anyone saying "bruh it's easy just [do this obscure shortcut or submenu item]" is missing the point of this video. I'm not saying FL is a bad program. I'm not saying you can't make great music with it. I'm saying is has UI problems that make it unnecessarily difficult for beginners. If the _default_ way of doing something (using the drum samples they give you at the start of a session, using the first, *highlighted* option for audio recording) is the "wrong" way, you've f***ed up as a UI designer.
Did fl studio beat you up in high school or smth ? I have to say at some point you sound even worse like fl studio stole your girl . Joking aside, like every daw or anything really it is just matter of how much time you spend on it. In my opinion fl works well for young beginners because it has a nice playful interface while ableton and a couple of other daws look like opening an excel document. Very ugly to the eye. I personally like all of them since they all have their strengths and weaknesses and i consider a good thing to own more than one daw of possible . Anyway wish you all the best man
It’s only default because it’s default to you. This is like saying “if you used a lead synth for a bassline, you fucked up. You should have used a bass synth.” You’re saying subjective opinions are wrong. FL is definitely confusing if you’re coming from other DAWs (especially if you’re a professional musician who’s been using them for years, like you), and while it can be unintuitive at first, someone might actually prefer FL’s workflow once they properly learn it. It’s known for having many different ways to do one thing, and my ADHD-addled brain greatly benefits from that. The steeper learning curve is worth it in my case, and it’s disingenuous to not recognize how different software might cater to someone with a different way of thinking than your own. I get that this video is mostly to be funny, and I definitely felt all the same confusion in the first 2 weeks of using the program.. but as someone with a platform and an audience to speak to, I also think it’s irresponsible to never actually point out the potential upsides. “It’s fine if you like FL” doesn’t really cut it.
While I agree that Ableton gets a lot of things right with how straightforward and simple its UI is, the biggest turn off is the price. Not only is the price of entry much higher than FL, but you also have to re purchase every major update. You can get up and going producing music with FL for only $199. The only drawback is having to do a few extra steps that aren't clearly explained by the program(but that are easily figured out with a google search), which is basically all of what you had issues with in this video.
I'm an FL user for almost a decade and I don't understand why other users are acting butt hurt 😂 this video was hilarious and eye opening.. people are just overly emotional and invested on picking sides..grow up boys 😂
@@areobeats some of the stuff he complained about is absolute BS. If you don't know a software at all it's not their fault, you just have to practice. He also said that here is only one undo and that you can't snap copied patterns to grid, both of these statements are crap. I personally don't like FL Studio, I think it's not an industry standard DAW and lacks some major features. But this video is just pointless, all about personal taste and minor issues that you face when you're not used to how a software works. Also Ableton is not an industry standard DAW either, makes this video even funnier
FL was my first real DAW, I remember struggling with these when I first started making music, but I feel that any music production software has its weird nuance things that make it difficult for beginners to figure out at first. I don't feel like i would be any further than where I already am now with production If I started on another program like Ableton. I've gotten so used to FL that these things don't bother my work flow. Learning any DAW is a challenge.
I started off using ableton (albeit the lite version) and then moved to FL Studio, and I I’ve also used Pro Tools a little bit as well. I actually hate using DAWs that force you to have specific things in one track now. Being able to move everything around freely is so much nicer, and you don’t need to have a huge list of tracks. Also the pattern system is sooo nice for layering. Want to have a drop with 10 lead sounds in FL? Put them all in one pattern and just move that one clip around when you want. Want to do that in any other DAW? Create 10 different tracks and select all 10 of them any time you want to change them. I also find the mixer channel system with the routing that only takes two clicks so much simpler than the bus system used in other DAWs, although they are very similar, but it’s more visual in FL. Also they did add “standard” undo in a new update, although I agree it took them wayyyyy too long for that.
@@pixthepenguin2935 You can accomplish that layering technique using less clicks, less UI space, and with more flexibility using MIDI sends in basically any other DAW.
I ain’t gonna lie, I was confused when I first tried FL but when I first tried Ableton WITH years of music production experience I felt like I was lost in the Sahara Desert
Even looking at him explain Ableton live there, I'm thinking ok but that insert midi thing that started you off wasn't obvious. I was stuck with Ableton for ages trying to use something 'simple' for my friend to use with her Scarlett solo. Also it's not so simple to know how to record audio and assign it to keys to sample against that, how to chain plugins on top of each other as effects on the mixer, how to control the volume or velocity of the instrument instead of the whole mixer track and not wanting to bother with automation. I do like the drum thing though.
First time i tried getting into music making i tried the fl trial, that day i learned that just because people use something doesn't mean you should use it
When you say Ableton is simpler to you, you’re forgetting that you have years of music experience to back you up. For someone who’s just starting out, Ableton can look like a archaic mess that doesn’t feel user friendly in terms of UI. I think people gravitate towards FL studio because the simplicity of the UI feels helpful to someone who doesn’t know what all of the knobs do.
Ableton scared the hell out of me when I tried it out it looked like some weird Star Trek console, Cubase, Protools and Reaper make far more sense. But I stayed with FL Studio because I love it's quirkiness and have used it since version 4.
Studio One 5 has the best UI I.M.O. and is super user friendly. I started in FL a few years ago but never really gave it more than a month before giving up because it was just too difficult. Got Studio One last week and I love it. The stock features are amazing and the software makes sense with how to do things in it if that makes sense.
DING DING DING. I find it funny he harps on FL studio when Ableton has just as many odd proclivities with it's UI and work flow. You can't say left click to add a note and right to delete a note is confusing, and then turn around as say if you want to compose ANYTHING have to select a tiny section on the timeline, then right click.
