Perks of an FL Studio User

[mryellow13]

Storytime:

Surfing the interwebs, come across this new sample library released by a company I've never heard of; company's kinda obscure so I take my time to read the specs page:
Memory usage: good
Kontakt 5 compatible: got that
Compatible DAWS: Ableton Live, Logic, Sonar and Cubase
dammit... scroll down a bit and see something along the lines of this:
NOTE: said sample library is incompatible with Reaper and Ardour
Getting mixed messages here, company must not care about FL that much (gasp)
Spend a whole day asking forums if they've heard of it and can clarify whether or not it'll work on FL.
After all my efforts, about 80% of the responses read "don't know br0, I've just been using the demo version of FL, haven't closed it in months, how about that?"
Give up.

Few days later, doodling in FL on the bus cause I'm edgy like that.
Random kid notices my screen and says: "hey look Fruity Loops, yea I used to use that but then I got Logic, it's WAAAY more professional." Hold back the tears.
Just to prove a point to myself I search for pros that use FL studio
The list starts and ends with Deadmau3.
Decide to jump on to Newgrounds as soon as i get home, everyone uses FL on there, they'll get my struggle.
Nothing but get rich/famous quick posts.
I sigh as I open FL studio, "maybe I just need to write something, anything" I tell myself. That's when I notice I haven't updated FL for like, a year. HELL YEAH, time to cash in those free updates!
New update changes the entire layout of FL studio. Spend half an hour trying to re-learn how to record, quantize and repeat.
It took a while, but I figured it out, motivated as hell by this achievement, I open an old project and swear to finish it within a day or two.
Press one note and the new version of Fruity Wrapper crashes and I lose all the data for a preset I spent ages working on.

Ableton Live Lite is looking pretty good.

[CreoMusic]

It's always a hassle when the software limitations and faults stand in the way of the creative process. I guess that's why many people recommend to try out different DAWs and stick with the one that seems most intuitive to your workflow.

I can only recommend Ableton Live. Even though I (currently) have no use for its Session View or Live playback functionality, it does every other aspect of music production at least equally as good as other DAWs.

[Rennh]

Wait, are you saying deadmau5 is the only professional who uses FL studio?

http://www.image-line.com/flstudio/powerusers.php

[egaSyeliR]

At 3/26/16 11:32 AM, Rennh wrote: Wait, are you saying deadmau5 is the only professional who uses FL studio?

http://www.image-line.com/flstudio/powerusers.php

i just died from looking at this

[Aterum]

At 3/26/16 06:16 AM, mryellow13 wrote: Storytime:

Press one note and the new version of Fruity Wrapper crashes and I lose all the data for a preset I spent ages working on.

The same thing happened to me on a track that was sounding promising, I opened a plugin and FL12 crashed in the worst way where it doesn't play any audio ever again, i made the stupid mistake of saving cause i had done so much work but that saved the corrupted state and i couldn't do anything for it on FL11 either. At the moment I'm scared of 12.

[midimachine]

lol get rekt scrub

btw your life will still suck if you switch to ableton

[mryellow13]

At 3/26/16 11:32 AM, Rennh wrote: Wait, are you saying deadmau5 is the only professional who uses FL studio?

http://www.image-line.com/flstudio/powerusers.php

By all means I know there are a ton of great artists that use FL, in fact I've always pointed to guys like Blake Robinson whenever someone tells me FL Studio "isn't that professional."
Although it's easy to make jokes about deadmau5 being the only FL user to go pro, what with all the Sytrus presets he left behind and whatnot.

[AliceMako]

At 3/26/16 06:16 AM, mryellow13 wrote:
The list starts and ends with Deadmau3.

That says everything about the average FL fanboy and next to nothing about deadmaus though.

List is pretty old even, doesn't include his eurorack modular stack of doom he's build up over the past years as he's shown off in his lviestreams for example.

[TIMETRAVL]

Dj Carnage uses fl aswell!

[Xorberax]

"...I literally couldn't shut the program down."
-Avicii

Probably because it's bugged and stopped responding and instead shut your entire PC down.

[mryellow13]

At 3/30/16 06:01 AM, lasse wrote: having a more "mature" daw means nothing if youre shit at composing music

or if youre good

the variable is YOU

Couldn't agree more, my friend!
Although I have to admit, some DAWs and VSTs are waaaaay easier to work with due to stability issues; like I mentioned, the new version of Fruity Wrapper keeps me edge whenever I start using really memory-intensive VSTs like WOTAN (all-male choir sample library) because there's a good chance it'll crash whenever it has to re-load.

[mryellow13]

At 3/30/16 03:45 AM, Lich wrote: I would of switched over to BitWig for full future operation by now if they had a Midi/Piano-Roll similar to FL's. Despite some apparent flaws, FL still has the quickest workflow for me to work with.

FL's piano roll is what sold me, I don't care for the riff machine, the scale and chord stamper, or the articulation options, but all the tools and shortcuts are pretty damn good. The ease with which you can edit multiple notes and there values is especially useful in the orchestral stuff I do.
Although it does have one odd problem... The lack of an option to disable the 'rounded rectangle' look of the piano roll notes can be infuriating when writing and adjusting fast parts (especially in compound time) because I can barely notice the edges of the note. I have pretty crappy eyesight so maybe this is just me, but if Image Line can be bothered to add in an "entertain me" option for animations, where can I get my square-edged notes?

