I acquired my Renoise license in 2011, made mediocre songs with it, and stopped using it for a few years.
Somehow, my license is still valid. The license is for version 2.7, and will be valid for a full version number, which means up to 3.7. Eight years later, we’re only up to 3.1, despite their financial incentive to push out point releases willy-nilly. The download is also DRM-free. Not even a license or activation to bother with - just a custom EXE fingerprinted to my legal name. It’s rare to see a licensing scheme this generous and user-friendly in the music software world, I’m glad it seems to work out for them.
I’m interested in using it purely as a sequencer for Reason.
While I own a MIDI keyboard, and it’s great to try out ideas, I’m just not good enough a keyboard player to use it to record things in time, so I tend
to input things directly in the sequencer, and Reason’s is an antique lacking all the convenience of modern competitors, while Renoise is a tracker
optimized for QWERTY songwriting.
So far, initial experiments are pretty positive. Things don’t work as painlessly as I’d like, but they work reliably.
Here’s a little idea I’m trying out, and will turn into a mediocre song more concerned to put it to the test than being a good tune: this setup turns a root note into an arpeggiated chord, allowing me to change the scale of the entire song for specific passages using only one single input. You can really do anything using Reason’s many free CV utilities.
Combining Renoise and Reason, I have many theory-aware training wheels to help me break out of my C Major + C Minor comfort zone.
I’m not very concerned that I’m using crutches, only whether I can use them to make good tunes.
2019-07-05