The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I dl'd the demo version of FL since it had been recommended to me by people who scoffed at my drum loops in my last entry (made with Hammerhead)

Fruity Loops looks pretty robust, but it also seems very overwhelming. I listened to a lot of the samples and the sounds were good enough that it got me interested in learning how to use it. But does anyone know where there might be some good beginner tutorials for getting started?

Sorry if this is posted elsewhere. I did a quick search of the Help and How To and didn't find anything that specifically addressed this.

kill_me_sarah wrote:people scoffed at my drum loops in my last entry made with Hammerhead

Hammerhead rocks for what it is. Don't knock it, it can do neat things.

kill_me_sarah wrote:Fruity Loops looks pretty robust, but it also seems very overwhelming.

I think Puce is the King of Fruity Loops if he's around.

i never tried a demo, but then again i don't know how to do that much beyond the basics, so maybe i should.
-bill

Kamakura wrote:Hammerhead rocks for what it is. Don't knock it, it can do neat things.

Well I certainly wasn't knocking it. I thought it sounded decent, but a lot of people complained...so maybe I just don't know how to effect-ify it enough.

Kamakura wrote:I think Puce is the King of Fruity Loops if he's around.

I humbly accept my crown. First, FL rules, and as of version 6 it has nearly every feature you'd ever want from one of the big-boy apps like Cubase. It also has, imo, the gentlest learning curve of any audio suite software.

I don't have a demo copy kicking around to look at, but the only resource you really need is the manual (F1).

If I recall correctly the demo is full-featured with the exception of its inability to save (so you can even still render to .wav).

...and that is what i've been doing so far, but i just decided to register it for the next time i do a song that uses it. you can even solo tracks so that each instrument renders in its own file.
-bill

FL really is a quality tool that doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets. It's very simple and smooth and handles all your vst plugs with ease. Keep in mind that if you're setting up your own drums, there are a few plugs that allow that slight variation to add realism. Other people notice more than I do, but that slight illusion that it might be real is key. You'll be a pro in no time I'm sure

Wow, I just figured out the gist of how FL works and I have a feeling I'm going to be spending many, many hours on it.

cochise wrote:FL really is a quality tool that doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets.

I've actually never heard anything good about fruity loops until now ... I just use hammerhead ... you can make any drum machine have some variation as long as you put some effort into it.

fruity kicks ass

jolly roger wrote: I've actually never heard anything good about fruity loops until now ...

What have you heard about fruity loops that's bad?

fruity has a reputation for allowing boring people to make boring loop-based music. it's too easy to make tolerable crap using fruity, so for a while there was an enormous glut of fruity-based loopy electronica flooding the online music scene. I dunno if it's still the case, but that's where a lot of the animosity seems to come from. a lot of people consider it sort of like a Casio.

a bebop a rebop wrote: What have you heard about fruity loops that's bad?

It used to get a really bad rap, in the first year or so that I was hanging out here. People heard boring derivative or just crummy electronic music and equated the ease of using the tool (FL) with all people using it. Or something like that. It's pretty cool seeing more good music being made with it and more good things said about it.
-bill

FL gets a bad rap becuase I use it for my songs lol

HeuristicsInc wrote:People heard boring derivative or just crummy electronic music and equated the ease of using the tool (FL) with all people using it. Or something like that.

garageband is the new fruityloops

tviyh wrote:

HeuristicsInc wrote:People heard boring derivative or just crummy electronic music and equated the ease of using the tool (FL) with all people using it. Or something like that.

garageband is the new fruityloops

I used to use Fruity Loops. Now I use Garageband

I guess this is why they call it FL Studio now... to try and lose that stigma.

On the Native Instruments forums, Reason is the one everybody picks on.

-craig

I figured I'd revive this thread instead of making a new one.

I've got my motif going midi i/o via my firepod. FL gets midi data just fine, and I got it to where it sends sample data back to the motif and it plays back through the motif, rather than through my laptop. This is all fantastic, exactly what I want.

But my current problem is that my whole keyboard only controls one sample at a time. I click the kick sample, and I have 76 keys of kicks, of differing pitches, as you'd expect. What I want to do is assign each sample in FL to a single key on my motif, so that it plays like a normal keyboard drumset. I have no idea how to do this, and the manual is very little help.

Is there an easier way to go about this? I like FL's interface as far as beat editing goes, but I want to make input less tedious.

Puce?

News: I figured pretty much everything out, largely due to help from Futureboy. I have a template with nskit layed out on the keyboard like a normal drumset, with full effects, levels, panning, and compression already done.

Wild goose: can I make the hihat closed and pedal triggers stop the hihat open sample, as a normal keyroll would do? That's pretty much all I'm missing. I can use a volume envelope to stop the open trigger, but the envelope is timed, so it's tempo sensitive, and not a true trigger.

More news: Check it out, here's a zip file containing all the samples and settings. All you should have to do is open the zip file with FL (don't unzip it, just open it), and make sure your controller is set up right. Let me know how it works for you:

Motif roll.zip

New problem:

I can't get FL to playback data to the keyboard using the keyboard's voices. I've got the midi playback in FL set to the Firepod's midi out on port 1, but no dice. All I get is straight audio playback.

I'd like to be able to write a phat beat(z) and audition the sequence on different voices on my keyboard.

Edit: Got it!

Open up a "MIDI out" channel. Very sneaky.