• pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    231·
    8 months ago

    LMMS - free and open source garage band. It’s a little weird on how you do a song, but it’s pretty great.

    Tips: Look at Beats and Baselines Editor and Piano Roll Editor first to probably get you where you want to be.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        8 months ago

        Wow, this thread came to me with perfect timing. I love LMMS and I’ll try out this plugins on Monday, thanks.

        I’m currently going through this thread and found 3 other sites that are amazing and solved some project issues I was having.

        • anon6789@lemmy.world
          3·
          8 months ago

          Oh, glad to help! Any other music tools you’re looking for? I’m not good with any of them, but I like testing them out. I’m still just learning and experimenting.

          I get a little sad when I don’t see anything new for me on threads like this, but then I’m a bit grateful since that means I’ve already spent a long time enjoying all these things!

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            8 months ago

            I’ve been playing with it since my last comment. I just installed 8 plugins. There are 3 that are so freaking good.

            My only wish is there was a way to make a song like in Garage band, where you can overlap the instruments and loops more easily. I think it’s there, but I’m just not good enough at it yet. When I play with the piano, I get a really good sounding melody, but then it’s gone.

            • anon6789@lemmy.world
              3·
              8 months ago

              Like in this video?

              I haven’t used LMMS in a long time, but he’s manually editing the piano roll (where the notes are stored) but I see a record button here where it should record what you play on the keyboard.

              • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
                3·
                8 months ago

                Sort of, I found that portion. Here is my workflow in Garage Band.

                • Pick loop and sound speed (has a ticker before it starts), and place on timeline
                • Add instruments and play with melodies from a keyboard plugged in and record them.
                • Use the melody.
                • Record some vocals
                • Add more layers of sounds or loops
                • Create file

                This takes about 4 hours to make an opening song that I usually love.

                In LMMS

                • I can find some loops, but they seem to really point towards making your own, or maybe there are some loop vaults somewhere I could use?
                • I found some amazing instruments on the plugins4free site, but recording them with a keyboard seems hard somehow.
                • I have the studio (paid) version of Davinci Resolve, I guess I could just switch over there once I’ve made my loops?

                The rest seems easy and I like the set up.

                • anon6789@lemmy.world
                  3·
                  8 months ago

                  Gotcha, now I have a better idea of what you’re trying to do.

                  Watching this video about looping in LMMS shows it can sorta be done, sometimes with some help from Audacity.

                  If you’re adding in more stuff like VST plugins and vocals, you may want to try out Waveform Free, which I checked is for iOS also, so you get a full modern DAW. It’s the same product as their paid full version, just like 2 updates behind.

                  For more premade loops, check out Looperman if you haven’t already.

                  It’s not free, but I think I under $20 for the program and all the upgrades, if looping and sampling is something you want to focus on, check out Koala Sampler. I downloaded it the other week and have been sampling vinyl recordings from YouTube, it has an AI stem extractor to separate the instrument tracks, and then chopping and looping that.

                  It has a built in simple synth now as well, and you can use a midi controller with it. Lots of videos are out there if you want to see how that works. You might be able to incorporate that into your setup.

                  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
                    3·
                    8 months ago

                    I’m jumping around to many programs now, thanks for all of this info.

                    Have you used Cakewalk? It seems great and a bit too good to be true.