Gol - tip of the day

8/8/2019 Gol - tip of the day

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gol

Nov 16 (08:20 am)

I will try to fill this thread with a tip/trick per day, that we can gather later.

Sometimes it will be something you already knew about, sometimes not.

Some may even be hidden tricks, not explained in the manual. I will also try

to delete obsolete tricks when new versions of FL will be available, so thatevery trick is useful in the current version.

This thread will be locked, if you want to comment, just create new posts.

gol

Nov 16 (08:29 am)

Playlist / piano roll navigation

I've read some complaints about the playlist zoom setting that isn't saved in

project files. Well, if you need the playlist zoom to be restored as you set it,you're using the playlist wrong. Just like ctrl+LMB (left mouse button) is your

best friend to select notes or clips, ctrl+RMB (right mouse button) is your

best friend to zoom & navigate in your project.

Ctrl+RMB & select a window in your project to zoom on. You want to zoom on


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an automation clip to edit it, ctrl+RMB a selection around it. Once you're

done with it, go back to your whole project overview, by simply ctrl+RMB &

not selecting anything. Then zoom on something else. If your project is really

too long, maybe you will have to scroll a little as the max zoom won't reveal it

all, but usually it will show entirely.

Also, use the MMB (middle mouse button) to move around in 2D, or

shift+RMB to 'pan' your view.

gol

Nov 17 (06:21 am)

Piano roll

You can rescale a score, for example, to adapt it to another tempo, in case

you didn't record it along with the metronome.

Select all of the notes, move your mouse near the end of one of the last notes

(like to resize it), and resize while holding shift. Any of the notes will work,

but it's better to use the rightmost ones to have more accuracy.

While rescaling, watch the hint bar, it tells how much the score is rescaled, in

%. If you didn't get it accurate enough, quantize the result to the nearest 1/4

step if necessary.

gol

Nov 18 (01:45 am)


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General

In most of FL's parts & even in IL plugins, middle-clicking an item that can be

renamed, prompts the name editor. If your mouse doesn't have a middle

button (but usually the wheel acts as one when you press it), shift+LMB will

work too.

gol

Nov 19 (09:34 pm)

Piano roll / playlist / event editor

Pressing ENTER maximizes/restores the piano roll / playlist / event editor

that's focused. If none is focused, the playlist is brought up.

gol

Nov 20 (03:39 pm)

Piano roll

Right-clicking the snap selector in the piano roll (or the main snap control)

will show a popup filled with stock note lengths.

gol


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Nov 22 (11:34 am)

Channel settings

Page Up/Down will move to the previous/next channel, while the channel

settings window is focused.

gol

Nov 22 (11:38 am)

General

Right-clicking the metronome button brings a menu in which you can select

other metronome sounds.

The metronome is played through the 'Preview mixer track' (audio settings).

If you want to change the volume of the metronome, you can do it by

adjusting the volume of that preview track of your choice.

gol

Nov 24 (05:03 am)

Edison / Slicex


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If you have 2 loops loaded in 2 instances of Edison, or the 2 decks of Slicex,

you can replace a drum in one of the loops by another. Simply select the

marker (ctrl+click its label), and drag onto a marker defining another drum in

the other drumloop (or the same drumloop in case of Slicex). Once you'reover a marker, you will see that it selects itself automatically. Another way is

to simply hold CTRL, and then simply be over a drum part, not necessarily the

marker.

Once you drop, the 'Drop replace drum' tool will appear, allowing you to

define how the drum should be adapted to fit the (probably different) length

of the other one.

If the new drum is longer than the old one, it will be cropped, if not it will be

artificially made longer.

Also, the drum's average level is adapted to the one of the old drum, so you

really are replacing a drum by another.

This isn't strictly between 2 loops, it also works with any sample. Open one

drumloop in Edison, slice it, and you can drag single-hit drums from the

browser to any of the detected drums.

gol

Nov 24 (05:12 am)

Slicex

If you ever wondered what the 'Song time-synced' layering mode did in

Slicex, try this:


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-load a drumloop, slice it if necessary.

-in the editor, Regions->Assign all to->C5. You now have all of the regions

assigned to C5. Press C5 and see all of them being triggered at once.

-select 'Song time-synced' as a layering mode.

-optionally set crossfade to 'none' (try the various modes).

You will see that the score in the piano roll is all flat, yet it plays the full

drumloop. It's simply because the drum is defined by its position in time - it

picks the closest drum(s) to the time in the drumloop.

