Speed

The speed-value in Renoise is the amount of ticks to be played per row. Some people that are new to tracking may be confused by the idea of having a BPM factor and a speed factor. Well the speed-factor is not there to influence the BPM rate, but is there to offer some timing opportunities for you to apply effects on. The speed value in Renoise sets a global groove-tempo per row based upon the BPM value currently set. (~21bpm per tick if speed = 6 and bpm is 128). Speed combined with the BPM value there is an actual BPM value coming out of this part. Exponential figures of the speed supply the actual BPM rate, set in Renoise, be it that the LPB is set differently.

A closer look

A song in Renoise is made of “patterns”.

A pattern is made of rows. A pattern has 64 rows as default, but this can be changed for each pattern in the song.

Rows are made of ticks.

The tick is the fundamental time unit in Renoise. The application processes properties of notes once each tick.

The “set songspeed” command sets how many ticks per rows there are. You can change this parameter at any time by using the F1xy command, where xy is the hexadecimal number of ticks per row to be.

If a row has 6 ticks, which is the default, it will be processed six times; if it has 12 ticks, it will be processed twelve times.

If we ideally fix the value of BPM at, say, 128, the flow of the song will be dependent on songspeed value, as Renoise processes about 50 ticks per second, so, the higher the number of ticks per row, the lower the number of rows per second will be processed.

That’s why, counterintuitively, higher songspeed values lead to slower pattern flowing.

Keep in mind that the fact that a row, for example, has 12 ticks instead of 6, will influence the behaviour of many commands, because they will be processed twice the times at songspeed 12 than at songspeed 6.

Also, don’t forget that the pattern commands such as 0Dxy? will work only if xy is less than the present number of ticks per row. This is logical because, if a row has 6 ticks, telling Renoise to delay a note of 8 ticks is meaningless: you simply put the note one row after, and delay it of 2 ticks.

An example

set songspeed to 6:

00 -— — — F106

put a C-4 on a track:

01 C-4 — — ----

use pitch slide up to add 3 units of pitch each tick:

02 -— — — 0103

a total of 6*3=18 units will be added in a row.

Now set songspeed to 12 (0C in hexadecimal):

00 -— — — F10C

put a C-4 on a track:

01 C-4 — — ----

use pitch slide up to add 3 units of pitch each tick:

02 -— — — 0103

a total of 12*3=36 units will be added in a row.