cl-renoise

This is a Common Lisp library to interface with Renoise. Currently in very early stages of development; not much functionality is written yet.

Setup

Put cl-renoise in your quicklisp local-projects (it is not on Quicklisp yet).
Enable OSC in Renoise. Edit->Preferences->OSC->Enable Server. Make sure “Protocol” is set to “Udp”.

Load the library. If Renoise is running on another host or you changed the OSC port, set those variables:

(ql:quickload :cl-renoise)

(setf renoise:*renoise-host* #(192 168 0 24)) ; If Renoise is running on 192.168.0.24. If it's running on the same computer as Lisp, you can skip this step.

(setf renoise:*renoise-port* 8000) ; Not needed if you use the default port of 8000.

That’s it! You can now interact with Renoise from Lisp.

Usage

Evaluate Lua in Renoise

(renoise:evaluate "renoise.app():show_warning((\"Hello from Lisp!\"))") ; Send Lua code to Renoise.

(renoise:warning-dialog "Hello again :^)") ; Show a warning, as above, but more conveniently.

Edit the song

(renoise:edit :pattern 0 :track 1 :line 0 :column 0 :note 70) ; Set the first cell to be MIDI note 70.
;; (Note that patterns, lines, and columns start from 0, while tracks start from 1.)

Start/stop notes

(renoise:note-on 48) ; Start playing the current instrument.

(renoise:note-off 48) ; Stop playing it.

Start/stop the song

(renoise:start) ; Start playing the song.

(renoise:stop) ; Stop playing it.

Receive OSC messages from Renoise

If you want to be able to receive OSC messages from Renoise, run initialize-osc-replier to set it up on the Renoise end, and start renoise:receiver in a thread on the Lisp end.

(renoise:initialize-osc-replier) ; Allow Renoise to send OSC to Lisp.

(ql:quickload :bordeaux-threads) ; Load Lisp's de facto threading library.

(bt:make-thread 'renoise:receiver :name "Renoise receiver thread") ; Make an OSC receiver thread to catch incoming messages.

You can then use add-reply-handler and remove-reply-handler to delegate OSC messages to functions.

(defun handle-blah (param) ; Define a function for processing received /blah OSC messages.
  (format t "Received /blah OSC message: ~S~%" param))

(renoise:add-reply-handler "/blah" 'handle-blah) ; Set an OSC handler for /blah messages.

(renoise:send-reply "/blah" "Howdy!") ; Make Renoise send an OSC message to the Lisp process (which will be handled by the /blah handler).

(defun handle-other (&rest msg) ; Define a function for processing other received OSC messages.
  (format t "Received OSC message: ~S~%" msg))

(renoise:add-reply-handler t 'handle-other) ; Add a catch-all reply handler that will be run when no other handler matches the message.

(renoise:send-reply "/foobar" 99 23.0) ; Make Renoise send an OSC message to the Lisp process (which will be handled by handle-other).

Related projects

cl-patterns

cl-patterns is an algorithmic sequencing library for Common Lisp. Patterns generate sequences of numbers or values, and music is sequenced by composition of patterns.

A Renoise backend based on cl-renoise is being developed, which will allow you to import and export Renoise patterns.

(Unfortunately it is not possible to actually control Renoise as a synthesizer, since Renoise seems to ignore OSC time tags.)

Spencerx/iRenoiseLisp