hey there,
i want to try ableton live workflow, just for a change and see if it spurs some more creativity, if i prefer it, etc. etc.
i know for a fact (!) that fl's piano roll is 10x superior to any others, i think everyone can agree on this. my questions are to those who have made the change...
did you feel like you were missing something from fl? something that was much harder to do in live than in fl? did it take time to adapt to the piano roll? etc.

cheers

 

What is it with your FL Piano Roll dedication? You keep bringing it up. I don't remember it being necessarily all that bad, or great either. One feature surely cannot be what dictates your choice of DAW? Every linear style daw is equal in 2022 for Piano Roll and Midi. Besides Protools. You aren't trying to run a movie studio or something with it. You are comparing what little squares look different.

With the style of music you seem to be focused on, I would delete FL in a second if Ableton was my other option. You can always reinstall it later, but you might not need to back up that installer. You have to commit to learning whichever one you pick. FL is too easy and addictive and you will just go back to it. But you are shooting yourself in the foot.

Sincerely,

A complete uninvested Logic user. I have no agenda about what I suggest here. I can listen to your tunes here when you post them from FL. Or Beatport after you learn Ableton.

 

Last edited: Nov 8, 2022

well that's what i'm trying to avoid and that's why i'm asking questions about people who made the switch, what they think about it etc.
and i'm not only asking about the piano roll (which for me is important), rather the whole thing.

 

FL is literally the only DAW like it. You clearly feel limited by it, and I do not blame you at all. The 90days to 6 months you spend learning ANY other linear DAW will be the most you could possibly do for your music making doing any facet of audio work you like. You can always go back to it, but you won't. The first version of FL I ever used was like v2 or something,do not take my comments as saying anything remotely bad about it. I understand the attraction to it. Maybe just not this magic piano roll.

People can make great music with it. That's not my point at all. That one DAW will limit how you approach anything by about 80% of your options.

 

Last edited: Nov 8, 2022

thanks mate, i understand your point and appreciate the comment

 

You have been confronted by the most easy musical decision ever. You just have to delete FL though, because it is like quitting smoking. Hard but really worth getting it over with.

 

but hey quitting smoking is easy, i've done that dozens of times! (cit)
on a serious note, yes, i believe i will go the ableton way. i even have a keyboard that integrates quite well from what i've read.
i will update this thread when i will get more familiar with it, hopefully my experience will help other people with the same doubts. i used to think fl studio was going to be my main weapon forever...
let's see if i'll manage to quit smoking once and for all! cheers brother, have a good night

 

I'll make you a deal. Try Ableton for 6 months with the assistance of a bunch of other ex-smokers. IF you have dumb noob questions you are embarrassed to ask to start; you know so many users of Ableton are here to help you out. They seem to like their DAW a lot and will help you out. It's not like learning MOTU Digital Performer. that is like joining some sort of cult. ;) They will insist it has 10x better midi stuff than any other daw too. If you run into something and cannot find your answer, I will figure it out for you. This is no big reward, because that won't happen anyway.

 

Last edited: Nov 8, 2022

Hi backtired,

i did switch because i didnt like the FL mixer when using hardware. FL routing was lacking at that time. (dont know if its better now..but still looks the same). I did used cracked software only at that time and ableton was cracked too. (and a friend did used it, so he recommended it and i tried it). I also didnt like FL edison to record hardware or other audio. Ableton could record audio more easy..and after using vst's it was cool to freeze your track and create a new audio file by drag it down to new channel while holding shift. I remember i did struggle with this session view and arrangment view in ableton first. This automation when it was recorded in arrangment view and then twisting knobs in session view or vice versa made me nuts. It did de-activate all recorded automation LOL. But after few years i am still happy i did switch.. i use legit ableton 11 and push 2 and it feels like a jam instrument... i also remember that when i did use FL i did use 2 tv monitor screens... now i use one 43"4k screen, stock albeton stuff cant be used as floating vst in your screens, or it need be some maxforlive stuff which some can float. The GUI of FL was using more floating windows, which can be handy when using more monitors screens. But... all routings in the channels of ableton and better recording audio had made me switch from fl to ableton. No regrets at all. Ableton feels more creative for me with all instrument racks and FX racks and drum racks..and routings in channel settings... and push 2...and midi tools...and maxforlive(this another level). Also an old project that got a missing vst will open more eazy. I remember Fl tracks did crash alot when a vst did got a different name or i missing file. I had tons of corrupted track files in FL. In ableton i dont have this struggle... Ableton got an easy file manager and didnt struggle as much when it is searching updated vst's or missing files. .........But this all my humble opinion, because you asked for it

 

Let me ask a question then. Even if in Ableton but using more than one screen, can't you just change what gets moved onto the new real estate with the second screen? Like put your entire mixer over there or something where you would normally put your floating VSTi Synth plugins or whatever. Logic seems totally "locked" into one screen too, at first. But really you just have to figure out how to detach whatever you decide upon.

