GUI Customisation

You may find it more useful to watch our video on this subject, since it provides full demonstrations of the features mentioned here.

Customising the general interface of Renoise can be done with the Global View Presets. In Renoise and Redux many of the interface panels can be resized to suit your needs by placing the mouse cursor on the dividing line and click-dragging.

In the GUI tab of the Preferences menu the entire interface can be scaled, and in that tab and the Theme tab, there are other methods of customising the GUI to your liking.

Pattern/Phrase Editor Customisation

There are several preferences in the GUI tab relevant to GUI customisation.

The first option is ‘Hide 0s in effect columns’. This is simply to reduce visual clutter and make it obvious when an effect command is actually present. This is how older trackers used to display effects columns, so if you're used to this style you may feel more at home with this disabled.

‘View multiple patterns continuously’ is available for Renoise only, not Redux. This shows any previous or next patterns at the edges of the current pattern. This can be an aesthetic preference, but it's also be extremely useful for composing music across patterns, such as when using polyrhythms.

‘Syntax highlighting’ applies color-coding for Effect Commands, with each different type having a different color. Disabling it makes them the same color as the notes.

As you can see from the two ‘Line number format’ options, the line numbers can be either decimal or hexadecimal. If you’re unfamiliar with hexadecimal we have a video covering that topic.

The final three options will probably be of the most use to people, since you can choose between four font sizes, adjust the horizontal spacing between individual letters and numbers, and change the vertical spacing between lines. Perfect for customising how the notes and effects appear to you, no matter how you’re scaling the GUI overall.

Theme Customisation

Themes control the entire color scheme for Renoise and Redux, as well as the shading of buttons, sliders, panels and optional texturing. Renoise comes with a wide range of Themes to choose from.2 If you’ve created your own Theme then it can be saved for future use by entering the desired name into the text field and clicking the "Save" button. Any existing Theme can be exported for others to use, and likewise theirs can be imported.

To access a huge resource of custom Themes created by our users, check the first link in the video description or below where this has been posted. And note: Themes are compatible between Renoise and Redux.

So, how would you go about creating your own custom theme? Well, each individual element of the user interface has its own Color Setting, and there's a lot for you to adjust. Of special note, since this might not be immediately obvious, you can also adjust the Color Settings for the VU Meters and set the default Track Colors.

You can adjust the colors for each individual element using either RGB mode or HSV. In that mode, the Value controls the brightness, Saturation is the strength of the color and Hue is the color itself.

The easiest way to get started with creating a Theme though, is to take an existing one and mess around with the Global Color Filter settings. This uses the same HSV values that I just explained, and there's also an Invert toggle which does exactly what you would expect.

Now, if you've made adjustments here, it doesn't automatically apply them to the Color Settings themselves, where you might want to make individual changes for certain elements. So to make that happen, just hit the Apply button.

And then come the Graphics where the ‘Knob shade’ shades the buttons and the sliders. ‘Body shade’ is self-explanatory. And the Contrast, which will adjust the contrast of certain panels, especially if they've been textured.

There's a few different Textures to choose from. Most of them are pretty subtle, although some of them will become more or less prominent depending on the adjustments you've made to your particular color scheme.

Custom Textures & Fonts

Now, there are a couple of other options here, though I wouldn't really recommend it unless you know what you're doing. You can create your own textures by copying an existing texture set to use as a template. Although this isn't officially supported, if you do that then the textures will be automatically added to the Textures drop-down menu. If you're interested in that, then check out the second link attached to this video.

The second thing you can do is replace fonts. And this is very much not supported because you can really break things by doing this. People have done this in the past though, so if you are so technically inclined, then I'm sure I don't need to tell you anything. You're more than capable of searching for how to do this on your own.