This is cool if you play it live, you can basically play parts of a whole

drumloop with just 1 key. This may also be useful with other audio sources, to

be able to trigger different clips depending on song time.

gol

Nov 25 (12:51 pm)

General

Press Ctrl+Z to undo/redo, and Ctrl+Alt+Z to get one step backwards in the

undo history.

This means that while you're holding Ctrl, pressing Alt+Z navigates upwardsin the history (& the history browser opens itself for easy navigation), and

pressing Z navigates downwards. Usually the most useful in the piano roll.

Owners of a Mackie CU or another controller for which FL handles the jog

wheel can navigate in the history browser using the jog wheel while pressing


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the undo button.

gol

Nov 26 (10:39 am)

Playlist / piano roll

You can add notes or clips to a selection. While Ctrl+LMB selects notes,Ctrl+Shift+LMB adds (or subtracts, if the first note you click is already

selected) notes to the existing selection.

Also, Ctrl+LMB on the leftmost column or the PR/PL selects full rows of notes /

clips.

gol

Nov 27 (07:53 am)

MIDI

You can link about any automatable parameter to your keyboard's aftertouch

(note that both channel aftertouch & key aftertouch will work as channel

aftertouch).

The hard way is by using 'Link to controller', right-click the controller #

selector, and select 'channel aftertouch' or 'key aftertouch'.


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The easy way is by holding a key, and then using 'Link to controller'. When

the window shows up, you just press your key so that the aftertouch is

detected and automatically linked to the control.

Why hold the key before opening the 'Link to controller' window? Well, if you

press the key when it's already visible, you will link your control to the key

itself (you can do that too), not the aftertouch.

To know if your keyboard is sending aftertouch, press a key and push it

further. If FL's MIDI input LED keeps blinking, then it is getting aftertouch

commands. See www.midiox.com to inspect your MIDI controller further.

If your synthesizer already supports aftertouch by itself, you can still route a

MIDI Out channel to the synthesizer, and define a knob that sends MIDI

aftertouch to the synthesizer, which you link to your keyboard's aftertouch

the same way as described above. Which means that you do not need your

keyboard to support aftertouch, to access a synthesizer's aftertouch feature,

and that you do not need your synthesizer to support aftertouch, for you to

access its controls using your keyboard's aftertouch.

Finally, you're free to link any automatable control to your pitch bend wheel

as well. If your controller only features 7bit controls, using the pitch bend

wheel is a nice way to control a parameter with 14bit precision (but of course,

most pitch bend wheels snap back to the middle when released).

gol

Nov 28 (11:17 am)

Edison
http://www.midiox.com/http://www.midiox.com/


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How to sample / rip a single-cycle waveform using Edison.

1. Unless you already have a recording, sample a dry (without filtering oreffects) note of a synthesizer of yours. To get the most harmonics, sample a

very low note, say, C2.

In an Edison that you place on your synthesizer's mixer track, just use the

"Record on audio input" preset, and press that low key.

2. Stop recording, and in the waveform's settings (F2), set the middle note to

the note you just recorded. If you recorded a C, this isn't really necessary, the

default C5 will be ok.

3. Switch 'Snap' on, and right-click that same snap checkbox to select 'Snap

to pitch period'.

4. Select your single-cycle somewhere in the waveform. Depending on the

fundamental of the note, you may have to select more than 1 cycle. Just

make it play in loop mode until it sounds like what you want to sample.

5. Once selected, either trim it (Ctrl+Del, first making sure that "Click-free

editing" is OFF), normalize it if necessary, and save it, or drag & drop it

directly into a Sytrus oscillator window, or even a Sytrus channel button (or a

3xOsc channel, or the synthesizer of your choice). It should be ready to use.

You can play with the shape further (messing with harmonics) in Sytrus in the

oscillator tab.

gol

Nov 29 (11:22 am)


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Step edit

You know that FL features a step editing mode, but you're probably missingsome of its features.

Its basic use is, you switch the step edit mode on (recording floating panel),

and you enter some notes (either from your piano keyboard or your typing

keyboard).

The length of a step is simply the value of the global snap setting (except

that 'Line' & 'Cell' are the default 1 step).

Notes are actually not entered until you release all of them. Which means

that you can enter chords too.

You can go back in time to either replace wrong notes, or add new ones over.