@jadennotkiri yeah I was looking for a new daw last week to get back into making music, so I got the trial of studio one 5 and ableton. Ableton feels like an old program with a UI that someone who’s been doing music for a while could understand but a beginner would feel lost. Studio one 5’s UI felt modern and very intuitive. I jumped in it and was able to make a synth wave song fairly easy by just messing with stock instruments and stock effects without watching any tutorials. I ended up getting a person is audio interface and it came with the artist version of the software for free so that worked out pretty good. Hope this helped you at all. I’d definitely get the trial, and a few other daw trials to see which is right for you.
I just hard disagree with SO MUCH of your problems with the program "Ew, you have to use right click to delete sequencer hits." Why is that any less intuitive? Your mouse is already on the pattern. "Think, you're hearing your song? wrong." This one just feels dumb. You can see the word PAT is highlighted and the word SONG is not. Only an issue if you ignore a whole section the UI makes very clear is important. Beginners will most likely quickly notice the big ol bar of buttons on the top, and can collect what shit means. They're not blind. And I personally prefer the ability to listen to my pattern on its own easily like that without having to just mute the rest of the song. "Assume I know what these 100 different synthesizers is good for making a bass" I know you didn't list this as a problem, but you're clearly already in complaining mode but...the same fucking thing could be said for any DAW??? You don't know the instruments yet, you gotta figure them out. "This isn't a drum, am I just gonna play the same note again." Again...people aren't blind? There's a little keyboard symbol in that top bar of the screen that makes itself VERY visually present. And that's on purpose. So you know to look at the very integral fucking buttons it gives you. "Why are they all on the same line, this is terrible" ...because you have samples and you want to play them at their original pitch??? I don't get how that one's a problem. If you move them to to different notes, they'll sound different. kind of basic shit. to comment what you say later "oh, everything's labeled in ableton." Yeah...because you picked out a drum machine instead of samples. Shocking. FL studio's drum machines do the same freaking thing. "This isn't a music program its a painting class." ...I would hate it if my DAW automatically threw the pattern I wrote into just...the entirety of the song? Cause that sounds like what you're suggesting. To not put the patterns in yourself, but rather to expect your DAW to do it for you??? Of course you're painting them in when you're working with patterns you should have control of where that pattern comes in. These aren't real issues. "drag it back to the beginning of the session." ...okay yeah this one's kind of fucking annoying. Especially when you're trying to copy a section from the song, cause then you have to drag to the beginning of the song. OR, you can turn up quantization frequency and then gently click it into its place. But that's the first fair actual problem and not just a petty dislike with flow style. "Manually assigning mixer tracks." Again, yeah, totally fair. Didn't really feel necessary. I will also say, if you add a ton of different samples and instruments, and given the mixer number limit of just over a hundred? If it was automatically dropping each and every sample and instrument into a new mixer track you'd run out real fast for some styles of music. BUT, I don't think that really excuses it because you could very well easily just group different things into the same mixer. "You can just put stuff anywhere." This isn't a problem. You just don't like it. That's fine, but its not an actual issue. "there's only one undo" that...that's just factually wrong......Have you never used like...any programs that use CTRL+ALT+Z for multiple undos? Like...that's pretty fucking standard tbh. A ton of professional grade software does this. "What does Edison mean." Again...reading...its a thing...it literally says audio editor. And edison is "usable" but its better for editing an audio track like noise supression, cutting out pieces, sampling specific parts of audio. Its definitely not for recording a session into your playlist. That would be the playlist option. "Where is it, its not in my song" Well yeah...you didn't click to record to playlist...where your song is. You pull out kits from Ableton, which are just drum machines. If you look through your plugin options for drums, you have options for drum machines. And in those instances? They do indeed show up on different notes. Shocker. ALL OF THIS is really just to say, a lot of these are just problems you have with workflow. That is personal problems. Not actual issues. You don't like them because they are not your style. And that is fine. But you're presenting them as problems with the program and not just things you don't vibe with. I picked up Ableton and FL Studio as a kid to try them both out, and I HATED ableton. Why? because I hated the workflow. I hated that things locked into a section, locked forever more. Ableton's UI is mindnumbing due to my ADD. I don't think the idea of selecting a section and right-clicking to create a midi pattern/clip is intuitive at all, despite you saying that's obvious. I never thought it was. FL Studio gives icons of a paint brush, gives a pattern selection tool on top, it gives a piano roll on top, and those visual cues made it overwhelmingly obvious to me where I needed to go for what I wanted to do when I was learning. You pick up ableton, you go to drums. You grab a drum rack. And you look at it, confounded and stupid. There's no piano roll button. There's no clear way to pull up midi. You have to look up that you need to right-click a selected area. Ableton's visual assistance towards people learning the program is absolutely fucking atrocious, in my opinion. It's so strange to me that you'll sit there and say switching between a pattern and a song isn't intuitive when the big ol top section of the software has a bunch of clearly important buttons, including a pat-tern and song button next to the play button. And then turn around and say "oh just select and right click this region." As if ableton tells you to do that anywhere on the screen. That is how you get midi. But yeah, FL Studio is probably the most beginner friendly software, it has its downsides, trying to record is horrible and they have terrible support for the vast variety of midi controllers. It pastes down copied clips and midi really fucking weird. You have to assign mixers manually. It is very not friendly to trying to record audio compared to just using plugins. but most of what he said today was "this is not my style of workflow, and therefore it is bad." Ableton is not my style of workflow, I fucking hate it. It is not bad. It is incredibly good.
