Playing sessions at other studios

When sharing a project with others, we need to keep a few things in mind:

LMMS projects will save preset data in them for a specific project, but our samples that we usually have access to will not necessarily be there. There are a couple of easy fixes for the samples and presets, but the VST plugins may be a bit more difficult.

Remember that external drive we got? The one that is so easily portable?

If this is where our WORKING directory is, we can simply take our drive to the other studio and re-point the settings window of the other studio's LMMS application to our drive while we are there.

Now we have access to all of our presets and samples again. Nice, huh?

Make sure that when leaving, the old settings are restored. It can freak a studio owner out if all of a sudden their computer is trying to find another drive for their resources. Jot a note down or take a screenshot of where their WORKING directory is located before pointing to another drive. Change the settings back before leaving. Unless playing a practical joke, in which case you are on your own.

VSTi and VST plugins are usually third-party plugins that aren't necessarily free. We may not be able to copy the VST plugins to the other studio's drive and use them. If they are freeware, we're ok. If not, the plugins may not open at all and cause havoc at the other studio. Be sure to check and see which plugins are freeware and which ones aren't. We can always write the effect to the audio of the tracks that have VST plugins on them. This way the audio will play back with the effect on someone else's LMMS application. To accomplish this, hit the red button on the track you need to export, as you can see in the following image:

Then go to the File menu, and choose Export....

Now that the track alone will be saved as an audio file, we can bring this file back into our project and play it on a sample track. That should solve any compatibility issues between studios (we should also save a version of this called First_Time_Out_v5_StudioVisit to keep our versions straight).