The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Okay, I'm hoping someone knows the answer to this offhand cuz I can't find it and it's driving me nuts and this song has to be done tonight. Lets say i have a series of patterns like so:

Is there a way I can turn this series of 5 patters into ONE loop but export it to a WAV or MP3 looped a given number of times? Or do I have to copy and paste it over and over again in the playlist for the length of time i want it to play? There's got to be a better way. You would think when you export it to WAV it might ask you how long you want it to loop, but not that I see.

kill_me_sarah wrote:Or do I have to copy and paste it over and over again in the playlist for the length of time i want it to play?

You have to copy and paste it over and over again in the playlist for the length of time i want it to play.

It actually shouldn't be too bad. If you want it to loop N times, that's at most log2(n)+1 copy-pastes.

yes, you might copy and paste as many times as neccessary. also you could use the Live Mode feature to play and loop any pattern while it is activated to be played on Live Mode, but of course, this would only help you at a live performance.

Thanks for the responses guys. I've been having fun with this program, but I know there are a lot of layers I have yet to scratch away. We need to have a FL seminar at SF Live

Thought I'd post this here since it's already on the subject of Fruity Loops. Does anyone know of any good tutorials out there for working with FL? I understand about 3% of the buttons . I'd really like to learn how to wring realistic drum sounds out of it. Also, if anyone knows of any tutorials that have suggestions for actually "writing" drum parts for programmed drums since the only thing I ever learned to play on a real set was the basic 4/4 rock beat: high hat on the 8ths, bass on the 1 and 3, snare on the 2 and 4 (is that correctly written?)

Kill Me Sarah wrote:Does anyone know of any good tutorials out there for working with FL?

The help file that comes with FL studio is fantastic; absolutetly the best one that's I've ever seen come with a DAW app. If you RT[F]M you will know everything there is to know about FL.

Kill Me Sarah wrote:I'd really like to learn how to wring realistic drum sounds out of it.

The fastest way to learn would be to eat Phil Redmon's brain; IIRC the lion's share of his drum parts are programmed. Not sure if he uses FL to do it, though. But getting a realistic sound out of FL is tough stuff. I couldn't, so eventually I bought an electronic kit so I could actually "play" my drum parts (and by "play" I mean do 400 takes, sweating and cursing, until I have a passable one, then find the best part and loop the hell out of it). It's not any easier doing it that way, but it is a little more realistic.

That's a really rad song. Thanks for the tips. I'll RTM

Puce wrote: The fastest way to learn would be to eat Phil Redmon's brain; IIRC the lion's share of his drum parts are programmed.

Not sure that it's the lion's share at this point, but def. the first million SF songs.

A hot tip:

Make a pattern. In the song layout view, with said pattern selected, hit ctrl-shift-c. You've duplicated the pattern. Now change something, just a tiny bit, or a smidge, or some, or whatever.

Time permitting, I never like to have an exact pattern play twice.

Phil. Redmon. wrote: A hot tip:

Make a pattern. In the song layout view, with said pattern selected, hit ctrl-shift-c. You've duplicated the pattern. Now change something, just a tiny bit, or a smidge, or some, or whatever.

Time permitting, I never like to have an exact pattern play twice.

This sounds like good advice. Out of curiosity, how many patterns do you typically wind up with in a given song? And do you have a method for organizing them?

Do any of you use Automation Clips? I haven't been able to decipher thru the manual what exactly these do.

*EDIT*

Also, when you mix your songs, do you mix it the way you want it in FL and then send the whole thing as one track to your Multi-Tracker or do you export each instrument from FL as it's own track so you can mix each one individually?

Maybe 60 to 80 patterns.

No organization at all, but the grid kind of resembles the song structure. I kind of program as I write. Also, I use 32 beat patterns instead of 16.

I only ever use automation for extreme special effect shit, never for drums, so I dunno what to tell you. They seem confusing.

Mixing: I poop it out as a stereo wav, mostly just focusing on the volumes & panning, mix wise. I compress the whole thing in my multitrack software, and a little reverb or whatever. It's too hard to mix it in FL because you can't tell how it will sit with the rest of the song.

OH-

I've got a file I always start with, called "blank shank". It's 16 blank sample deals, each one routed to a different fx channel. I clone each sampler as needed, keeping all the kicks on fx channel 1, snare on 3, etc. (These samplers are also color coded. Before you drop any samples in , you can randomize their colors, but then when you clone samplers, they stay the same color within their fx groups.)

I don't actually use hardly any effects, but this way you can pan types of drums as a whole in the fx menu, instead of per sample, which takes way longer.

Bu, yeah, exporting each drum as a track is insanity. I don't know what kind of rig you've got, but that many tracks, on top of the typical 4-6 guitars and however many vocals, would grind my shit to a halt.
What I usually do; if there's trouble in the mix (almost always hats too loud and snare too quiet), I poop a new mix out of FL, and replace it in the DAW.

One more little side tip:

To insure that the final cymbals ring out, or whatever, the reverb to decay fully at the end of the song, when I export the wav of my drums, I put an extra pattern at the very end, leaving about 8-10 blank patterns. Even with the wav export set to "leave remainder," it can still cut off reverb decays. Just chop off the dummy pattern in your DAW.


I'm just now realizing: I could talk about this shit all day.

Awesome tips, thanks! I'm not sure I know how to work the FX channels in the mixer yet. I tinkered with them a bit today but I definitely need to read up on it more. That makes a lot of sense though from the volume and panning department. Also, great idea on the final cymbals. I usually end up fading the final milliseconds of the song so that it doesn't sound so abrupt, but that idea is way better. Much food for thought...

By the way. I'm very excited to try out using the 32 beat patterns. It seems obvious now that you mention it. I was editing drums in the piano roll that I probably could have done much more easily that way. Is it possible to get a realistic-ish drum roll doing this?

Depends on the bpm, but kinda yeah.

Put the same sample in 2 different samplers, and shift all the notes of the 2nd one to the half-way point. Give you double the notes, obv, and you can fade the volume as needed. I usually set the 2nd sampler a little quieter, or whatever.

That piano roll gives me nightmares. I am all about efficiency with the programming.

I'll spend 20 minutes figuring out how to save 30 seconds, I swear.

'Cause... you know.

Aggregate.

Actually I think I misunderstood the point of the 32 beat pattern, unless i were to speed up the BPM tremendously, I still would have had to use the piano roll. I was using it to to a really fast high hat rhythm. I can see why you'd use the 32 beat pattern for variation purposes however.

Oh, I still haven't figured this out... how do you route the sample to the FX channel? When I open my mixer, some of the channels are still named after samples that have been replaced in my project with new samples.