Who uses FL studio?

PrideInBattle

I just got it and I'm completley lost,

I have no past experience DJ'ing, Producing or any music software, All I have is a love for music.

Any tutorials for a beginner? tips, help?

Anima

Youtube has a lot of links. There is a an FLstudio bible, which is basically the manual. I've seen it on a few sites before. If you wanted to learn it in depth, that would be the best way. If you know a little bit about how DAWs work, you'd be able to figure out the rest with enough time and reading the various help files that come with it.

thecraichead

There are a load of great video tutorials on the official website. I'd highly recommend watching all starting with the basics.

There is a lot to FL Studio, but if you can master it it will be extremely rewarding

rayzercork

search on youtube for the users nfxbeats, Loopyfruits7 and acepincter.. loads of useful videos about FL on those 3 channels

flyswatter

Hi PrideInBattle, Check these youtube channels for good tutorials.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ste1438 - This guy does a FL Studio for absolute beginners series which should have you up and running. Has other useful tutorials too.

http://www.youtube.com/user/KevWillow7 - This guy, Kev Willow has a lot of decent tutorials and has a series of videos detailing how to create a hardstyle song from the beginning to the end.

http://www.youtube.com/user/nfxbeats - As mentioned before in the thread, NFX has some excellent videos.

legomonster

Fruity is one of my oldest and dearest friends. It can though as I remember be a bit of a mindrape to use at first glance. Where to start partly depends on what you want to do with it.

Alot of the difficulties with beginning something like music production I think is the initial horror of realising that the sounds that are made by the computer are in actual fact made by the people using the computer. Electronic music is really not constrained in ways that more traditional styles are and because of this the realm of possiblities can be blinding. With this in mind, my advice would be to introduce some constraints yourself, which will help you find medication in the asylum you have just committed yourself. To be specific:

Learn what the basic views are for: They are step sequencer, piano roll, arrangement, and mixer. Google can help you here so I wont elaborate further.

Limit your vst's! It is easy to get lost in the the world of using every single instument you find on KVR or wherever else. Instead I would recommend finding a good quality, but simple subtractive synth to use as your "Johnny on the spot" initially. Since you have the fruit, you may already have poizone, which is a good candidate. You may also have Sytrus, which is probably one of the best synths I have used but is about as complex as fruity itself. KVRaudio.com has nice forums and

Try to make you own sounds, presets can be good but you dont learn a lot from using them, I generally use them as starting points. You will learn much more from creating your own, even if they sound horrible at first.

A bit of music theory knowledge never hurt anyone. Ask google about this, he's very helpful... but I have always found this site good (and it's sooooo retro) http://chordmaps.com/

The simplicity thing goes for samples too, It's really easy to aquire a terabyte of samples these days. You will never be able to find the point in that haystack though. I would say look for a small selection of clean (not fx'd) drum samples and add as you need to. www.freesound.org is a great resource.

Get into the piano roll asap, it is the best in the business. The step sequencer is ok for quickly putting down a drum groove, but is really just there to hook you into the program.

EQ and compression can make any sound good, if you know how to use them, if not they will have the opposite effect. Fruity comes with a super duper EQ plugin "parametric eq 2", the interface alone will teach you a lot. Good tutorial on eq:
http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.php?threadid=399049, for compression I would recommend not using it until you understand (from experience rather than because you read it on a forum/tutorial) why you need it, which will be soon enough.

Ok that turned into a bit of a rant for one of my first posts here. Hope it helps though, I think that what I was trying to get across was start simple on all fronts. One last thing is I think a general piece of good advice is to have ideas/set goals before you start working you will get more done.

Hope this was helpful! Have fun.

flyswatter

Yeah Fruity's Parametric EQ 2 is something I really want to learn how to use. I was looking at FL9's demo song flp and the guy was using EQ on nearly every mixer channel so it must be really important.

paulelectronica

i use it myself but only use it to create rough drum loops before exporting them into cubase .

