ant1 wrote:

i have used many other trackers but i could NOT get myself into this one, really! the interface sucks, somehow

which is a shame because nothing else has that "DAW feel". but oh well

Have you used noisetrekker or protrekker? i hear they were what renoise was built off of. Noisetrekker looks kinda cool with the native 303s

oh my gosh that takes me back. noisetrekker was the first tracker I really got down with. I guess these days it would leave a lot to be desired though.

John Tiberio, who wrote the above-linked review, later interviewed me about the album and I had this to say in his question regarding Renoise specifically:

"When I first started looking into creating chiptunes it was overwhelming because I’m extremely”right-brained” and inspiration driven.  I am both impressed and stressed by mathematics and chemistry.  Complex computer languages and interfaces cause my brain to cease functioning in a seemingly pathological way.  On top of it all, I own a Mac, so it turns out that my tracker options are fairly limited.  I discovered Renoise and Milky Tracker, and I decided to hunker down with Renoise because it had a fairly broad user base and a lot of straightforward tutorials, many geared toward much more complex production techniques than I was interested in employing at the time. Once I got over the visual attack of the tracker interface as a whole, I found the format of trackers to be much more intuitive than any piano roll sequencer.  Despite being a bombastic cluster of numbers and letters, Renoise allowed (and continues to allow) me to compose my songs like essays rather than complex equations.Renoise’s ability to read .IT, .XM, and even .S3M files allowed me to study the ancient masters, particularly 4mat, maktone, virt, spamtron, and Norrin_Radd.  I found it very important and inspiring to maintain a strict respect for their form, particularly regarding a total lack of effect automation.  I quickly found a lot of liberty and creative inspiration available in eschewing Renoise’s native channel “effects” and sticking straight to classic volume column values.  I think something like the two-channel intro to “Flight of the Peacock Lords” wouldn’t have come to fruition if I had relied on static delay “effect” values.The “fine tuning” I referred to regards a simple need I faced to literally fine-tune the base notes of the different square wave samples I cobbled together into my instrument bank."

So, tl;dr aside, Renoise was a very easy transition into trackers for someone who had never used any sort of music sequencer before and who nearly broke out into a panic attack during a 2002 attempt to do something with Impulse Tracker.

This will totally replace Duplex for my Launchpad in my setup !!!
http://www.stepsequencer.net/

I totally get it if you want to play live, but if you're not playing live then doesn't using a step sequencer in Renoise sort of null the whole point of the tracker interface?  The Launchpad is awesome, but I can't see it being too useful outside of a live environment.

Because why not.

I just got Renoise, moving up from Milkytracker, and so far I absolutely love it.  I dabbled around in the likes of FL Studio for a little while but the setup is stupid - piano rolls and step sequencing, bleh.  A DAW with a tracker interface and some really, really nice workflow ideas is a much better, much more usable option in my opinion. 

Anyways, assuming you use Renoise, why not share your favorite techniques for making chip-style music?  Your favorite tools/scripts?  Or even just pop in to say you love such and such artist for using the program as well.

                              You should buy the chip tune 1 vst insturment by she, works greate with renoise. its 5$

I kind of bought the software and then secluded myself from the world, sampling different instruments and what-have-you in the depths of my room, leading to odd sample-only tracks, such as this: http://soundcloud.com/myriadviolets/adv … -mountains

Wow, that's really freaking cool. Great work!

http://soundcloud.com/myriadviolets/adv … -mountains

Dude that's beautiful.

I haven't much messed with vsts yet...I have a ton of samples I recorded myself from Casio/Yamaha keyboards, so I don't really need them. But I think it'd be fun to play with a few, such as a nice Mellotron vst.

I love it. This has been my setup for 2012.