Music Hacker: Aversion of Trial and Error

I literally spent years doing this wrong before I figured it out. The point of this episode is to help other beginners spend less time in annoyed trial and error before they figure it out.


I have a special surprise planned for next week...

Also, this post gets five points for conciseness... conciseness is a very unwieldy word.

     -LazerBlade

Music Hacker - Synth Programming Time

I've had people asking me to do this episode for quite awhile now, so hopefully this will be a boon for some people somewhere. I don't have much else to say, so shut up and either watch the episode or wait for my next game design article.


        --LazerBlade

Serious Remix

Some of you may or may not know that I recently signed up on the OCRemix forums and started working on my first serious remix. I'm planning to eventually submit it to OCRemix and hopefully do some battle against the stigma against LMMS that makes people think it can't hold it's own in music production circles. It's a lot of work, but it's loads of fun.

If you want regular updates on this project, just keep an eye on the WIP thread: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=42315

Music Hacker - You broke my beat!

Because you all demanded it.

Music Hacker - live FX

Sorry if this episode seems a little rushed. I had a really busy week/weekend.

Music Hacker - Trancey Breakfast Cereal

Oatmeal really deserves more videos, that's one of the reasons I made this episode.

Music Hacker - More Trance for Everyone

This was admittedly an easy and short episode to do, but I needed it here to segway into the next episode about completing your trance sound.

Coding After Midnight complete

Video speaks for itself.

Music Hacker - More Dubstep

Apparently the show isn't dubby enough 4 my fans, so here's another episode about Dubstep.

Trancey Music Hacker

I was happy to finally do a real trance episode.

Music Hacker - Season 2 episode 5

This one went up a bit late because YT was borking around.

Music Hacker - Final Hardstyle

Yay!

Music Hacker - S2E2

Unfortunately, the audio quality is mucked up pretty bad. Can't really find a way to fix it,

Transmusical Distortion now 100% on youtube!

Great CD from a Christmas party. Of course, had this been any other holiday I would have said it was great for that. Meh.

Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3265A73F5656A79A&feature=viewall

Music Hacker - Season Debut

This episode ended up running a lot longer then I originally thought. I think it turned out for the better though.

Icicle Cyberpunk Theme for LMMS

Well gents, I've gotten more than a little fed up with the stupid aesthetic and logo shipped with LMMS. I decided to create my own.

The Icicle Cyberpunk Theme is a work in progress, but still pretty to look at. Above this text is a my new splash screen, which although not amazing, I consider to be much better than the original. I've chosen a cyberspace style and designed the theme accordingly.

I don't know when I'll be done or to what level I will change the look. Hopefully I can get something more appealing and sharp than the usual dull grey look though.

I will note that it's really a pain that LMMS doesn't read certain colors from the theme file. This forces the same boring grey in several places where it should be customizable, leaving manual patching of the hardwired code as the only option. This may delay completion of my theme, but hopefully won't be too much of a hassle to deal with.

Just to dream a little bit here, I'd love it if I could eventually replace the default theme and logo. They've  been in need of a makeover for a long time.

        --LazerBlade

Advanced LMMS - Season Finale

Shut up. Plenty of shows have 15 episode seasons.

Advanced LMMS S1E14

Here it is:

LMMS wish list

With the new VST(i) patch recently integrated into the current GIT version of LMMS, I've began wondering what else I could possibly want. LMMS will probably have these new features in the next official version, which will hopefully be released sometime this month or next. VST parameters can be accessed via LMMS interface knobs allowing the user to connect them to controllers and even automate them. If this isn't enough of a boon, VST preset saving and loading are thrown in for good measure.

Considering this, I've decided to throw out all my crazy ideas about what new features I'd like to see in LMMS. I'd temporarily underestimated the power of open-source, so I think some slingshot overestimation is in order. The point isn't really to be realistic here. I also know that if I had any integrity I'd get into the meat and bones of LMMS and develop some of these features myself. I'm thinking about giving a crack at it.

That said, I'm going to start out with the automation editor. You all know I've been wanting some kind of control point curve or line drawing setup for quite awhile. Having to draw curves by hand, and drawing lines the way it is done now makes automation a little too cumbersome.

Too ensure your security in my not just being another "Make LMMS more like X proprietary application" guy, I bring you something I cooked up over time. If you consider the current controller rack, and the controllers available, I think it's a bit lacking selection-wise. I don't know of other music software that comes with say, and envelope controller. While an envelope controller would be higher priority, since it also solves the problem where LMMS lacks a pitch envelope, virtual MIDI controllers like knobs, sliders, and buttons would also be quite useful. I used to use some old school virtual MIDI controller rack awhile back, but that required jack and didn't always work properly.


Now I'm really just dreaming here, in a kind of sky is the limit way. An accompanying or built in synth editor would be awesome. Like, amazing awesome. Like really hacking awesomely amazing. Like-oh skip it. It would rock. I'm not suggesting something like synth-edit. Probably the best way would be to create an elaborate instrument plugin with this type of feature. I'm thinking something kind of like what BEAST tried to do here:

Not only for anything in this post, but for my next wish especially, feel free to hit me up in the comments with an "RTFM, n00b!" and a link to the relevant manual section. I'd like to see LMMS more plugin friendly. I'm not talking about VST(i) plugin friendly, I'm talking things like instrument plugins and controller plugins(provided controllers are done via plugins.) It looks to me(who might be wrong) like you have to re-compile LMMS for every new set of plugins. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Add in the fact that LMMS doesn't seem to have easy support for Linux native DSSI(VST) plugins, and there is a feature hole many music producers would love to have filled.

Anything else... I guess not that I can think of right now (other than a new logo and less lame default theme). Oh yea, we also need more people to use it. ;)


        --LazerBlade

Advanced LMMS - dubstep

So, I finally started my dubstep tutorial. This is the first of a three part set, this one covering the beat.