How to maximise efficiency in FL?

[GenericNameHere]

I don't know if any of you guys ever get an idea in the heat of the moment, and then through not knowing all the quickest ways to actually achieve something like sidechaining a certain frequency region, you lose that amazing melody you just faintly heard ... in your head.

So I thought we could create a thread that saves all those manly man type guys, like me, who couldn't be bothered to read another manual, some time from not reading up all this shit.

To start off, I need to know something about the playlist in FL: I've watched a very informative vid where Avicii produces some song, and I noticed something strange -- YMMV -- about his whole setup. I'm not refering to the FACT that he ONLY USES PRESETS, but that his FL playlist has this section at the bottom, where he can input midi notes.

Does anyone know how to get that section there?

[mthrfnk]

It's the old version of FL everything goes in the playlist now.

http://support.image-line.com/knowledge ... 54&ans=120

[YeahItsMe]

It sound likes you need to learn your DAW better dude. Take a few days to not work on new music. Take an old song you've been working on and experiment with your plugins and you'll get faster at using them and how to use them

Also, quit being lazy and read your manual. If you don't read it, have it handy on your computer/iphone and search for what you wanna know

[fragments]

It sound likes you need to learn your DAW better dude. Take a few days to not work on new music. Take an old song you've been working on and experiment with your plugins and you'll get faster at using them and how to use them

Also, quit being lazy and read your manual. If you don't read it, have it handy on your computer/iphone and search for what you wanna know

Yea, seriously. Fuck your manly man bullshit. Read the manual instead of asking others to do the work for you.

[Coolschmid]

manly men are illiterate?

[titchbit]

you don't need to read the whole manual front to back. you can just look shit up here and there as you go. a few pages at a time.

[dotcurrency]

Maximum efficiency is a question of what works best for you
As far as not reading the manual goes, I haven't read the FL manual or watched many youtube tutorials for that matter, and I know how get what I need done quickly. It's all about knowing yourself and how you work really. Set up a template!

[Triphosphate]

Here's a tip that doesn't require you to read a manual:

Use a template, set all your bus groups and routing, put a couple verbs and delays you frequently use on the sends, create a sc channel so you don't have to fiddle with one every time.

Here's how I set up mine in FL. I wanted to make my workflow faster without painting myself into a corner. So I set up my template so that all the routing is done, and all those instruments in the pattern window are all just empty sample slots to act as placeholders for my mixer inserts. There are no VSTs loaded, only FPC (FL Studio's Drum Rack) with some generic placeholder drums. All of my busses are the red slots to the left. And the 4 tracks to the right are 2 reverb sends with FL's standard Reverb 2, and a convolution reverb, and 2 delays, one short subtle one and one long feedback one for spot delay. All of my busses already have my bus compressor of choice.

It's very slimmed down, and doesn't make me feel restricted to using the same stuff on every song, but still saves me a lot of time per project, and more importantly, I don't have to stop the creative flow to do some menial routing task.

^take a look

Edit: Oh yea... and putting a meter in on the "selected" track... Can't tell you how many times I've thanked my past self for that. Image should be working now.

[Dustwyrm]

Here's a tip that doesn't require you to read a manual:

Use a template, set all your bus groups and routing, put a couple verbs and delays you frequently use on the sends, create a sc channel so you don't have to fiddle with one every time.

Here's how I set up mine in FL. I wanted to make my workflow faster without painting myself into a corner. So I set up my template so that all the routing is done, and all those instruments in the pattern window are all just empty sample slots to act as placeholders for my mixer inserts. There are no VSTs loaded, only FPC (FL Studio's Drum Rack) with some generic placeholder drums. All of my busses are the red slots to the left. And the 4 tracks to the right are 2 reverb sends with FL's standard Reverb 2, and a convolution reverb, and 2 delays, one short subtle one and one long feedback one for spot delay. All of my busses already have my bus compressor of choice.

It's very slimmed down, and doesn't make me feel restricted to using the same stuff on every song, but still saves me a lot of time per project, and more importantly, I don't have to stop the creative flow to do some menial routing task.

^take a look

Edit: Oh yea... and putting a meter in on the "selected" track... Can't tell you how many times I've thanked my past self for that. Image should be working now.

This is such a great idea, going to do a template of my own tomorrow. Thanks for sharing

[GenericNameHere]

@mthrfnk

Thanks.

@YeahItsMe

I've read a lot of things in the manual, but that one option -- midi sequencer at the bottom of the playlist -- wasn't in the manual. Therefore I tried to get some ideas on how to get it there. I thought my version was still demo, and IL didn't want to upgrade me because I'm black -- Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

@fragments

Sorry, man. There was nothing in the manual about a midi feature at the bottom of the playlist. I'm sorry for asking. I'm new to FL, so...

