Here is what we're going to explore in this chapter:
- Check our system requirements
- Show how to install LMMS on various operating systems
- Get familiar with the location of LMMS resources
- Control our project assets
- Configuring MIDI devices for use with LMMS
- Configuring audio devices for use with LMMS
- Setting up your sample library—how not to get sued
- The art of listening: how to help a room sound better
- Ergonomics: make music! Continue to have feeling in your hands!
Your computer is the control center of your studio. A computer will impact not only how music is made but also how it is performed. This means major decisions like desktop or laptop, to minor decisions such as deciding which audio effects will save your computer's processor from working too hard.
Your external hard drive should meet these optimal specifications:
LMMS installers can be downloaded from the following link:
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/download.php
The Windows operating system comes in several flavors. The versions of Windows operating system that LMMS is compatible with are the following:
The downloaded installer from lmms.sourceforge.net will simply install the application and it will be located in your Programs folder.
LMMS was born on Linux! Linux is a free operating system that is very popular as an alternative to Apple and Windows platforms. Linux also comes in many flavors. I would suggest checking out Ubuntu. The download for Ubuntu can be found here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/download
You will need to burn this installer to CD, run it from a memory stick, or you can even run Linux inside Windows. Nothing like having your cake and eating it too!
Installing LMMS on the Linux platform is detailed here:
http://www.linuxmusicmaker.com/2011/07/easy-install-lmms-0412-using-ppa-on.html
For those of us who would like to try LMMS on OS X:
The OS X version is currently 4.1.0 and is fairly stable. It is a port, however, and is not available directly from the folks at lmms.sourceforge.net. Use at your own risk!
To install LMMS, simply drag the downloaded application to your applications folder.
The LMMS application is fairly self-contained, but there are many pre-defined areas that LMMS looks to for its resources.
When we open up LMMS for the first time, we can see where LMMS is looking for its resources by opening the Edit menu and selecting Settings, followed by clicking on the folder icon on the left-hand side of the menu:
This will show us where LMMS is currently pointing to for its resources.
Here's where all those paths are looking:
- The WORKING directory is where our projects and presets for software instruments are stored.
- The VST PLUGIN directory is where our installed third-party VST plugins are stored.
- The ARTWORK and BACKGROUND ARTWORK directories are where we can put custom artwork for changing LMMS' appearance. There are several users on the Internet who have developed custom skins to make LMMS more attractive to the eye.
- The FL STUDIO INSTALLATION directory is only for Windows users who already have the Fruity Loops application installed on their computer. If it's on the computer, LMMS can access its FLP files for importing into an LMMS session.
- The LADSPA PLUGIN PATHS directory is where LADSPA plugins are located. LADSPA stands for Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API. Yeah, it's a mouthful, but there are a lot of LADSPA plugins that we can get from the Internet and incorporate them into our studio. They're made by a loving community of developers.
- The STK RAWWAVE directory contains raw wave files and samples.
- The SOUNDFONT directory can use soundfont files for sampled instruments. Soundfont files are single documents that are a container of sound files used in simple sampler architectures.
With the exception of the WORKING directory, we can use all of the other directories in their current locations to get up and running.
We need to be diligent, almost religious, about file management. File management is what allows us to work on projects over time and not have them suddenly stop playing back right. We aren't all going to be able to write the hit dance song of the century in one night, so we need to be sure that files are named properly and are headed in the right direction when we save. The WORKING directory is a nice start, but we need to start thinking about projects that might have several revisions.
These are three very important folders. When we have instruments or effects that have been custom-tweaked, their settings are saved in the presets directory. These settings will then be available to you in all future projects. This is how to build a palate of sounds that give our songs a specific and unique signature.
The projects directory is where our projects will live. LMMS projects contain a lot of information. They reference presets, samples, MIDI sequences, and all kinds of other important assets. As we create new projects, though, this folder is going to get really messy. The way to handle file management is to create subdirectories within the projects directory and concentrate on version management.
Working with versions is simple. It's mostly about naming your files correctly and using subfolders. Let's save a project as First_Time_Out_v1:
- When we do this, we should be presented with a menu that looks something like the following:
- Now we need to add a new directory by hitting the following button:
- This creates our new directory, which I'll name First_Time_Out:
It's important to note that we're using underscores. This is a method of substituting spaces so that there's no issue with the way the computer sees this file. It's a holdover from the days when having a space in the name of your file could mean bad news.
- We're now going to save into this folder. Use the name First_Time_Out_v1:
When sharing a project with others, we need to keep a few things in mind:
Remember that external drive we got? The one that is so easily portable?
Now we have access to all of our presets and samples again. Nice, huh?
