FL Studio 12 Released!

[maruks]

but tweaking the # of steps per beat has more or less the same result, in the piano roll (not step sequencer) as playing with the snap, and he says that changing the snap isn't the same thing

there's a 3.5 in his post

i don't really know but he might also refer to this

in my own words

"that problem that steps per beat is an integer where in music theory 1 16/denominator isn't always an integer. no walz then in fl studio i guess except you double the beats per bar."

which i was not aware of until just now

[maruks]

sorry

i need to correct myself. wikipedia says, a walz has an even denominator. so i didn't really mean "walz", but anything with an odd denominator in the time signature. and there was nothing like that in the whole wikipedia article.

so, sorry for the confusion i might have brought up. i guess it's ok that steps per beat is an integer.

[maruks]

sorry

i need to correct myself. wikipedia says, a walz has an even denominator. so i didn't really mean "walz", but anything with an odd denominator in the time signature. and there was nothing like that in the whole wikipedia article.

so, sorry for the confusion i might have brought up. i guess it's ok that steps per beat is an integer.

now wikipedia gave me a slight grasp of what the musicians mean

facts:

fl_beats_per_bar = music_theory_numerator
fl_steps_per_beat = 16 / music_theory_denominator

conclusion:

usually 16 / music_theory_denominator is an integer.



but wikipedia says, there *are "irrational meters" "irrational bar lengths" with denominators that are not a power of two.
these are used when *two or more* time signatures are used (displayed) at the same time.

and then indeed:

16 / odd_number will result in a non-integer fl_steps_per_beat.

which means:

if fl studio were about to display time-devision-settings per pattern, then it might be forced to either change that "16" to something like 24 or 48, or provide a non-integer fl_steps_per_beat.

but as long as there is only one time-signature in a project, this wikipedia line should apply:

"a piece written entirely in 4/3, say, could be more legibly written out in 4/4"

[OutCider]

Off topic and last contribution here, but another no posts for years, this time four and a half, and then a nine in one day.
Do people really have accounts they don't ever use and then all of a sudden splurge? I don't get it. Looks suss to me.

Ip checking time?

[xNiMiNx]

There are forums i joined years ago at one version of software, very few posts. It might have only been one single post i registered to thank someone for posting a fix. Then for years never logged in. When a new version was coming out, i tried to log in and my account still existed. It was for software not relating to audio.

It happens. Do i know for sure its the same case for the one you point out here? Nope. Id also like to point out that no one publicly called for IP checks on the forums im speaking of in my situation.

[Andywanders]

Firstly I have to say I have a lot of respect for Image-Line. They make some really nice synths (Harmor, Poizone, Drummax etc), and the FL free updates for life thing is very cool. Kudos to IL.

However, after trying FL 12 I have to say that this update is a step backwards IMO, and many of the comments in this thread reflect that - VST management, time signatures etc.

In addition to this I'm really disappointed to see that the mixer sends haven't been improved. Adjusting a send amount on the receiving bus as opposed to adjusting it on the sending channel is just wrong IMO, and it's impossible to get a visual overview of how much is going into an effects bus from several channels.

And still no pre-fader routing. Tell me, who, in 2015, would buy a mixer that didn't have pre-fader sends? Sure, I know about Fruity Send, but that's a cumbersome work-around and not much help if you need to set up a monitor mix (even worse if you need to have several monitor mixes).

Overall, I see this update as being mostly cosmetic (the best looking FL so far - resizeable too), but lacking in any real functional improvements.

DISCLAIMER:

This is just my opinion and it's not meant to offend Gol or any FL Studio users so don't beat me up. As I said earlier, IL have my respect as s music software company, and that still stands.

[EvilDragon]

gol, that's not what I'm saying (but YES - all things considered, at any BPM, a beat in 4/4 lasts longer than a beat in 6/8, for example - which makes sense, since 8th notes are twice faster than quarter notes). First of all I don't know what you meant by "changing the snap". I know what snapping is, and usually it's a setting, like "snap to 1/4 note" or "snap to bar", or "snap to 1/16 note", whatever.

because the snap changes the grid. FL's denumerator isn't really one, it's there for the step sequencer.
The piano roll however has no specific subdivisions for bars, it's related to the timesig in default snap, but it's divided (visually too) by whatever you pick. So what's the difference?

Again, what do you mean by "snap changes the grid".

Here in Reaper (for example, but in many other DAWs) I can set the grid to something ELSE than what's defined by the time signature.

Example, I'm working in 4/4, but I can set the grid to snap to 1/16 triplets instead. Or, I'm working in 9/8, but I'm having it snap to grid at 1/4 dotted notes.

Snapping to grid should have no relation to time signatures used in the project, at all.


We can take it over to PM, if you want, gol. I'll gladly help you out if there's anything more you'd want to know about timesigs and how it could be made to work within FLS.

[maruks]

hi evildragon

hi gol

please forgive and ignore me, if i'm too much noise in this discussion.

but when you (evildragon) say, the snapping should not depend on the time signature (the time-division settings?), i think, why not make it depend *and not depend?

