Linux MultiMedia Studio 0.4.3
==============================

Copyright (c) 2004-2009 by LMMS-developers


This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more
details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.



What is LMMS?
--------------

LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio (R), which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.


Features
---------

    * Song-Editor for composing songs
    * A Beat+Bassline-Editor for creating beats and basslines
    * An easy-to-use Piano-Roll for editing patterns and melodies
    * An FX mixer with 64 FX channels and arbitrary number of effects allow unlimited mixing possibilities
    * Many powerful instrument and effect-plugins out of the box
    * Full user-defined track-based automation and computer-controlled automation sources
    * Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and full MIDI support
    * Import of MIDI and FLP (Fruityloops(R) Project) files


Requirements
------------

The most important requirement is for sure a fast computer, so don't try to get
LMMS working on a pentium I with 60 MHz... ;-) Therefore you should have at
least 500 MHz, but for really enjoying LMMS less than 1 GHz makes no sense...


Required libraries:

- Qt >= 4.3.0 with devel-files (4.4.x recommended)

Optional, but strongly recommended:
- libalsa with devel-files
- libvorbis & libogg with devel-files
- libfluidsynth with devel files
- SDL with devel-files
- libsamplerate >= 0.1.3 with devel-files
- libsndfile with devel-files
- WINE + WINE-devel-files
- stk, libstk + libstk-dev
- JACK with devel-files

For compiling you should have an up to date GCC with g++.

If you have problems with compiling or running LMMS, find any bug or have
suggestions and so on, please feel free to e-mail me (for mail-address see
below)!



Building
---------

See INSTALL for information on how to build LMMS extras.




Join LMMS-development
----------------------

If you are interested in LMMS, it's programming, artwork, testing, writing
demo-songs, (and improving this README...) or something like that,
you're welcome to participate on the development of LMMS!

The project-homepage of LMMS, mailingslists and a list of things you can do
can be found at

http://lmms.sourceforge.net


Details on development can be found at

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/development.php

or in the Wiki:

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/wiki/

Before coding a new big feature, please ALWAYS post your idea and suggestions
about your feature and about the intended implementation to the
LMMS-devel-mailinglist (lmms-devel@lists.sourceforge.net) and wait for replies!
Maybe there're different ideas, improvements, hints or maybe your feature is
not welcome/needed at the moment.
