These groove settings however apply to the complete song. Also the speed and tempo tricks section explained on that page as an alternative, are at least affecting the whole pattern for the rows that you use these tricks.

In the following movie we are going to show you how to generate a simple 50% groove pattern on a single note-column and at the second part of the movie, we demonstrate the same method to apply a groove pattern to the full track.
Also, this trick does not affect synchronisation problems to external hosts or plugin effects that cannot handle swift timing effects, which is an extra plus benefit as well.

To clarify some of the actions done in the movie:We pick a delay value of 2 to apply on each second row.
To apply a 50% groove everything needs to be sliced by 2, else there won’t be a 50% groove, so we place a delay command on every second row.
Then there is the amount of delay we can apply and as we work with individual tracks or notecolumns, we can only use the delay command to achieve this local effect and the delay command is affected by the speedfactor which you have to divide by 2 as well.
The example song in the movie used speed 6 which is 3 when you divide this number by 2. However…
Each row starts at the first tick which is position 0 for Renoise and not position 1. Basically a speed to effect command translation table would look like this:

So for that reason, we say speed divided by two minus 1 which means: 6 / 2 = 3 -1 gives you the value of 2 for the delay effect command.
For every command that is based on ticks, this table applies. The higher the speed value, the more ticks in a row you have, the higher the integrity of your effect commands can be.
But that falls outside the scope of this tutorial. (You can read more about that at this location.)

That was for the background information, now go and watch the movie…

Note that you need to manually pause the movie when you see a text balloon as they swiftly pass by during the movie

Have a look at some of the examples here and submit your own:

http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=13319

Be as basic or as adventurous as you like. We need a little bit of everything. Here’s some Foo? ideas:

- EQ and filter chain for making slick bass.
- Send: Magical verb.
- Send: Magical delay.
- Glitchy gating.
- Pad echo.
- Dirty Drum Warmth.
- Vocal processing.
- Sludge.
- LFO Madness.
- etc. etc.

Let’s go! The more idiosyncratic the better!

So I set out to try and fake the sound somehow using combinations of VSTs. Predictably, I couldn’t exactly get it, but during experimentation I developed some processes that really improve the ‘wet’ characteristic of delays and reverbs, especially with stiff repetitive input sounds. Here’s a summary:

Firstly, I really recommend EchoLIVE as a delay plugin, it’s probably the best free plug I have used for getting lush authentic analogue style dub delay. In conjunction with that I nearly always use Moneo for pre/post width and/or channel swapping.

What follows isn’t dependent on those two plugs, in fact just using Renoise’s native effects you can do wonderful things. To do this you have to use a send channel - in the ’send’ chain we are just going to effect the ‘wet’ characteristic of the sound. So if you’re using the native delay, click ‘mute source’, and in the mpverb mix the dry fader to 0%.

Now try some of these send chains:

- Phaser —> Delay
- Flanger —> Delay
- Phaser —> mpverb
- Flanger —> mpverb

…And so on. The idea is to modulate the incoming signal in a way that makes the ‘wet ambiance’ echo out naturally, but uniquely each time there is an input sound. So even a stiff snare drum sample, for example, that is used all the time at the same pitch can have a echo or verb behind it that doesn’t sound stiff and machine like. This can make very ‘cheap sounding’ reverb plug-ins sound quite usable!

Naturally, each composer will prefer a certain sound governed by what they set the parameters for each plug. However I have a few recommendations. My stock standard usage usually ends up look like this (depending on the type of input sounds and the song’s mix):

For Delay:
- SEND 1-50% —> Phaser (500hz-3khz crossover, medium LFO, 50% effect, 0-25% feedback, 0-3% width) —> LP Filter (Moog No Rez, 1-9khz) —> Delay (all wet, length+feedback suitable to mix and instrument expression) —> HP Filter (Moog anywhere between 3-12khz) —> optional Phaser (lite) —> Width —> SEND 1-10% to Verb Channel.