 

Clone ... i can only show this to you.

i use often 2 screens on 1 monitor

and you can create with maxforlive floating vst's

dont know how to explain it different to you

 

So basically it is 2 screens worth of visual content inside one monitor. Logic is like 1 keypress of X to your mixer, 1 of E to your editors, etc. You can setup screen sets and so on, and jump all around if you need to. The plugins not loading as floating and down in the bottom of the screen in Ableton like that make me way less uncomfortable than the Track Inspectors being moved to the right of the screen does. I don't see the point, maybe it's for left handed people. Art for Art's sake is great, but I do not like change just for the sake of change. I would put up with even it over FL, if at all necessary.

 

If I had to pick my favorite piano roll then it would likely be Logic X and FL Studio. And in fact I'm switching to LPX when I have to do substantial MIDI editing.
Anyway, I'm in Ableton 90% of the time because it's just so straightforward to use and mostly everything is simply where I'd expect it to be.
The regular updates and little cool enhancements over the years have made me stick with it so far.

 

On dual screens Ableton works really well for me. I use Session View on the left screen for mixer stuff and Arrange View on the right

If you're talking about inspiration, I think its going to take at least weeks, but probably months to get familiar enough that inspiration can flow. If you just want to get lucky with inspiration then that change might work, but you're pissing in the wind really...

It all depends on what you hope to get out of this change, apart from inspiration. If its all down to chance then you need to set things up in a familiar way to allow chance more potential, so IMO sticking to what you already know will allow this better. Change the setup, build a Template that allows creativity, accidents etc, but gives you enough control so that when creativity blossoms you have the sheers ready. If you have to go to the shop to buy sheers, you murdered that moment and you'll never get it back... So it can be self-defeating

I changed from Cubase to Ableton mostly to follow Tutorials etc. Cubase became a dinosaur and I couldn't learn using it. I was also making Dance Music, so loop based, and it suited that creative process better than Cubase at that time. But having learned a lot about myself and gone back to making songs either would do the job

Honestly I think that the best way to change your inspiration isn't to swap DAW, its to swap approach. Figure out a better way to set up inspiration, which might mean using an Arp Generator, Chord Generator etc... The arse over elbow approach that you live with right now will be adaptable if you get creative with that. If it comes down to the blocks that most DAWs don't use in Arrangement then shift how you look at those blocks and turn that into a strength that isn't available elsewhere. Copy and Pasting blocks seems like a really fast creative plus to me and if you repeat loops at all then one thing that comes to mind straight away is duplicating 20 blocks and mess about 20 times, then choose the best ones. Shuffle them around in real time to see what flows nicely. Right there you have something that Ableton would struggle with. You can do similar in Session View, but it means duplicating rows and it would work well, but I feel like FL is probably faster at that and keeps everything tight in one place, where Ableton really needs to move into Arrange View once you have things figured out, which is pretty arse over elbow.... I set out with something similar a few years ago and ended up just using Arrange View. Session View is mainly just for mixing

Hope that's useful for some perspective

 

Hey! I resemble that comment.

It's hard to let go of what you are comfortable with, know intimately and get around pretty quickly in. Especially when it does everything you want, even if it is a bit laggier than everyone else when doing so.

 

Yeah I agree with that. Sometimes those quirks become you and it's probably faster to just go through something you already learned than to confuse matters with an alternative like a shortcut key...

It might even be helpful by being longer if it delays your thoughts a touch and forces some extra creativity by making things slower. Who knows? Its all about us individually in the end and what works best

 

When you tire of the bad routing in Ableton try Reaper.

 

The bad routing can be a strength if you get creative. I made Parallel Busses where I could put EQ/Transient Shapers etc on an extra Fader going into the Buss so that it wasn't on the Reverb or the Dry signal. I have no idea why I wanted to do that, it was something to do with dimensional mixing and pushing sounds around the Dimensions

Instead of just thinking 'send x amount to Reverb' you have to think deeper about what you want to achieve and how this piece of shit can make that possible because of the fucked up routing. If you are just using Reverb as a colour its a different mindset I guess, but if you're seeing it as positioning sounds in a space this could change the game for you

I probably should set up Parallel FX instead of the Sends I'm using. It will free up a lot of CPU - cheers for bringing this up

 

What makes Ableton routing BAD? I myself switched from FL to Ableton after purchasing an AKAI MPK61 (Live Lite incl.) FL can't do MIDI output (input only) therefore the Note repeat didn't work but I continued using FL for 2 years. Tried Live lite and everything was mapped perfectly plus note repeat works flawlessly. FL routing is inferior to Ableton's IMHO. So OP would probably take a while to get to the point you mention. But why is it BAD?

 

True. But most of the people who are die-hard into MOTU Performer are working with many machines which really depend on it's rock solid timing and midi editing. They are advanced users who need it for a reason, which is often not at their own homes. They go home and fire up Logic or Ableton or, or, or, or, or. Anything but FL.

IDK, for this part of someones journey in audio; I'd compare this to going and seeing the world. And then picking to move back to Topeka Kansas. It's not going to happen.

I'm trying my best not to break down and tell him to get it over with and go to Cubase. Thats just my personal preference on a PC if I have to use one. I'd learn Bitwig in-depth before going back to FL. But for the OP's own learning curve, I think that might be much without some prior Linear DAW experience. Maybe you don't even need to, but I can't say that myself.

 

Last edited: Nov 9, 2022