Using the > keys on your keyboard (/* keys on a typing keyboard), you

can navigate within the score, in the mini piano-roll view. To add new notesinstead of replacing them, simply switch 'Blend recorded notes' on (it's just

above the step edit switch).

Finally, you can enter several steps at once. While you're holding the key(s),

simply navigate (again, same > keys), and release your keys.

gol

Nov 30 (11:48 am)


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FL Studio

Often you see icons in FL's hint bar. Here they are in a row, and here's what

they mean:

1. It's a MIDI plug. It means that the parameter that goes with that hint, can

be linked to anything (a MIDI control, an internal controller)

2. Recording. It means that the parameter can be automated, recorded, have

an envelope controller.

1. & 2. always show together, because there's no real difference between

automatable & linkable, in FL.

3. Happy face. Shown when things went fine.

4. Right mouse button. Whenever you see this, it means that you can right-

click the control in order to access a popup or another feature. However, the

lack of this icon doesn't necessarily mean that there is no right-click feature.

Always try clicking a control with every mouse button.

5. Sad face. Shown when things went wrong. Rarely seen.

6. Arrow to the left. To be honnest, I have no idea where I've used this one, or

if I ever used it. Tell me if you see it

7. Fast forward. Shown when holding a fast-forward key (playlist, Edison)

8. Attention/warning. Shown when the hint is important and you shouldn't

miss it.


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9. Hourglass. Shown for lengthy operations. Rarely used, as the hourglass

mouse cursor is used instead.

10. Backward. Shown when holding a backward key (playlist, Edison)

11. Shown for 2 events that are linked (grouped) together. Not available in FL

Studio 8.

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gol

Dec 01 (01:10 pm)

FL Studio

The reason the main snap is on a toolbar, and not just in the piano roll (&

playlist, etc), is that it has global functions that aren't related to the piano

roll.


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The first one is live quantization. Quite often it's asked, or assumed that it's

not possible in FL, but it really is as simple as selecting the step to quantize.

Just set the main snap to 1 step, and there, your notes are quantized to steps

while they're recorded.

The second one is to define the step length in step editing mode. Set it to 1/2

step, and your step editing will work in 1/2 step increments.

And, read control hints, because there's a reason it says "Main snap /

quantization / step edit step" when you hover it

gol

Dec 02 (10:00 am)

FL Studio

Linking several parameters to the same knob (or internal controller).

You may want to link a knob to more than one parameter for various reasons,

and these require slightly different methods:

1. Linking 2 parameters to a knob for the sake of controlling both at the same

time.

The easiest is to bring the 'Remote control settings' window for the first

parameter (if it's an FL plugin, you just right-click the parameter & select

'Link to controller...'), and to tweak your hardware knob, then to do the same


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for the second parameter, *making sure that 'Remove conflicts' is NOT

checked*. Your knob will now control both parameters.

Usually you don't want a 1:1 mapping for both of the parameters, you'd use a

formula to adapt the scales.

2. Having a knob control a parameter only in the channel that's selected, for

several channels of the same type.

Here you bring the 'Remote control settings' window for the parameter, and

you make sure that 'Omni' is checked, then you tweak your hardware knob.

This is handy for parameters that channels have in common. For example, a

panning knob. But results will be unpredictable if the channels are of a

different type. For example, a knob controlling a filter for a synthesizer, will

control another (or no) parameter for another synthesizer.

3. Having a knob control a parameter only for the window that's focused, and

only for that type of window.

This is when you want to map your hardware controller to specific plugin

types. I don't recommend this simply because linking parameters is pretty

quick and can be done on-the-fly, but if you really want to map your

controller to your favorite plugins once for all, here's how to:

Switch 'Multilink to controllers' ON (it's on the recording panel), tweak your

parameter slightly (its name will appear above the checkbox), then right-click

the 'Multilink to controllers' checkbox and select 'Override generic links', and

now simply tweak your hardware controller.

This type of link is stored globally, NOT in the project. It's only for a specific

controller & with a specific window or plugin type. This type of link also has a

lower priority than the per-project one, meaning that a knob that you

assigned to a specific parameter in a specific plugin, can still be linked to

something else in a specific project.

gol

Dec 03 (12:48 pm)


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General

This isn't strictly related to FL Studio, it normally applies to most, if not allserious music software.

Your soundcard isn't involved anywhere in your rendered project. In fact, you

don't even need a soundcard / audio output to render a project in FL Studio.