For Reverb:
- SEND 1-50% —> Phaser (500hz-3khz crossover, medium LFO, 50% effect, 0-50% feedback, 0-3% width) —> LP Filter (Moog No Rez, 1-9khz) —> mpVerb (all wet, length+feedback+pre+cpu-quality suitable to mix and instrument expression, cutoff 2-5khz) —> HP Filter (Moog anywhere between 3-12khz) —> optional Phaser (lite) —> Width —> SEND 1-10% to Delay Channel.

See the example XRNS for how these sound.

Notice that I’m using a pre-LP-filter and a post-HP-filter either side of the ‘wet ambiance’ effect - this helps to narrow the echo into a sonic-region that sounds more authentic, architectural or distant. There’s nothing worse, for example, than an overly bright reverb sounding cheap; or, a delay or verb mashing up a mix with muddy kick drum and bass sound. Ambiance, especially when it’s long and deep, tends to speak best between 500hz to 12khz, but many genres, especially dub, get narrower than that again. Your tastes will reveal themselves with experimentation.

There are other optional and creative things you can obviously put in front of the delay/verb to get astoundingly cool spatial sounds. Easy good ones are: Leslie, Pitch modulation, Stretch, Buffer mashups, Reverser, Long delay loops, slow chorus, Formant filters, or anything that has workable modulation in it. You’re basically limited by your imagination and the plug-ins you have at hand!

I’m keen to see if anyone else is using this technique or anything similar to it, so post back here if you’ve tried it out. Otherwise, enjoy putting some ‘magic delay and verb’ into your songs.

What are Ghost Notes?

The Ghost Notes technique allows you to glide effects from one note to subsequent notes. On synthesizers the same effect is usually achieved with an LFO in combination with the Legato mode.

Ghost Notes were introduced in second generation trackers, such as Fast Tracker 2. Using this technique increases your understanding of trackers and provides you with a great tool to ornament your production.

The key to the Ghost Notes technique is the Instrument Envelope.

Instrument Envelopes

The Instrument Envelope is an imaginary curve that describes how a parameter changes over time. For example, you can tell an Instrument to slowly pan from left to right on every note. Another parameter is volume. In Fig 1. the Instrument fades in.

Renoise Tutorials contains a lot of information about Instrument Envelopes.

Envelope Retrigger

In most cases, you want each note to trigger a new Volume Envelope. Everytime the Volume Envelope is restarted from the beginning, even if notes are overlapping. We call that Envelope Retrigger. In the video you can see a large part of the envelope is never being played.

A usual sequence, with Envelope Retrigger:

C-4 01 80 0000 //the envelope starts
--- -- -- ---- // the envelope continues
E-4 01 80 0000 //the envelope starts over

C-4 is the pitch
01 is the Instrument Number
80 is the note volume
0000 is a void Command Effect (does nothing)

What if you do not want notes to retrigger the envelope? Can we let a note continue the envelope where the previous one stopped? Yes, and that is exactly the purpose of the Ghost Note technique.

The Ghost Note technique

The Instruments Envelopes are retriggered when a note contains the Instrument Number. Ghost Notes are enabled by simply deleting the Instrument Number.

To delete the Instrument Number:

1. Move the cursor with the arrow keys onto the Instrument Number. In the image below, the Instrument Number is 01.

   

   Fig. 2: A note (C-4) with its instrument number (01)

2. Press <del> on Windows, or <fn>+<del> on Mac. Notice the 01 is gone.

   

   Fig.3: A note (C-4) without its instrument number

A sequence with a single Ghost Note looks like this.

An example of the Ghost Note technique

Here is a typical example of Ghost Notes. Only the first note has an Instrument Number.

What do you think will happen with the Volume Envelope when we play the sequence? The answer is shown in the video:

As you can see, the Volume Envelope is triggered once at the first row. The following notes continue the envelope where the previous one has ended.

You can use this example together with a fading Filter Envelope to create an interesting filter sweep!

