LMMS • Forums

Hi.

Playing Music with only one instrument is often not desired, both in "classical", but also "modern" music: Sometimes you want the same melody played with a piano, then by a string. Or: You want to play the first 8/4 of your refrain stacato, the next 8/4 legato, and then maybe 4/4 with a crazy effect like, let's say, frequency lfo or distortion.

This can be done by having multiple similar (or even equal) instruments in multiple channels, each playing the whole time, and then activating the channel you want. So for 16 instruments, this channel selector should have an automation track with 16 values on the y axis.

Are you getting my idea? I think it would be extremely important. And I would be really thankful.

Kind regards,
Johannes

I thought that all of these can be done using Automation-Editor?

Create several different instruments.
Drag the channel's on/off bulb into the Automation track and then just turn it on/off from there.

Or that I just don't understand your purpose of doing that
I would just stick to the good old Automation track

nikorasuchan wrote:Create several different instruments.
Drag the channel's on/off bulb into the Automation track and then just turn it on/off from there.

Exactly, that's a solution to my problem! Thanks. I thought of this, too. But it really gets annoying with many instruments. Imagine you have 16 instruments, then you'll have 16 automation tracks. With the plug-in I suggest, You just have to edit one automation track. That makes it extremely handy, imo.

Well, you can always put all the bulbs together into a same Automation track too... I think by using the default Automation track will still save more time than using any Automation plugin (since you can't see what is going on in it and you'll have to open it to see what's in it).

If saving space is really important for you... why not LMMS having the 'folder' feature in where you can put any kinds of instruments or VSTs in it, that would save space and time to search for specific instruments too, considering when you are making orchestra music or something as complicated as that

BTW, automations can also conrol the I/O of the bulbs that activate an FX within an FX channel. So anything patched through that channel would have that FX turned on or off. This just means that each FX needs an automation I/O rather than every instrument.

I also did something a while back where I moved an instrument between channels, which is another way of doing things.
(Example of this is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMgCd4DR9qc)
But yeah that could get old pretty fast if doing it with a lot of instruments.