[AeronMusic]

At 3/29/16 09:56 PM, Zooloo75 wrote: "...I literally couldn't shut the program down."
-Avicii

Probably because it's bugged and stopped responding and instead shut your entire PC down.

Sssst, he just had to change his pentium 2 processor and 128mb RAM to something better.

[AliceMako]

At 3/30/16 06:26 AM, mryellow13 wrote:
FL's piano roll is what sold me, I don't care for the riff machine, the scale and chord stamper, or the articulation options,
but all the tools and shortcuts are pretty damn good.

Actually those insta note puke functions are the main thing, well ok along with the superior pianoroll, that has me tempted to eventually get the fruity/basic edition instead of whatever plugin currently has my fancy.

I mainline reason and most if not all of my time is spent processing audio, not so much actually composing or writing music so a doodad that shits out midi that isn't wholly random like the faux analog sequencer to feed synths would be the height of convenience for me.

[midimachine]

At 4/4/16 07:28 PM, AliceMako wrote: Actually those insta note puke functions are the main thing, well ok along with the superior pianoroll, that has me tempted to eventually get the fruity/basic edition instead of whatever plugin currently has my fancy.

I mainline reason and most if not all of my time is spent processing audio, not so much actually composing or writing music so a doodad that shits out midi that isn't wholly random like the faux analog sequencer to feed synths would be the height of convenience for me.

you can use fl studio as a rewire host, that way you're not switching between programs and exporting/importing .mid files (y)

[ILG924]

At 3/26/16 01:10 PM, Aterum wrote:

At 3/26/16 06:16 AM, mryellow13 wrote: Storytime:

Press one note and the new version of Fruity Wrapper crashes and I lose all the data for a preset I spent ages working on.

The same thing happened to me on a track that was sounding promising, I opened a plugin and FL12 crashed in the worst way where it doesn't play any audio ever again, i made the stupid mistake of saving cause i had done so much work but that saved the corrupted state and i couldn't do anything for it on FL11 either. At the moment I'm scared of 12.

Doesn't FL 12 save backups? I used 12 for like a day, crashed thrice, went back to 11 and haven't gone back.
Anytime I accidentally overwrite a project, it saves the old versions into a hidden backup folder in FL Studio\Data

[AliceMako]

At 4/4/16 10:31 PM, midimachine wrote:
you can click and drop .mid files, that way you're not throwing your workflow out the window using a rewire host (y)

Yeah thats the gist of it, besides it's not like i'm suddenly going to start going back and forth crafting all manner of melodic onslaughts when all i really ever need for weeks on end is single note ditties and just maybe the odd chord or two once in a blue moon. ( with more then enough editing options within reason to tweak shit afterwards if need be )

Like i said main benefit would be the convenience of instant musically correct midi, if i'm dying to sample some vsti or another i'll still prefer ableton but we were discussing perks and however much i find fl studio a total drag it does have some terrific features imo.

[officialkrex]

Woa there seems to be so much negativity here towards FL studio. I know so many pros who have made it pretty well with music that use fl. I've been using it for a few years now with experience with both cracked and purchased legitimate versions of it and I've never really had a bad crash or bug. It runs well and especially the new FL Studio 12 is very sleek. I enjoy using it.

At the end of the day though, its whatever program allows the individual to create. Everyones workflow is different and different people will excel with different programs. Its not about how many 'pros' use a certain program. Its about what program works for you.

[UserSigon]

one word: lul

[Veikyul]

I myself use FL studio, and I love it!

I think I can produce pretty decent stuff with it, so I dunno.

Also, a lot of big people like Deadmau5 and Savant use it.

Xtrullor and Lockyn too, who I love. If only they were more well-known!

[SuperGoodSound]

I've been on the FL bus for a long long time but honestly the glory days are well behind us.

Usability peaked back in version 9. After they eliminated blocks, the program just became harder and harder to use efficiently. Multi-core performance is complete shit now, running bridged plugins is a crapshoot, gui is fancier but functionally more frustrating to actually utilize. I have a i7-6700k at work and honestly I can really only load about as many plugins on v12 as I could on my Q6600 running v9. Blows my mind how that could even be a comparison.

Reaper is great for a lot of stuff but the piano roll is fucking awful so it's not an option for production (for me).

I had this age old idea of actually coding my own DAW which is now my next project largely due to how much awful software has made me hate writing music. Flat design has really fucked up the UI/UX world in general. I haven't used a piece of legitimately impressive software for about 10 years now. All of it is pretty well garbage these days.

[LaserVision]

Yeah.... and then Im the only one who uses GB :(
I have actually considered switching to FL when I have the resources. But I get so many mixed opinions so IDK really xd

[AliceMako]

At 4/7/16 09:47 AM, LaserVision wrote: Yeah.... and then Im the only one who uses GB :(
I have actually considered switching to FL when I have the resources. But I get so many mixed opinions so IDK really xd

Well, at the expense of saying something that's been said a bajillion times before, every single daw has something particular going for it and it's incredibly common for people to end up using mutliple ones as suits their needs or preferences. Pretty sure that old list of deadmaus' gear is a fairly typical example of this.

There really is no right or wrong way to go about what tools you enjoy using so it's not like you have to toss out garageband if and when you get FL, sure you might want to on account of how limited it is compared to FL but it's not a rule set in stone or anything.