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

[jancivil]

There are any number of things I read a question about here where I come away with a notion of things it does so differently, and in such a circuitous way that I'm gobsmacked. The mixer doesn't reflect the tracks, but this is good? That's just a botch of design.

It seems incoherent in design, in that it was made really for people dependent on loops in order to do anything, and a very special way of operation; but then there is a perception of some demand from a more musical way of thinking, but not like they cared a lot but tossed a thing in here and there.

So evidently there are really normal approaches that require many workaround steps to achieve if at all. it's fine if it suits your M.O. but if you want to put it next to something more normative, made for a musician that thinks in music-oriented terms, or someone out of the recording studio paradigm, you're not going to persuade. On a basic, information level this is not a complicated situation. There are things it can't possibly be good for, don't try and sell that equation to me.

I had I guess a cut-down version of it which came bundled with something I bought in the beginning. There wasn't any 'intuitive' going on there. I did realize it pretty much revolved around having audio ready to stick on that timeline. Cubase was a bit intimidating but it made sense to me in a way that reading left to right as an English speaker does, if you get my drift.

[sebaden]

RTFM

[musikmachine]

if you so choose, you gotta ignore the step sequencers imo. I work in the piano roll but i bring audio in from maschine. With the mixer there's an option to route all the tracks in the pattern to individual mixer channels, there's also an option to rout multitimbral plugins if you click on the plugins cog icon so you can autoroute kontakt or a drum sampler in a few clicks which is actually quicker than studio one.

Stuff like sidechain etc is not exactly intuitive though but the FL Studio Guru videos are great for more advanced stuff.

[hibidy]

I'm certainly not saying you CAN'T do things in FL, I'm just saying it gives me a headache

[jancivil]

This is what you can do with FL

Ok, if you want to press on with this area...
I was aware FL has a piano roll.

I don't know how that is particularly impressive. It's music that that sits there on a grid, as a quantized sounds-totally-like-a-midi, made-in-a-DAW thing. This is well illustrated by the flat tempo track.

And I would have to argue that this type of thing follows the limitations of the program - it seems to me like this is music made to conform to a flat tempo, which doesn't happen in reality - rather than the program being designed to meet more musical needs.
If you take any living, breathing, let's go with orchestral music, in the real world and compare it with the grid, here is an eye-opener.

here's the first few bars of Debussy, 'Rondes de Printemps'. Montreal - Charles Dutoit. I called it 3/8 & made the barlines conform to the music. There are 3 places with a ritenuto at the end, I don't have the score but 50, 49 is indicative...
I'll enclose a video with audio so you can judge. Except for that, and I didn't notice it really as I selected this as something with a steady pulse, it's more or less a steady beat, not terrifically rubato. 56, 62 to 59, seems like a lot of variance but listen to it. If I did that with a Pretender's song, such as the tutorial when this was a new feature, the same kind of thing appears, several BPMs inside a bar for a normal rock beat. This is how people are.



that's just the deviations at the barline. Inside the bar there is more. Music does not need to conform to a machine's clock. When it does, well that video you shared is illustrative.




That is what I mean by a program meeting more, well, musicianly needs. If we want to get into what FL is really good for, this isn't it.

[stonestreet]

Hey Jancivil,

Just because there is a grid does not mean that you have to use it. You can use these daws as glorified tape recorders. What stops anybody from recording straight into the audio editor without any regard for the bpm or the grid.

I am not sure whether my memory serves me well, I think that when I first got Fruity Loops 3 it was similar to Reason in the sense that you could automate anything whilst recording. I have not done so but I think that you could automate the bpm during recording in song mode.

Have fun

Mark

This is what you can do with FL

Ok, if you want to press on with this area...
I was aware FL has a piano roll.

I don't know how that is particularly impressive. It's music that that sits there on a grid, as a quantized sounds-totally-like-a-midi, made-in-a-DAW thing. This is well illustrated by the flat tempo track.

