Since the dawn of computer-driven music, every aspiring synth mechanic has tried to find a way to create decent home-grown tunes in a way that's easy to understand. The whole ethos of music making is that it should be fun. Your muse won't wait for you.

Although ReNoise is a brand-new music package to hit the dance music scene, the idea behind it isn't. Since the late 80s, Music "Trackers" have been pretty big on the underground. The concept is generally known to go date back to the days of the Amiga. Fed up with lightweight synthesized noise, musicians wanted something that could make music that harnessed the power of sound samples rather than instruments. SoundTracker took this idea and made it possible to play sound samples at different pitches on a track. Effects such as volume control, pitch bend and virbrato could then be added and multiple tracks combined to make music.

ReNoise does all of this and so much more. As well as special effects for each sample, you can also control the overall effects on each track, such as EQ, distortion and resonance. In short, you can create some really wicked dance music armed only with a few samples. I fed in my Electribe and dirtied up some samples to create a half-decent tune within just a few minutes.

ReNoise also supports MIDI and VST, so all you Cubase freaks can take a well-earned break from wrestling with the cumbersome appregios and chords on your music keyboard. It also takes a wide variety of existing sound formats such as WAV, RNS and XM so there's no excuse for sticking with the redundant FastTracker 2 any longer.

The interface is well written. Obviously a lot of hard work has gone into this, and the result is an excellent layout that's quick to use and easy to learn. Although the program is DirectX compliant (which means the program runs on top of windows), ReNoise has managed to keep all the Windows shortcuts and many of it's interrupts out of the way so there's no chance of accidentally hitting the windows key or activating the screensaver halfway through your tracking frenzy.

Renoise is a joy to use. The only downsides I can see is the current lack of MP3 import/export (but it does support WAV rendering so if you have a decent wave editor program you can master to CD quite easily.) Also, Renoise doesn't support ProTracker-style single-sample playing from one key. You can sort of trigger notes to play in their entirety by dickering with the MIDI commands, but this does not stop unwanted notes from being played.

Bitching aside, ReNoise is FREEWARE which is just incredible. I would strongly recommend registering your copy for a paltry £30, as you get tons of freebies, immediate upgrade notification and you'll be doing your bit to support the scene.

It's time to unleash those tunes people!