Incrementally add drum sounds to loop?

[DwarfNebula]

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How would this be done in Cubase? ....

cycle record on a midi track would do the job.

[ahja]

....
How would this be done in Cubase? ....

cycle record on a midi track would do the job.

Yeh, just set your locators for your loop points, enable loop mode... and away you go. Simple as that.

[mub]

OK so now I have about a dozen basic tracks in FL Studio, but I would like to use Live for the MIDI-looping (is that the right terminology?).

How can I bring all my FL Studio material over into Live so I can add some real-time MIDI-looped patterns on top? Maybe someone will say I should go the other direction, but I would like to hear what I have now, and record some "MIDI loops" on top.


TIA again,
mub

[Cabinfever]

mub, i strongly recommend you take them into sonar. it's good for audio & midi together. then render out from there and then drop the results into ableton.

but also get yourself a copy of acidpro5 and test render the same files out in both acid and ableton. some people swear there's big differences. you be the judge.

with your song nearing completion in ableton (or acid) render out *by track*. you'll have a bunch of long wav files.

drop those long waves files onto separate tracks in sx.

in sx load up absynth, pro53, fm7 etc and experimnent with a few subtle little extra bits over the top. your song won't sound like a total loop construction that way.

finally, render that out as a single wav file.

take it into wavelab or soundforge to master.

i recommend you use the "waves" plugs to master. this is an important step and you don't want to skimp and ruin your track by using cheap plugins now.

but some of this may be a bit tricky depending on your sound card.

i assume you're using a soundblaster pro or maybe a sound chip integrated in your motherboard ? do let us know and we can advise further

[mub]

Cabinfever: Thanks, that I can tell is some really good info--much appreciated!

mub, i strongly recommend you take them into sonar. it's good for audio & midi together. then render out from there and then drop the results into ableton.

but also get yourself a copy of acidpro5 and test render the same files out in both acid and ableton. some people swear there's big differences. you be the judge.

I don't have Sonar or Acid but I can get ahold of them. I'm surprised to hear the Sonar recommendation because I thought Sonar was somewhat like Reason, and wouldn't have suspected it would be recommended, because I thought it was not so friendly with other apps, but I believe you.

:?:When you say "render" do you mean "export as WAV"? Are there 2 levels of rendering that we're talking about? (I understand you about rendering the tracks separately to WAVs and then ultimately rendering down to a single .WAV, but are there other "renderings" that are intermediate steps?

with your song nearing completion in ableton (or acid) render out *by track*. you'll have a bunch of long wav files.

What I have now are about a dozen tracks in FL Studio. Let's call them "experimental electronic" for lack of a better term. Typically I have 4 or 5 tracks of drums, built from various drum .WAVs (so the drums are generally not tuned together but it works for my needs... starting to move towards Battery now). So I have these drums and then I have created melodies/riffs with various plugins including Absynth, Albino, Pro53, BooBass, etc. Sometimes the riffs are built from a single .WAV sample, a trumpet blast for example (via FL Studio piano roll functionality).

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So at the beginning of this thread, I was wanting to know how to take what I have and add some layers that I would build using "MIDI loops", probably with Ableton it seems now. I now know how to do the MIDI loops but I'm trying to learn how to combine everything still.

:?:So I guess the first thing I'm not very clear on is how to take the work I've done in FL Studio and move it to ANY other sequencer, since it consists of plugins (Fruity and otherwise), plugin settings, WAVs, and the MIDI data that plays the WAVs. Can I export all these settings into something that can be used by Ableton? or by Sonar?

in sx load up absynth, pro53, fm7 etc and experimnent with a few subtle little extra bits over the top. your song won't sound like a total loop construction that way.

So I've kind of done this only it's all been FL Studio. I began with almost 100% step sequencer but now I am doing more and more real-time recording of my MIDI controller keyboard.

take it into wavelab or soundforge to master.

i recommend you use the "waves" plugs to master. this is an important step and you don't want to skimp and ruin your track by using cheap plugins now.

I have the "waves" plugs but I've never mastered anything before. Actually I used the "Waves C1 Gate" on the master track once in FL Studio, if that counts.
:?:What advantage does Wavelab or Soundforge have, if you/I were going to use the same plugins to master anyway? I mean can they do things that Cubase SX can't do?

but some of this may be a bit tricky depending on your sound card.

I'm using the Gina-20, which I've had for years, but it's not been through serious recording. In fact my entire knowledge of all these topics (such as it is) has been picked up only over the last year.

I would like to eventually do a live show in the near future, playing over the top of these constructions, and for that I had planned to move everything to my laptop and play through my Echo Indigo.

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Speaking of rendering, my "question mark" emoticons got rendered as the "confused" emoticon with the colon (":") after. I guess it's not too far off the mark

Thanks again,
mub

[Warmonger]

Thanks, that I can tell is some really good info--much appreciated!

*Whoosh*

That's the sound of the point of a post going completely over a reader's head.

[Lunch Money]

Yup.

[mub]

Which part of my last post went over your head?

[Sascha Franck]

....
How would this be done in Cubase? ....

cycle record on a midi track would do the job.

It's not THAT easy because SX offers various cycle modes for MIDI:
- Mix. This might be what you want. It'll just add what you play each cycle.
- Overwrite. Does what it say, overwrites the content of the previous cycles (only happening when you actually play something during the most recent cycle).
Then there's "stacked" and "stacked no mute" (if I remember correctly, music machine's off atm) which will keep all cycles but place them on individual "stacks" inside the cycle, so you could later on select which one to keep (or just mute/unmute).

The two first versions have been there since version 1.0/Atari, so it makes me wonder that people don't know about it... and it makes me wonder even more that FL doesn't have it. These for me are THE key features when recording MIDI in cycle mode. I either want to add notes each cycle or try new versions.

[mub]

Thanks Sascha for the Cubase tips.

One thing still stumps me, and I've kind of gotten off the original thread, but it's related, for me.

I still need to find a way (if there is one) to export all the FL work I've done into Cubase (or Live or something that does MIDI cycles/loops). Is it possible?

Thanks again,
mub

[Sascha Franck]

I still need to find a way (if there is one) to export all the FL work I've done into Cubase (or Live or something that does MIDI cycles/loops). Is it possible?

I think both of them should offer a way to export things as MIDI files. Just do that and import (or drag) the MIDI files into Cubase.