And I would have to argue that this type of thing follows the limitations of the program - it seems to me like this is music made to conform to a flat tempo, which doesn't happen in reality - rather than the program being designed to meet more musical needs.
If you take any living, breathing, let's go with orchestral music, in the real world and compare it with the grid, here is an eye-opener.

here's the first few bars of Debussy, 'Rondes de Printemps'. Montreal - Charles Dutoit. I called it 3/8 & made the barlines conform to the music. There are 3 places with a ritenuto at the end, I don't have the score but 50, 49 is indicative...
I'll enclose a video with audio so you can judge. Except for that, and I didn't notice it really as I selected this as something with a steady pulse, it's more or less a steady beat, not terrifically rubato. 56, 62 to 59, seems like a lot of variance but listen to it. If I did that with a Pretender's song, such as the tutorial when this was a new feature, the same kind of thing appears, several BPMs inside a bar for a normal rock beat. This is how people are.



that's just the deviations at the barline. Inside the bar there is more. Music does not need to conform to a machine's clock. When it does, well that video you shared is illustrative.




That is what I mean by a program meeting more, well, musicianly needs. If we want to get into what FL is really good for, this isn't it.

[SoundGoddess]

Regarding the original topic I think that many testimonials here and elsewhere are of relative worth since they often come from folks who have been using a program for too long to be able to tell how difficult it is, specially for someone who is just starting out and is learning the rudiments of music.

Yes I have to say that FL *is* difficult when you're just starting out...but I think it's very much worth learning...frankly it makes more sense to me than Ableton does.

Maybe it's just "marketing" but I feel like FL lives up to the "studio producer" name, and Ableton lives up to the "live" name...I don't want to do live stuff, so I don't care about Ableton for now, maybe I will buy it if I do get into "live" stuff...but for my desire make music on "studio producer" level, FL shines, and when I first bought FL over a decade ago, Sony's acid pro was much more featured, but now FL makes acid pro look like a kid's toy.

[SoundGoddess]

This is what you can do with FL

I don't know how that is particularly impressive. It's music that that sits there on a grid, as a quantized sounds-totally-like-a-midi, made-in-a-DAW thing. This is well illustrated by the flat tempo track.

And I would have to argue that this type of thing follows the limitations of the program - it seems to me like this is music made to conform to a flat tempo, which doesn't happen in reality - rather than the program being designed to meet more musical needs.

No, it is not a limitation of the program. You can automate everything, including tempo. You don't have to quantize. You link up your midi controller and hit record and then while it's playing back you can use the knobs of your midi controller to make stuff have a much more "human" touch.

Take a look at this:

[aciddose]

In my opinion FL really isn't that bad. Its piano roll has some very nice features and it all comes together quite nice.

Like many other hosts it is the small but significant little quirks that really bother me.

Biggest peeve: It doesn't display levels in db, instead we're either given a percentage or a number from 0 to 255 or 0 o 127, and these are different depending where they are! The point of using a scale like db is to make it clear exactly what the level is. I don't care if the control has some specific fine-tuned curve that matches "someone's" in my opinion weird preferences, but I at least want to know exactly what levels I'm getting! Ideally I'd also like to be able to type in an exact number like "-3" but that is less important.

The VST wrapper is often unstable and does quite a lot of weird things. This isn't limited just to FL, a lot of hosts have hot-keys which "steal" focus even if the plugin window is currently focused. In FL with the VST wrapper for example, a middle mouse click clears focus from the plugin window for wheel events, who knows why.

The over-all layout just has "too much shit" packed in everywhere and it is a pain to remove the stuff I wouldn't actually ever want or need. I did experiment in the past with a couple versions but it turned out that removing those elements, while possible, created error messages that popped up when starting up and other stuff...