VSTi and VST plugins are usually third-party plugins that aren't necessarily free. We may not be able to copy the VST plugins to the other studio's drive and use them. If they are freeware, we're ok. If not, the plugins may not open at all and cause havoc at the other studio. Be sure to check and see which plugins are freeware and which ones aren't. We can always write the effect to the audio of the tracks that have VST plugins on them. This way the audio will play back with the effect on someone else's LMMS application. To accomplish this, hit the red button on the track you need to export, as you can see in the following image:
MIDI controllers come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Most virtual studio applications are based around the MIDI keyboard as a primary source of MIDI input. In LMMS we don't necessarily need a keyboard to write electronic music. We can write MIDI data in one of LMMS' many editors. Sometimes entering MIDI data from a keyboard is faster, though. Here are some examples of MIDI controllers:
Some MIDI keyboards are built solely for the purpose of entering MIDI notes into your music program, but others have a bit more going on than that. Here are some MIDI keyboard controllers that pack in some additional hardware such as knobs and sliders to allow us to control LMMS' parameters:
MIDI control language allows us to automate knobs and sliders in LMMS using real physical knobs and sliders out here in the real world. Some control surfaces these days don't even have a keyboard, since many of us want just the knobs and sliders. A lot of electronic music artists prefer to write note information rather than play the notes from a keyboard. Here are some controllers without piano keys. We call them control surfaces:
If you are using Windows, you will likely need to download a driver for the controller:
- Go to the manufacturer's website and look under their downloads section to get the current driver. Be sure to download the 32-bit or 64-bit driver depending on which OS is running. After downloading the driver, we need to install it. If you are running Windows 2000 or XP, you should go to Start | Control Panel | Add Hardware and Devices.
- When adding a new hardware device, Windows will ask for the new driver. Simply point to the directory that contains the new driver and we're good.
In Windows 7, there may be issues with drivers that are slightly older. Some drivers made for Vista need to be set to Compatability Mode to get them to work in Windows 7. To get to Compatability Mode, simply right-click the driver and select Properties. The Properties tab will have a checkbox for Compatability Mode. Try this out. If it doesn't work, you'll need to ask the manufacturer if they'd please get Windows 7 drivers up, as soon as possible. Most manufacturers have made the move to Windows 7 drivers, but it's good to have this technique if something goes awry.
Setting up MIDI in Linux can be a little tricky, but LMMS has done its level best to include the ability to use MIDI controllers without much hassle.
Most Linux hosts will automatically install ALSA and all of the appropriate drivers, so usually your audio interface or MIDI interface is automatically detected.
Linux uses an open source MIDI driver system. Let's look at the process of setting up Linux for MIDI:
Microphones come in all shapes and sizes as well as price points. A microphone is essentially the opposite of a speaker. A speaker pushes and pulls on air, making waves that tickle our ears. A microphone receives sound and converts it to an electrical wave that can be amplified and can be sent into a computer, audio mixer, or public address system.
Microphones come in two major categories, with a couple of odd exceptions here and there.
The Shure SM58—the most popular dynamic mic in the world is as follows:
Dynamic microphones are the tough guys of microphones. They aren't usually delicate, due to the fact that they have very simple electronics. Dynamic microphones use a membrane to vibrate along with sound waves, moving a coil that is between two magnets. The vibration of the coil creates an electrical current that flows down a cable to be amplified. The amplifier used to boost the signal before sending that signal along to be used in recording is called a microphone pre-amp. The volume knob at the pre-amp is called a trim knob. This is what a dynamic mic looks like from inside:
The AKG Perception condenser microphone is shown as follows:
Condenser microphones have a very thin, flat conductive sheet called a diaphram that is suspended in front of an electrified backplate. Any movement of the diaphragm disturbs the electrical field between them, making a signal. Condensers then take this information and have a bunch of circuitry that convert the signal into something our audio interface would like. It still needs a pre-amp. The signal is usually very detailed compared to the dynamic mic. If you plan on screaming a bunch, the dynamic may be a better choice. If you are a crooner, you should think about getting a condenser mic (although they tend to be more expensive). Here's what the inside of a condenser mic looks like:
If you are just starting to record things, I would suggest investing in a dynamic mic from a company like Shure, AKG, or Electro-Voice. They are well established and you can find them online for pretty reasonable prices.
When you need to get an audio signal out of your computer to some speakers, or get some sound from the outside world into your computer, you need an audio interface.
An external audio interface like this gives us a lot of information. If you are using an internal soundcard that came with your computer, you are going to have to rely on the meters in the software you are using and your ears to tell you whether your volume is too loud or not.
