FL Studio 8

madma

Hi

i have FL 8 and havent used it have it a good while but im going to get stuck into it so have a few questions.

1. how good is it? is it very basic/beginner? ill be looking to make progressive house/trance aswel as electro. they would be the 3 but will dabble in every genre eventually

2. should i get another programme or invest in something better, ableton etc?

3. havent produced anything yet but when im happy with any tunes am i able to get them onto soundcloud?

flyswatter

1. It is very good and gets better with each release. It's easy to use and this is why people think it's only for beginners. Workflow is easy to follow (Select instrument, draw notes or make beats in piano roll or step sequencer, draw data into playlist etc).

The plugins included are good to great (Sytrus is a powerful workhorse), especially if you have the signature/xxl edition. Drum samples included are weak though, just use your own samples.

The piano roll is pretty much the best in the business as far as I'm aware.


2. If the workflow doesn't get on with you get another sequencer but FL is very capable. Different DAW's suit different tastes. Just spend a bit of time to learn. I found it hard at first, everyone does for a while but it's grand when you spend a bit of time with it. I have Pro Tools 8 as well but that's cos PT is the best for recording audio.


3. Definitely. It supports mp3, wav, ogg and others in export so yes, you'll definitely be able to do that. I've done it before.


The genres you want to make are suited to FL well, perfect in fact. Wouldn't be my first choice for recording a rock band.

Hope that helped, any more questions, fire away!

madma

thanks for the reply,its helpfull, thats good to read you have positive things to say about it, what i need to do is look at tutorials and how to get going with it and learn everything about it which i will do. been putting it off but going to get stuck into it.

oh yeah, its the xxl version cheers

red dave

I've been using FL since v.3

I love it and it is very easy to get a basic idea down quickly. I've tried other DAW's like Cubase and Reason for only a very short time before going back to the fruity.

The saviour for me when I first started using fruity was one of my mates who knew it inside out lived around the corner from me and he would go through the whole process of producing tracks with me.

Now there's so many tutorials to find both on the Image-Line forums and Youtube to help get started.

If you're planning on playing gigs then you would want to get Ableton for that I think. I've never used Ableton but I know a good few lads that use that when playing so maybe look into that also.

mordeith

I've been using FL for while now as well and really like. (could never get my head around Reason ) The best thing I like about it how is how easy automation is and assigning functions to my MIDI keyboard.

Anima

I think its definitely improved in the last few releases and less of a toy. Basically when they changed name from Fruity Loops to Flstudio it started being more professional.

The current version 9.7beta has everything you could want. It finally has automatic delay compensation which is really the only disadvantage it had compared to other DAWs.

As someone else said, the automation is top notch and you can route anything anywhere. Its perfect for electronic music.

flyswatter

There's a good few people who are insecure about using FL, cos of some internet forum trolls who talk sh1t about it.

But fortunately the majority recognise it for what it is, a good professional sequencer.

Anima, they're actually on the 9.8 beta now, but I don't download the betas, prefer the stable versions. FL 10 should be out in the next few months it's rumoured.