Look and Feel

When you open up Renoise, there are a lot of things that will confront you…

At the top you will see the status indicator bar. This shows you the VU Output Meters, the MIDI I/O Indicators, the Song Timer (either time passed or time left depending upon whether you clicked it), and your CPU Utilisation.

On the left, below this bar, you will notice the Song Controls.

The Song Controls involve playing or recording (parts of) your song, setting the tempo and speed (bpm combined), and properties for Pattern Editor controlling (e.g. instrument, quantise, metronome in the background during play / record, etc).

To the right of the song controls, you have the Disk Browser / Scope Pane.

In the Disk Browser section, you load your songs, instruments, samples, Dsp chains, and skins / themes. The scopes are graphical representations of your track’s or song’s sound generation. In the Track-Scope Viewer you can also roughly enable / disable tracks or focus / defocus one track.

To the right of the Disk Browser / Scopes, you’ll find the Instrument Table.

The Instrument Table consists of two parts: the Instrument Index and the Sample Index below it. This is where all entries to your instrument and samples reside. You cannot edit properties here, but you can select an instrument in order to edit its properties elsewhere in the program. The Sample Table is generally unused when VST or MIDI instruments are involved. However, it is possible to combine samples with a VST and / or MIDI instrument simultaneously in one slot. Whether the delays between the combined outputs sound pleasant is a different question… In the upper-right corner you find the Prehearing Toggle button. When quick-selecting an instrument by the numbers on your numeric keypad, the instrument will be played if this button is toggled on.

Above the Instrument Tables, you have a couple of MIDI control buttons and GUI controls.

The first MIDI button sets Renoise as a MIDI Clock Slave device and the second opens up a MIDI mapper, to attach certain MIDI-device controllers to Dsp / Vst Effect sliders. The third and fourth buttons hide / display the upper and lower control areas of Renoise so you can expand the pattern and sequence editor. The fifth button is the Full-screen toggle button and the rest are, of course, the well known minimize, maximize, and close application buttons. The row of numbered buttons select different screen-set presets.

On the left, you see the Sequence Editor. The Sequence Editor can be expanded by dragging the right side of the frame to the right.

→ Expanded sequence editor → .

The Sequence Editor allows you to create / copy and sort your pattern-sequence order, so you can build up your song with different pattern-sequences. As indicated above, you can also assign names to each individual pattern.

On the right side of the Sequence Editor, you will find the Pattern Editor.

In here you do the big works, entering or jamming in your notes, applying Renoise or MIDI effects in the Effect column, adding or removing tracks, and renaming your tracks to make them easy to identify.

Underneath the Sequencer and Pattern Editors, you find the Property Button Bar.

These buttons decide what is displayed in the upper frame and the lower frame.

The buttons to the right affect the main window. Those to the left affect the lower pane.

On startup, the default visible area in the lower pane is the Effect Property Pane.

The Effect Property Pane corresponds to the current track you are editing. There are several options available to apply as an effect on the current track. Besides DSP effects and VST effects, you can also assign meta devices (such as LFOs) and routing devices (such as sends) to control your sounds and effects.

Below that you can find the Status-Event Bar.

Various info will appear here, depending upon what’s happening:
If you are loading a song, it will supply you info on what it is currently doing. If you are busy editing a track in the pattern editor, info about current effects entered in the effect or panning column are displayed in this bar (this is all relevant and useful info if you don’t have the effect command’s quick-table handy).

The startup tips are, of course, there to give you little hints that you can use each fresh start. They may lead to some new inspiration, as well as make things easier than you figured possible. If you unchecked the checkbox (to make the tips appear at startup) you can always click on the Renoise logo in the lower-right corner of the status bar to magically make them appear back again.

So this is the quick tour across the GUI that pops up in your face once Renoise has been started.

Feel free to go to the next Quick Start section on the side-bar (or follow the link) to continue this quick Renoise guide.