Are you looking for a great DAW that's free to use?
SoundBridge (previously known as Lumit) is a full-featured DAW with really unique graphics.
Stick around and you'll learn how to use this DAW, even if you've never heard about it before.
[SoundBridge DAW Tutorial For Beginners] [(FREE DAW 2018)]
Hey, everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here.
SoundBridge is capable of doing what most paid DAWs can do and they even have a blog
diving into the audio industry.
If you want to check them out, both the download and the blog links are in the description below.
Now, let's get into the DAW.
First, let's talk about the transport bar really quickly since it's pretty much the control center
of the DAW.
On the bottom left, you'll find the option menus.
You can switch to and from full screen by clicking the logo and when you're in full screen,
you have to exit using the file menu (or just go back and use the exit button).
The bar next to the logo will tell you what you're hovering over along with the hotkey
if it has one.
Next to it, you'll find the typical song position timer, CPU usage, and master dB meter.
Next, there's the playback controls and beats per minute meter.
Below that there's the count-in option, which is just how long it plays before recording.
Beside those, we've got some options here for the Edit and Sequencer windows.
Here you can choose what will happen when you click; select, draw, cut and mute.
If you click on draw or cut again, they'll snap to grid and they'll stay like that even
if you've selected something else.
To tell if you've muted something, you'll notice diagonal lines passing through a block
on the sequencer.
Muting MIDI, however, is a bit different.
You need to drop the velocity of the notes to 0 by dragging it down here.
You can find the tutorial and undo/redo buttons here, as well as the window display.
The last part of the transport bar contains a few options, and I know, we're gonna make
some music right after this but you're going to wanna know what these things do first.
Split will make a cut where the play head is,
merge will glue together everything you've selected on the same track,
even if there's space in between.
Freeze will convert a track into an audio file format you chose.
This helps reduce CPU usage.
To do this, select the track you want to convert, where you want it to be put inside the DAW,
the file format, sample rate, bit depth, and the folder you want the audio file to go into,
on your computer.
Adjust rounds off the length of the pattern or note to the right,
based on the beat you have selected,
which is where it will snap to.
Quantize moves the beginning of the selection to the beat closest to the left side,
without affecting the length.
Duplicate will copy and paste whatever you have selected.
Playlist patterns, tracks, samples, notes, you name it.
Now, time to make some music.
First, we're gonna need an instrument to start writing notes with, then we'll get into effects
and samples.
Go up to the top left and select the plug icon, the first button will bring up all the
stock effects that come with the DAW and the following two will hold the third party plugins
(which is just the plugins you might already have on your computer).
Now, if your plugins aren't showing up, you can click on Full rescan or Find new to populate
the menu with your own plugins.
Once you've found an instrument, drag it to a row that doesn't have a track to create
one with it, on a track to the left or the row next to it, or to a track's insert rack
to add it in.
If you add an instrument to a track with one already there, it will give you the option
to replace it.
Oh, and you can also drag plugins onto the mixer as well, either here, or here.
To create a block in the sequencer for MIDI notes to be played in, simply use the draw
tool to click and drag out the number of bars you want to use.
You can edit MIDI and samples in the edit window but we'll get to that in a little bit,
so stick around for that.
Now for some samples.
Click the middle icon and go to the directory you want to search from.
You'll need to go to the folder you hold all of your samples in, once there, you can drag
and drop your files anywhere in the sequencer or tracklist to create a new Audio track.
Adding a sample to a track twice will put it there twice, even if it doesn't look like it.
So be careful of how many times you throw a sample in, you might want to double check
before doing it again.
I only say this because I made that big mistake and I was wondering where all my samples were going.
So now that we've figured out how to add in samples, instruments, and effects, let's go
over the tracks that they'll belong to.
With the sequencer open, go to the top left and press "Add Track".
There are three types of tracks you can make.
An Audio track in mono or stereo for samples, A MIDI track for plugins and you can actually
assign an instrument to the track through this menu here.
Last, a return track.
By pressing the "A" button on a track, you can take a look at some of the automation involved.
You can create automation by using the draw tool and selecting a region like this.
You can show and hide the track as well as its pre-gain and panning levels.
A quick note here, changing the pan here will do so on the mixer track, but changing the
pre-gain will not affect the gain level on the mixer.
We'll get into the mixer tracks right after this section.
You can rearrange tracks by dragging them on top of another and if you right click on a track,
you can change its name and colour.
To group together tracks you can hold control and select the tracks you want to group together
and press the group button on the top.
To ungroup your selection just use the button next to it.
To add or remove tracks to and from an existing group, simply drag and drop the track
in or out of the group.
You can also show and hide the tracks in a group by pressing the button to the far right
of the group.
Okay, now for the mixer section.
This part of SoundBridge holds the typical pan, gain, and routing options for each track.
MIDI and Audio tracks will have a few different parameters and return tracks will be stacked
to the right along with the master track.
If you've made a return track, the amount each channel sends to it can be changed here.
You can also send a return track, to another return if you really wanted to.
Sounds crazy, but I'm sure there's some weird use cases for it.
Either way, the option is there if you need it and if you know of any reason to do this,
let me know in the comments below.
The edit window will allow you to take a quick look at your mixer rack,
and depending on what type of track you have selected, will let you edit samples and MIDI.
When selecting a specific sample or an audio track, you can change parameters using the
menu to the left.
If that's not good for your workflow, you can also do it by moving points on the sample display.
To reverse or flip the sample's polarity, you can use these two buttons here.
If you have loop selected, it will continue copying the region for whatever length you
decide to make the block in the sequencer.
When I discovered this, I thought it was pretty cool.
In the sequencer, you can also change the gain and the fade points of the sample you've selected.
You can also select a specific part of a sample by dragging the left and right loop points.
When selecting a MIDI track block, you can draw out the notes you want to use or edit
the ones you already have.
Using the draw tool you can place notes by clicking and dragging and remove notes by
clicking on a note or by selecting one or more and pressing delete.
On the bottom, you'll be able to change the velocity by clicking or dragging the level bars.
The edit menu is based on the left-most selected note.
So, let's say you have these notes selected here, the farthest note to the left of everything
you've selected is the one this menu is going to inherit all of its values and parameters from.
Pressing the equal (=) button will change the respective parameter to match the
leftmost note selected.
Selecting the MIDI's CC will allow you to automate the parameter selected to the right.
Using the select tool, you can click or drag over automation points and delete them,
doing so will remove the star as well.
A star will appear next to the parameter once you've added automation to it.
SoundBridge actually comes with a free cloud-based collaboration feature called SkyTracks.
You can access it on the top left corner.
Here, you can upload your tracks and work on projects with others, you can leave notes
and there is even a few DAW-like features built into the website.
If you're left with any more questions, don't forget to use the built-in tutorial,
which is the question mark to the right of the transport bar or by pressing "T" on your keyboard.
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