LMMS is a free Digital Audio Workstation (or
DAW) that works on Linux, Windows, and Mac. It's a good option to make music with and many say it's the closest thing
you can get to FL Studio for free. Another great feature is you can use your
computer keyboard as a MIDI controller. If you want to learn how to use this DAW in
a practical tutorial, keep watching. [How to use LMMS - Tutorial for beginners] Hey everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here. The first thing I want to mention is that I'll put the
link to the website where you can download this, in the description below, along with the computer specs you'll need
and what kinds of plugins this DAW supports. I will also pin a comment below with timestamps
of the different sections I go over. Oh, and if you're wondering what LMMS stands for, the software was formerly known as
Linux MultiMedia Studio. Let's get into the settings first, then we'll move on to the layout of the DAW so you know what everything does and where everything is. Go up to Edit in the top left and down to Settings. There are two things you may
want to change right away. First is "Enable note labels in piano roll", which will help you know what notes
you're using when writing music. The other is "Language" at the bottom which may be good to change if you
read a different one better than English. Moving on to "Directories", this is where you can set up the folders
that LMMS looks in for your files. This would be your plugins, Soundfonts, and
other things like themes and background art. Samples are handled a bit differently but
I'll talk about that when I get to the layout. There is Performance Settings and then Audio Settings, where you can set up your audio Interface and last is MIDI settings, Once you're done, press OK at the bottom
and if you want, you can restart LMMS now but it's not necessary for this tutorial. The Layout in LMMS is very customizable and
is basically a sandbox. You get unlimited space as
you can expand the work area when you move windows further out in any direction. And, it will shrink back down as you move
them towards the center again. Closing a window inside the DAW will not erase
anything, it's pretty much minimizing it. I'll get back to these windows later. Now on the top, you'll find the toolbar which holds some shortcuts to what is in the top menus like File, Edit, etc. These are for creating new projects and opening exzig... exzigzigzigzigzigzigzig These are for creating new projects and opening
existing ones, saving, exporting, and even a cool info button where you can click on
it, then on someone you want to learn about, and it will tell you what it does. Below the shortcuts for the File menu are
the ones for the View menu. These are for all the windows you'll need
to create or edit audio. The transport section to the right of the toolbar options shows you information about the arrangement. Click on the position to change
it from "time" to "measure" and you can either double click, click and drag, or scroll to change the rest. To the right of those are the master volume,
and master pitch. Then you have a CPU meter which
you can enable by clicking on it. Okay, one last thing before I move on to the
windows like the piano roll and mixing console. On the left side of the DAW, you'll find the
Media Browser. Here is where your virtual instruments will
be, where your projects will be, the samples... and presets.. that come with the DAW, and
the last two are directories for your computer. These two are where you'll need to navigate
to the folders that hold all your samples or audio files you want to use in the DAW
such as loops, drums, etc. And what's cool is you can even navigate to
your VST plugins this way too. For both samples and plugins, you can drag and drop them from the folders directly into the song-editor, also known as the playlist. Or, the beat+bassline editor, also known as
a step-sequencer. This brings us back to the windows from the toolbar. The option to the left opens the song-editor,
which is a timeline to arrange different patterns and audio. Like I said, you can drag and drop plugins
and samples into this to assign them to their own track in the playlist. You can also add things like the beat+bassline editor, audio files, and automation tracks from
the toolbar in the song-editor. Then, you can re-arrange the order of tracks if you want by clicking and dragging on any part
that doesn't have a button or parameter. On each track you have an options menu which
is different for each type of track, a mute and un-mute button, a solo button (which mutes every other track), the name of the track (single click to open
its window... and double-click to rename it), then for VST tracks (and audio tracks) there is a test button. [example of test button for VST and audio tracks] And last, there is the volume and pan parameters. Oh, and you can hold SHIFT then click and
