I swapped Ableton Live for Renoise 3.5 — here’s what I learned

$88 / €76, renoise.com Of all the things that impact our creative output, our relationship with our tools is one of the most significant. Whether consciously or not, they shape all our decisions, but these decisions often harden into reflexes. Before we know it, creative control has been quietly assumed by the tool, and we’re stuck in a loop of familiar behaviour. For me, that tool is Ableton Live. Frequently finding myself on autopilot when I load up a blank project, I’ve pondered for a while how life would look if I’d picked a different DAW, and how my music might sound if I jumped ship after 15 years. READ MORE: Suno Studio review: Is this AI DAW really the future of music production? Modern DAWs are broadly comparable, but one still stands as a black sheep: Renoise. Unlike Ableton Live or Logic Pro, it eschews left-to-right sequencing in favour of a vertical tracker that looks a little like an Excel spreadsheet. This retro approach is a radical change to my usual workflow. Bracing myself, I open Renoise and am transported back to where I started: a helpless beginner staring at an empty session, realising just how much of my process depends on muscle memory. Renoise 3.5 interface, Image: James Langley First contact Upon loading, Renoise immediately presents its biggest difference – the tracker. Fundamentally, it does the same thing as a piano roll, telling the DAW which notes to play, when and for how long. But the tracker strips away the piano notes, showing note data for what it truly is: a set of instructions to be parsed by a machine. This has an imposing effect on my mindset. I begin to feel like a programmer rather than a musician, writing code that commands the software. Unsurprisingly, there’s immediate friction in my creativity, but this is due to unfamiliarity rather than bad design. Screen sample editor. Image: Press Slave to the rhythm To some extent, Renoise’s reputation precedes it. I’m already aware of the tracker’s cult status among breaks-focused producers, a heritage rooted in Amiga computers running software like Protracker and OctaMED. Countless YouTube tutorials confirm the DAW’s affinity for detailed drum work, where micro slices of Amen break are deftly sequenced into a frantic performance behind the kit. Naturally, I’m drawn to giving this a try for myself. I briefly worry. Has Renoise hijacked my autonomy just 20 minutes in, unapologetically steering me towards a specific tempo, aesthetic, even an entire genre? If so, it’s easy to see why. Even for a novice, the tracker workflow feels incredibly fluid for composing drum parts. The in-line effects commands are where its real power is unlocked. Typing one into the FX column of a track delivers on-the-fly pitching, reversing, and retriggering — all the hallmarks of high-tempo, break-driven genres — in a fraction of the time it would take in the mainstream DAWs. In-line FX. Image: James Langley Abandoning notes Shifting from rhythm to melody, a slightly more surprising nudge from Renoise is towards samples. Going in, I’d imagined myself programming intricate melodies using MIDI instruments, perhaps influenced by trackers’ historical association with early video game music. Writing a simple bassline is easy enough, but sequencing chords instantly feels like a weak spot. Without a piano roll at my disposal, my rusty music theory is exposed and it’s hard to visualise intervals from note names alone. Perseverance feels futile, so I throw out the pad instrument and hunt for a sample instead. Freed from note-based thinking, composition becomes more instinctual, relying on my ears rather than my brain. An eagle-eye view While loss of abstraction proves a challenge in the case of composing note sequences, it’s a boon elsewhere. This is particularly evident as the arrangement becomes larger, and the Renoise workflow starts to feel like a turbocharged version of Live’s Session View. In Live, notes and samples are tucked away inside individual clips, each one a small black box. In Renoise, it’s more like being able to view — and more importantly edit — every scene’s clips at once. Image: James Langley The practical effect is profound. Rather than jumping between windows and views, I find myself editing more holistically. If a kick isn’t gelling with the bassline, there’s no need to dig through multiple clips or automation lanes, as I can simply tab across a few tracks and adjust the sequence in place. This extends to automation, too. Although you can draw curves in a separate window, parameter changes can be specified directly on the note line, feeling less like isolated tweaks to discrete elements and more like an intrinsic component of the composition. Ultimately, this ‘everything at once’ way of working encourages a kind of gestalt thinking, where you’re adjusting relationships between parts of a single, interdependent system. Making changes feels less tentative as a result. What might manifest as vague knob-twiddling in Ableton Live becomes