Am I The ONLY Person Who Finds FL Studio EXCEEDINGLY HARD To Understand And Use?

[Carpenter]

I've had FL Studio for quite some time, as there is a lot that I've always liked about it. However, I've always abandoned it because I find it very unintuitive, VERY different from every other DAW and therefore, exceedingly difficult to wrap my head around. I can use all the other well known DAWS with ease, but I can't seem to understand the FL Studio paradigm. Perhaps it's my Aspergers, but I can't for the life of me understand why FL is always touted as "the easiest" to use DAW. I personally think that award would have to go to Studio One, my main DAW. Anyway, I'd like to also use FL Studio, but my frustration levels and temper with it are getting very high again. Can someone please answer a few questions?

1. How do I just arm a midi/virtual instrument track for recording and just record or draw in the piano roll? The tracks don't tell me anything about them? They're just numbered?

2. Do I have to use this "step sequencer" thing to work with any MIDI in FL Studio? I don't program my own beats and don't think of my midi data in this "pattern" sense that FL Studio seems to stress? Can I just draw a blank field on a midi track and either play or sequence in the piano roll, simply and fast, like every other DAW?

3. Why does FL either paste copies of or delete midi clips on the timeline/arrangement page when I click left or right mouse buttons? This is HIGHLY annoying, no?

4. How come when I go to the mixer, the vst instruments I have don't show up in the mixer? I managed (unfortunately having to use this step sequencer thing) to finally get some normal midi sequence clips on my timeline. They were playing back and everything, but they were not shown in the mixer? In fact, the mixer doesn't seem to even handle audio and midi in the arrangement? All of the mixer channels are labeled either as insert or send? WTF? What's that all about? Shouldn't tracks with audio or midi data on them appear on their respective mixer channel, just automatically?

5. Why do windows that one needs to work with in FL simply disappear constantly, forcing one to go back to the commands bar up top and re open the piano roll or step sequencer all over again? Do people like this? Is this constant sub-menu mousing around simply a requirement of working in FL, or is there a better way to use the program in this sense?

I really like a lot of FL's FX and sound generators, but I'm about to give up on it again. Is there anyone who can help me understand the seemingly strange paradigm of this DAW?

Thanks!

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[luafc11]

Re 4, you have to click on the instrument in the Pattern list -the channel settings box pops up.

Click the downwards arrow that appears top left and click "assign free mixer track" - it will then show the mixer track number allocated in the box to the right above the letters "FX".

[luafc11]

Re 2 - I usually draw in a blank pattern (say 16 bars - pattern 1), put the thing in song mode and then arm for recording automation and score and off I go. Midi recorded. The only annoyance for me is when I forget to extend the pattern and the bloody thing loops over 1 bar!!

[kmonkey]

It worked for me(fl studio). I recall i had same feeling about Ableton Live. I couldn't get that little squares thing. But today i don't have any problems with it either. If it ever became possible i'l lsold my whole IL account with fl studio and various goodies in it.

It's a choice of personal preference.

Try it once more maybe..

[BERFAB]

I've never been able to do anything more than rudimentary with it. I find Cubase (of all things) to be much more intuitive. Go figure.

-B

[experimental.crow]

you say you've had FLS for ' quite some time ' ...
a read through of your list of questions leads me to the conclusion that
you have been avoiding the help file for ' quite some time ' as well ...

i am ceaselessly astounded by the number of people who will not read a help file / manual ,
but are eager to encourage others to write out the answers to their questions , which they will then ,
one assumes , read ...

since you can use all the other well known DAWs ' with ease ' , you should do so ...
and if you really like a lot of the FLS effects and sound generators , well then , just use the
FLS vsti .dll in your other well known DAWs , and have the best of all possible worlds ...

[DHR53]

Definitely a situation where if you come from a linear style sequencer like most of the big DAWs you would be highly confused. If you started with FL I'm sure you would have gotten used to it and or adapted to the workflow. I've owned it for years, and used it on my PC but I never understood much of the design of the program other than it was originally a beatbox type of thing which the developer has steadily expanded the capabilities by adding other modules. It is a pretty elegant interface and has a great piano roll, but it's underpinnings ultimately are holding it back from being much more accepted by a wider audience. And lifetime upgrades is pretty amazing, as I still get updates and notices... and it's been like 10 years? Wow!

[Dean Aka Nekro]

FWIW FL Studio the times I have demoed it, It was totally alien to me and I could not work it out at all. So yeah it made no sense to me personally and is definately not for me. Obviously that is me and not anything to do with FL Studio. You get alot for your money with it and FL Studio works for many

[koalaboy]

I really like FL, and it's one of the most capable I own (and I own most).

However, I rarely use it because it differs so much from standard Windows behaviour - the right-click especially, and so I always end up doing the wrong thing (I'm always right-clicking clips to get properties, and then finding I'm un-painting them, etc.).

Yeah, stupid reasons, and if it was the only thing I used, it would be fine, but for me it makes it a non-starter in general.

A real shame - and I have the greatest respect for Gol, so I'm not making demands it change - as I'd like to use it much more.

There's no way I'd remove it from my hard disk though

[gassle]

For me FLstudio was unique and pretty straighforward until version 6 or so. I produced complete albums with it. It was all about patterns and playlist blocks. Then when it went after a direction to mimic standart host analogy with the new playlist concept and stuff it got less intuitive for me and eventually I ended up losing the connection with it.

[osiris]

Yes.

[Arglebargle]

I have demoed FL Studio many times, and it has never clicked with me. It seems very cumbersome. It's interesting how different peoples' minds work differently.

[rifftrax]

FL Studio to me is the most intuitive system out there.

