I recently got the feeling that LMMS offers too many little instrument
plugins... Or better, that we already have a lot of them.
Other Daws which do offer native plugins have a similar quantity of
them, but they are much bigger and "easier" to use. (with "easier" I
mean that they are ready to make strong ordinary sounds with massive
compulsory effects)
I think we should start to make bigger plugins, but our way. (and I'm
writing "we" because I hope I'll be able to do that myself, in a year or
less).
By "big" and "small" I'm saying:
- Big is a synth with exclusive features and capable of making a wide
range of sounds, with a self-explanatory GUI (that doesn't require you
to know everything about electronic music and take note of what is
linked to what, like Monstro does D:)
- Small is either a versatile synth with not so many knobs or a synth
made for 1 thing only (so it could be 3OSC, LB302, Mallets, patman, most
of our current plugins)
I think that we should give more screen space to powerful but
complicated things like Monstro and Zyn (support for more automations
here) and create those plugins that we didn't do because they would
require a large GUI (like a sampler)
What I ask here is to tell why we should keep the size of our plugins
small. One possible reason is that doing so, we allow the user to
control a lot of instruments and their effects without having to
minimize things.
On the other side, most of our plugins don't require much time to craft
a sound, they mostly require knowledge and /need/ effects.
Using a big synth, you pass most of the time working on the main GUI.
I'll give some examples.
Oh, for the GUI size, the plugin window is currently around 255x465. A
big synth may vary from a 600x500 to a 1000x800.
First Example: a massive 8-oscillators synth, with similar features to
Monstro, but also they ability to have "hertz shift" (let's say you have
2 oscillators at the same pitch, you want them to have a fixed beat.
With fine detuning, that beat changes each note played, while if you
shift one by a fixed frequency, that beat will always be the same. With
a synth like this, you can have two similar sounds in 4 and 4
oscillators, but the second copy shifted by 5 hz: you'll get a cute
wobble for dubstep and such, without using LFO and controllers)
Second Example: Octave Additive Synth, a simple additive synth but with
a creative design.
You get different knobs for: Fundamental (1 armonic), Octaves (2^n
armonics), Fifths (3^n armonics), and then 7^n, 11^n and 13^n.
While the Fundamental is a singular note, Octaves and Fifths have a knob
with a number from 1 to 5, the others have a 1-3 one, to turn on their
multiple armonics.
The amplitude level of these armonics is a Sequence given by a formula,
with the first value equal to the n=1 amplitude, the others may be equal
to that, decrease linearly or with a simple curve.
Of each of these, you can decide left/right phase shift and fine detuning.
(I hope it's clear, if not I can make a paint of it)
Third Example: a Sampler made for drums. The user can decide what
imported sample goes in what key.
These plugins may go on another slot of the sidebar.
That's the idea! I know that programming and debugging a big synth is
tough and that they require more RAM, but I think we need bigger synths!
Speaking of plugins... do we have subtractive synth?
~DeRobyJ
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