LMMS Music Creation Tutorial Guide
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ScribdTranslationsLMMS Music Creation Tutorial Guide
Translated by
ScribdTranslationsLMMS Tutorial
Table of contents
Download LMMS
Presentation
The launch
Choose drum sounds.............................................................................................................4
Create a rhythm...............................................................................................................................5
Create a bass line..................................................................................................................5
Download LMMS
You can download LMMS version 1.1.3 at this address:
[Link]
This tutorial may be a bit outdated. So be sure to check what the latest is.
software version by going to the LMMS website: [Link]
Presentation
The launch
To launch LMMS, click on the Windows 'Start' menu icon and
search for 'LMMS' in the menu. Click on it, you will end up on a window
resembling this:
Don't touch anything and press 'OK'. On the warning message, if it appears
watch, press OK, there is no problem. Here you are with a window like
this:
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Do you see the two windows at the top, the one with the grid and its neighbor?
Right? These are the only ones that will interest us. The rest, you can remove them.
Personally, I organize the windows like this:
So we have two windows left. The bottom window is called 'the editor of
rhythm." It is thanks to this window that we will compose different parts of the
piece (drum rhythm, piano melody...). Then it will be necessary to assemble the
different parts of the piece that we are going to create. We will do this through
"The track editor" is the top window.
The first reflex to have when creating a piece is to record it.
project even before starting it. To do this, you need to go to the menu located in
top of the software and click on "Project" then on "Save As...". You will
then choose the folder where you want to save your project, as well as the name
what you want to give him.
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Choose drum sounds
To start our piece, we will first create a drum rhythm.
To do this, you first need to choose suitable drum sounds to create what one
called a "battery kit", meaning to gather the different elements like
on a real drum set (a bass drum, a snare drum, a cymbal...).
We will therefore look for the different drum sounds in LMMS. For that, it
you need to click on the small music note icon in the vertical menu that
is located all the way to the left of the screen. A tab will then open with the mention 'My
samples
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This menu offers us the choice of different types of sounds: "bass", "beats".
(rhythm in French), "drums" (drum)… So we will choose the part
"drums" and press the " + " button located to its left to unfold it. In
in this section, we will choose:
• A 'kick' (bass drum)
• A snare drum
• An 'open HiHat' (open charleston)
• A 'Closed HiHat' (closed Charleston)
To select these sounds, you need to double-click on them. You will then hear an excerpt.
of this sound, and this one will be placed in the 'rhythm editor' window. These four
elements represent a basic drum kit that will allow us to create a
basic rhythm.
Create a rhythm
We will use the rhythm editor window to test these sounds. It's necessary to
Click on the gray squares to make them appear bluish. Press the button
"play" (the triangle) to hear your rhythm.
Create a bass line
Once a drumbeat that suits us has been created, we can move on to
the creation of another element of the piece. Here, we are going to create a bass line.
To do this, a new rhythm editor window, different from the current one, will need to be added.
from where our battery is located. Before that, we are going to tidy up a bit in
our piece editor, since that’s where everything is going to happen.
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We see that our track editor contains 4 different tracks: a track
"triple oscillator", a "sample track", a "automation track" and
our editor "rhythm or bass line." We will only keep the latter and
delete all the others. To delete a track, you must proceed as in the editor
of rhythm and therefore click on the gear that is located to the left of the track then
click on "delete". your track editor should therefore look like this:
To avoid getting lost, we will rename the remaining track to 'drums' to
to be able to meet again. For this, you need to double-click on the track name.
(here, "rhythm or bass line") then change the name in the frame that goes
appear in the middle of the screen.
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Once we have changed the default name of the track, we will be able to
to create a second one. You just need to click on the icon which is located above
from your track editor. A new track will then appear at the bottom of
your track "drums", a track that you will rename to "bass", since we
let's create a bass line. To choose to edit this track, you need to click once
on its name and the associated rhythm editor window will open.
The elements of the drum kit can always be found in the rhythm editor,
even if we are on the 'low' track. This is the default behavior of
LMMS, the tracks keep all the instruments from the other tracks, which is a bit
disturbing. However, you just need to avoid using the drum sounds but
only the bass sound that interests you. To choose a bass sound, it will
it is necessary to do like for the drum kit but instead of selecting your sounds in the tab
"Drum", let's go get them in the 'Bases' tab. Likewise, we need to
double click on the sound to add it to the rhythm editor.
Once we have chosen a bass sound, we will create a melodic line.
with this sound. The approach is a little different from that of the drums: instead of
place blue dots on the rhythm editor, we will double-click on the
first gray square of our bass track (in the song editor) to do
appear what is called a 'piano roll'. It works like the points
blues from the rhythm editor, except that it also offers the option to choose the key of the sound and
so to create a melody.
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Once we have edited our melody, we can close the piano roll window. We
then see our pattern appear in the rhythm editor.
Once you understand how to create a new instrument and a new
Melody, it is very simple to create a new track and add any sound.
to this track, to create a new melody.
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