I'm just gonna reiterate these two big mixups that just come from you not knowing the software. FL Studio can do continuous undos. CTRL+ALT+Z is an incredibly common thing in software to do. And of course Ableton has the drums labeled, you are picking a drum pack that has been made for you as a drum machine. If you pick the drum machine plugin in FL Studio, and you pick a kit that's been made for you, the drums will be labeled for you on the piano roll. You just don't about that plugin labeled in the drums section of the plugins. The samples are literally just playing the note of the sample so of course its not going to be a drum machine.
Ableton's warping algorithm is definitely something I'm super fucking jealous of as an FL user though. I wish I had such a great tool in FL Studio, quantizing audio loops instead of midi is probably one of the biggest weakest tools in FL Studio. FL's audio warping plugin has only recently become a thing and its not great, with NewTime.
Nah fl studio is equally good for beginners. Its workflow doesnt transfer to other daws perfectly but the sheer size of the fl studio user base makes it hella easy to hop on fl studio and immediately follow along to a top tier tutorial. I can say the same for ableton as well since it has an equally large userbase; but other daws lack those kinds of online resources imo.
After watching this whole thing, I gotta say, respectable opinion, but there’s only really a handful of things I agree with, namely the limited undo and the faults of the recording process. Maybe also the sequencer, but I don’t use the sequencer to begin with so I’m indifferent on it. Personally I feel like many of the things you described as “issues” with FL are really just differences. For example, patterns. You said patterns made the whole process confusing, but as someone who has actively tried many other DAWs in the past, I’ve always found a lot of trouble in writing each part of the song for a single instrument in one confined space. It’s made it LEAGUES harder for me to just find the part of the song I want to change and change it, because I’m constantly staring at a huge number of midi notes instead of just one isolated section that I want to alter. Obviously that’s a personal thing, but in honesty a lot of the “issues” you say FL has have actually really helped me grasp my workflow in a way I simply can’t do in any other DAW. In fairness, I’ve been using FL since I was a little kid, I’ve had a lot of time to learn it, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have had a simpler time using anything else if I had started with it, but I don’t think it’s fair to say FL is “worse” than these other DAWs like Ableton or Cubase or Logic or any of them. It is fundamentally different, you said it yourself, being a loop based tool that sprawled into a full DAW, that’s why producers who use any of the other DAWs you mentioned look at it in confusion and resentment. But is that really a bad thing? It’s a unique tool, and many people who haven’t been able to get the gist of other big name tools have been able to comfortably work with FL *because* it’s so different from the rest, and I feel like calling it worse just because it doesn’t follow the usual formula and it is so far out from other DAWs is simply unfair. I can totally get the frustration, I totally get why someone as seasoned as yourself looks at it and cringes, because it is simply nothing like other DAWs, but it does have its uses, it has its audience, and I think it’s as serious as a tool as any other DAW (speaking from a viability standpoint and not the opinion people have on it). That’s all, not a big attack, just my honest opinion on the matter, hoping you have a great day :)
Totally agree, I started music production from FL and even though I've had problems I couldn't be any happier with it. If it just stopped being a performance hogger and had no limited undos I'd be even happier
3:36 - In almost all DAWs you have to place your MIDI patterns in the arrangement. Even in Ableton. That is literally how you build your track's structure. 4:08 - Press F8 and drag and drop your desired VSTi into one of the grey track squares in the arrangement view. Autmatically makes a new pattern with piano roll, assigns it to a mixer channel, renaming + coloring it affects it in all places. 5:42 - CTRL + B , and there are options for MIDI snapping in the top view ☠️ 7:18 - As stated earlier, if you brought in your VSTi with F8 function it would already be there. Even your drums in the drum machine have already been nicely arranged in the mixer for you. 8:30 - Being able to place anything wherever is a plus for me. If you have a tidy workflow you can make sense of anything you put down in your session. Also, I'm sure you know this but grouping tracks helps to keep order. 8:40 - CTRL + SHIFT + Z is undo, CTRL + Z is redo. Back and forth, simple. If you don't like it there is an option for you to change it to just CTRL + Z in the settings. 9:42 - Like Twitter told you, very few ppl use Edison. Select a mixer channel you would like to record to, select your input and then record audio to mixer track. The everything button records... Idk.. everything??? If you have hardware and assign some MIDI knobs to automate parameters while playing a melody all of that stuff gets recorded in 1 go, pretty handy. 10:46 - Nothing 'secret' about the audio panel lol, once you got 40+ elements in your track this sorting system helps out a lot to find the exact thing you are looking for. Or you could just select the 'all' option so it displays everything, sorted or unsorted. 14:25 - I actally prefer this system with 'pieces of string' as it visually tells me where my audio signals are going. In Logic Pro for example, when you want to route channels in the mixer you have a drop down list with all the names, and that to me is more confusing than a couple of lines. Plus if I have my audio going to several group channels and/or parallel channels and/or sidechain mixer channels it gives me a better feeling of control. Sidechaining in FL isn't particularly hard either and theres several ways to go about it. 15:02 - I've used many other DAWs such as Ableton and yes, FL Studio's piano roll takes the cake. Judging by the fact you were struggling to properly copy and paste a section of notes earlier makes me think you havent really fully figured out the workflow and potential of the FL piano roll.. I agree that the drums being sorted automatically on different notes is cool if you use a drum machine, but for the other half of producers who just use samples to make drums, that little function doesn't matter as much. 16:20 - Automation on the tracks themselves in Ableton , similar to Logic, is handy and convenient. That doesn't mean the automation clips system in FL isn't. It's a different workflow, but not necessarily unhandy. I've use both and both have their upsides and downsides, it comes down to preference. And yes believe it or not you can curve your automations in FL Studio 🤯🤯 you can even oscillate them, and have multiple curve style options. 16:25 - FL also has plenty of warp algorithm options. In conclusion, it is a totally different workflow, but from what I can see you're making your own life harder while using FL Studio by not approaching different situations in the correct/optimal way. Learning the correct shortcuts, all the functions and such for each situation is one of the first things you have to master when learning any DAW. It is what I did when I learned to use Ableton, plus any newbie is deffo gonna have their Google tab at the ready to help them make sense of the software, no matter what DAW they're trying to learn. Everyone knows just winging it and pressing random buttons is only gonna get you so far.. I agree that in general, Ableton has a more simple and speedy workflow, but for some people the more intricate and manual workflow of FL Studio is more appealing. It might be a bit harder to learn for beginners, but it is deffo not inferior. It all comes down to preference!