- the snap settings with the words "step" in it are the ones that are independant from "Project - Steps per beat"
- the snap settings with the words "beat" in it are the ones that are dependant from "Project - Steps per beat"

right?

so that distinction could later resolve to:

- independant on musical denominator
- dependant on musical denominator

only problem: my assumption some hours ago was not entirely right.

"fl_steps_per_beat = fl_16 / music_theory_denominator" is only right when you would always adjust the tempo.

like this: corrected_tempo = usual_tempo * 4 / fl_steps_per_beat

and since nobody would want to fiddle with the time-division settings and even a tempo correction to it anyway,
the final feature could be a drop down list (for now per project, later per pattern), which holds all usefull time-sigs,
and when you select a time-sig, it will do:

fl_beats_per_bar = music_theory_denumerator
fl_steps_per_beat = fl_16 / music_theory_denominator
corrected_tempo = usual_tempo * 4 / fl_steps_per_beat

(corrected_tempo just internally overrides the tempo, maybe a bit hard to do this per-pattern instead of per-project somewhen)


with minor flaws (see "irrational bar length" at wikipedia and therefore need for a higher fl_16 value or a non-integer fl_steps_per_beat) that would make some sense to me

if you think this is wayy too different from better approaches, please don't feel disturbed by my posts. sorry. i just thought, it might be nice this way

[sjm]

I'm not sure why you find time signatures so hard to understand gol. They're really simple.

you find what you wrote easy to understand?

it doesn't explain what is a "note", yet everything relies to it. Assuming a note isn't related to the tempo either, as a beat is - then what is a note, and where is the user interacting with that "note"?

Sorry, as this is music 101 (i.e. the basics of the basics), I assumed you knew what the different types of notes are.



The fact that this is beyond you makes it pretty clear why you're having trouble with time signatures in FL. Seriously, go to an introduction to music class and learn this stuff. If you haven't even understood the very very basics of musical notation and theory, there's no point in trying to understand time signatures. You need to start at the beginning - and really, this is the sort of stuff you should already know as a DAW programmer.

[murnau]

Where are the 32th, 64th and 128th notes???

[trimph1]

What happened to the odd and weird notes?

[basslinemaster]

I'm not sure why you find time signatures so hard to understand gol. They're really simple.

you find what you wrote easy to understand?

it doesn't explain what is a "note", yet everything relies to it. Assuming a note isn't related to the tempo either, as a beat is - then what is a note, and where is the user interacting with that "note"?

If things were simple, if musicians weren't masochists, there would be the # of beats per bar, period. Anything more to it, I don't get it.

I feel the same about chords - I find it amazing that people "learn their chords" without even thinking of what's behind them. Better understand simple rules behind something, that learning all of its results, IMHO.

Another example, sharp vs flat notes. Anything more masochistic than this? It's just there to make things more complicated.
And yes, I can understand the centuries of history behind this - but there's already other software dedicated to all this, anyway.


But maybe it's what made FL's success, it's easy to understand, while music theory isn't (and for wrong reasons).

Jesus, I find that quite scary to read... I am only just starting to learn the basics of reading music, and I understood everything sjm said, he/she explained it really clearly...
Looks like we will never have this functionality in FL Studio then.

[koalaboy]

A note is the waveform emitted between the note-on and note-off events. Everything else is just tradition and subjective choice.

Personally, I like regulated symmetry with well-defined lengths, but nobody is forced to the grid.

[sjm]

Another example, sharp vs flat notes. Anything more masochistic than this? It's just there to make things more complicated.

This is also misinformed nonsense. Try writing a the key signature on a staff (i.e. musical notation) for Eb using sharps. It's not possible. You can't have both a D and a D# notated in the key signature - how would you do that when you only have one line for D? That's why you need an Eb. You need one occurrence of each note named A-G, not 2 Ds and no Es. Again, this is basic stuff, and I appreciate that it's above you, but don't flaunt your ignorance as if it's gospel. There are good reasons for these things - you might not understand them, but those that do actually want to use them. Instead of remaining (proudly) ignorant, why not educate yourself about the basics of music? It'd make you so much better at your job - writing software for making music. If you don't understand the domain you're programming for, is it any surprise that you come up with stuff that makes people unhappy and is criticised? It's hard to cater to the needs of your users if you haven't understood their basic needs. In a lot of areas (related to music theory), FL is a classic example of the tree and swing images we all know and love. The finished result bears little relation to what the users actually want, because you never took the time to understand what it is people want.


The things you do really well - and there's a lot of them IMO - are related to workflow and making most common tasks easy to perform without a lot of steps. That's really great, and why I use FL. You need someone else on board to help you with the things you don't understand - and that are very important to your field - relating to the underlying theory behind a lot of what you're programming.

[memyselfandus]

Now that we have a discussion going with the possibility of adding this.. let's work together here and be nice to each other.

Let's help Gol out here. one of my favorite programmers ever. He made FL Studio. how badass is that? He makes badass software. let's help him out here.

@EvilDragon any ideas on how this can be done again? thanks a TON for helping with the conversation. you are always a huge help on the forums.