Assembling Instruments (Using samples)

Related topics
Instrument Envelopes
Sample editor

Using instruments is one way to compose in Renoise. An instrument slot can be filled with a MIDI instrument set, a VST instrument plugin, or alternatively you can load samples into the sample slots associated with an instrument. You can even mix MIDI, VST and sample-based instruments in one slot.

This tutorial shows you how to assemble an instrument using the sample slots. (Note: the pattern editor is omitted from many of the screen shots as this tutorial focuses mainly on the instrument slot panel).

Loading samples into the sample slots

Let’s create a small drumkit to illustrate the basics of loading and assigning samples to the virtual keyboard. Open the Disk Browser and select the Sample preset button on the left of the browser (see below).

(note :You can audition samples when selecting them in the Disk Browser by toggling: .)
To interrupt the pre-hear function, press and hold the [esc] key.

On the right hand-side, the window is divided into two parts. The numbered slots in the upper half represent instrument slots, the slots in the lower window represent the individual sample slots associated with the currently selected instrument slot. First, select an instrument slot you want to load the sample into. In the example, slot “00″ is selected. Locate and double-click a supported audio file (install quicktime 7.0 or higher for ogg / aac support) in the file list area of the browser. In this case I’m loading up a set of different percussion samples into one instrument. To load multiple samples into one instrument, select the first sample you want to insert then either hold the left ctrl key to select multiple samples (see below), or hold the shift key and click the last sample in the range of samples you want to load.
If you want to create one instrument for each sample, right click upon the selected samples and then click “Load File”. If you want the whole selection to be loaded into ‘one instrument, then click and drag the selection onto the first sampleslot.

You can also import individual samples from Renoise songs or instruments.

If you want to follow this example, you can download the sample-pack right here: Drumkit (541Kb).

The instrument will be given the name of the sample loaded into sample-slot “00″ by default. Keep loading the samples into the following slots until you have all desired / related samples loaded.

You can shift the split-frame of the instrument and sample pane to show either more samples or more instruments by dragging the split-bar up or down on the right side of the frame:

When you’re finished, you can rename your instrument if you don’t want it to remain named after the first sample loaded into it. Right-click on the instrument and then click on the Rename Instrument option that appears in the context-menu.

Start typing.

The mouse cursor changes into a text cursor whenever it is hovering above a text-enabled field. Note: this trick works on certain other fields as well (explained in other tutorials).

Each sample has its own personal properties. When you select a sampleslot, the data related to it pops up in this frame that can be found under the lower Instrument Settings tab.

• NNA: Determines the New Note Action;
• Loop: Selects a loop-type, if used (See Sample editor);
• Interpolate: Set interpolation mode for this sample. This trigger allows you to toggle interpolation quality to affect CPU resource consumption.;
• Basenote: The start-note from which all other notes will relate to;
• Finetuning: If samples are dissonant or incorrectly tuned to other samples in the same or different instrument(s), you can correct this problem here. Tuning is done on hz basis.
• Sync: Synchronize beat to the amount of lines set;
• Amplify: How much to raise or lower the sample’s individual volume;
• Panning: Set the sample’s pan position (left to right);

Mapping samples to keys

Generating a drumkit / sound-pack instrument.
Once all samples are loaded, they need to be assigned to keys on the virtual keyboard. If you select the Instrument Envelopes button in the lower-right corner of the program, the envelope tables appear, including the virtual keyboard. In this tutorial I will demonstrate a quick drum-kit generation method which automatically maps the samples in your instrument and sets the proper Basenote for you. Simply hit the Generate Drumkit button in the lower-right part of the instrument envelopes panel.

After you have clicked it, you’ll notice that some numbers in the fourth octave on the virtual keyboard have changed. If you follow the path of the red lines to each sample slot, you’ll discover the relationship between the numbers marked on the keys and the numbers set in the sample-slots. (Note: avoid the temptation to click the keys on the virtual keyboard at this point, as doing so will assign the currently selected sample to the clicked key).