I've been using FL for 7 years and didnt know about the F8 trick. Thank you. I also see a lot of FL producers (and I started doing it, realizing it makes swing and "drunk" drums far easier) is arranging samples versus re-writing patterns a million different times. Just taking a sample and placing it exactly where you want in time in the arrangement helps to add so much more life and musicianship immediately instead of always writing a pattern. The ALT button is the most powerful button to learn in FL.
@@SALEENS7GTR5 Yeah 100% thats exactly what drew me in the first place over other DAWS. Hell I was even making shit in other DAWS and resampling it into FL just to use the sequencer before Reason Plugin was a thing.
Problem is, I can usually find my way around every major daw other then FL studio because they all work in a logical way from my point of view. They are all so different but the core concept is kept the same - track view and channel view should be the same, not assigned in some patten editor.
I like how he plays braindead during the FL studio section, but when he gets to ableton he says that he "just" has to select part of the timeline and "just" rightclick and find the "insert midi clip" option. Bozo. The average beginner, like you are trying to portray in the first half, would not know how to do this either. 💀
Ok being someone who used FL for years and has switched to ableton, I have to completely disagree. Every bit of FL was easier and more user friendly, as much as FL doesn’t have the work flow I now enjoy. If FL didn’t give me an extremely comprehensive understanding of how a daw works, ableton would have never made sense to me. It’s definitely the most basic and user friendly daw, and that’s its flaw sometimes it’s too basic. But complicated ? Compared to logic or ableton or pro tools ? That’s an insane take that I just can’t understand.
I remember trying Ableton 10 years ago. Very confusing. Tried FLS too, but I did not get that either. Then Bitwig came and I could learn it from scratch. Orherwise, I probably never got into it.
As someone who also switched (I was a beginner in FL at the time that I switched so I learned most of production in Ableton) I intensely disagree with the sentiment that FL is in any way more user friendly than ableton in terms of UI and workflow, based on my experience.
The pattern system and routing in FL studio is super confusing for most beginners if you ask me. Ableton is pretty self explanatory. I started in FL and the only thing I miss is the piano roll and a few of the plugins
as a fl studio user, I was trying to calm down my anger with you navigating fl studio but I respected your opinion with it and I just kind of let it flow, I like these types of videos :) 👍
I felt like he was being dramatic about basic issues...I can make this seem video with any daw and be like "what wait ughhh" for anything i dont like lol
FL has an audio warping feature as well. You can do curved automation in FL (there's even a bunch of different curve-styles you can apply, and even different wave patterns). You can do more than one undo with ctrl + alt + z. Moving stuff off the grid / ignoring the snap to grid is as easy as holding alt while you're dragging your selection around. Ctrl + b lets you paste your selection at the end of said selection. Also, FL is really popular in the Hip-Hop and EDM world. I agree that FL is not perfect, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. Idk if it's just me but when something bothers me in a program then i google how to fix it and usually find a solution/feature for that within 10 minutes. While you did critisize FL, almost all of the things you mentioned are very easily fixable and you failed to point out a lot of the actual problems that I feel come with FL, like the very limited effects slots in the mixer which forces you to use patcher most of the time for sound design purposes which is just annoying (and my main reason why I want to switch to Ableton tbh) or making samples unique but then its the whole thing and not just the bit you selected and you have to go to make unique as sample and then save it seperately... Just to name a few things that imo are actually valid criticism.
imo I feel like patcher is a monster within a monster, like u need to learn all these inputs and outputs, but when u do, you become an unstoppable force
He critisized FL from the POV of a beginner. It's not that they aren't fixable, he is just comparing how it feels starting out on ableton vs starting out on FL. He did a great job showing the issues that beginners have with FL
I opened the program and tried to record my voice. Took me 20 minutes to figure that out before realizing I didn't push the tiny little "song" button in the top corner. Shit it so convoluted it's insane
4:51 - It makes sense for the drums to all be on C, they’re individual samples that can be pitched up and down in the piano roll the same as any other sample. If it was a drum kit from a plug-in it would make more sense to assign each part of the kit to a respective note
Also if it is a drum kit it labels the drums lol he just didn't select a drum kit. Granted it is a bit more tedious to select a drum kit, but I also always found it more uncomfortable to add individual samples to a Logic or ableton project if I wanted to paint notes for it with my mouse.
