Refreshing the Cool Songs

[unfa]

I've noticed that many songs shipped with LMMS have a few things missing:

· Making use of FX-mixer
· A decent escription
· WOW factor
· polished feel

I'd say there's a lot of old stuff there that... well... doesn't get me too excited when I play it. And they don't look like they were made by LMMS masters - the project's don't use all LMMS potential (FX-mixer, automation, controllers, now availabile mixer sends and awesome new synths).

We've got so much talented and skilled artist in the community, I think we could filter the existing demo projects and take some action to attract new demo projects from the community.

I'd suggest making a competition for a demo song.
As a requirement I'd give a few points:

• you have to use the FX-mixer
• you have to write an aesthetic, comprehensive description
• make a track that's between 2 and 5 minutes long
• use only LMMS-shipped effect plugins so the projects are portable
• use only LMMS-shipped samples so the project is portable
• release it under a CC license and include this information in the project description

Additional points for:

• using mixer sends
• using automation
• using controllers
• using coloured song clips
• creating innovative sounds
• using a wide selection of instrument plugins

I think there should be a jury of skilled people who can judge the projects in both technical and musical ways. We could add the existing projects into the pool letting them compete with the new submissions - those who don't pass will be removed and replaced with the top tracks submitted.

As a bonus we could render the submitted tracks and master them making another LMMS community album available on Bandcamp.

What say thou?

[rubiefawn]

I would love to contribute to this. I'd be glad to whip something up from
native LMMS.

On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 11:15 AM, unfa notifications@github.com wrote:

I've noticed that many songs shipped with LMMS have a few things missing:

· Making use of FX-mixer
· A decent escription
· WOW factor
· polished feel

I'd say there's a lot of old stuff there that... well... doesn't get me
too excited when I play it. And they don't look like they were made by LMMS
masters - the project's don't use all LMMS potential (FX-mixer, automation,
controllers, now availabile mixer sends and awesome new synths).

We've got so much talented and skilled artist in the community, I think we
could filter the existing demo projects and take some action to attract new
demo projects from the community.

I'd suggest making a competition for a demo song.
As a requirement I'd give a few points:

• you have to use the FX-mixer
• you have to write an aesthetic, comprehensive description
• make a track that's between 2 and 5 minutes long
• use only LMMS-shipped effect plugins so the projects are portable
• use only LMMS-shipped samples so the project is portable
• release it under a CC license and include this information in the
  project description

Additional points for:

• using mixer sends
• using automation
• using controllers
• using coloured song clips
• creating innovative sounds
• using a wide selection of instrument plugins

I think there should be a jury of skilled people who can judge the
projects in both technical and musical ways. We could add the existing
projects into the pool letting them compete with the new submissions -
those who don't pass will be removed and replaced with the top tracks
submitted.

As a bonus we could render the submitted tracks and master them making
another LMMS community album available on Bandcamp.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#1273.

[tresf]

Some clarifications... Moving forward, we want all compositions that ship with the software to be CC0 so that people can do as they wish.

• you have to write an aesthetic, comprehensive description

I don't see how this should be mandatory unless it is a tutorial. Many tracks are self explanatory.

We already have a good set of judges for these things as well as some competitions we sponsor. I would recommend we take this out of our bug tracker and put it where I feel it belongs (back in the social media team conversations).

[josh-audio]

I'd love to get one of my tracks included. How would I go about this?

[tresf]

@SecondFlight, a pull request is usually a good start. 👍

[josh-audio]

@tresf Alright.

[Sti2nd]

Do we need more fantastic songs which will blow the listeners mind? Do we need songs that make use of LMMS functions in a brilliant way? Do we need songs that have a combination of those?
We need to discuss the process of adding projects to LMMS.

1. Criteria for putting songs into LMMS. Everyone who knows github clearly has an advantage the way we do it now. My point of view on this lies with unfa. Through "competitions" / challenges we can set the rules, and then choose the song which best show the part(s) of LMMS we wanted to show!
2. Second we need to talk about credits in LMMS. Now many projects has the name of their artist in the name, and we don't even know what kind of licence it got. With CC0 the problem will be solved, no reason to credit then. And honestly, there have been, are right now and are going to be a lot of great LMMS artists in the world, and having some of these artists name in the program just because they have made a song in LMMS seems stupid, we just agreed on not to have credits for samples for example. Tres, Umcaruje, StakeoutPunch and I had a conversation where I were convinced that special crediting for projects is just as unfair.