This means that

1. when buying a soundcard, consider that it won't be used to render your

projects, so that you don't need any special one for this purpose

2. if something goes wrong in your rendered projects, you can rule out the

soundcard as being a cause

This would imply that a project would render exactly the same way on

different computers, that peripherals don't interfere.

Well, not exactly: there is however the fact that software can make use of

different parts of the CPU, that may or may not be supported by yours. For

example, SSE or SSE2 media instructions support in audio software is

common. But the precision of the output can differ, and the choice is up to

the programmer (& sometimes the user).

Say, user A has an old system that doesn't support SSE (uncommon, and in

fact, FL Studio requires SSE1 now anyway). The code in his plugin has to

make use of the old FPU unit. This unit works with 80bit precision (can be less

for several reasons, I won't be too technical).

User B has a processor that supports up to SSE1. The code in his plugin

makes use of SSE1 isntructions. Processing will be faster (not necessarily a

lot faster, sadly it's partly marketing), but with 32bit precision.

User C has a processor that supports SSE2. The code in his plugin makes use

of SSE2 instructions, and can here process with double (64bit) precision.


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Results: most likely the output from all 3 systems will -digitally- differ in

precision, and ironically, it's the old system that will produce the most

accurate output.

Most likely the user will not hear any difference, and certainly not between

the 80bit & 64bit precision results. There are cases however (filters) where32bit processing may result in noticable artefacts.

(now, what's sure is that all 3 systems will process at very different speeds)

Just to clear things up, yes different CPU's can render different things.

Normally never noticable. Sometimes switchable by the user through quality

switches.

Note that

-all recent CPU's support SSE2 & way above, so this isn't much a concern

anymore

-this doesn't mean that 64bit audio streams are any useful. They aren't. It's

not because you may need to process a filter with 64bit precision, that you

need 64bit precision in its output.

gol

Dec 04 (12:31 pm)

Slicex

You can have the same bit of audio in Slicex, play with different propertiesand linked to different (or the same) keys.

First, select your audio region, assuming your audio is already sliced. Select it

either by selecting the region (ctrl+LMB its label), or from the list of regions

(or using a jog wheel, arrow keys, etc).


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Right-click the marker's label (or left-click the icon on the left or 'Region

settings'), and select 'Clone as region'. You now have 2 regions pointing to

the same bit of audio, these 2 are selectable from the list of regions (not easy

to select them from the region markers, since they overlap).

You can, for example, route them through 2 different articulators for different

effects, assign them to different keys or the same key & velocity-layer the

result. Or simply have the same drum appear at different places in a drumkit,

for better playability.

gol

Dec 06 (01:41 pm)

Browser

How to have quick access to your favorite folders through FL's browser:

-select one of the 5 snapshots, by pressing the 1..5 keys

-open the folder(s) of your choice

-from the snapshots selector, make sure that 'Frozen' is checked

Now that key will switch to that specific browser snapshot and, because it's

frozen, anything you will do in it (opening other folders) will not mess that

snapshot's settings (that is, reselecting it will restore your initial setup).

This applies to the whole browser state, that includes font sizes, file

extension visibility, sorting, etc.

gol

Dec 06 (01:45 pm)


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Event editor

You opened an event editor for a parameter, and you would like to draw a

curve starting from the current parameter value? You can do this by simply

pressing Ctrl+I (Edit->Insert current controller value).

This is also useful for switch/selector controls, when you want an immediate

jump to a specific value at one specific time. First, make a selection on the

event editor's timeline, then press Ctrl+I, this should insert the value of the

selector at the beginning of the selection.

gol

Dec 07 (12:55 am)

Wave Candy

Wave Candy is also useful to monitor oscillator shapes in oscilloscope mode.

Open Wave Candy, switch to the 'Oscilloscope' preset, and play some

synthesizer's C note through it. It should look cool, but unstable & not veryinformative.

Now, in the plugin's settings, Oscilloscope tab, right-click the 'Update' knob,

and select one of the C notes. The display should now be stable for a C note

from the synthesizer.


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Note that, for technical reasons, the display won't be totally stable, but will

only drift very slowly.

gol

Dec 08 (04:56 am)

FL Studio

While FL offers no surround panner, it's not too hard to prepare surround

output manually, if you really need it.