If you want cleaner drums you also pitch your drums to the key the song is in, it is was pros do, so a pro calling out an easy way to pitch drums is odd
@@Milla4life2 I found it funny when he was taking about no one really USes FL when about 20% of the top 100 was made with FL and like ab live is like 4%. With the younger Gen moving to FL in it could be number 1 in the next decade or so. A pro of the industry would know that. there is many things that he clamed that goes against hard number data points that he is just flat wrong on
The pattern system is amazing! It's so organized and allows you to edit melodies in greater detail, and you can splice them on the playlist to avoid copying and pasting notes on the piano roll. FL is so nice because it's so organized, I find that when using Ableton, you can't really start using it until you have learned what every button and every icon means
how does the pattern system allow you to edit melodies in greater detail? you don't do that in the pattern, you do that in the midi sequencer (or piano roll). Splicing them on the playlist is another thing you can do in other daws, as you can cut clips. I really don't see how these things have anything to do with the functionality of the pattern system.
@@sks1795 pretty sure they mean instead of creating a MASSIVELY long midi playlist for whatever synth or vocal chop sample thing but instead you can use the same playlist and chop parts of it splicing it in different ways to create a new pattern while still using the original pattern
@@sks1795 When all my instruments are layered over I can make a complete beat with all the patterns (relative to each other) and lay it out in the playlist after the fact. Watch a quick Nick Mira video of him making a beat, and it'll show you how fast and simple the workflow is.
As someone coming from music tracker programs I agree so much. Yes, renoise exists, but something more visually intuitive like FL is great for people like me
03:16 just extend the channel rack and you can write however many measures you want. 03:22 - you can build everything in one pattern and then split by channel which will split every instrument and drum into its own pattern and rename it. So you can tgen "paint" to arrange your song. 04:41 ghost notes - which are helpful when making melodies and bass lines etc you can see your main chord progression and build off of it. Especially when you're a beginner. But can be turned off if you want. 05:09 can be solved by simply hitting ctrl+b after highlighting what you want to copy, or holding alt while dragging the notes around. 06:27 by highlighting your bars or beats in the piano roll and pasting, FL will paste it directly after what you highlighted. Ie if you highlight the first 4 bars it will paste at the beginning of the 5th bar. I could keep going but I don't wanna type that much 😭😂 I taught myself how to use FL, it is super easy to use if you pay attention. Where as even after making music for years, using ableton or logic is nowhere near as simple, intuitive, or user friendly as FL. There are numerous simple ways to do everything you listed as a problem in this video if you actually tried a bit. And that's one of the best things about FL, there a many many different ways to do what you want to do depending on the users preference. 👌👏
@@Official.MagzBeats it depends on when you learned FL vs when Prax learned FL. It was heeella different 10 years ago; nobody wanted to share shit about producing and how to use FL compared to today
Just so you know, most of the things showed in the video aren't really that way in FL if you just take a little bit of time to figure them out. Not being able to undo? Nope, it's entirely possible. Not being able to choose where you paste? Also nope, it just works differently. Having to manually assign tracks? I'd say it's actually helpful, especially in those situations when you want to apply same effects to multiple tracks. Ableton being capable of curved automation and displaying drums? Guess what, FL can do that as well, it just works a bit differently. Drums being on the same note? That's only the case with samples, making different pitches of them possible, and if you want a different default note, you can just change it in the sample's settings.
You could make this exact same video about Ableton. Nothing in that DAW is intuitive. He acts like this is about beginners, but the struggles he's pointing out are due to assuming this DAW should work like Pro Tools. No one with no experience opens a DAW for the first time and knows how to do everything.
He just overexaggerating every single new software u use will be weird and unfamiliar, fl studio can be easy to understand in less than a week of u follow tutorials
@@WhoStoleKirya73 is there a way to have FL studio automatically match the sample to your your tempo? I've been using fl studio since 2019 and i recently tried ableton trail and i was amazed at how any sample i dragged in just matched the tempo without me having to manually find the bpm and set it like I do in FL studio.
@@dondanana9573 yes, you can just stretch the audio sample manually, there is multiple way of doing it, just search it up on how to stretch a audio clip in yt
I'm an FL studio user and I picked it up quickly and was never really that confused. However, a lot of my friends have mentioned that it's kind of overwhelming for them.
Currently learning FL Studio and is so new to every single thing but I’m not going to switch. Idk I just accepted it’s going to be tough. Learning a DAW is going to be a learning experience either way ig
6:15 Or... you could hold the Alt key... I figured that one out on my own tbh 8:47 Again, the Alt key is your friend Edit: Tbh FL Studio doesn't make their shortcuts clear, but once you figure out those nifty shortcuts, it's actually pretty comfortable to use. Doesn't make it any less complex, just comfortable.
i think fl got updated a few days ago so you can toggle thte type of undo in your general settings. i have it changed to control+z for multiple undos like in most programs.
Don’t. He already knows there’re better ways to do it but if he mentions those, he couldn’t have made FL Studio look so bad, would’ve defeated the purpose of his video altogether.