Radiohead is one of the most well-known bands in the world, and they just love having their music remixed. Check out their site (http://www.radioheadremix.com/) regularly for tweaky strange sounds and lilting English voices:
Indaba music (http://www.indabamusic.com/home) is relatively new on the scene, but has a regularly awesome set of artists who are willing to let other artists take a crack at their work. They also provide a networking solution for artists who are looking for producers, remixers, and so on. Their roster of talent is impressive and they also have sample packs available for download:
Remix comps (http://www.remixcomps.com/) is a site that is always on the lookout for who is putting a remix contest out in the world. It's certainly more of an aggregate site, but one that has found remix contests for everyone from Alicia Keys to Kaskade:
CCmixter (http://ccmixter.org/) is another great site that actually has public domain sample packs for downloading and using. They are using a different type of copyright, creative commons that allows for other artists to use the sampled works free of litigiousness. They also have a community of remixers and artists, so it can be a great place to find other like minds in the electronic music field:
We'll be creating our own audio samples in Chapter 6, Finding and Creating New Noises. We'll need to acquire another piece of open source software to get the recording done.
To start out, I would suggest Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
An example of an audio sample is shown as follows:
Audacity is an excellent multi-track open source audio recording and editing platform for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It's easy to use and ridiculously powerful. Here are the best links for the manual, Wiki, and other goodies related to Audacity:
After downloading, Audacity can access the audio input and output of the computer from its Preferences page, which is under the Audacity Menu. Windows and OS X will use their own system based drivers and you can choose your device in the Preferences menu. If using Linux, ALSA will be available through your Preferences menu, and Audacity should have access to the current sound device.
Ok, now that we're safe from feedback, we have a couple of options. Let's start with recording with a microphone:
- Under Preferences, choose Devices, and make sure the device is set to record only one channel or Mono.
- Get something to sample. Maybe a cat, dog, or loud sibling.
- Grab a mic.
- The microphone will need to be plugged into an audio interface that has the ability to boost the microphone's audio signal properly. Also, check to see if the microphone requires Phantom Power. Phantom Power is not some strange mutation. It's a 48-volt power signal that a condenser mic requires to power its capsule properly.
- Once the microphone is plugged in, turn up the trim (audio input volume) on the audio interface. Most audio interfaces have a bright red light that flashes when the audio interface is getting too much signal. Don't let the signal get so loud that red lights begin to flash. We want plenty of room to be able to scream or whisper. If we don't have that room, we get clicks, pops, and distortion.
- There is a transport bar in Audacity that looks like the following:
- This is where you can pause, loop, stop, rewind, fast-forward, and record in Audacity.
- Grab the thing you are about to record (be careful if it is ) and hit the red 'record' button in the Audacity transport bar.
- Audacity will automatically create a new track according to your preferences and start recording. Once the recording is done, you can either mouse over the stop button and hit stop or you can use your space bar to stop. The audio file will then appear in the editing window of Audacity as follows:
- Samples should never have a lot of space at the top (beginning) of the file. If we want to trigger this sample in a song, then we need to crop the file. Audacity makes this kind of editing very simple.
- To zoom in a bit, we need the zoom tool. It looks like a magnifying glass in the upper-left corner of the screen, where our toolbox is located. The toolbox looks like the following:
- The zoom tool is just underneath the selector tool, which is what we are using right now. Click the zoom tool and select all that dead space before the audio starts. You will get a screen that looks like this:
- Now use your selector tool to select that area of dead space. You can adjust either side of the selection by holding down the Shift key.
- Now hit Delete! We now have a sample that starts right at the first sign of audio:
- You can also delete dead space from the middle of the file with the same technique.
- Ok, we can let go of that poor creature we just sampled and start using this recording. Samples need to be saved to the samples folder in our WORKING directory.
- In Audacity, go to File | Export.... We'll choose the 16-bit PCM for the audio file settings to give us a standard wave file. Make sure to save to the WORKING directory on that nice, spacious external drive.
- It's recommended to create subdirectories in the samples folder to keep yourself organized. Let's call this sample poor_creature.wav and put it in a subdirectory called Animals.
- When that's done, open LMMS, and we will see the sample show up in our handy sidebar!
- In LMMS, this is where you'll find your samples:
- When the sidebar opens up, you'll see the new folder called Animals:
- And here's our poor creature!
When you are composing on a laptop and you aren't at home, it's a good idea to have some options in the headphones department. It's also not a bad idea to find a bus-powered audio interface that gives you nice, clear sound. A portable interface means that you can also potentially have a microphone on you to record the occasional vocal or street lunatic.
So we have our project drive, how about the interface?
The audio interface can also be bus-powered. The PreSonus AudioBox is quite inexpensive and gives you nice, clean headphone output and mic preamps for recording in the outside world. I find this device to be the best bang for the buck, but would highly recommend checking some of the other contenders out there. It's a great template for everything you need in a mobile device, though. That is, small, light, bus-powered, and nice preamps.
