lines intersect with strings, the notes are perfect ratios to each other. This helps you to locate and get to know the useful pitches that are used in world music. [See image, top for a beautiful visualization of how this works. -Ed.] That is explained here:
When you play a chord like a major third, you line up the blue notes to overlap perfectly, and you get shiningly perfect major thirds that way. Same for harmonically correct fifths and fourths. These are the pitches that you hear as overtones when you listen carefully to instruments with lots of sympathetics, etc.
I do want to respond to this one lamentation in Rob’s post: he frets (ahem) that MIDI doesn’t use frequency, and that OSC isn’t well-supported. I actually think MIDI isn’t far off – it just lacks precision. Perception of pitch is complex, but a logarithmic scale (in which 440 sounds one octave higher than 220) is reasonably close to how we hear. And that’s precisely what MIDI gives you; if you just wanted to number the piano, its solution of using a number like 60 for middle C makes perfect sense. (We can overlook for a moment that the definition of MIDI fumbled the octave. The basic idea was still right.)
Even outside MIDI, a numbering system like that in MIDI – mapping pitch space to a logarithmic scale to make them match intuitively what we hear – is not uncommon. The problem is that MIDI doesn’t have a rational way of dealing with what happens in between the notes, as it used integers for efficiency. Take MIDI’s logarithmic scale and set floating-point numbers (numbers with a decimal place, like 60.5 instead of 60), and you have a pretty decent solution. You could still, if you didn’t want integers to represent 12-tone equal-tempered pitch, apply different scales and modes. But I think if you wanted a decent way of communicating note values, unless I’m really missing something, sending floating point numbers that default to a 12-TET logarithmic scale can’t be too bad. I understand that most instruments don’t yet respond in any standardized way, but I refuse to believe this is an intractable problem. I’m happy to discuss in comments. Heck, if we just got Max and Pd patchers to agree on something, I’d be pleased.
On to another very cool idea:
Octave Rounding
Pythagoras is using octave rounding in its latest incarnation when you press the “Auto” button for the octave switch. What this means is simply that it doesn’t care about what octave a note is in, it will pick the closest octave to the last played note. This allows for astounding feats of arpeggiation and pentatonic scales – even when playing fretless. Here is the more popular video:
And here is the improvement upon it the next day (much less viewed video) where you can slide up or down a fourth:
This octave rounding is an idea I implemented a few years ago in my derivative called Xstrument. (Both and are open source projects on github). This idea is very applicable to 2 octave keyboards as well.
Here is the idea with a trivial program:
It’s really great stuff. As it happens, I’ve been exploring new geometries for music making myself, interested along similar lines. And musical inventor Roger Linn has had a lot of things to say about it lately, too, including his respect for Rob’s work.
So, I’d love to have a discussion. What interesting interfaces have you seen for music? Are there any you find playable in practical circumstances? And why can’t we just solve this issue of how to transmit pitch information between software and hardware once and for all? (I don’t yet know how HD-MIDI will address the issue; that’ll be interesting to see.)
And don’t miss Rob’s blog:
Finally, here’s Jordan Rudess rocking out with Mugician, Rob’s (currently-available) app.
We live in a fragile world, and I’m immensely grateful for the opportunities we’re gifted to share ideas about music making and engineering, sound and tools.
I will continue our regular content, but I also want to ask all of our readers to reflect on our friends and colleagues impacted directly and indirectly by the aftermath of Friday’s tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear crisis. It is to date one of the most far-reaching disasters in its connection to the larger audience for this site, though we remain sensitive to loss throughout our community worldwide. I want to specifically send our thoughts to our Japanese readers, and our friends at Korg, Roland, Yamaha, and too many other manufacturers and press outlets to name as they face the challenges ahead.
We rely on electricity and network availability to even be connected to one another via this outlet; recent events in Egypt and Japan correlate to odd silences in countries that otherwise make large showings in server logs. But absent those connections, we can still contribute.
I’m sure there will be musical benefits; one such is being discussed at the monome forum. But as we as musicians and artists share one larger global community (this site alone registers visits from seven continents, and we’re English-only), here are good ways to give. All are in what I’ve been able to research efficient, generous, and well-respected organizations, and all equip themselves to handle not only these most recent events, but unexpected crises around the world. I’ll be giving on CDM’s behalf.
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Tech writer Rick Martin has compiled an sorted by where you are in the world.
Updated: See also the record label who are giving 100% of profits (and are themselves supporters of Japanese music), and, in turn, their beneficiary
It’s easy for the other things we do to seem meaningless in the face of tragedy, but I believe that part of why we share with each other, commercially and culturally, with music and with tools, is because it is a gift to do so, to be part of a greater community of people. Wherever you are in the world, I can’t thank you enough for that.
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.
Multiband send, anyone? While not typically associated with most mod trackers, one of Renoise’s strengths is flexible routing.
The new 2.7 release, released in beta this weekend, adds some changes that could dramatically improve working with this tool. Renoise 2.6 ; 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.
Automation editing is snappier – figuratively and literally.
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 control means that Renoise, and , and (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:
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.
The welcome new slice marker editing feature. Yes, in this case, it’s something that will look familiar from other tools – but couple this with Renoise’s mod tracker-style editing, and you could have what will be to some a perfect workflow. All screenshots courtesy Renoise; click for larger version.
Kieran Foster (dblue)
Known to plug-in enthusiasts for his fantastic, free 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!
At last, the sampler in Renoise becomes a proper multi-sampler – but with an interface that remains, in my opinion, easy to use.
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.