When I was a kid I watched one or two tutorials that basically taught how to handle all these problems and I've had no issues since its extremely easy to use once it clicks just takes a bit of using it and getting comfortable with it. I can understand coming from different DAWs why it makes no sense seeing that when I looked at people use Ableton it was vastly different (yet i still pretty much understood what they were doing all be it way different then how I would in FL) but yeah most of these issues highlighted are things I didn't even know would be considered problems cause they are very (at least for me) intuitive and not that complicated things about it. Some things I will highlight specifically especially because another comment I saw had most of it covered already: The playlist can have everything stacked as you mentioned because it is meant to be used to arrange a piece. It isn't a software just for making tracks its meant to do it all aka production, recording, mixing and mastering. What I mean is, you can make a pattern with a bunch of drums then separate the pattern entirely to each individual component and layer them top to bottom on the track list, adding or removing specific elements for specific parts of the song (hooks, countermelodies, extra sounds, etc etc). This includes adding the vocals and automations any additional sounds, you could make a full song only putting .mp3 drums in the playlist without patterns if you so choose. There's lots of options and lots you can do. Mixer doesn't automatically add new sounds to it because you can put similar things onto the same mixer track allowing them to share effects, volume, panning, automation, sidechains, etc. There are easy ways to organize these sounds with minimal effort like clicking the name of an instrument in the channel rack and clicking the track text on the top right. All in all. I understand why you feel that way but the video just kind of rubbed off the wrong way for me and that's only because when I first decided what DAW I was going to use I was told to just use the one I liked and that all them can do the same things if you spend the time to learn how to use the specific DAW. As soon as you went to Ableton to compare you immediately did things that to you were extremely simple but someone that uses FL could do the exact same thing just as simple as you did and make it look easy because they know how to use it which is crazy when the comparison is said to be "night and day, thousands of times easier" which to me as someone who uses FL is just not even close. It's all in the eyes of the beholder and fully agree that Ableton IS easier for 90% of beginners but overall you aren't going to be a beginner forever so at some point it won't matter which DAW you use and all of them will get the job done. I could go on and on comparing apples to oranges each and every thing in the video but as I said someone else covered most of it already. No hate, just had to clarify and I hope most of it is understood to be just constructive.
I consider myself proficient in Ableton, Pro Tools, Logic, Bitwig, and Renoise. I cannot use FL Studio. Every FL user I’ve ever met cannot use other DAWs because they do not share or conserve any aspects of the workflow. Using FL feels like reinventing the wheel. I like rotating between DAWs to keep it fresh and FL is just too different for me. That being said, I think the opposite of this video’s takeaway is true - FL Studio is better as a first DAW because you really only will want to put up with its unique workflow if you haven’t become proficient with the other more traditional DAWs. And to everyone saying “the industry uses X DAW,” nobody cares. Mastering houses use Pro Tools because they’re run by dudes in their 40s. That doesn’t give legitimacy to making fun of any DAW. You can use any DAW to make any kind of music.
I agree that FL Studio is a better first DAW. Because I had to learn to set up mixing chains manually and was forced to set up everything, forced to arrange patterns, I actually learned more and have an appreciation for the stuff Ableton does automatically for me, but with the added benefit of understanding the underlying concepts that make them work. That being said, I will never record with FL Studio, it's a goddamn nightmare. Ableton or even Audacity are so much better for that.
Well i use FL for 19 years and using Reaper as my sub, but i was a former Cubase user before FL yet still I cannot wrap my head on using Live... bitwig was more user friendly IMO despite they're sharing the DNA, Bitwig was more of a Ableton Live 2.0 to me when i tried it
That last statement is fake news, it depends on the approach. The more you rely on the daw to actually create the music, the problems you run into. This shit is for the birds.
As a Music Engineer and Producer who is quite fluent in Fl, I'm Also Fluent in Pro Tools, Studio one, Reaper, Reason, Bitwig and Sonar cakewalk. You are right, Any daw can make the same quality music
I used Ableton for 4 years to get my audio degree and almost stopped composing as a result. FL is incredibly liberating. Ableton’s interface forces you to work a very specific way. It seems like your brain works that way. FL kinda forces you to define your own workflow. Not for everyone but it’s loved for a reason
Oh god just got to the piano roll bit at the end. Honestly feels like you haven’t actually used FL for more than a few hours. This video is borderline irresponsible
Honestly, ableton looks (I don't own it I'm poor) intuitive, maybe only to me but as someone who works with band lab it looks natural, easy, and for beginners. Sure I'm biased but i tried the fl trial and didn't even know where to start, In band lab I started making music right away, click "virtual instrument" chose an instrument, start playing on the piano roll, simple! Even if you didn't understand bandlabs ui, there was a tutorial, I'm pretty sure fl doesn't have one, even if it lacks features it still works.
Points mentioned in the video and how to do it easily. 1. Adding A New Pattern: Hover mouse to the pattern nelector, then scroll wheel up. 2. Duplicate midi in piano roll: 1st method: Ctrl+A to select all, then hold shift + click on a note and drag then "decide where you paste it" 2nd method: Ctrl+A to select all, them Ctrl+B to duplicate. (NOTE: duplicate will appear directly after last midi note, same goes for patterns, samples, and automation in the playlist) 3. Snap to grid: When a sample, pattern, midi, or automation is off grid, hold Alt to temporarily disable grid snapping. 4. Sequencer to Mixer: When you're in the squencer, you can see where a specific sound is sent to in the mixer to its LEFT. Use scroll wheel (or click and drag) to send to a spacific mixer track. (NOTE: the drums that are automatically added when you open a new project are automatically sent to the mixer) (NOTE 2: if a sound is not sent to the mixer it will be send to the master) 5. Solo in the Mixer: To solo a single sound in the mixer, right click on the green light. Right click again to un-solo. 6. Undo multiple instances: Ctrl + shift + Z 7. Recording from mic: Right click on the record button next to the play/stop button. A menu will appear, allowing you to select what to record. (automation, midi, or audio from mic) The recording will appear on the Playlist. 8. Edison Edison is an audio tool. Anything recorded into Edison will not be played unless it is on the Playlist. You can drag and drop the recoded audio within Edison by clicking and dragging the upper-right button. 9. Audio Sample to Mixer: Double click on a sample. This will open sample controls. On the upper-right corner will be "track" where you can scroll-wheel up (or click and drag) to send it to a Mixer track. 10. Why are samples in C in the sequencer? Because C is the sample's "default pitch" Regadless of its actual pitch, when you play C in the Piano Roll, it will play the sample as it is. It will NOT be tuned to the note C. 11. Automation: You can literally automate almost anything in FL. Right-click on any parameter then "Create Automation" For 3rd party VSTs or Effect Plugins: Move the parameter, then on the top-pannel will ba a button that looks like a knob. Right-click then "create automation" (NOTE: You can also do curve automation and other types of curves) 12. Warping audio samples: Double-click on a sample. Below "track" will be different stretch modes. The best mode in comparison to "Complex Pro" is "Stretch" FL Studio License: One-time payment + free lifetime updates. Ableton License: 6-month installment Conclusion Its not about how difficult you think using a vertain DAW is, it's about how determined you are to learn it. The points mentioned in this video against FL can similarly be said to Ableton.