Now if only they would add an option to activate clipping LEDs in reaper only with >0db levels rather than >=0db

[SoundGoddess]

Biggest peeve: It doesn't display levels in db, instead we're either given a percentage or a number from 0 to 255 or 0 o 127, and these are different depending where they are! The point of using a scale like db is to make it clear exactly what the level is. I don't care if the control has some specific fine-tuned curve that matches "someone's" in my opinion weird preferences, but I at least want to know exactly what levels I'm getting! Ideally I'd also like to be able to type in an exact number like "-3" but that is less important.

Sorry, but this is completely incorrect. Maybe you were using an older version that didn't do this, but FL 11 absolutely displays dB.

The VST wrapper is often unstable and does quite a lot of weird things. This isn't limited just to FL, a lot of hosts have hot-keys which "steal" focus even if the plugin window is currently focused. In FL with the VST wrapper for example, a middle mouse click clears focus from the plugin window for wheel events, who knows why.

The wrapper has a "don't allow keyboard focus" option. Also make sure "auto close device" is unchecked on audio settings page.

The over-all layout just has "too much shit" packed in everywhere and it is a pain to remove the stuff I wouldn't actually ever want or need. I did experiment in the past with a couple versions but it turned out that removing those elements, while possible, created error messages that popped up when starting up and other stuff...

I agree that it's slightly bloated initially but it's easy to clean up. You just go to the "more" menu and turn off all plugins you're not using. As for the plugin picker, I just nuked the directory and manually added the things I actually use on a daily basis.

There are no error messages if you're not going through and deleting system files...personally I keep everything installed, I just hide the stuff I don't use, because that maximizes compatibility when I open up other people's project files that do use those things.

Also, F12 closes everything that's open.

Anyway the stuff you complain about would have been easy to resolve with a post or two to their "tech support" forum, LOL.

[The_Hidden_Goose]

It's probably not the best thing for composing classical music with timesig changes halfway through the track and such. Thankfully I don't need a daw that does that (aslthough it would be nice to have the opiotn to do it easily).

It's not the best thing for recording audio either, IMO.

However, for everything else, I find it an absolute piece of p!ss to use. Every time I try to get to grips with something else, I last about 2 weeks, and then end up reverting back to FLStudio - usually because to do simple things it takes me far longer with lots more faffing about on anything else that I've used. Perhaps it's because I've grown up with it since fairly early versions and stuck with it, but it seems perfectly intuitive to me now.

Also my early computers couldn't really run anything else, except an early beta of Audiomulch that was great fun but I couldn't afford to buy it when the beta ran out. The way I work has changed significantly by now, so even that seems a bit clunky and foreign to me now - despite it now having all the features I wished it would have back then!

I've tried Reaper, which has it's many champions round here - couldn't get on with it - just a blank mind looking at a blank canvas with no inspiration.

I've tried Studio 1 with slightly better results, but not significant enough for me to pick it up.

I've tried Cubase many years ago (before SX), but couldn't deal with the setup time taking so long that inspiration has bought a ticket to Ibiza and stayed there for the summer, come back with a tan and I'm still setting the damn project up. Hated it.

Haven't tried any later incarnations of Cakewalk, but the no native VST support thing makes me think that would just be trouble from the get-go, somehow.

FLStudio is for me!

[The_Hidden_Goose]

Oh...quite liked Ableton - bit out of my price range, and didn't really offer me much that I couldn't do easily in FLS. Maybe if I spent a lot of time with it, that would be the one to change my mind, or perhaps Bitwig since it seems to work in similar ways. I just can't see me ditching FLS any time soon though!

[aciddose]

Anyway the stuff you complain about would have been easy to resolve with a post or two to their "tech support" forum, LOL.

I've mentioned all these issues and more for years.

I was told "decibels are stupid" by the developers!

Does 11 actually show db?

I was told "vst sdk 2.4 has a minimum rate for idle(), but you shouldn't use idle() for anything" regarding the fact that editor idle() isn't called frequently enough for animation.

I'm grabbing the fls11 demo again to test this comment you have about "keyboard focus".