@Triphosphate

I have one of those ... but it's blank/empty, because I like starting from scratch; I feel that having a template with everything figured up got me into a comfort zone a couple months back, so I decided to go blank.

But I'm definitely going to put reverbs on the send, and also a meter. Big ups.

[fragments]

It's fine if you've actually read the manual, but you said you didn't...because you were too manly...so...that's what I'm responding to. Your OP doesn't sound like a legit question after having done your own research. It sounds like yet another "please spoon feed me" thread.

[GenericNameHere]

It's fine if you've actually read the manual, but you said you didn't...because you were too manly...so...that's what I'm responding to. Your OP doesn't sound like a legit question after having done your own research. It sounds like yet another "please spoon feed me" thread.

When you're right... But I'm new to FL. I didn't even know they removed that feature for FL11.

[Triphosphate]

@Triphosphate

I have one of those ... but it's blank/empty, because I like starting from scratch; I feel that having a template with everything figured up got me into a comfort zone a couple months back, so I decided to go blank.

No, you misunderstood... My template has no vsts loaded, It's all empty placeholders so that I don't have to do the routing every time I insert an instrument.

The only loaded plugins are Fruity's FPC Drum rack, and a 3xOsc set to a single sine wave for the sub. Everything else is just a placeholder. Say for example I want to use Massive for Bass 1, and FM8 for Bass 2... I right click Bass 1 > Replace with... > Massive. Now it's already routed to the Bass 1 Mixer insert. Which is routed to the Bass Buss Mixer insert. Take things that you KNOW you're going to do with every song regardless of genre and template-ize that. You're asking for ways to increase your efficiency, starting with an empty template is the opposite of efficient.

The example you gave about Sidechaining is perfect. As you can see on my template Insert 7 is a SC... it's not routed to the master, and it receives a signal from Insert 8 (kick drum) by default. You may be asking yourself, "Why don't you just route the kick drum directly?" The reason being: I use a transient enhancer (Flux Bittersweet) and a gate to capture JUST the attack of whichever kick drum I might drop in, without actually effecting what the audience hears as far as the kick is concerned. That's already 3 steps that would take me at least 3 minutes to tweak properly that I never have to do on a track, it's already been done for me. Then, for example, let's say I want the sidechain to cause the sub to duck. I go to the sub channel, route the SC signal to it, and load a preset FL limiter I made that already has all the parameters I need (Threshold at 0, ratio at 100:1, SC source designated) and all I have left to do is tweak the release to taste.

It's not one big thing I do that saves me time, it's hundreds of little things I don't HAVE to do everytime. Trust me on this one, man, make yourself a nice template JUST for routing, and create yourself lots of little frequently used presets for your plugins. Here are some I use that come to mind:
1) EQ with rolloffs at 20hz and 19khz
2) EQ with rolloff at 100hz (to remove sub and hum from anything other than my sub)
3) FL Patcher configured with 3 multiband compressors for frequency splitting
4) Several Compressors configured to Parallel compress
5) Tons and tons of Distortion presets I've saved from completed tracks, named appropriately.

The more you can do for yourself in down time with presets, patches, routing, sound design, etc. The less you have to deviate from a creative flow for technical aspects, and the more focused you can stay.

Edit: Oh, and for the record... anything you can do with the legacy pattern blocks you can do with audio/pattern clips... Plus, you can't see what's in those legacy blocks, you can actually see the midi in the pattern clips. Also, when you slice tool the pattern blocks it makes a huge mess, you also can't click the end of pattern blocks to slide and adjust the length. All in all, the legacy blocks are crap. Good riddance.

[GenericNameHere]

@Triphosphate

I didn't misunderstand you, I just prefer -- or rathher prefered -- working from scratch, as per the comfort zone deal I went on about, but now that I think about it some more, it could really save me a hell of a lot of time. It's a really great idea ... where's the like button.

I was hesitant to do a template at first, because I haven't decided which genre I want to do yet, and as such, I would need to do multiple templates, but fuck it, this could really save me time -- in the long run.

What you said inspired me to brighten up those dull sound design sessions by creating a sound design template, where I sidechain an effect insert that has a pre-loaded Patcher preset with several knobs and sliders already loaded, to a different insert that has Edison and a Compressor in place. So I can listen to music, and create new synth patches.
Although I think it's a good idea, it basically sucks -- CPU that is; Edison loads the music files into RAM, which isn't bad by itself, but the fact that it can't load playlists is what urks me most.

So, I'm wondering if there's a music player VST that can be loaded as an effect? Tried Google, maybe one of the vets know.