AdamTheDub

yeah it depends on what genre you're making. i make progressive house and i find it fantastic to use. i plan on moving to live soon but for now its fantastic the Fruity Parametric EQ2 is essential for any genre. just play around with it, its what i did

Pingu-D

Deadmau5 uses it quite a bit apparently

Neurojazz

Pingu-D wrote: »

Deadmau5 uses it quite a bit apparently

No, he doesn't - http://www.workingdj.com/2009/06/10/the-dj-equipment-of-deadmau5/

seannash

AdamTheDub wrote: »

the Fruity Parametric EQ2 is essential for any genre.

why so essential?

Dragan

seannash wrote: »

why so essential?

Because it's a very decent little EQ that comes in the pack...and you should be EQing your sounds regardless of genre.

I reckon.:)

flyswatter

Neurojazz wrote: »

No, he doesn't - http://www.workingdj.com/2009/06/10/the-dj-equipment-of-deadmau5/

Yes he uses those for his DJ setup but I believe FL Studio has always been part of his producing setup. Says here:

http://flstudio.image-line.com/documents/deadmau5.html

jtsuited

flyswatter wrote: »

Yes he uses those for his DJ setup but I believe FL Studio has always been part of his producing setup. Says here:

http://flstudio.image-line.com/documents/deadmau5.html

he worked for image line. doubt he actually uses FL at all.

Pingu-D

Neurojazz wrote: »

No, he doesn't - http://www.workingdj.com/2009/06/10/the-dj-equipment-of-deadmau5/

Thats a link to info about his Dj set up! he recently gave an interview to future music magazine in regards to his production techniques where he says he uses Fl studios because he enjoys how easy and quick it is to draw melodies into the piano tool but he doesn use it extensively....Deadmau5 is a tech head so he uses a lot of different software and Plug-ins in his production sure he even tests stuff for companies like fx expansion!

flyswatter

jtsuited wrote: »

he worked for image line. doubt he actually uses FL at all.

Why do you doubt that? In this video he says his production is a 'software orgy'. He says he uses Reason ,Cubase, Ableton and FL Studio.

Neurojazz

flyswatter wrote: »

Why do you doubt that? In this video he says his production is a 'software orgy'. He says he uses Reason ,Cubase, Ableton and FL Studio.

Have you tried moving projects from each of those DAWs and back again?

flyswatter

Neurojazz wrote: »

Have you tried moving projects from each of those DAWs and back again?

No, but surely rendering makes it possible?

Neurojazz

flyswatter wrote: »

No, but surely rendering makes it possible?

Yep, rendering also makes for large file sizes. FL has some inherent problems meaning that's it's the least flexible of most the DAWs out there - it is very gimmicky unfortunately and has other problems for laptop users when using larger VSTs (a resolution problem)

It's purely a numbers thing... more people buy other DAW and more money gets invested, FL being one of the smaller brothers that is quite light and friendly, but that's about it... for working between projects on other daws it's a bit of a mare - the midi export seems to be fraught with bugs (and midi has been a standard for many years)

I'm still yet to try logic and see what strength/weaknesses that has, but people seem to rate it without being evangelical about it (a good sign usually), to be able to compare all these DAWs... My only experience with logic was a long time ago and it wasn't great - but i expect that has changed a lot.

The midi problem may have been with the version the person was using - but other DAW couldn't read either format FL exported in. And the graphic bug with large VST was pretty much a rookie coding error on FLs part where if the skin of a vst extended beyond the physical resolution of the monitor you couldn't scroll down (this may have been fixed since).

Also another niggle with FL was the fact they had to put fancy moving graphics in there - so it looks really *cool*, but just eats cpu at the end of the day - really what is the point of that? (marketing niche)

Anima

What moving graphics?

Neurojazz

Anima wrote: »

What moving graphics?

The version i saw had some weird animated sections in it - like picturesque titles for synths/plugins that made it look fancy... can't remember exactly where they were or what version the person was using - it was an inbuilt thing into FL.

