Book Image

LMMS: A Complete Guide to Dance Music Production

By : David Earl
Book Image

LMMS: A Complete Guide to Dance Music Production

By: David Earl

Overview of this book

You've scoured the forums, watched the tutorial videos, and done everything you can to learn the secrets of the art of making dance music. Everyone is saying something different about how to get into producing your own projects. This book will help connect the dots and lay a solid foundation of knowledge so you can get beats banging out of LMMS.This book will show you the ins and outs of making Dance music with LMMS. Do you make house, trance, techno or down-tempo? After this book you'll be able to make a song that stands out from the masses, using time honoured tricks of the trade. From inception to conception, this book will help give you a workflow to channel your muse using LMMS.Readers will be given a brief lesson on the best of dance music history, then learn how to recreate it using the Open Source digital workstation - LMMS. The reader will be guided through creating a project from start to finish. By the end of this book, the reader will know how to create a full dance track in LMMS and make it ready for distribution.Along the way, readers will take short stops into music theory, song arranging, recording, and other related information to give them a good foundation for making dance music with depth as well as power. Reading LMMS: A Complete Guide to Dance Music Production will not just teach the reader how to use LMMS, but also how good dance music is crafted. The reader will not just be taught how to make decisions in LMMS, but when and why. After devouring this book, the reader should be able to focus on his or her creativity, with LMMS as a co-conspirator in the process of making great dance music.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
14
Index

When setting up our system, we'll want to start populating our hard drive with samples, loops, and other audio files to use in songs. Many electronic artists still get caught using samples that haven't been cleared. By cleared, I mean that when you sample a CD, record, mp3, or any other audio file from an artist, you need to ask permission to use it.

Heck, just the act of asking may get you noticed by the artists you are pulling from, right? It's worth a try, I guess. Most of the time you get a cold shoulder, though, so I generally advise against it.

There are many, many artists out there that are trying to get their music remixed. I suggest using Google to look up current remixing competitions on the web. I've seen remix contests of everyone from Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and Sasha, to Peter Gabriel, Ok GO, and Radiohead. Here are some links to get you started:

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:

Indaba music

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:

Remix comps

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:

CCmixter

Remixing is a fantastic way to hear the sub mixes of elements from great artists. After digesting them, remixing is a way to get started by pushing the envelope of what can be done in LMMS. We'll be exploring techniques in remixing in Chapters 6 through 9, that will show how to integrate samples from other artists into our own remix. If a remix is good enough, it may even be chosen to be featured on the artists' next album, which is a cool way to get exposure.