Kickmess / Megamess - A (Kick Drum) Synthesizer Plugin

Kickmess is a port of the easy to use and good sounding Kicker plugin from LMMS to a reusable audio plugin format on Linux (VST currently). The DSP code has been ported, changed a bit and extended with some other functionality.

An extended version of Kickmess, with more oscillators and other functionality, is available as Megamess plugin. It's built from the same code base, but with a larger DSP core and extended GUI. It's useful for many kinds of percussion synthesis, for synthesizing bass sounds and other fx sounds.

More features and changes might be added and before Version 1.0 is released I will not guarantee that your presets will sound the same. After Version 1.0 significant changes will come with a change in the major version number.

Currently this crate generates a VST (Version 2.4) plugin. Eventually this will be changed to LV2, once rust-lv2 does not require the inPlaceBroken feature anymore and provides UI support.

Support for more platforms (MacOS) is currently out of scope, but depending on the amount of code I might maintain contributions.

Features

• Sine oscillator
• Noise oscillator
• Pitch and amplitude envelopes with configurable exponential slope
• Pitch from MIDI note
• Simple Distortion effect

More features and changes might be added and before Version 1.0 is released. I can't guarantee that your presets will sound the same. After Version 1.0 significant changes will come with a change in the major version number.

Currently only VST 2 plugins are provided. Eventually this will be changed to LV2, once rust-lv2 does not require the inPlaceBroken feature anymore and the plugins work in Ardour.

Support for more platforms (MacOS) is currently out of scope.

State of Development

This project is still (2021-01-08) under development but is considered useable for what it is, but don't be surprised if there are still show stopper bugs. There are features missing, which might come in future. And until version 1.0 is released I can't guarantee that your presets will all sound the same.

Make sure to follow Weird Constructors Mastodon account or the releases of this project to be notified once I release a beta or stable release.

Building & Installing Kickmess:

cargo build --release

cp target/release/libkickmessvst.so ~/.vst/

Building & Installing Megamess:

The Megamess plugin does not have it's own project or crate yet and is just the Kickmess code base with it's own feature enabled:

cargo build --all-features --release

cp target/release/libkickmessvst.so ~/.vst/libmegamess.so

Running the development GUI example

For development the GUI can be executed without any DSP code running in the background:

cargo run --release --example gui

For Megamess:

cargo run --release --example gui

TODO / Features

• A few presets
• Less blurry text (needs improvements in femtovg library/crate)
• Modulation (3 AHDSR envelopes, 3 LFOs) like in LMMS
• DONE: A high/low/band pass filter(s) with resonance
• DONE (in Megamess): A second oscillator with sawtooth/square waveforms

Known Bugs

• The ones you encounter and create as issues on GitHub.

Tested Hosts and Systems

Support Development

You can support me (and the development of this project) via Liberapay:

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 or later.

The DSP code that was translated from LMMS C++ to Rust and was originally released under GNU General Public License Version 2 or any later. The former authors were:

• Copyright (c) 2006-2014 Tobias Doerffel <tobydox/at/users.sourceforge.net>
• Copyright (c) 2014 grejppi <grejppi/at/gmail.com>

The fonts DejaVuSerif.ttf and DejaVuSansMono.ttf under the license:

Fonts are (c) Bitstream (see below). DejaVu changes are in public domain.
Glyphs imported from Arev fonts are (c) Tavmjong Bah (see below)

Why (A)GPL?

Picking a license for my code bothered me for a long time. I read many discussions about this topic. Read the license explanations. And discussed this matter with other developers.

First about why I write code for free at all, the reasons are:

• It's my passion to write computer programs. In my free time I can write the code I want, when I want and the way I want. I can freely allocate my time and freely choose the projects I want to work on.
• To help a friend or member of my family.
• To solve a problem I have.
• To learn something new.

Those are the reasons why I write code for free. Now the reasons why I publish the code, when I could as well keep it to myself:

• So that it may bring value to users and the free software community.
• Show my work as an artist.
• To get into contact with other developers.
• To exchange knowledge and help other developers.
• And it's a nice change to put some more polish on my private projects.

Most of those reasons don't yet justify (A)GPL. The main point of the (A)GPL, as far as I understand: The (A)GPL makes sure the software stays free software until eternity. That the end user of the software always stays in control. That the users have the means to adapt the software to new platforms or use cases. Even if the original authors don't maintain the software anymore. It ultimately prevents "vendor lock in". I really dislike vendor lock in, especially as developer. Especially as developer I want and need to stay in control of the computers and software I use.

Another point is, that my work (and the work of any other developer) has a value. If I give away my work without any strings attached, I effectively work for free. This compromises the price I (and potentially other developers) can demand for the skill, workforce and time.

This makes two reasons for me to choose the (A)GPL:

1. I do not want to support vendor lock in scenarios for free. I want to prevent those when I have a choice, when I invest my private time to bring value to the end users.
2. I don't want to low ball my own (and other developer's) wage and prices by giving away the work I spent my scarce private time on with no strings attached. I do not want companies to be able to use it in closed source projects to drive a vendor lock in scenario.

We can discuss relicensing of my code or project if you are interested in using it in a closed source project. Bear in mind, that I can only relicense the parts of the project I wrote. If the project contains GPL code from other projects and authors, I can't relicense it.