Can anyone help me with some FL Studio questions that will greatly improve my workflow?

[GirTheRobot]

As I've been recording more and more I'm running into little things that are throwing kinks in my workflow.

For instance, when I don't have my selected VST up, and I use my midi keyboard, it'll play back my last selected audio sample slowed down or sped up depending on which key I pick relative to middle C. Is there any way to just "lock" the vst to my midi so that this doesn't happen; i.e. no matter how buried my VST is in any windows it'll always play when I hit a key on my keyboard?

Secondly, the way I record audio leads to having chunks of nothing in the playlist. So let's say I have lead synth part that only comes in on the chorus, so I go ahead and record it for the chorus and it plops it down on track 1 (let's assume i have nothing else recorded), leaving the verses with empty track space in the playlist. Now if I go to record, say, a tambourine part for the verses, it'll automatically record it to track 1 where there was empty space. I'm used to just moving these around and shifting them—it's what I've always done—but I'm kind of tired of doing that now. It's gotten to the point where I realize there's probably some way to tell a recording to be tied to a specific playlist track no matter what, and I just didn't learn how. Is this possible?

Lastly, I know this is possible because I saw it in a video a while back I just never remembered how to do it, when I record a track to the playlist—let's say vocals—there is a way to have it automatically assigned to the mixer track to which you recorded it; i.e. I arm mixer track 5 (vocals) to record to the playlist, and it's got all these FX and aux sends and everything, and instead of having to go to the playlist and click the sample and assign it to the mixer track, it's already automatically there.

Any help with any of these questions would be greatly appreciated:) Thank you!

[acYm]

you're looking for "Receive Notes From" in the channel's menu, it's new since 12.3.

not too sure about the others, would like to know as well.

[sjm]

The whole recordings-go-to-random-spaces-in-the-playlist thing is a bit of a bummer. It's not the first time this has been mentioned, but you'd be much better off posting about it on the IL forum. A lot of things are slated for change in FL 13 based on the discussions on the forum.

At some level you are going to have to drag things around in the playlist because of the non-linear nature of the playlist. I'm sure this could be improved for the future.