Say your soundcard has 5.1 outputs (through ASIO). Set up 3 mixer channels

in a row & assign them the 3 "5.1 front", "5.1 rear" & "5.1 center+sub" mixer

icons, & color them if necessary. Then assign your ASIO outputs (they usually

come packed in front, rear & center+sub stereo pairs) to those 3 tracks.

Now it will be easy enough to route other mixer tracks to those 3 tracks,

while adjusting send levels. To export, simply render these 3 tracks as 3

stereo audio files, that other tools can use.

gol

Dec 09 (07:19 am)

Browser


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Middle-clicking a browser item sends it to the selected channel. F5 & F6, or

the 2 extra mouse buttons, send the previous or next browser items to the

selected channels (handy when previewing presets or testing different

drums).

Pressing the Enter key sends the selected item to the selected channel.

gol

Dec 10 (01:51 am)

General

Here are some tricks that apply to FL Studio & most (but not all) of its plugins

knobs & sliders.

-hold CTRL to move the knob more slowly/accurately

-hold SHIFT to bypass the knob's snap points (the points where it makes short

pauses)

-Alt+click or middle-click to reset the knob to its default value

-use mouse wheel to increment/decrement the value (in steps)

-use the 2 extra mouse buttons (X1 & X2, when available) to continuously

increment or decrement the value

-for "digit" selectors, an up or down arrow appears when you're close to the


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top or bottom edges, click there to make continuous increments (with a short

pause for the first increment). This is actually what the extra mouse buttons

are linked to.

gol

Dec 11 (08:13 pm)

Playlist

Alt+T will add a marker starting at the time selection, or at the beginning if

there's no selection.

Ctrl+clicking, or double-clicking a marker label selects the time between that

marker & the next one.

"." on the numpad will jump to the next marker, and ctrl+"." will jump to thenext marker & select it.

Still on the numpad, Alt+"/" or "*" will jump to the previous or next marker.

And here again, hold Ctrl to select.

This is also accessable through jogs if your controller (is supported by FLStudio) features one.

gol

Dec 12 (08:03 am)


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Edison

Press Ctrl+F, and type 'overdub recording', this will make the browser show

the '1-bar overdub recording' mixer preset. Drag & drop it onto a mixer slot.

This preset just opened a Fruity Delay 2 that's basically a 1-bar delay without

decay, and an Edison recording its output.

Press play, and from now on, any sound that you play (through that mixertrack) is 'added' to the loop, while Edison is recording each take separated by

markers.

On Edison's side, it's the 'On play' recording mode that's making it record as

soon as FL starts playing, and separate takes by markers.

gol

Dec 14 (08:09 pm)

Piano roll

Shift+mouse wheel nudges the closest note horizontally, while Alt+mouse

wheel offsets the selected level of the closest note.

When one or more notes are selected, this applies to the selection instead of

the closest note.

gol


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Dec 14 (08:12 pm)

Piano roll / event editor

Ctrl+LMB the time bar starts a time selection.

RMB enlarges the selection (on its left or right side).

Shift+LMB moves the existing selection horizontally (& as usual, hold ALT tobypass the current snap).

gol

Dec 15 (05:27 am)

FL Studio

There are several ways to quickly transpose a score or channel:

-the most obvious: select the notes using the lasso, and move the selection

vertically

-open the piano roll, press SHIFT+Up/Down to transpose by 1 semitone, or

CTRL+Up/Down to transpose by 1 octave


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-open the piano roll, open the "Limit" tool, and press notes to transpose the

score

-in the channel settings, right-click the bottom testing keyboard to change

the channel's root note, and make sure that the "Add to key" checkbox is on.

This will transpose the whole channel.

gol

Dec 16 (10:24 am)

FL Studio

The "Typing keyboard to piano keyboard" checkbox (on the recording panel)

is there so that you can switch off the function in order to access some

single-key keyboard shortcuts.

Right-clicking it will bring a popup that lets you adjust the root note of the 2-

octaves mapping (your keyboard being divided in 2 rows of black & white

keys).

FL Studio 9 will add a Janko layout option to that same popup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_piano

gol

Dec 17 (06:16 am)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_pianohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_piano


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FL Studio

"Waiting for input..."

It's something you have seen or will see, like every user, and you won't make

a tech support post about it because you've read about it here first.

