There are lots of ways of introducing randomness across the various features of Renoise and Redux. But what if you generated changes at random initially and you like what you heard, so you want those changes to be the same each time the song is played?

As shown in the Beginner’s Tutorial, automating track effects is done with effect commands and graphical automation. You can also use those methods to automate effects contained within an instrument by ‘Using Macros’. Obviously that requires you to manually create those automations across the entire song. However, there is a different technique where everything works automatically.

As their names suggest, the Key and Velocity Trackers accept as inputs: key (or ‘note’) values, and velocity (or ‘volume’) values. The devices then process this input through various options to create an output, which is used to control a Destination parameter.

There’s some interesting stuff going on in the instruments of my Mutant Breaks 13 song, so I made the first unscripted video since the SDEK stuff back in 2009. I’ll be doing more of this kind of thing soon. The song file is available for download.

While the delay column can be used to manually create swinging rhythms for individual notes, there are two other automatic methods available in the form of Global Groove and Phrase Shuffle.

The Gainer & Stereo Expander effects make the Panning, Volume and Width parameters from the Pre-Mixer available within these devices, with a few useful expansions. This means that these fundamental aspects of an audio signal can be controlled from anywhere within an effect chain.

Hardware trackpads and joysticks allow the user to perform simple movements and more complex gestures to create musical changes. The XY Pad device provides the same ability within Renoise and Redux, where using its pad changes the X and Y output values simultaneously. This allows two effect parameters to be controlled in a free-form manner and, as usual, automations can be recorded by using the right mouse button.

This update turns the Drawtomator tool into something useful for Renoise songs instead of just a fun gimmick. Pressing the Create Automations button will use the drawing to create graphical automations for the destination parameters. Fit Patterns calculates the correct Replay Speed so that the drawing length matches the pattern length.

In a previous video we looked at the Chorus, Flanger & Phaser devices, which use a free-running modulation to drive their effects. No matter how you change the settings though, the shape of that modulation is always a sine wave. Let’s see if we can do something about that.

Mapping devices handle parameter modulations across multiple inputs and outputs. The Hydra has a single input which can be altered in different ways for each of its multiple outputs. The Meta Mixer and Formula devices have multiple inputs and combine them in various, potentially complex ways to craft a single output.