Piano Roll - What's the next best DAW after FL Studio?

[pdxindy]

There won't be any as long as the midi keyboard is considered the main input device for composition. FL Studio was lucky in that it was made by a non musician (gol) so he had to perfect the mouse+keyboard experience.

That is exactly why FL Studio is of no interest to me. I'm a musician and I play keyboards and record my playing. I have little interest to program music with a mouse and spend minimal time in the piano roll. I'll tweak the recorded midi a bit in the piano roll, but mostly, if I am unhappy with a result, I re-record it.

[Erisian]

There won't be any as long as the midi keyboard is considered the main input device for composition. FL Studio was lucky in that it was made by a non musician (gol) so he had to perfect the mouse+keyboard experience.

That is exactly why FL Studio is of no interest to me. I'm a musician and I play keyboards and record my playing. I have little interest to program music with a mouse and spend minimal time in the piano roll. I'll tweak the recorded midi a bit in the piano roll, but mostly, if I am unhappy with a result, I re-record it.

I'm a musician too but I cannot play piano or drums/percussion with any degree of accuracy with regards timing so I like to program those and sometimes bass, then play over them with real instruments. I would actually love to have FL Studio if I could afford it. LMMS has a similar piano roll but lacks the advantage of FL Studio's pattern arranger/song arranger setup.

[xbitz]

^^^ have you tried https://helio.fm/ not sure about its MIDI out supporting, AFAIK I've added pizmidi midiOut from https://code.google.com/archive/p/pizmidi/ as VSTi to it so need some MIDI loopback app

ps. https://storage.googleapis.com/google-c ... 120111.zip can find MIDI out in it

https://www.youtube.com/user/peterrudenko

[LoveEnigma18]

There won't be any as long as the midi keyboard is considered the main input device for composition. FL Studio was lucky in that it was made by a non musician (gol) so he had to perfect the mouse+keyboard experience.

That is exactly why FL Studio is of no interest to me. I'm a musician and I play keyboards and record my playing. I have little interest to program music with a mouse and spend minimal time in the piano roll. I'll tweak the recorded midi a bit in the piano roll, but mostly, if I am unhappy with a result, I re-record it.

I'm a musician too but I cannot play piano or drums/percussion with any degree of accuracy with regards timing so I like to program those and sometimes bass, then play over them with real instruments. I would actually love to have FL Studio if I could afford it. LMMS has a similar piano roll but lacks the advantage of FL Studio's pattern arranger/song arranger setup.

Watch out for a possible sale during the next couple of months. I would recommend FL Studio Producer Edition if you are really interested.

[Erisian]

Watch out for a possible sale during the next couple of months. I would recommend FL Studio Producer Edition if you are really interested.

Thanks for that, I'll keep my eyes open.

[pdxindy]

There won't be any as long as the midi keyboard is considered the main input device for composition. FL Studio was lucky in that it was made by a non musician (gol) so he had to perfect the mouse+keyboard experience.

That is exactly why FL Studio is of no interest to me. I'm a musician and I play keyboards and record my playing. I have little interest to program music with a mouse and spend minimal time in the piano roll. I'll tweak the recorded midi a bit in the piano roll, but mostly, if I am unhappy with a result, I re-record it.

I'm a musician too but I cannot play piano or drums/percussion with any degree of accuracy with regards timing so I like to program those and sometimes bass, then play over them with real instruments. I would actually love to have FL Studio if I could afford it. LMMS has a similar piano roll but lacks the advantage of FL Studio's pattern arranger/song arranger setup.

Of course... you can do things however you wish... have fun!

[Passing Bye]

Logic

Honestly, I would have loved to try Logic Pro. I absolutely love it just based on watching videos. But I cannot and do not want to buy/move to a Mac.

Your call, I'm pretty much OS agnostic, whatever works the best with DAW I use I will get, I use computers mainly for music making, don't care about gaming and any other aspect, for my next machine I'm open to anything, Bitwig works awesome on all 3 OS's and most of my plugins.

[chk071]

the MIDI chart of DAW compersion https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/DAW-Chart.html shows quite well FL and Cubase are the best ones

Actually, what it really shows is AdmiralBumblebee's favorite ones.

Never understood why he's considered such an authority here. His videos and blog entries are pretty gimmicky, if anything.

[LoveEnigma18]

Logic

Honestly, I would have loved to try Logic Pro. I absolutely love it just based on watching videos. But I cannot and do not want to buy/move to a Mac.

Your call, I'm pretty much OS agnostic, whatever works the best with DAW I use I will get, I use computers mainly for music making, don't care about gaming and any other aspect, for my next machine I'm open to anything, Bitwig works awesome on all 3 OS's and most of my plugins.

Yes, I said that mainly for two reasons: I am a Windows user since the beginning and I am very comfortable with it (know it well). Although I wish/ed to (love the looks/design and love Logic Pro), have never tried a Mac nor I can afford it and the problems that come up with OS updates, things not working, etc. It's basically having to relearn a lot of surrounding things regarding a new OS and I just don't want to get into that hassle. We already have so many distractions in our music making process. So keeping it simple from computer/OS point of view. At the end of the day, slight performance/experience difference isn't going to make or break anything.

[BONES]

FL Studio has been my only DAW, but I can confidently say that it has hands down the best Piano Roll (Key Editor).

Based on what? Honestly, that's the dumbest thing I've read this week. Does it have any of these features, which I'd say were the most desirable for working quickly and accurately -
- single click to add a note, right-click to delete.
- remember previous note length and apply it to subsequent notes.
- affect every note without having to select everything.
- hold down a modifier key and just paint notes into the grid.
- built-in LFO to quickly create and tailor rhythmic automation.
- built-in arpeggiator with user-definable patterns.
- hotkey to cut selected notes in half.

If it doesn't have all of those features, then it's not as good as Orion's Piano Roll.

What I think: I feel that Cubase has a pretty good one, but I am not sure if others have it better.

I don't like Cubase's PR much. It shits me to tears having to double-click to enter a note. After more than two years I am still not comfortable with it. Studio One is pretty much the same, only cheaper to buy. Same with Bitwig. I don't know about any others but the shitful double-click thing seems standard for some stupid reason.

[LoveEnigma18]

FL Studio has been my only DAW, but I can confidently say that it has hands down the best Piano Roll (Key Editor).

Based on what? Honestly, that's the dumbest thing I've read this week. Does it have any of these features, which I'd say were the most desirable for working quickly and accurately -
- single click to add a note, right-click to delete.
- remember previous note length and apply it to subsequent notes.
- affect every note without having to select everything.
- hold down a modifier key and just paint notes into the grid.
- built-in LFO to quickly create and tailor rhythmic automation.
- built-in arpeggiator with user-definable patterns.
- hotkey to cut selected notes in half.

If it doesn't have all of those features, then it's not as good as Orion's Piano Roll.

What I think: I feel that Cubase has a pretty good one, but I am not sure if others have it better.

I don't like Cubase's PR much. It shits me to tears having to double-click to enter a note. After more than two years I am still not comfortable with it. Studio One is pretty much the same, only cheaper to buy. Same with Bitwig. I don't know about any others but the shitful double-click thing seems standard for some stupid reason.

You say my claim was dumbest regarding FL Studio Piano Roll and then write first feature you mention is " - single click to add a note, right-click to delete". Good joke, isn't it?

That's the first and most important thing about FL Studio Piano Roll. Looks like you haven't bothered to try FL Studio. If not, please do.

Some of the other features you mention are also doable and there is WAY MORE you can do in it. I know that the modulation things need some improvements and some things only work with native plugins (at least out of the box), but hopefully that will be improved in future.

In my first post I also mentioned "However, I would like to know what DAW comes next in terms of being closest to FL Studio in this regard especially for the speed of working with it for basic operations.

I do know from memory and seeing videos that nothing is as faster as FL Studio "currently" available (let's not talk about Orion and other things that existed in stone age, at least for me). That's why I wanted to know what other DAW comes closest to it. But it looks like no other DAW can compete with FL Studio in this regard even today. Sure, other DAWs might be doing many more things, but most of the time you don't care of those additional things.

[hoxclab]

Bitwig

Bonus it opens .flp files

[BONES]

You say my claim was dumbest regarding FL Studio Piano Roll and then write first feature you mention is " - single click to add a note, right-click to delete". Good joke, isn't it?

No, what you said was dumb because you proclaimed FL's piano roll to be the best and then sais you didn't know what any of th eothers were like. You can only knwo which is best if you have tired all th eothers.

That's the first and most important thing about FL Studio Piano Roll. Looks like you haven't bothered to try FL Studio. If not, please do.

I was actually a Fruityloops beta tester a long, long time ago. Its piano roll might be OK but the rest of it is rubbish. It remains a nice little drum machine with loads of shit bolted onto it to make it seem like a proper DAW. I last tried it at version 12 or 12.5 or something, about three years ago.

Some of the other features you mention are also doable and there is WAY MORE you can do in it.

It's a Piano Roll, the things I listed are the only things I need it to be ale to do. I assumed FL would have at least some of those features but I knew it wouldn't have them all. I'm sure you, and most other people, would hate the way automation works but I really like it because it works and it's quick.

I know that the modulation things need some improvements and some things only work with native plugins (at least out of the box), but hopefully that will be improved in future.

Mate, it's 20-odd years old, if they were going to fix anything they'd have done it by now, don't you think?

do know from memory and seeing videos that nothing is as faster as FL Studio "currently" available.

I imagine I can work as quickly in Studio One as you work in FL Studio, it's just that I don't enjoy the experience as much as I used to with Orion. It requires too much changing of tools, which can be done very quickly via keyboard shortcuts, and holding down of modifiers and shit like that, so it can be super-quick but it's not elegant.

[xbitz]

^^^

"do know from memory and seeing videos that nothing is as faster as FL Studio "currently" available."

depend on which genre and which phase of the songwriting, for ex. in trance which uses typically basic triads, seventh/sus chords if you create such a grid in Cubase can scratch out chord progressions very fast (and able to learn from it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mi5xMv17C0
chord track + arranger track + some arp, at the end the progression can be flattened, this type of workflow doesn't even exist in FL so every man to his taste

(AFAIK RapidComposer works very similarly just with linear playing order only)

[LoveEnigma18]

You say my claim was dumbest regarding FL Studio Piano Roll and then write first feature you mention is " - single click to add a note, right-click to delete". Good joke, isn't it?

No, what you said was dumb because you proclaimed FL's piano roll to be the best and then sais you didn't know what any of th eothers were like. You can only knwo which is best if you have tired all th eothers.

Okay, perhaps you guys were disturbed because I used the word "best". But I already explained in my original post and few posts after what I am/was looking for.

That's the first and most important thing about FL Studio Piano Roll. Looks like you haven't bothered to try FL Studio. If not, please do.

I was actually a Fruityloops beta tester a long, long time ago. Its piano roll might be OK but the rest of it is rubbish. It remains a nice little drum machine with loads of shit bolted onto it to make it seem like a proper DAW. I last tried it at version 12 or 12.5 or something, about three years ago.[/quote]

Well there lies the problem. You should have actually start using it after 12 because that's when it started to become better and look a big leap from what you say (I know there was a version jump from 12 to 20, but no pun intended, lots of good things were added in 12.x and 20.x). Anyway, I am not here to convince anyone about using a particular DAW. But I do hope you know that they have added linear workflow option since FL Studio 20 and are improving it further, in case you missed that workflow in FL Studio.

I know that the modulation things need some improvements and some things only work with native plugins (at least out of the box), but hopefully that will be improved in future.

Mate, it's 20-odd years old, if they were going to fix anything they'd have done it by now, don't you think?

I agree here. Lately, I am not happy with the way things are moving and the things they are trying to focus on. Looks like they don't have a proper UX specialist or Product Specialist who can actually help and influence the changes. It really needs consistency and GUI tweaks in many aspects. That said, what Shinyless (FL dev) has done so far is beyond amazing. Without him (and of course reflex) FL Studio would not have taken this shape. I am still hopeful that some good things will happen with FL Studio 21.