Thank you. Every bad design of FL he mentioned, could have been handle it better. It seems that the most times, hes just scraching the surfaces of knowledge. If youre willing to put more effort into it, it gets smoother everytime. But i can totally understand it, that beginners are just suffering. Sometimes it makes no sense, and if u have not the workflow in your memory, you can struggle. I cant compare it to other daws, since fruity is my only daw i‘ve ever used. Hows ableton in comparison for beginners?
1. I will leave the part about patterns, right click to delete and playlist without comment as it all came down to you not knowing the basics and expecting it to "just work". 2. There are snapping options in the top left or you could just hold alt and position notes without snapping. The same applies to playlist. 3. Unassigned plugins/samples don't come from "nowhere", they are assigned to master by default. It has it's benefits as you can manually assign anything you want wherever you want without mess. Ctrl+L assigns and names all of that automatically, if you will. 4. Actually playlist tracks and mixer channels can be contacted by right clicking and choosing track mode - audio track/instrument. 5. Recording... Just select "record to playlist" and "don't ask later" and voila. Most of the "issues" you presented are just things that are done differently or only differently by default and can easily be changed. But you expected it to work the way Ableton works and got furious everytime something didn't the way you wanted.
out of the memes, I think this is a great video, it shows like everyone's reaction to FL studio, but I think we are forgeting something, that is FL studio has its own unique workflow, if you use flstudio expecting it to follow the exact same workflow than other daws then it will be oviously more complicated to use, but if you use fl studio, and learn how to go with its own flow, it turns out to be an extremely comfortable daw, mostly becouse of it's "hidden tools" or it's keyboard shortcuts or the way you "do" things on it, I admit it, you need more steps to do the same things on fl compared to ableton but in my experience trying both I prefer taking the longer way becouse es confier than the short one, is a hard to explain feeling, and I'm not defending FL studio and deacrediting you video / points stated, I'm just sharing what I think and why I think FL studio works that way. just think about it, many new users struggle with FL but in the end of the day, they say "FL is simpler" but they are actually referring to the comfort they get when using it. in other words, and long story short: FL studio IS more complex to use, but once you master its own unique way to work, it's a really satisfying and comfy proccess, unlike other daws 🤝
Absolutely! Once you learn what you're doing with FL, it's a perfectly capable program, and even has some cool stuff that nothing else has (Patcher, polyphonic note slide, fantastic synths like Harmor and Sytrus) My big beef with it is that FL fights you every step of the way to learning this stuff, especially as a beginner.
@@longestsoloever harmor and sytrus are available as vsts if you know where to look, and stuff like patcher is not an fl studio exclusively patented thing *like they often try to do...* if you are able to find the abandonware that is the image line plugin pack, which even if pirated is fair play due to it being discontinued abandonware, it makes transitioning from fl studio to any other daw a breeze
Yeah, a lot of the criticisms is that it is completely different (like the pattern function) which, I understood in like a week. I actually love FL mostly BECAUSE of this because there is 0 fear losing my drum patterns or samples, when I ALWAYS have it in the patterns menu, which felt like a lifesaver. FL looks more colorful and fun compared to many other DAWs that look like Microsoft Word, so it seems more like actual fun than work. But everyone has a different workflow, and if a DAW supports yours, that is the best for you to use, for example, I would never suggest for Hans Zimmer to use FL, or Tay Keith to use Pro Tools.
As an fl studio user, this brought me back to when i first used it. I was also very confused and over time got used to it Thinking back on it, fl studio does seem to be a little complicated for no good reason Rn im thinking about switching to either pro tools or ableton
To be fair he explained the problems with using FL Studio 100% accurately when you're a beginner at music. I'm a FL studio user and these were EXACTLY the same problems that I had to face when learning how to use the DAW (Automation is still the biggest problem I have had with 6 years of using FL Studio). I'm glad Dean mentioned that even if you use FL it doesn't mean you can't make bangers with it, but I have to agree aswell with not using FL Studio as your first DAW to try out. cant wait to see more like these on here and your second channel :D
I'm primarily an FL Studio user so when I started using Ableton it was difficult as heck. FL Studip also labels drum when you choose a drum machine. Basically to me he sounds like someone who has never really used FL just like an FL user would act towards Ableton
I'd have to disagree with several of his arguments here. Compared to every DAW in existence I've tried, Ableton is actually WORSE. I would agree that Pro Tools is BETTER for both, especially for pro music making, but *FL was never meant to be any better than Ableton*, Reaper, or LMMS. Have yet to test other DAWs outside those mentioned above.