Also notice the selected Split’s Base Note in the lower-left corner below the virtual keyboard. It’s set to D-4. If you look up the D-4 key on the keyboard and you follow the red-line, you end up on sample-slot “02″ which is currently the selected sample-slot. The displayed Base Note relates to the current selected sample in the sample-table.

The Base Note means that the sample would be played at the original samplerate it was recorded at on this note. The sample does not specifically have to be assigned to this key on the virtual keyboard, but the offset is set to that key as if the sample *was* assigned to that key. If you assign the sample to keys on the right side of it, Renoise will play that sample at a higher frequency related to its Base Note offset, and the sample assigned to keys on the left side of this basenote key will be played at a lower rate relative to the Base Note offset. To give an example. If you shift a sample with an assigned basenote of C-4 to D-4, it will play higher than the original sample’s pitch. If you adjust the basenote to D-4, the sample will again be played at its original pitch when triggered.

So, virtual keyboard keys and the Base Note do not automatically relate to each other. Everything is automatically set when you use the Drumkit Generator, but normally you would have to set the proper Base Note yourself when assigning individual samples manually. Also, the Drumkit Generator is mostly meaningful for percussion sets and sound effects, but for normal instruments you assign them to multiple keys at different BaseNotes per key-range. (I will explain this in the next example.) The Set all to current split button takes care that the current selected sample in the instrument panel, is being attached to all the keys on the keyboard so that the selected sample will be the default sample of the instrument. So in this case you can automatically assign one sample to the complete keyrange.

Assigning samples to multiple keys

To assign a sample to one or more different keys across the keyboard, select the sampleslot in the sample area, then click the key(s) upon the large virtual keyboard that you want to trigger this sample. You will see the number change as soon as you click any of the keys.

In the diagram below, I illustrate the relationships between various aspects of the sample sets and the virtual keyboard keys to make things more obvious. I have also chosen logical sample names to make it clear what’s going on:

This diagram is a little bit more complex. But, fear not, in Renoise itself, only the settings related to the currently selected sample are shown. The diagram above shows the relationship of all first three visible sample-slots in the sample-table. The Red paths refer to the sample’s personal properties and the other coloured paths indicate the keyrange on the virtual keyboard the sample is assigned to. The Base Note and border of the keyrange is given. If you look up to sample “00″, you will notice it is assigned to three octaves of the virtual keyboard, from C-0 to B-2 (the octave number is signified by the numbers 1–5 underneath the virtual keyboard). As you can see, the Base Note of Sample 00 is C-2 (as you can see in the upper Sample-Properties panel as well) so all keys from B-1 to C-0 will be played at a lower samplerate than was originally recorded, and all keys played above C-2 up to B-2 will be played at a higher frequency rate than was originally recorded.
How this is done goes beyond the scope of this tutorial, since this involves calculation algorithms. If you really want to know how this works, there are lots of developer’s notes and SDK’s around the net for various trackers that display this type of info, but for the majority of people that compose using Renoise, I presume they don’t want to know this boring stuff unless they are interested in designing their own player to play various tracker formats!

If you have set up a keyboard-mapping, it will be auto-updated once you drag new samples into it or you move samples along within it.

Sync

One last thing to mention in here is the Sync option.
The sync option is for sample sequences which are either looped or just have a certain rythmic pattern. Sync adjusts the sample playrate to the amount of pattern-lines entered in the value box. Once you have synced a sample (i.e. a drum loop) you can change the speed and bpm and the sample-frequency will automatically increase or decrease to fit the range of lines you selected.

A drawback, though, is that you can’t fiddle with high speed differences, since your sample-sequence may not sound exactly like you want it to sound. Another drawback is that the sync value goes up to a maximum value of 512 lines and calculates this based upon the full length of your sample. In other words: if it is too big to sync, you will have to physically break the sample into multiple smaller samples to be able to work with them.

Related topics
Instrument Envelopes
Sample editor

‘’Disclaimer :The external components that enables you to load mp3/ogg/aac samples are not maintained by any of the Renoise developers so the plugins are not officially supported in case of problems regarding any of these plugins.
\\