Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
We have taken a quick start approach to using LMMS, now let’s look a little deeper. Target audience is still n00bs. Open LMMS and you should see these buttons (lots of images to follow). These buttons will open and close your working windows. It is a good idea to visualize them as F5-F11. F10 is the project notes, a sort of minimal notepad, that will ship with your tune. It is also the only one I never use. Now, if you click on “File”, you will notice a few extra import and export commands below the usual suspects. Importing will allow you to import midi projects and hydrogen sequences. You can cheat a bit and go to ultimate guitar tabs and see if you can get the midi file for the song you want to remix. So far, we have used all the other menu items in this series. If you missed any of the previous entries in this series, feel free to grab a back issue and be in the know. So now that we have covered all of these, what else is there? Well, there is one very important plug-in we have not touched. That is ZynAddSubFX. Just to avoid ANY confusion right from the start, I would like to point out that I am talking about the plug-in inside your instrument plug-ins, and not the one in the software centre. If you see the image shown below? You are in the wrong one. When you add ZynAddSubFX to your song editor and you click it, you should see a familiar small window open.
This issue is a “Show and Tell” article, rather than a full blown tutorial, as I need you to recognize the windows – in the next issue, I am going to refer to them only as it would be too many images. I will just be opening the sequence we will be using, though there are more and you should have a click around, so to speak. You can always close LMMS without saving anything – in case you get lost or you could not undo some change. “Show GUI” is a grey button in the middle of the ZynAddSubFX window. I realize this does not look like a button, but push it anyway. You should get a dialogue that asks if you are a beginner or advanced. This just affects what you see. Since we are beginners, press beginner, and have a look at the layout. You are welcome to press the advanced button, as this is where we will be working. You can swap at any time, by pressing the “misc” button at the end of the menu. If you are an advanced user, what are you doing here, go make some tunes!! So, please use the “misc” menu item to swap to advanced if you clicked the beginner button. The difference here is “advanced” allows you to add up to 16 instruments per instance of ZynAddSubFX! (powerful stuff indeed.) Shall we make an instrument? Good! In the advanced view, click on “Edit Instrument”. Then please click “Edit” under “Adsynth”. This will open yet another window. Don’t worry, it may look like inception with all the windows open, but there is only one more I want to show you in this lesson. Click show voice parameters, to get to the final window I want you to go to. (Though they all look the same, try to remember who’s who in the zoo.) Okay, this is the last image, promise.
The part that sets ZynAddSubFX apart from the triple oscillator is here we can add up to eight voices! Think of these “voices” as the three parts inside the triple oscillator. This is basically for when you need just that something ‘extra’ that the triple oscillator cannot give you. We will do a deeper dive into how this works in the next issue, so stay tuned! When editing sounds in ZynAddSubFX, remember that they are quieter than the triple ocillator, for some reason, so feel free to crank the volume. So, let us go back a window or two to where you clicked “Show voice parameters”. The window layout is a bit clunky, but each cyan block does exactly what it says. Please hover over everything and read the tool tips. Familiarize yourself with what is in front of you. Actually please feel free to click around and twist knobs, etc. You can’t break anything. Now that you know the basic layout, please refer to this issue if, in the next, you don’t know how I got to a specific window. If you get stuck or have any questions, please direct them to: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org (Remember, your feedback is important, if a series goes forward or not.)