1) When you click the middle mouse button fl no longer forwards WM_MOUSEWHEEL messages to the child window. Works fine in other hosts. I have no idea what they're doing or why but no other hosts seem to do this. All I expect is that my window will receive messages it's supposed to due to dispatchmessage being called by the host, is that too much to ask?

(Has absolutely nothing to do with keyboard focus. In fact with keyboard focus disabled absolutely no wheel messages are sent at all, ever. In fact if anything what we want is for fl to NOT STEAL the keyboard focus when clicking the middle mouse button inside the plugin's window. Again, other hosts handle this just fine, no problems. So don't try to bullshit your way out of it by claiming it's inherent to the system or something. Sure, maybe inherent to fl's backward implementation.)

2) Idle() is not called frequently enough. Seems to be called every 50ms or so. Now sure, WM_TIMER can be used, but at the same time the host is calling PeekMessage for all windows with WM_TIMER so it can dispatch those and result in the callbacks working, why isn't it also calling the plugin's idle?

(I've been through this discussion with the authors of fl in the past. They don't seem to understand that the very same code which dispatches the WM_TIMER messages connects via a call-stack directly up to the editor in the same thread, exactly as if it had called idle. The difference being only that there are many windows system calls in between with WM_TIMER.)

(Side-note, in previous fl versions the idle was called from multiple threads at the same time. Not sure if it still does that, but wow.)

3) Send levels are represented as 0% to 125% which is just one of many cases. I suppose we can assume the same % applies for the mixer levels as send, or can we? Just what is the point of showing a percentage at all? What is it a percentage of? Apparently 125% produces 1.9, where does this number come from?

These are just some of numerous horrible things about fl studio.


(Actually, you can't just use WM_TIMER, fl studio calls that with the same ultra-low frequency as idle.)

[jancivil]

Just because there is a grid does not mean that you have to use it. You can use these daws as glorified tape recorders. What stops anybody from recording straight into the audio editor without any regard for the bpm or the grid.

I am not sure whether my memory serves me well, I think that when I first got Fruity Loops 3 it was similar to Reason in the sense that you could automate anything whilst recording. I have not done so but I think that you could automate the bpm during recording in song mode.

I'm talking about making the timeline useful per se. Rather than what was done in the other video, which doesn't sound like live music, in all likelihood following the fact it was done via midi conforming to a flat tempo for a long time. There is a better M.O. for orchestral music, that is a serious limitation imposed by a design which isn't up to the job really. You're not really dealing with what I wrote, but reacting to it. There is something to learn from it, which is why I went to the trouble.

In fact, what I do typically is record <without any regard for the bpm or the grid>, but should there come a point where I need a useful bars and beats, for scoring other parts, I have those which conform to what I recorded via this tool.

[jancivil]

This is what you can do with FL

I don't know how that is particularly impressive. It's music that that sits there on a grid, as a quantized sounds-totally-like-a-midi, made-in-a-DAW thing. This is well illustrated by the flat tempo track.

And I would have to argue that this type of thing follows the limitations of the program - it seems to me like this is music made to conform to a flat tempo, which doesn't happen in reality - rather than the program being designed to meet more musical needs.

No, it is not a limitation of the program. You can automate everything, including tempo.

Can you make the timeline warp to your decision, or not? I did not assert it does not have a tempo track. I'm pretty sure your 'automate tempo' means changing the tempo from a fixed tempo, rather. And that that was really a guess and limited by convenience. The warp timeline means you do not have to guess and set a tempo, it means by dragging the cursor to a musically meaningful spot, the program knows exactly the tempo in relation to the other tempi. The value of it is, one can work freely and force the machine to understand what you've done, after the fact. I reckon that most vigorous advocates of this program have little clue what I'm even saying.*

In fact there are workarounds just to get a tempo number in FL, as it gives percentages off of a ramp for starters. It's a very clunky design.

Whatever anyone likes to use for whatever advantage, it's no skin off of me, *but someone figured to go 'here's what FL can do:' and it's a midi from piano roll off a flat tempo. It's nothing special for that kind of work, it illustrates my point about why people use other things.