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  • 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.

    • And if you need some free virtual instruments, Plugins4Free and Vital.

      Other free, though not FOSS DAWs are Reaper and Waveform.

      • 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.

        • 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!

          • 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.

            • 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.

              • 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.

                • 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.

                  • 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.

                    • That's the drawback of there being so much great free music stuff these days! You can get lost playing and never actually finish anything.

                      I haven't used Cakewalk. It seems very powerful, but I see people say it's one of the harder DAWs to learn.

                      I also hear Sonar discontinued Cakewalk Free and is moving to a paid license, though that was 2 years ago and Free is still available I think, but I don't know if it's being maintained any longer.

                      • I just was going through it. I think it's updated and they're focusing on earning money with the licensing of your songs. The UI seems comfortable for me, but we'll see. Thanks for all of your help again.

                • If you want to do any loop and sample work FOSS style, then I'd highly highly recommend Bespoke Synth, easily the best FOSS modular DAW out there

                  It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you're over it then it's a pleasure to use and easily the best open source DAW I've used so far (and I've tried alot)

                  Biggest thing it has over LMMS: VST3 support, so you can actually use modern synth plugins like Surge XT, or dynamic EQ plugins like ZL Equalizer, or lo-fi plugins like CHOW Tape and MAIM

                  Although, there is a FOSS workout to get VST3 working in LMMS using KV Element, which you can load as a VST2 that itself can run VST3's.

                  I use to use that before Bespoke but it was very much a workaround, and I had this infuriating annoyance where KV Element would just send pitch-wheel signals to everything and detune my synths without me knowing, and I could not find any reason or fix, so I just stopped using LMMS in favor of Bespoke

                  Hope this helped!!!

                  • Bespoke looks really interesting, but I don't know if my mind could work that way. I'm a project manager, so seeing the entire song is the only way I think i could work. I've just recently become used to working with nodes in Davinci and I still prefer not to use them.

                    It definitely helped to see what is out there, thanks for the great write up too.

              • It looks I can use the same workflow, it's just a little more complicated.

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSGvcyRzDRo

      • Wow, I was wanting to get into composing for fun and i saw this great comment :D never knew Mr. Superbowl would help me with this :-)

        • I do have some other hobbies! 😁

          If you're looking for instruments, effects, etc, the YouTube channel elektronickmusick demos a few each day and many are free or free trials and they run the same midday track through all of them to give you an indeed what they sound like.

          I don't think they're the best demos because it's a generic track through all of them, not necessarily something that fits perfect with each unique instrument's strengths, but it gives you some ideas of the sound before you search for it, download it, and find out it's not for you.

          If you want some nifty and weird sounds with fun back stories, David Hilowitz searches out obscure old instruments, fixes them, and samples them in his Decent Sampler plugin and rotates giving away different ones for free.

          I'm still really bad at making my own music, but I like experimenting while I'm learning to do better.

          • I do have some other hobbies! 😁

            I don't believe you... I fully believe you spend most of your day looking at owl pictures!

            Thanks for the recommendations :D I'm not dedicated to it at all, but i think it would be fun to try. Bookmarking your comments for later :)

            • As hard as it may be to imagine, I feel I've been getting a bit behind from where I'd like to be with owl stuff. With so many owl babies right now, it's been hard to get some of the variety I'd like, and between being sick and depressed, it's hard for me to focus on owls or music the way I'd like.

              But between all those links I've shared, you should have years worth of experimentation ahead of you. I hope you find lots of good stuff.

              • :C I'm sorry to hear about your irl affairs. Unfortunately going through some stuff too, but i hope you're doing okay. I'd rather you be healthy than have superbowl :) anyways, thank you for the links <3

                • I'm sure a good deal of it is just that like being lazy and complaining. 😁

                  I got some good posts added to the queue today and planted some more stuff in my container garden and made some bread, so now to clean dishes and laundry and try to focus on some piano.

                  I think I've been lost since the gf has gone to a very fluctuating schedule, as it really throws off my routines. It's like if the sun came out at a different time every day. There's still the same amount of time and opportunity to do stuff, but you'd feel off after a while doing stuff at what feels like the wrong time of day. I dunno. I'm weird. 😝

296 comments