First Things First

The first thing to understand about LMMS would be it's interface. After knowing its interface, you will have an easier time following the rest of the tutorial or other people's tutorial. The skill of navigating through different components is essential to be efficient in using LMMS.

If you haven't install LMMS, click here to start installing the program.

After launching LMMS, you should see this:

You should see this screen. If not, something is wrong!

There are quite alot of things displaying on the interface but let me go over each one and explain what each component does.

Let's start with the Song-Editor component. What this window does is actually quite simple. It manages the tracks that you use and allow easy access for the user to configure them. In this case, we are just going to focus on two particular tracks: The TripleOscillator and the Beat/Bassline.

This is the window we are looking at.

I have already deleted the other instruments so that we can focus on the TripleOscillator and the Beat/Bassline. To delete an instrument, just click on the cogwheel button and choose remove track. This window is where you will create all the beats in. Try double clicking the black bar closest to the left.

Create your beats!

This window should pop up. We see a piano keyboard to the left of the window. This is a intuitive design since within first glance, you should be able to tell that we can create and manipulate notes using the piano scale. Again, there are lots of buttons so I will be explaining each button from the left to the right.

  1. The leftmost button is the play button. After you created and placed notes where you like them to be, you can preview the song by clicking on this button.
  2. The next two buttons are for recording from a MIDI device or your keyboard. Click the button and play from your device and the notes will be automatically keyed into the system.
  3. This button is the stop button. Whenever you want the piano roll to stop playing your song, just click this button.
  4. This pencil icon is the draw mode. You will be in this mode most of the time. In this mode, whenever you click on the area to the right of the piano, you will place a note into your project. This is how you create sounds for your song.
  5. This eraser icon is the erase mode. In this mode, whenever you click on a note, you will remove it from your project. However, there is actually no need to click on this icon since you can also right click a note to remove it.
  6. This is the select mode button. In this mode, you can select multiple notes. After selecting them, you can edit them as a group. Just remember to change to the draw mode to edit them.
  7. This is the detune mode button. After placing a note, you can change to detune mode and click on a particular note you want to detune. Another window will pop up and will allow you to change the pitches of that particular note.
  8. The next two buttons are cut and copy notes. These two buttons only work when you have at least one note selected through the select mode. They can be then pasted through the paste button which is the next button.
  9. The right arrow button is for toggling automatic scrolling. If the arrow is green, it means that automatic scrolling is toggled. Automatic scrolling means when playing your song, if there are more notes than the window can display, then the window will automatically scroll to the next page of notes.
  10. The next button is for looping your song. Once clicked, you will see an interval marked by two green markers right under the buttons pane. The song will only loop within the interval. To move the left marker, use your middle mouse button. To move the right marker, use your right mouse button.
  11. This next button is a toggle button. But its main function is to repeat the song right after the song ends.

The second component we will be looking at is the Beat+Bassline editor. This component usually keeps track of the rhythms of the song you are creating. You can click the black bar once to add a single beat or you can double click the black bar and to fully customize the beats you want in your song.

The beat & bassline editor

However, if the Kicker does not produce the sound you want, you can remove it via the cog wheel button. To add more instruments into the Beat+Bassline editor, you can go to the side panel to retrieve some premade samples. Once you have chosen the sound you want, drag it onto the Beat+Baseline editor and you can then make configurations on it. Each black bar in the Beat+Bassline editor counts as a quarter note so you can play around with the beats to make the rhythm go well with your melody. To further customize the rhythm, you can also double click on the black bar which will open up the Piano Roll window. The controls are the same as the piano roll from the Song-Editior.

Click the 3rd option and choose from a list of samples!

The last window that is crucial to the development of your song is General Settings window. Each instrument and plugin will have their own distinct General Setting window. To get to this window, you must have the instrument/track or plugin listed in your Song-Editor or Beat+Bassline editor window. Just click on the name of the instrument/plugin and the general settings window will pop up. In this example, I will use the Triple Oscillator's general settings window.

General Settings for Triple Oscillator

In this tiny window, there are lots of controls however the most basic controls will lie on this first page. Since this is a triple oscillator, you can see that there are 3 independent oscillator settings on this window. You are able to manually change each of their settings so that as a whole, they can produce the sound that you are looking for. Each knob control does something different and I believe the best way to see what each of them do is to play a sound and then tweak with the controls.

On each oscillator, you also can see a row of different waves. Since a triple oscillator generates its sounds from computer generated waves, you can also change how each oscillator generates its sound. Again, the best way to see how each of the waves function is to test it out. If you want to explore more of the triple oscillator's functionability (or any instrument/plugin that has a general settings window), you can visit the row that has the following buttons: Plugin, Env/Lfo, Func, Fx, Midi. Each button will bring you to another tab that is fill with more controls.