[diizy]

If my LMMS 2.0 plan pans out, then we're going to need an entire new
library of demo songs for 2.0, so from that point of view, I don't
really see much point in starting to replace the songs now...

[Sti2nd]

If my LMMS 2.0 plan pans out, then we're going to need an entire new
library of demo songs for 2.0, so from that point of view, I don't
really see much point in starting to replace the songs now...

I disagree with that. Coordination between developers and the rest of the community is great, but LMMS 2.0 won't be out for a long time, and the rest of the community has to do something in between. Also arranging such a competition might bring us valuable knowledge we can use when LMMS 2.0 needs projects! With new versions, though, one can't arrange those challenges before the new version is out... So I guess the very first songs still need to be made by the inner circle.

[drunkenjesus]

Fully support this idea, some of the demo tracks now are pretty basic. Having a criteria so all tracks are a better representation of LMMS capabilities would be a good look. Don't agree with leaving out a persons name on the project file though, even though it will have a CC0 license the original artist should be at least acknowledged. Also the description doesn't really need to be too thorough imo it'll be more useful for people to figure out what's going on by themselves.

Even though the demo projects won't open in 2.0 if the tracks are really impressive I'm sure the original author or even somebody else would take the time to port them to the new format it'd likely only take an hour or two tops. Also in addition to new song demos, technical demos would also be a good idea showing things like setting up sidechain compression, using mixer sends, etc. with a detailed description.

[tresf]

even though it will have a CC0 license the original artist should be at least acknowledged

I don't particularly mind the name there either, but just remember, CC0 by definition gives us the ability to remove accreditation at any time. It is tremendously important that we do not give the impression that the author's name will ever be kept with the track. This is the ****storm we're in with the samples library.

AFAIK, they sign that right and accreditation over once they release it to use under a CC0 license. Having the name there is extremely suggestive so we need to be very explicit to the authors when we accept the tracks.

Also in addition to new song demos, technical demos would also be a good idea showing things like setting up sidechain compression, using mixer sends, etc. with a detailed description.

Agreed, which is why we need these tracks to be clearly stated as CC0. If down the road someone builds out a lesson which refers to our contribution as Lesson_1.mmpz, Lesson_2.mmpz, it's important that we can re-purpose or cherry-pick as needed.

AFAIK we don't have any formal training material that references our built-in tracks. The (non-free) LMMS book released by Packt Publishing also came with lesson tracks. As a technical reviewer, I can attest to the usefulness. 👍

-Tres

[Sti2nd]

even though it will have a CC0 license the original artist should be at least acknowledged.

No :)

[eagles051387]

If the cool songs are changed will they get moved to LSP?

On Sun, Nov 23, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Stian Jørgensrud <notifications@github.com

wrote:

even though it will have a CC0 license the original artist should be at
least acknowledged.

No :)

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#1273 (comment).

Jonathan Aquilina

[tresf]

If the cool songs are changed will they get moved to LSP?

Take a look at the commit and compare against the LSP. There is no requirement that a song, sample or preset must be moved to the LSP prior to its removal, but you are invited to do so yourself, or grab an old version of the software.

-Tres

[tresf]

@eagles051387, to properly answer your question... it appears most of them already are:

https://github.com/LMMS/lmms/blob/stable-1.1/data/projects/CoolSongs/LICENSES.TXT
https://github.com/LMMS/lmms/blob/stable-1.1/data/projects/Demos/LICENSES.TXT
https://github.com/LMMS/lmms/blob/stable-1.1/data/projects/Shorties/LICENSES.TXT

@Umcaruje, perhaps another good search/replace candidate for the sourceforge links? 😈

[Umcaruje]

@Umcaruje, perhaps another good search/replace candidate for the sourceforge links? 😈

@tresf Done. #1342

[josh-audio]

There has been quite a bit of work towards this goal since late 2014 when this issue was opened. I personally don't see a reason to keep this issue open.

In the spirit of pruning, here are my arguments for closing this issue:

1. This can't be solved by any single person.
2. New songs have been added, but no specific push has happened in the last 5 years towards actually moving this issue to a closed state, and it's not likely anything's going to happen now.
3. Closing this issue is not likely to have any significant impact on whether or not someone will request to have their song in LMMS.

I'll leave this open for a bit in case there are any objections.