Check out the tutorial song “Tutorial - Ghost notes.xrns” and the demo song “Demosong - Overlook.xrns” to see how Ghost Notes are used in practice.

Disambiguation

Ghost Notes (or Ghost Hits) can also refer to very quiet, muffled notes. Usually practiced in drumming. For example, to let a drum riff roll, you can place Ghost Notes between the louder drum hits.

Minimize VSTIs

Now don’t misinterpret this instruction as “DON’T use VSTIs”. There are decent ones that don’t use a lot of CPU power and are quite nice; Synth1 comes to mind. Preferably, though, you don’t want to corner yourself into having to replace a VSTI with a sample late in a song, so just assume you won’t use VSTIs from the beginning. When it comes down to it, most of the time, the only parameters you’ll use during a song is a filter. Render out some notes or even a riff or two instead of wasting CPU power on a VSTI that’s not sounding much different from pattern to pattern anyway. You’ll find out later that you have slightly ‘more’ control of the sound this way by way of the 09xx command. Avoid using CPU hogs ‘live’ at all costs (e.g. Crystal). Sample them ONLY!

Minimize Polyphony

After eliminating unneeded VSTs, don’t start running your processor into the ground with a plethora of instruments with long trailing times and and filter envelopes, because you’ll have just defeated the purpose of clearing out the VSTIs to begin with. Whenever possible, eliminate the filter envelopes as well. A simple sample with the filter in the track works just as good in many cases and allows you to use it across more sounds.

Reducing polyphony also goes for people that waste 15 tracks for drums - 2 or 3 tracks with a good majority of sampled and looped sounds will do the same job. Plus you can ‘glitch’ them up a bit when they’re sampled by using the pattern effect codes.

Minimize Effects

On my personal tunes, I always make sure that I’m able to run my favorite multi-band compressor and brick-wall limiter on the master track. If I can’t, I delete other effects. Try to find an effect or two you just can’t live without, even if it differs from song to song, and treat those as part of the song. Don’t get to crazy and start thinking that your chain of 50 effects is necessary to the song, though. When you start running out of CPU start thinking to yourself about other ways to do the delay (multiple notes on a track, oldskool tracking style? You bet!). Is the filter on this ‘backing’ track really noticeable behind all of the other sounds? If not, delete it.

Another way you can do this is make use of the sends tracks. Don’t use a different style reverb for every track: just make one reverb and set the send slider to it differently for each track. You can even switch on and off things like Flangers by way of sends meta devices by keeping the source and setting the sends accordingly. It takes more work to decide what to do in each song and each situation, but generally in my experience, you shouldn’t need more than 2 delays, a reverb, 3-4 filters and 1 or 2 gratuitous effects like Lo-Fi and Distortions per song when you get to the core of the music you’re working on. On a side note, working like this will sometimes help you view writing music differently, relying less on VST wizardry and more on tracking itself.

Minimize Sample Rates

You can get a speed boost here and there by putting less demand on the RAM. If you’re not an audiophile and don’t mind 16bit samples, then export your rendered samples and convert them into 16 bit. Less sample data in the RAM = more room for your wisely chosen effects to process data.

Examples?

Well, here’s one… Maybe it’s not everyone’s style of music, but, it runs on the aforementioned LifeBook just fine, maxing out at about 30% CPU usage. Yes, even the end patterns. NOTE: Example uses Karma FX Filter, BuzzRoom GranComp3 and MDA Dynamics (in their Effect Pack).

Less is More

All in all, conserving CPU is a hard topic to explain, but once you get in the swing of things, you’ll notice that you’ll use Renoise more like a “powerful tracker” with a few chosen effects and synths - rather than Renoise as a pure VST host, which is the quickest way to get that dreaded ‘Maxed-Out CPU’ message and skippy audio. “Render Selection to Wav” is definitely the most used feature of Renoise and the most versatile. If you ignore it, you’re headed to a low CPU ceiling headache.