It means that you've messed with a setting, the checkbox that says "wait" on

the recording toolbar. It means that the playback won't start until you have

input some MIDI or tweaked a control. It's made so that the performance

starts as soon as you've started playing (your MIDI keyboard, MIDI or virutal

knob or whatever).

gol

Dec 18 (10:48 am)

FL Studio

Splitters in FL Studio (the bars separating the top & bottom parts of the

playlist & piano roll, as well as the bar sizing the browser) have a memory.

Right-click them, move them, right-click again and they go back to their

previous position. You now have a simple switch between 2 positions of your

choice, by right-clicking.

gol

Dec 19 (04:40 am)


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General

In most modal (that interrupt other windows while waiting for input) windows,pressing Enter accepts while Escape cancels.

Controllers such as the Mackie CU feature ok/cancel buttons that have the

same effect (handy to quickly accept or bypass confirmation/warning

dialogs).

gol

Dec 21 (11:49 pm)

Browser

You can drag files TO the browser as well.

If that file can be located in one of the brower's folders, then the browser will

display it. If not, the parent folder of the file will be added to the extra search

folders, and then the file will be displayed.

Thus, to add a new search folder to FL, you can simply drop a file from that

folder onto the browser.

This is also handy when you have a sample in a channel, and want to browse

other samples from the same folder (probably samples of the same style).

You just drag/drop the channel's sample (from the channel settings) onto the

browser.


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In FL Studio 9, files dragged in MOVE mode (files that are created at the time

of the drop, like drags from Edison or Slicex) will be created inside the folder

onto which you dropped.

gol

Dec 21 (11:53 pm)

Mixer

When you want to route a mixer track to another, quite often you need to

disable the default routing to the master (not to have the track sent twice,

unless it's what you need of course).

To do so in 1 click, just right-click the target routing button and select 'Route

to this track only'.

gol

Dec 21 (11:56 pm)

Toolbars

You can hide FL's toolbars (panels), or lock them (not to move them by

mistake), by right-clicking an empty place on their docking rack.

(In FL Studio 9 this menu will also appear inside the VIEW menu)


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gol

Dec 24 (02:11 pm)

Playlist

While drag/dropping a sample file onto the playlist creates a clip, dropping a

sample file onto an existing audio clip replaces the audio from that clip. Thus,

you can easily replace a loop by another by dropping a sample onto it,without having to locate the channel of that clip.

gol

Jan 06 (12:03 am)

General

The F3 key (& also a button on some MIDI controllers) brings the context

menu in several of FL's windows.

gol

Jan 08 (12:35 am)


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General

How to randomize (set at random) or humanize (sligthly offset at random)

several automatable parameters at once:

-switch the 'Multilink to controllers' LED on (recording panel)

-tweak the parameters you want to randomize, until their name appears

around the LED

-once you've selected them all, right-click the LED, and choose 'Randomize'

or 'Humanize'.

This doesn't disengage the LED, so you can repeat the process.

gol

Jan 24 (06:37 pm)

Piano roll

Left-clicking the mini-piano roll view in the step sequencer windows brings

the piano roll, but right-clicking it brings the piano roll starting at the place

you clicked (handy to quickly jump in a score).

gol

Jan 26 (12:51 pm)


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Edison

In Edison, /* keys play forward/backwards, either at normal speed if thecontent is not already playing, or at faster speed if it's already playing.

+- keys as well as Insert on the numpad play the content slower if it's not

already playing, or faster/slower if it's arleady playing.

SHIFT+/* keys moves the playback indicator left/right, if the content is notplaying.

Holding DOWN while the content is playing makes a 'live selection' (selection

from the point where you pressed the key up to the point where you released

it).

While holding DOWN while the content is not playing, you can use the /* keys

to make a precise selection.

Most of those keys work using MIDI jogs & special keys, where available

(Mackie CU).

gol

Feb 06 (01:44 pm)


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Remote control

In order to delete all of the "MIDI links" (knobs linked to controllers (internal

or hardware) at once:

Right-click Browser->Current project->Remote control, & select "Delete

whole mapping".

This will delete them all & restore a default link for pitch bending (which you

can still delete manually if you really don't want it).

gol

Aug 14 (08:47 am)

Automation

Let's say you wanna automate the tempo from 120 to 130BPM. You'd

normally do this in the event editor, but if you really prefer automation clips,

here's a way:

-right-click tempo selector, "Create automation clip"

-set tempo to 120

-right-click tempo selector, "Copy value"

-right-click "Output min level" on automation clip (in step sequencer), "Paste

value"

-set tempo to 130

-right-click tempo selector, "Copy value"

-right-click "Output max level" on automation clip (in step sequencer), "Paste


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value"

There, you now have an automation clip in the 120-130BPM range. A simple

line will automate smoothly between both.

