splitting midi keyboard lmms | FREE Tutorial LMMS N°1 DAW

Splitting midi keyboard LMMS : How can I split my midi keyboard to play more than one instrument. This is useful if you want to do a live performance with LMMS using your laptop and only one midi keyboard. If you use a drumpad from the LaunchKey 25 then you can also put 1 sound under each LED key.

How to split my midi keyboard in LMMS

Splitting midi keyboard LMMS: Normally this is not needed to compose music. Because you select the instrument you want to play on the LMMS screen. And then you play it 🙂 But on a live performance it would be handy if you can play more than one instrument using the same midi keyboard. Without haven to seek for your instrument you want to play.

ZynAddSubFX in LMMS

Thanks to the ZynAddSubFX virtual synthesizer that is inside LMMS. You can easily program 1 instrument per octave. (or even 1 per note)

splitting midi keyboard lmms — splitting midi keyboard – how to

So first activate a ZynAddSubFX module in your LMMS project. (It is under the standard instrument listing in LMMS. Justdrag it to your project. Or right-click it an choose add) If you than click on that instrument you will see the above picture. If you haven’t set up your LMMS to work with midi see the other article: Novation LED in LMMS how to.

Also on this website : How to change the LMMS theme

Now click the mini-piano icon on the ZynAddSubFX to change your midi input channel to 1. (Or any other if that is your midi keyboard out-put)

Go back to the main screen (click the first icon) And than click the show GUI. Then you get this:

ZynAddSubFX midi synthesizer how to split my keyboard.

Splitting midi keyboard LMMS : ZynAddSubFX setup.

Splitting midi keyboard LMMS : If you don’t see the above layout. Than you can change that via the Misc-menu.

Standard you play one instrument. Per channel. But now we want to split our midi keyboard so we can play more instruments at the same time using only 1 input source.

Now first select your first instrument out of a very big list 🙂 In the picture above you see ‘Bright Rush Pipe’ that I selected. But if you click there you get a list with all preinstalled instruments of the ZynAddSubFX plug-in.

Just above the piano clavier you see the Midi Channel Receive. Set this to CH1. (or whatever channel you use, but standard is 1) And now it comes. Min.Key and Max.key are the keys you want to use for this instrument. As you can see I set these to 48 and 59. This is the C4 octave on your midi-keybords. And the next 11 notes.

Now for your second instrument. Change the PART from 1 to 2. You will see it is not active. So click The Enable option. And now choose your second instrument out of the list.

And then again choose on what keys you want this sound. So I choose the next 12 notes. Beginning at 60 to 72. !!! Check that it is also on Channel CH1 incomming midi.

Splitting midi keyboard LMMS – more than 2 instruments: Then you just repeat it again for a third instrument if you want that.

Midi keyboard multi layer in LMMS.

Splitting midi keyboard LMMS: I have now 2 instruments next to each other. But if you want it. You can put more than one instrument in the same range. This can be useful to create a special FX or a nicer fuller sound pad.

P.S.: Dont close this window with the X in the corner. Because then it stays resident in memory. Go back to the first ZynAddSubFx screen and hit the show GUI again, to unload the editing screen. It’s a small bug. And it does not matter if you have enough RAM. And we can’t complain since this is the best FREE plugin that I know 🙂 (And so is LMMS as a DAW)

End off – ‘Splitting midi keyboard LMMS‘ article: