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

[LoveEnigma18]

^^^

"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)

Okay, but I did not mean that way - only said for Piano Roll editing, not chords, etc. features. Of course, having this feature is good and superhelpful. Nice video there, sounds good too.

Scaler 2 is a great plugin btw for chords stuff. Of course, I am not into the more modern AI stuff and all.

[Caine123]

Interesting topic, when i was totally pi××ed about fl studio's performance and crashes (well it got a bit improved but still no crash protection....) i heavily looked into for a replacement. In my opinion there is NONE!

I tested the following DAWs

Reaper:
It seems very very powerful, lots and lots of options but you need to invest a lot of time to adjust, to learn etc. It seems very stable but no the piano roll is nothing like fl studio.

Bitwig
This should have been my new go to daw, it got a great crash protection and crashing projects can still be loaded and checked what crashes them.
Overall it seems a more experimental ableton daw with a lot of nice things but nah the piano roll is again for programmers.... i sent them an email and told them please test fl studio and improve piano roll i dunno if it got improved.

Ableton
Overall great daw but no the piano roll again is nothing like fl studio, well you got scale selection now? Nice

Studio One
This Piano roll has many promises but again nothin like fl studio. Very stable daw so far. I wanted to use it more for mixing and mastering as fl studio struggles a lot with performance.

Overall what daws lack is the fluid piano rolls, they look too programmy like not handy, yeah many say fl studio is a kids daw, too shiny erc i think this can be ignored nowadays it is not anymore fruity loops times but a great daw. The fast, good feeling piano roll seemed always normal for me, nothing special but im shocked that other daws feel and look so cheaply compared to fl studio, maybe if you can play like a pro a piano you dont care but if you love playing with notes, markers etc i love piano roll in fl studio.

[Caine123]

Bitwig

Bonus it opens .flp files

Really? Wow i need to test it asap!!!!
That would be awesome.

[xbitz]

^^^.flp https://www.bitwig.com/support/technica ... ts-flp-41/ and .als ones too https://www.bitwig.com/support/technica ... ts-als-40/

[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)

Okay, but I did not mean that way - only said for Piano Roll editing, not chords, etc. features. Of course, having this feature is good and superhelpful. Nice video there, sounds good too.

Scaler 2 is a great plugin btw for chords stuff. Of course, I am not into the more modern AI stuff and all.

Mixed in Key Captain plugins has a similar workflow, ontopic so copying here

from 14:45, but Cubase inbuilt one is better as I've demonstrated it (the chord progression builder part)

[wuworld]

Studio One's piano roll beats them all.

[Kalamata Kid]

^^^
Some interesting videos.

[chk071]

I think what this thread severely lacks is a good description of what's so good about FLS' piano roll, and what is lacking to other piano rolls in comparison. "Not fluid enough and too program-y" just won't cut it.

[jonljacobi]

There's just a fundamental difference in need. Some people need all the tools and entry help FLS and similar provide, and some people just want to edit MIDI they've recorded, or know how to enter stuff quickly without help.

[vurt]

I think what this thread severely lacks is a good description of what's so good about FLS' piano roll, and what is lacking to other piano rolls in comparison. "Not fluid enough and too program-y" just won't cut it.

i think the answer is "familiarity".
if you start with a particular program, that becomes your benchmark.
if a tool in another program is in a different place, or requires different clicks to achieve, then it's "wrong and clunky", no, you just learned elsewhere!!!

they all do pretty much the same thing, just some do it differently

but! if we didn't talk bollocks about all this stuff, the forum would be about 12 threads

[chk071]

I think you're absolutely spot on with that. I just realized the same things when I demo'd Cakewalk... I'm reasonably familiar with Studio One, so, everything in Cakewalk feels alien, even things like the window management (absolutely hate when Cakewalk closes the instrument window when I open the tracks fx window, and vice versa). It also happens to me when I try Cubase every now and then. It just feels weird, even though the differences are probably minor.

The best cure is to stick with what you are used to, I guess...

[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.

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.

There’s pretty much nothing new, OS is pretty much the shell, I couldn’t tell in which OS my DAW is because it doesn’t mater, it looks and feels the same, I have been using Windows/macOS/Linux a lot for audio and everything works pretty much the same, you don’t have to live on bleeding edge of updates either, but many people choose to, I use Windows 8.1, don’t care about 11 or 10 the slightest, didn’t care for any new macOS either, I’m there for audio, none of the updates brought much in that regard last decade and more, there’s no actual need to be there… It's so much easier when you are there strictly for audio, it's just an computer, it's just an OS, there's nothing else to it..

[vurt]

I think you're absolutely spot on with that. I just realized the same things when I demo'd Cakewalk... I'm reasonably familiar with Studio One, so, everything in Cakewalk feels alien, even things like the window management (absolutely hate when Cakewalk closes the instrument window when I open the tracks fx window, and vice versa). It also happens to me when I try Cubase every now and then. It just feels weird, even though the differences are probably minor.

The best cure is to stick with what you are used to, I guess...

yup, i had to find a replacement for orion now it's not supported, yes, still works, but for how long??? so i got samplitude in one of the sales, was alien, got nothing done for months trying to get used to it.
now, i ocassionally still use orion for knocking up loops for samplers, so much easier in a loops based daw... but because im used to samplitude now, i get a bit confused in orion...

[Dionysos]

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.

Until the last three words I was convinced you're describing FL Studio's piano roll. It has all of those features, except maybe the "cut note in half" shortcut, but there's a quick-chop shortcut instead. I wouldn't be surprised if the way Orion works/ed was directly inspired by FL, or the other way around.

I think what this thread severely lacks is a good description of what's so good about FLS' piano roll, and what is lacking to other piano rolls in comparison. "Not fluid enough and too program-y" just won't cut it.

To me personally it's less about a wealth of features, but about feel and basic usability. And at the center of that is the way you add and delete notes with a simple left or right click respectively. In most other sequencers, left-clicking selects, and right-click brings up a context menu, both very standard actions that are in line with how stuff works in operating systems. It's not something that's easily changed, so single-click entry and deletion is usually delegated to a separate "pen" tool or similar. FL is more like a video game in that it defined its own opinionated, non-standard control paradigm that more or less ignores OS conventions, but is super optimised for its use case. So it's not super straightforward to copy that for the developers of other sequencers, unless they were willing to either massively sacrifice in-app consistency or go all-in on this control paradigm.

[xbitz]

^^^ "It has all of those features, except maybe the "cut note in half" shortcut," try right shift + the left/right mouse buttons