Editing bass track in Piano Roll - won't show green lines

[Michelle]

Hi all,

I'm trying to work through David Earl's book about LMMS, and I've come across a problem. Have a look at the image, taken from his book.


Edit: This isn't showing, but if you open the image in a new tab it does.

I need to be able to change my bass from little white lines to the green bars in the piano roll as you see in the book image, but I can't figure out how. I have a feeling being able to do this might be really important, but all I can achieve at the moment is the little white lines that give me a single brief beat.

I suspect the version of LMMS I'm using is different from the book, but it's the only book I found that walks through LMMS step by step.

[bokuyata]

Right click on the beat pattern of the instrument > click on Open in Piano Roll

[slipstick]

The easiest way is not to enter any notes in the Bass/Beat Editor (which is what puts the short white notes in) but go straight to piano roll and enter notes of whatever length you want in there as you would in Song Editor.

But if you do have Piano Roll open and there are short notes in there it's very easy to delete them (right click) and instead enter notes of the length you want.

See https://lmms.io/documentation/Piano_Roll_Editor for how to use the Piano Roll.

It's well worth checking the online documentation if things don't look right in your book https://lmms.io/documentation

Steve

[musikbear]

which is what puts the short white notes in

Yhis is a<bout no-length-notes right?

The neon-green little suckers there..
Observe that the picture has a mix of normal and no-length-notes!

no-length-notes are special, They:
* cant change length
* they play (almost) for the duration of the sample.
And that sample is actually important, because no-length-notes are designed for samples!
In development its realized that no-length-notes has a flaw. They do not cover the length of any sample, as they were meant to. This is meant to change, and if the (imo) best solution is implemented, lmms will have loop-sequensing just sonyACID, at least i sketched a design for it, but not this release :)
The grit of it is: Do not use no-length-notes for instruments, that can be quite confusing when you later looks at your project.
It is a safe-guard, to insert one no-length-note before you open in piano-roll, because the position in octaves, gives you the perfect pitch. Then just use the note-selection

and select anything except 'last-note, then the notes will be ordinary notes, and can be treated normally

[slipstick]

They're the ones...at 100% they just look like white lines. And they're what Beat/Bass editor always uses if you click in the Step Editor whether the track uses a sample or an instrument.

Steve

[Michelle]

Thank you Slipstick and Musikbear.

I must confess that it took me a while to fully understand what you were both saying - I don't know why, perhaps my brain wasn't thinking straight. But after reading through your comments a few times and experimenting I finally got it

It's a small thing, but a sense of achievement nonetheless.

By the way, the documentation and most of the YouTube videos seem to assume some basic understanding of music creation, which makes it a tad difficult for a person like me to follow along.

As I get more used to using LMMS, I might make my own little videos that explain show people how fix little problems like this so that they can follow the examples in the book - without breaching copyright, of course.

[Michelle]

After correctly following the example, which is supposed to be a Larry Heard type if bassline. Ouch, I don't like it. Either I did something wrong, or the bassline is horrible. I'll re-read the book instructions and see if I made a mistake.

Do you all see how difficult music creation can be for someone who doesn't have any training?

[slipstick]

Yep. It's even difficult to know how to ask the questions. But I imagine we're willing to keep trying to help if you're game.

OTOH I've never seen that book you keep referring to which doesn't make it exactly easy to know what it is you're asking about sometimes .

Steve

[Michelle]

When I decided to learn with LMMS, I went looking for an online course and couldn't find one. But I did find the book.

https://www.packtpub.com/hardware-and-c ... production

[musikbear]

By the way, the documentation and most of the YouTube videos seem to assume some basic understanding of music creation

I do have several videos on my channel specifically on music-theory, chords harmonies, scales, and keys:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WhkwmABRtp4/default.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEgx-_hMFYg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXRmv54dUnI

If you find something that is difficult to understand, or there are things you fell is missing, then i would appreciate that you give me a hint, or if you have a specific issue that you would like a tutorial on, just let me know.

This topic is perhaps also interesting for you:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1685