drag to resize a track vertically. Okay, now for the timeline section. Left-click on a bar to create a pattern, right-click
to see more options, middle-click to delete it, and hold CTRL and middle-click to mute the pattern. You can drag them around and it will tell
you what bar they're on and pressing CTRL then dragging will
duplicate the pattern you've selected. To edit what is in a pattern, just double click and it will open the editor specific to what kind of track it is. With the exception of the beat+bassline editor, each pattern is unique and the changes
you make are separate from the rest, even if it was originally a duplicate of something else. [example of pattern uniqueness] MIDI patterns will grow and shrink to fit
the length of notes in it, but all other tracks can be resized manually by clicking and dragging from the right side of the pattern. Although, Beat and Bassline editor tracks are the
only ones to keep duplicating as you drag them out. The arrow and line is where the song will play from and can be moved around by left-clicking
once or dragging along the bar counter on the top. Playing and stopping can be done from the toolbar, but can also be done by pressing the SPACE bar, as long as the song or automation
editor was the last window clicked. You can set loop points by enabling it on
the toolbar and can move the endpoint by right-clicking once
or dragging along the bar counter and can set the start point by doing the same while holding down SHIFT. As for the rest of the menu buttons, you can
toggle between Draw mode and Select mode, auto-scrolling, and what will happen
when you press stop. Now the beat and bassline editor is like a
mini-song-editor and will have its own track in the actual song-editor. Kind of confusing but I'm sure it can keep
things organized. For the most part, it's all the same but there
are some differences. The play and stop buttons for the step sequencer
are for this window specifically and not the song-editor. Each block is a beat or a MIDI note and you can
left-click to enable or disable a note for each one and right-click on any of them
to show the options for that track. For example, you can show the piano roll which can give you a better perspective
of what this actually is. By default, there are 4 bars but you can add
4 more with the option here, clone what you have with this one, or remove 4 the last 4 bars with this option. Like I said, these are the same as notes on a piano roll. And in most cases, you're gonna
want to use that instead. If you're dealing exclusively with the piano
roll for making a melody or something, you would want to go back to the song editor for this. Make a pattern on a VST track, right-click,
and open the piano roll. This thing is so easy to use and there are
a lot of features you can take advantage of. With Draw mode enabled, you can place notes by left-clicking and delete notes by right-clicking (and dragging if you want to delete multiple notes). Holding CTRL and left-clicking while
dragging lets you select multiple notes, holding shift and dragging lets you duplicate notes and holding SHIFT and CTRL lets you add selections together by either clicking on or dragging over notes. So, that basically makes Erase Mode and Select
Mode useless. But, there is another one called Pitch Bend Mode. With it selected, click on a note to open
the automation editor for it exclusively, even if the note is in a selection of other notes. Now, the automation editor in
LMMS is pretty straight forward. This is where you can create automation patterns
that can change settings over time. Left-click will place an automation point
and right-click will delete one (but you can also delete multiple notes
in one go by left-clicking and dragging). You can flip the automation pattern
horizontally, vertically, and can change how each point transitions to the other, including the tension when Curve is selected. Finally, you have horizontal... and vertical
zoom, and quantization, which is just where each point will snap to horizontally. Oh, and you'll probably want to stick to whole numbers when changing the vertical position of each point as these are semitones and that
is what each note will be. If you're a bit confused, check out the card to the
top right and skip to 5 minutes and 48 seconds, I talk about what Cents, Semitones, and Octaves are. It will help you a lot when changing
the pitch of something. Automation clips may also have
their own track in the song-editor depending on what parameter you automate. And, you'll need to make a new automation
track for each parameter you want to change, if that's where it's going to be. However, something like the pitch bend is not,
that is handled inside the piano roll as you can see. Okay, let's get back to the piano roll, there are still
some really cool features that I need to show you. Just like the automation editor,
you have zoom and quantization. But you can also choose how long the note
