Ubuntu Studio with LMMS, Peach, Toad, and Triforce!

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It is simply amazing how much knowledge and information I have accrued in the past 12 hours.

I went from listening to the Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy (both nes) Soundtracks on my ipod to thinking to myself, gee wouldn't it be cool to sample some of these sounds and sequence them in something like Fruity Loops or the Open Source Equivalent LMMS so I would have something different to play my guitar over, to discovering this growing 8bit world of musicians!

First off, i want to thank Tweakbench for developing these VST instruments! I always view modern technology as figuring that someone way smarter and more inclined then me has already put together something I have in mind, it's just a matter of finding it.

I am in no way a developer, but love to tweak and mod and just generally read other peoples how to's and instructions on how to do things.

It is a rare occasion that I get to say to the world "Hey something works, I tried it and it works well!".

As I said above, I have learned alot in the past 12 hours:

In discovering these VST plugins, I have also been playing alot with Linux. Mainly Ubuntu Studio. One of the cool things about Linux is that there is just about an open source/free equivalent to just about every commercial application out there.

In this case I am talking about LMMS to Fruity Loops. LMMS, or Linux MultiMedia Studio is a Free and Open Source alternative to Fruity Loops, which you can get right here: http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ (http://lmms.sourceforge.net/)

Now while I do know that these VST instruments were created with Windows in mind, I am happy to report that they also work, and work quite well in a Linux environment!

Now by all accounts, they technically shouldn't because linux doesn't use .dll files. However in the Linux environment there is a program called WINE that basically emulates the Windows environment.

So what I did was this: I installed Ubuntu Studio (8.0.4 i think, whatever the latest is), and installed a program called LMMS. This program is not a standard OEM program so to speak, but it's easy enough to get using synaptic.

When you install LMMS, it automatically installs WINE (which does a good job of running some windows programs also) because there are some dependencies in it that require windows emulation (in this case the VST plugin ability).

Now, to use the plugins in LMMS it is very very easy. All you need to do is d/l and extract them like you would in windows, create a directory for them, and then in LMMS define where you want your VST plugins (that would be under settings/show settings dialogue and then under the folder icon on the right). Copy and Paste the DLL's into the folder that you just made via the file manager program (basically the same way as you would in windows, just using the linux version). And they are installed.

Now to use them, you need to open LMMS again (because you need to reset for your settings to take affect anyways). Once LMMS is running, and you of course want to start playing with your new instruments, move your mouse over to the star on the left side of the screen, click on it and open up the "my presets" area.

Click on VeSTige, and then Default.cs.xml. This will open up a little green like box with a windows logo in headphones.

It will say "no VST plugin Loaded". Click on the little blue file folder, and it should open right up to the folder in which you placed your plugins. Click on the .dll file that you want, and up should pop the nice graphical interface that mr rutledge created as well as the wonderfull analogue tones to go with it.

Generically speaking the rest works mostly like Fruity Loops. You have your piano roll and sound font editor just like in fruity loops.

Once you open the plugin, you can close the green box out also...

Now... a few notes on the matter and the big downside to all of this.

1. This has thus far only been tested and confirmed with Toad, Peach and Triforce (i'm sure you can see where my head is at :-) So I can't vouch for the rest, but there is no reason why they shouldn't work in the same fashion.

2. There is a windows version of LMMS. However, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to get the VST plugins to work in the windows version (go figure). So if anyone can figure it out, please let me know.

3. The downside... LMMS is still a new program, and developed by people who like the developer of Tweakbench, do it in their spare time. With that in mind, i will warn you that there is one bug that can cause some frustration and that is the intermittent crashing of the program. This crash is a known bug, and the developers are working on it. It exists in both the Linux and the Windows version of this program. So like playing Leisure Suite Larry, or Kings Quest, or Space Quest and all the old great games from better days gone by. Save early, save often.

Where the bug exists is actually in the piano roll editor. What happens is that if you make too many edits at a time then the program will crash. It's annoying, but workaroundable if you save more often then not (that way if the program crashes you wont lose your information and set up).

4. There are other programs such as Ardour, which is a ProTools alternative that have been reported to be able to use VST instruments as well. I haven't tried it, cause i wanted to start simply, but i wanted to throw that out there in case anyone was interested.

I hope this tutorial helps someone. I know that I like to read other peoples experiences and learn off of what they have done. I hope that someone can use what I've discovered and keep the ball rolling for all this great software being developed. Even though 99% of us never come close to being professional, or even on a stage, making music is a fun, therapeutic past time.

In the past 12 hours I have learned how to use VST plugins in places where they normally arent, learned a bit more of LMMS, Linux, discovered Sabrepulse, 8bitpeople Records, successfully looped my first song, discovered this whole burgeoning community that up until today I never knew existed. It's cool to know that there are other like minded people out there.

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I got ubuntu as a harddrive sponge.. Its a great OS, just none of my games works on it. Does fruity work in linux? I should try LMMS out also. I installed it but never found any vst or how to get them working. Thanks for the post :love:

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