It was almost like an ad banner hopefully something that you'd be able to disable to optimize cpu.

paulelectronica

i use FL studio myself , but i just use it to create drum loops and then export each part as a wav file into cubase 4.5

legomonster

This is why we have rewire is it not?
Why move projects at all?

Neurojazz

Working with people on different platforms.

eoin5

Neurojazz wrote: »

The version i saw had some weird animated sections in it - like picturesque titles for synths/plugins that made it look fancy... can't remember exactly where they were or what version the person was using - it was an inbuilt thing into FL.

It was almost like an ad banner hopefully something that you'd be able to disable to optimize cpu.

The step sequencer is a bit ott but the interfaces I know are just bitmaps and anything animated was used for realtime parameter messin about, I havent used anything before version 3 and after 5 though.

Anima

The current version of FLstudio is 9 :pac:

I think a lot of the criticisms aren't really valid to be honest. The only flaw I can see with it (and it is a major one really) is that it doesn't have automatic delay compensation for plug-ins.

Outside of that, it is a great program for easily laying down an idea, having complex routings of signals/buses, great for automation. Its perfect for electronic music as far as I can see. Comes with loads of great plug-ins, Parametric2 for instance.

Neurojazz

Anima wrote: »

The current version of FLstudio is 9 :pac:

I think a lot of the criticisms aren't really valid to be honest.

I've seen FL setup in front of me and the user unable to see the bottom inch of his vst instrument... It's poorly coded - anyone who uses c++ would be able to point out the routine for a simple statement like 'if stuff oges off edge of screen, then give the user a scrollbar'

Also, I've sat here with most DAWs and look at these things as impartially as possible (from years of working in music shops) - unless you have all these DAW in front of you it is impossible to compare to what works well and what doesn't.

The issue with the larger vst is pathetic, and probably not the only problem in there.

As i've said before - logic is the only app i haven't really seen in the flesh yet (excluding pro-tools at the moment) - but ableton really is the winner for dance music once you get over preconceptions from early version of it and get the demo!

It's made with love, just like mommies cookies.

legomonster

Ableton is my main dude to be sure, but fruity and I go way back. He's got his quirks, but I would have to say he is a well put together piece of software, these days especially. Ableton has a great autosave, but would be useless without it. The fruit don't crash on my system, and it does some things the best. As to the vst Issue, that kind of thing is usually not the host's fault, and I have found that the fruity vst wrapper is more forgiving than most. Since I'm a programmer who has the misfortune of typing c++ half the day I would say this: It's not nice to have to program in c++ half the day. Some things have to be done in c/c++ though and vst is one of them. Eat fat balls steinberg.

Neurojazz

legomonster wrote: »

Ableton is my main dude to be sure, but fruity and I go way back. He's got his quirks, but I would have to say he is a well put together piece of software, these days especially. Ableton has a great autosave, but would be useless without it. The fruit don't crash on my system, and it does some things the best. As to the vst Issue, that kind of thing is usually not the host's fault, and I have found that the fruity vst wrapper is more forgiving than most. Since I'm a programmer who has the misfortune of typing c++ half the day I would say this: It's not nice to have to program in c++ half the day. Some things have to be done in c/c++ though and vst is one of them. Eat fat balls steinberg.

Wrong end of stick... it's not the vst that is in error - but the hosts handling of screen size when *any* vst panel goes beyond the edges of the physical monitor size. Ableton hasn't crashed on my system - so don't see an issue there.

I have cubase here also and is fine, haven't had crashes anytime i can remember that couldn't be ironed out due to end user stupidty

As a coder you'll probably know the call that the program should be making for clipped items on window redraw wouldn't be that hard to spot (and maybe send FL the code to fix it

gitman

legomonster wrote: »

This is why we have rewire is it not?
Why move projects at all?

thats all good in theory rewire is good when its set up but there tends to be conflicts sometimes. It can be cpu intensive also