will be when you draw it, the scale you're using, and what's crazy is you have the option
to write in chords with one click. Check it out... [Example of writing Chords with one click.] Pretty cool, huh? Another amazing feature is the ability to
record from a MIDI controller, right into the piano roll, either on its own
or as the rest of the song is playing. And yes, this includes your computer keyboard AND will play chords from a single
key if you have one selected. The last thing I want to show you in the piano roll is the note velocity (or volume) and panning of each note. These are both at the bottom and can be
switched back and forth by clicking on the left and can be resized by dragging the top of its section. Each note can be changed separately or together
while being selected too. Alright, so now that you have some audio going
on, you may want to mix it now. This is the mixing console or mixing rack,
which is called the FX-mixer in LMMS. Unfortunately, this is where the DAW lacks
features, and instrument tracks are the only ones
that can be routed to this window. But, you can still change the volume
of audio tracks from the song-editor, along with adding effects to them by
clicking on the name of the track. As for what's going on in the mixer track,
you can add new tracks by using the plus icon or by going to the song-editor, then to the
options of an instrument track and assigning it to a new track that way. The master track is the output of the entire
DAW and all other tracks are sent to it by default. You can disconnect a track from it
or change the amount being sent and you can also send tracks to
other tracks too, not just the master. This would be good for a mix bus for example. If you want to learn more about that and mixing in general, check out the card to the top right. Each track has a volume slider (often called a fader) and controls the decibel level of
everything being sent to that track. And yes, you can have more than one instrument
track sent to a single mixer track. Above the fader is the mute and solo buttons, the name, and track number. Right-click to see the options for the track. Last is the effect chain, which is unique
to each track But, the master would apply
its effects to every track. So if you had reverb on the master,
ever other track would have reverb on it too. [Example of reverb being applied to every track - including tracks in the song-editor] You have the on and off buttons for each effect and the entire effect chain. You can add an effect with the button on the bottom. Right-click an effect to see the options and press controls to see the plugin. LMMS also comes with a Project Notes window
so you can write down information about your project. It's got a lot of features for a notepad and
for some odd reason it's super customizable, but hey, I'm not complaining. Okay, the last window in LMMS is the Controller Rack. Now I'm not going to be talking about it in
this video as it is more of an intermediate skill. The basics of it though, is that it's an LFO
(or low-frequency oscillator) that will change parameters over time. For example, let's use it on the Pitch of
a VST plugin to see what it would do. [example of what an LFO does] That's it for this LMMS tutorial for beginners. If you liked the video, consider subscribing for more content like this and be sure to enable notifications too. If you're left with any questions, please, let me know in the comments below, I'd be happy to try and help. As always, thanks for watching.
Hey everyone!
I just made a tutorial for LMMS as I think it is one of the best free DAWs out there.
It's very similar to FL Studio but does lack some features. For example, no audio recording, only MIDI. But, you could just use Audacity for that.
With that aside, it is a great option for making music and it's open-source!
Please leave me any questions you may have, I'd be happy to try and help.
This is the program that got me into music production. After using LMMS for about a year when I got into my 8th school year I bought FL Studio 12. LMMS is an amazing program, but you'll definitely need an upgrade after a bit
LMMS is my only DAW, I started 6 years ago and today I can produce Bigroom like I could in any other DAW, and even got the support of EZUMI on YouTube in his TOP 10 Bigroom drops. ("T0NIT0 RMX - After Vibes" for people interested to see how it sounds)
Of course you need some VST for that, I would advise you the free Synthesizer "ToneZ" that I developed this year for your EDM leads / bass / pluck etc.
So of you don't want to spend lot's of money and depending on your needs (no recording yet in LMMS but that will come guys!) go for LMMS guys !
I currently use LMMS, and I love it
Yup I'm still using it after three years and I'm able to make pretty good stuff 👌
Cool content. Thought I'd mention Reaper as an alternative to some of the big corp DAWs.
I used to use this it’s pretty good then went to fl studio