Now for listening. Laptop music makers are headphone people. When out in the world, we want to shut the world out so we can work. When we're in a quiet environment, clarity and accuracy is key.
If you are in a more controlled environment, I would suggest a set of open-ear headphones for referencing your mixes. My favorite low-cost high-performance headphones are the Grado SR80 headphones. These were suggested to me by audiophiles and mastering engineers. They are under $100 and sound wonderful. I've actually mixed on them and been happy with the result. The other thing about these headphones is that you can actually talk to people in the room while you have them on. They are an open-ear design, which means that you can be aware of your surroundings if you have someone over that's asking you how the mix is coming along. I don't know how many times I've been mixing on closed-ear headphones and hit the ceiling when someone tapped my shoulder to get my attention.
So that's about it for the laptop! You don't need much to get by in that configuration. It's somewhat important that when you are writing on a laptop, try to sit with good posture in a comfortable chair if you can. Sitting in a cafe is cool, so long as you aren't hunched over the laptop with your arms cramped up. This is how you get bad tendonitis of several kinds. I had bicep tendonitis, and I have to say that it really sucks.
So let's say that we're composing in a room with speakers and a desktop computer. What kind of configuration is going to give us the best sound?
A couple of good general rules are the following:
Keep in mind that computers are noisy and sometimes even the power in your room can cause noisy recordings. In a perfect world, your computer should live in a climate-controlled box, or if you have a large, airy closet it can live there. As for hum and buzz, try separating your audio cables from your power cables. Many times hum is introduced into audio because the electricity flowing through a power cable will jump into an audio cable.
Try to minimize corners in your room. Put something dense in them to take the corner out. A popular material for taking out corners is Owens Corning 703 Insulation. It's very sturdy, doesn't shed much, and if you cover it with cloth like burlap (usually used to make potato sacks), or other simple heavy-duty fabric, it makes a great bass trap. We don't need to be fancy. Just put the 48x24" panel in the corner and see what happens. The results are pretty great. If you can't find any Owens Corning 703 nearby or on the Internet, there are alternatives out there that are still very good. Most insulation will work fairly well as long as it is dense and is well covered, so that you aren't breathing fiberglass. If you find it hard to find fiberglass or it's cost-prohibitive, try packing old clothing into the corners tightly. If you can get it to stay in place, you will still get the advantages of bass absorption.
If we are living in an older building, we might have hardwood floors. Hardwood floors look really nice, but they are very reflective. This can cause sound waves to bounce between the floor and ceiling. Putting a rug down makes a world of difference on hardwood floors.
Like our floors and ceilings, we need to try and minimize parallel surfaces whenever possible. Sound waves will bounce from these walls and sum together in the center of the room, giving us a boost in certain frequencies. Creating uneven surfaces will minimize this effect. Even having a curved piece of wood on the wall will help keep the negatives of this effect down.
Many folks talk about sound-proofing a room. They usually mean making a room silent to the outside world and vice versa. In our studio, we're going to focus less on sound-proofing and think more about treatment.
Taking out the corners of the room and laying a rug down will help control the over-hyping of certain frequencies in a room. What we don't want to do is cover every surface of our room with sound absorption material. This can actually affect the way we hear a mix and will make the room sound lifeless. A good rule of thumb is to use absorption in the corners, floor, and ceiling, and on the back wall to use diffusion.
That said, let's say we need to save up for some diffusion. In the meantime, put a lot of stuff in your room on the walls. Books can be good because they have both mass and uneven surfaces. Load up the walls so that you have very uneven surfaces all over the place. As long as you aren't listening at insane volumes, you should notice a difference.
The speakers we use in our studio are extremely important. When choosing your first pair of studio monitors, you should never pick a set of monitors simply because they sound 'good'. Sometimes speakers that sound good have less in the midrange, where our ears are very sensitive, or some other bias. We want monitors that are accurate. Accuracy is the king when we are creating music for the masses. Whether our audience is on a laptop or a high-fidelity system, we want our mix to sound good on just about anything, and our monitors are the key to giving us the truth about what's going on.
Speaker placement should be roughly an equilateral triangle with our head as one point and the speakers' cones as the other two points. This setup will give us the most accurate stereo image and center. Don't put a bunch of stuff over or between the speakers if you can get away with it. Also, we need to try not to have our speakers sitting on our desk or any large surface. Buy some inexpensive monitor stands to de-couple them. Anything a speaker touches will vibrate. The smaller and more isolated the surface, the better!
You laugh! No, no. I'm serious.
We are about to embark upon a long journey that is absorbing and intense. Time tends to fly by in the studio and before you know it, the sun is coming up and we're looking happy but bleary-eyed at the clock. It's ok to do this and it's invigorating to have one of those all-night sessions making music. The trick is to be able to do it again after a short recovery period.
