Using Renoise as a ReWire Master sequencer: what's a good process?

[Aria Salvatrice]

Hi!

Recently, I realized that my Renoise license, bought like a decade ago, is somehow still valid, thanks to their incredibly generous licensing scheme.
I never made much good music with Renoise, even if the tracker workflow is intriguing. Reason has always been what inspires me to bang out a tune.

When Player RE's were introduced, it opened up a ton of creative shortcuts & semi-generative music opportunities, and really highlighted just how much Reason's sequencer is an early 00's relic mostly unaware of the underlying rhythmic and harmonic structure. So I figured out, why not try out Renoise as a sequencer and see what happens.

Now, I am not very familiar with trackers or renoise yet, so I hope describing my findings will spark a discussion and encourage others to share their experiences.

So, I made a song with Renoise as Rewire master and Reason doing all the heavy lifting (including the mixing).

My findings so far:

1. It works well! Having to keep two files in sync seems annoying, but in practice it's mostly just about replacing the "Ctrl+S" habit with a "Ctrl+S Alt+Tab Ctrl+S" one.

2. Combine EVERYTHING.




Even if it's just a single device, put it in a combinator, expose parameters via the programmer, and make a Intrument MIDI Control preset in Renoise: that way, it's easy to remember what the effect numbers do.



3. To use a combinator button as a triggered latch rather than as a toggle, turning it on and off on the same line ensures it always fires off at least once no matter its previous state.

4. Start with a 4 bars reset pattern, and explicitly set parameters to what you want them to be at the start of patterns. Unlike Reason automation that resets things intelligently between plays, Renoise is perfectly happy to play pattern 21 with the knobs in the last known position you left them on bar 48. Play that reset pattern when jumping around the song to ensure sane defaults.

5. It works very well with player devices! I made a song going crazy with them, changing scales globally to generate complex arpeggios & chords (using Scales & Chords, Kompulsion, and Mercury 4):


(Explanation how this mess works upon request if insufficiently self-explanatory!)


Now, a few issues:

1. It's pretty much impossible to quickly freeze the project. I haven't figured out how to remove Renoise out of the equation once the song is entirely written down, except by painstakingly exporting and re-importing MIDI (which I have not tried yet).

2. Seems more CPU hungry than usual somehow? About 10 synths & 6 effects brought my i7-4790 to its knees, and I didn't expect that. Granted, they are recent synths rather than legacy super-optimized devices, but I was surprised how fast this song used up CPU time.

And here's what the song I made with this process sounds like:



Have you tried out Renoise as a Rewire master? How does it work out for you?

[mon]

In my experience Renoise don’t adds weight to Reason projects. In fact it may do the opposite as Reason GUI is heavier and once the midi instruments are setuped in Renoise, I mostly use it’s lighter interface. I guess that the same project done entirely in Reason will eat the same or nearly the same resources.

[diminished]

2. Combine EVERYTHING.

Sorry for no contribution on my end, since my tracker days are long over.. but I have a question if you don't mind:
"Global Song Scale Control" - what did you do there? Does it work?

[Aria Salvatrice]

Sorry for no contribution on my end, since my tracker days are long over.. but I have a question if you don't mind:
"Global Song Scale Control" - what did you do there? Does it work?

Just an overengineered little experiment in my case. I'm using it to set all the player devices I use to the same scale, since the song uses many players. I send the key from the first combinator knob, but Since Scales & Chords and Kompulsion have a different list of scales, I'm dialing the scale with the CV8X4, and selecting which signal to send with the Select CV switch (both free devices), then I send the output to the combinator's programmers CV input in unipolar mode.

[Aria Salvatrice]

I tried to explore this further, and it's been turning into a comedy of errors.

First, I learned that you cannot run VST at all in Rewire slave mode. You have to run them on the master, but if I do that I can't use Reason's SSL mixer anymore.

So, I took it as a challenge and tried to sync them using a virtual loopback device. I used Reason's Advanced Midi Device to assign midi channels to rack devices. It seemed to work OK, save for one detail: you can't record MIDI coming from the Advanced Midi Device.

After discovering that, I used brute force: I created 16 virtual devices, added them all as control surfaces, and locked them individually to devices.

The setup is really janky. Quite broken with player devices. Can't trust things to play legato. Honestly, I've been spending more times fighting the jankiness of the setup than writing a song, so I removed the VST I wanted to use for stock devices and went back to ReWire mode.

[Boombastix]

Thanks for sharing - I'm interested in this too. But haven't had enough time to find a solution.

First, I learned that you cannot run VST at all in Rewire slave mode.

A bit of a surprise isn't it. Nowhere is it said in the manual, or on the PH web page. I did find one comment on KVR buried in a 65 page thread. Way to communicate PH - this has cost me unnecessary time loss / agony and money... Not fun.

The setup is really janky. Quite broken with player devices. Can't trust things to play legato.

I'm thinking: Only use Midi Clock Sync, having Reason to follow a host. Not sending midi from DAW-DAW, but only play midi in Reason for Reason, and play Midi in Cubase for Cubase (as an example).
I haven't tried this, but it would allow VST in Reason.
1. Question is then can I get audio from both DAWs via ASIO?
2. Is the Midi Clock sync stable enough?
When my track is finished and arranged, I'm thinking to just bounce out from one of the DAWs and mix/master everything in one session/DAW.

Would that work for what you are trying to do?

[Aria Salvatrice]

Would that work for what you are trying to do?

Well, right now I'm interested in exploring using a tracker as Reason's sequencer to see what it inspires, so I want a fully empty Reason sequencer

Before Reason added VST support, I tried using ASIO4ALL to have VST support, but it was a huge pain to setup. But in theory it would allow me to run VST on the rewire master and send them to Reason.

It's fun to tinker with this sort of mad science but it's no fun to actually write a song with something this hacky to set up!

[boingy]

Yep, you can't use VSTs in Reason when Rewired and you also can't run Reason as a Rewire master. Two things that have pushed me a little further away from Reason.

[OverneathTheSkyBridg]

I really like Renoise's MIDI instrument control, makes Reason's EMI look like a joke.