The mixer is like any other mixer, of course it only handles audio data as either insert or send tracks. Midi routing is on a per instrument basis or you can just arrange audio or midi tracks directly in the pattern/timeline view.

I've used Cubase, Nuendo, Sonar, Tracktion, Soundtrack Pro 2, DP, Reason, Reaper, Pro Tools and others and I honestly hated all of them except for Tracktion, Reaper and Reason. FL Studio just kinda "worked" for what I wanted to accomplish and made it insanely quick.

I know of no other system where I can sequence groups of notes as patterns and lay them out with such power in a timeline view as I can in FL Studio. Piano roll and note handling is second to none. Reaper handles automation and raw audio editing much better but that is all I really rely on Reaper for. I can lay out a full 3 minute track of moderate complexity from scratch in like 3 hours for the most part inside FL.

[rifftrax]

1. How do I just arm a midi/virtual instrument track for recording and just record or draw in the piano roll? The tracks don't tell me anything about them? They're just numbered?

Right click on the track, select "Piano Roll". The piano roll pops up. You sequence right there. Or, just click on the instrument you want to record to and arm recording and hit play and then start recording.

2. Do I have to use this "step sequencer" thing to work with any MIDI in FL Studio? I don't program my own beats and don't think of my midi data in this "pattern" sense that FL Studio seems to stress? Can I just draw a blank field on a midi track and either play or sequence in the piano roll, simply and fast, like every other DAW?

Yes, you do. You do have to think of things as patterns. However, when you get the hang of manipulating data like that, it's really quite powerful and much quicker than normal non-linear editing where you have to manually cut/paste certain areas that you would like to re-use and then have to carefully transplant the data using whatever paste method is permitted. Patterns allow you to essentially "paint" grouped data anywhere you want. It's a very quick way to setup a skeletal song structure. Everything you lay out is a numbered pattern. Easiest way I've found to keep track of them is with the legacy pattern view enabled and then just have all the patterns color-coded and named so that way you know what kind of data each pattern contains.

As you build a song you can quickly visualize what kind of data each part of the song contains by which little blocks are enabled in that area. A single pattern may contain only an individual instrument playing or maybe it has all the note data for every instrument in that single pattern. Whatever floats your boat. It's very open-ended.

3. Why does FL either paste copies of or delete midi clips on the timeline/arrangement page when I click left or right mouse buttons? This is HIGHLY annoying, no?

Again, this is the whole paradigm of pattern based sequencing. You build a pattern - then decide where your pattern goes in the timeline. It's like you're building little song component blocks and then building your song from those. It is a totally different approach to creating a song.

Here's a example of where this is so handy.

Let's say I sequence a single drum beat with like Fruity Slicer. I play/sequence/type-in all my notes corresponding to the beat I want in Pattern 1, it is a single measure of note data. I want this drum beat to play out the entire song except some breaks where I drop the 3rd count of that measure and then on the 4th count it is 16th note snare hits. I duplicate Pattern 1 to Pattern 2 (Shift + Ctrl + C), open the piano roll for the new pattern, remove the note data for count three and then click in all snare hits for count 4. Then I can go back to the legacy blocks/timeline view, select the paint brush tool and paint in all Pattern 1 to run the entire time. Then, the measures I want the alternate snare hit ending pattern to run (Pattern 2), I click off Pattern 1 and click Pattern 2 in that measure instead.

And you have a very quick complete drum track for your song. Tada. Doing that all with copy + paste would have been incredibly tedious.

Now, of course what this also means is that the piano roll view gives you a "relative" measure count. It only shows how many effective measures are in that pattern. Unless your pattern runs the entire length of the song, the piano roll might show "measure 4" is actually playing/active while your song timeline shows you are on "measure 62" in the song. That's because if you paste that pattern to start on "measure 58" in the actual full song timeline, then 4 measures into that particular pattern will correspond to 4 measures later in your song. A pattern can be 1 measure long or it can be 300 measures long. Depends on how you want to structure your patterns or what works best for you.

4. How come when I go to the mixer, the vst instruments I have don't show up in the mixer? I managed (unfortunately having to use this step sequencer thing) to finally get some normal midi sequence clips on my timeline. They were playing back and everything, but they were not shown in the mixer? In fact, the mixer doesn't seem to even handle audio and midi in the arrangement? All of the mixer channels are labeled either as insert or send? WTF? What's that all about? Shouldn't tracks with audio or midi data on them appear on their respective mixer channel, just automatically?

The mixer only handles audio data and fx.

You have to "route" your instrument or audio track to a mixer channel. This is similar to how things work in the real world. This also allows a lot of instruments to share the same mixer channel in terms of fx processing without having to specifically setup some kind of sub-group or buss for it to all go to. For instance, if I have Kontakt, FM8 and Surge as 3 individual instruments... I can just click on each of those instruments and assign them to mixer track "2" and then they will all then send all their audio data to track "2" and then the fx I apply to track "2" affects all that stuff at the same time.

5. Why do windows that one needs to work with in FL simply disappear constantly, forcing one to go back to the commands bar up top and re open the piano roll or step sequencer all over again? Do people like this? Is this constant sub-menu mousing around simply a requirement of working in FL, or is there a better way to use the program in this sense?

You can right click on any window and select "detached" so it is always on top. I use a dual-monitor span for serious sequencing and I only work with one instrument at a time so I think the way FL Studio is setup to only display minimal interfaces at a single time is very efficient.

I really like a lot of FL's FX and sound generators, but I'm about to give up on it again. Is there anyone who can help me understand the seemingly strange paradigm of this DAW?

Let me know if you have more questions.