The same would apply to pitch bending. In FL, both channel pitch knob &

tempo selector have such huge ranges.

gol

Aug 26 (10:54 pm)

Processing

These are tips to get better performances for multicore CPU's. The #1 thingto know is: multithreading has a cost (& a big one), thus to benefit from it,

the CPU to spare has to be higher than the threading costs. FL can't know

this, because the CPU usage of a plugin isn't anything constant, it depends on

how you use it, and rebuilding the structure intelligently over time would too

cost a lot of CPU.

Benchmark projects have shown big benefits from multithreading, when

things are set up properly. In practice however, only rare projects really

benefit from it, some even eat more CPU when multithreading is active, forthe above reasons. But if your project contains real CPU eaters (like 20% of

your CPU), then a clever setup can really bring benefits.


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So you have to help FL building a better multithreading structure. To start

with, once you've loaded a project or moved a mixer track, take a look at the

debug log (in the settings window), it'll look like the attached picture.

-it says that there are 6 threaded generators. They're independent enough,

you don't have to do anything about them. However if you have a generator

very light in CPU, or inactive for most of the song, the threading costs will be

higher than the processing, thus you may simply disable it (uncheck "Allow

threaded processing" in the plugin's menu).

-next is mixer track map. The first list is the processing order, it doesn't really

matter here, at least not directly.

-the threaded map however does matter.

First rule, you don't want too many layers there. Layers are processed

serially, no 2 layer can process at the same time. A layer is created when

there's dependency. In some cases it's possible to reorder mixer tracks to

reduce the # of layers.

Inside layers are units. These are threads, and they process a list of mixer

tracks, like on the pic, unit 1 of layer 1 processes tracks 1, 2 & 3.

(note that units aren't exactly threads, but shared threads. Unit 1 of layer 1 is

the same thread as unit 1 of layer 2)

Here it gets tricky, same as for generators, you want to avoid too light

processing in a unit, since the threading costs will be higher than the

processing. FL already groups empty mixer tracks. That's why you see unit 1

processing tracks 1 to 3, they are empty.

So the rule is to force FL to create units intelligently. Say you have a plugin

eating a lot of CPU (which FL can't really detect, the CPU may fluctuate, or

may be very high for only a small part of the song), see in which layer it is,

and move it so that it's the first of the layer.

Say next to that CPU-eating plugin you have 5 other mixer tracks with light


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plugins in them, in the same layer. Keep "allow threaded processing" for the

FIRST of those mixer tracks, and disable it for the 4 next ones. FL should now

put all 5 mixer tracks in the same unit. You now have 2 units, one with a CPU-

eating plugin, and another processing 5 light mixer tracks. If you're lucky the

5 mixer tracks will be processed while the first unit processes.

It's also possible to create less layers by reordering tracks again. But take

care when moving tracks, it may screw up your project, you may have multi-

in/multi-out plugins (wrapped VST's, Slicex, sidechained stuff, etc), FL doesn't

know about that as plugins are free to access whatever they want without

telling first. When you move a mixer track, FL only adapts what it knows

(routing between tracks & automation).

-if you have one big CPU-eating plugin and a light or empty unit in the same

layer, uncheck "allow threaded processing" for the light one, it'll probably

work better.

-if you have a big lot of units that contain light plugins, group them into 2 or 3

units by unchecking allow threaded processing again.

-you may want to avoid more units than your # of cores. But it can be useful

to have more units than cores in the case a plugin waits for some reason

(internal synchronization), blocking the whole unit (you'll then have another

unit ready to process). This is why FL (unlike Vocodex) doesn't have as many

worker threads as the # of cores always processing the next plugin available,

because if a plugin is in a waiting state, you will be left with less working

threads than cores.

Threading structure.gif

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gol

Sep 17 (08:27 pm)

Playlist

Not sure where the current pattern is used in your project? From the playlist,

use Select->Select by selected source (Shift+C). All instances of the current

pattern will be selected. If a selected channel is an audio or automation clip,

instances of it will be selected too.

And remember that double-clicking a playlist clip selects the pattern or

channel it refers to, and possibly opens the piano roll to edit the pattern'sdata (& centers the view according to where you clicked on the clip).

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Gol - tip of the day