FL makes more sense to me because 1. Its COMPLETELY CUSTOMIZABLE 2. The Program is always updating to match or outlimit other DAWs. It was always meant to be like a Sandbox DAW, not necessarily a starter DAW. Ableton makes sense for those who: 1. Wanna be lazy and not learn all the MASSIVE shortcuts in FL 2. Wanna limit thier configuration capabilities (becomes apparent the more you work with Ableton). 3. Spend more money on a software that's pretty much on equal or lesser ground than FL. The only legit argument he makes here is the pattern layering issue. Past that the arguments honestly sound like someone who isn't willing to learn a DAW. Based on his complaints, the closest equivalent to FL that I recommend ANYONE to use is LMMS (which btw, is free)
I clicked the video expecting some revelation that oughta make me change the DAW I've been working with for the last four years. Instead, you made me more attached to FL. Your video deterred me from change.
you can paste a selection directly after that last placed note, by pressing CTRL + B. Also, the Piano roll grid is controlled by the magnet at the top. you can also bypass the grid by pressing ALT while dragging the notes.
@@mpan2258 what he was saying was that ctrl+v does what ctrl+b does in other daws. i will admit the fact that it isn't that way in FL is a bit ludicrous
i mean yeah, no daw is hard to use when you understand it, but while ableton's learning curve is pretty shallow, fl studio's learning curve is like trying to climb up a 30ft wall made of ice
@@nyeeeeeee9346 ableton is a good daw for beginner because its simple to use and you can understand it in minutes but you can just make simple songs with it but fl studio takes really long to learn how to use it but you can make really cool songs with it. So i like fl studio
I learned production on FL and this made me chuckle because I've had these problems and more with it for so long. The more I've come away from watching FL tips and towards general production/design/mixing tips, the more I'm seeing Ableton and feeling like that workflow would be so much better for me. I'm so jealous of your method of automation because FL so often feels like a frustrating pain in the arse in that respect.
Let me react to what you did in Ableton with the average questions a beginner of Ableton would have: 11:35 how would I know to do that and how would I also know that the kit changed over there? 11:48 how would I know how to insert the midi clip until after I randomly clicked around the program? 12:09 you can make the track loop by dragging it? I did not know that 12:21 wait that's where the bass is? I thought the bass would be in instruments, since that's what the instruments are for right? 12:29 what did you press in order to play that on your keyboard how did you do that? 12:42 wait that's the mixer? how would i have known that without a tutorial? 12:45 i can turn down the track right there? that's so small and not entirely noticeable 13:09 what if I wanted more than one mixer channel? 13:11 after asking all of these questions it sounds pretty complicated 13:16 how do I even enable that track for recording without already knowing that? 13:57 how do i copy a loop in Ableton without looking it up?
I've been producing for about 6. I started using FL Studio when I was in the 5th grade, and with no tutorials, I completely learned the software. When I decided I wanted to switch my DAW after about 3 - 4 years of producing I decided to try Ableton first, and as an experienced producer I couldn't figure out what I need to do. If I could learn FL Studio from scratch as a 5th Grader but not Ableton as an 8th grader, it's obvious that FL Studio is not the problem. I'm really out here watching this grown act like a complete fucking idiot just to make a DAW look bad. There is no way that this is not trying your hardest to make the software look bad. I have now switched to Logic. I can admit that the recording features are way better and there are more built-in presets, but Logic (even though it's also great) is probably less user-friendly than FL-Studio. When you switched to Logic you act like everything is very easy and user-friendly, BUT OF COURSE, YOU'RE GOING TO KNOW WHAT BUTTONS TO PRESS WHEN THIS IS YOUR MAIN DAW. Also, maybe FL Studio is not the most popular DAW for whatever genre you're producing, but FL Studio is by far the most widely used daw in Trap music, which if you haven't noticed is pretty much the most popular music genre as of right now. Btw, by the track you made in Ableton, it's clear that whatever you did in FL Studio was not to the best of your ability. In FL Studio you just used the stock template drums and a synth you probably know is shitty, and in Ableton, you just picked the drum sounds you liked and used a bass preset, and just straight up wrote a better bassline and drum pattern than you did in FL Studio, showing that you know how to make things sound good, you just aren't trying. You haven't even bothered trying to learn FL Studio before making yourself look like an idiot by saying that only Ableton has features you can find in both. Here's a list of the things you missed about FL: You haven't even bothered to look for the shortcut Alt Z (Undo button for more than one thing, a shortcut in many other programs) FPC (FL Studios drum plugin) Automatically labels your samples. FL Studio has curved automation. Oh, and FL Studio piano roll is by FAR Superior with all of the built-in features like the strumming, arpeggiator, randomizer, limit, flip, quick legato. A Fold feature does not make your Piano Roll better, if you don't wanna use a drum sound, just delete it. This is a terrible video.
and he acts like you cant make music at all in fl when you can literally do every step of music production in it, from playing a guitar to singing to making beats many of the things he complained about were actually useful which i dont see how he doesnt understand of he knows the program at least a little bit and has good knowledge of production
When moving any highlighted notes, you can hold shift and move the mouse wheel up for fine movement to the left, or down for fine movement to the right, or simply hold the Alt key for fine adjustment while dragging. The grid snaping is based on zoom level. If you zoom in all the way, you automatically have fine tuning when you drag. I usually drag plugins from the database on the left right onto the mixer channel. I agree with many of your points, because it's not really intuitive and most of the shortcuts have to be discovered.
yea, as someone who doesn’t use fl studio, i found that out by accident. because on most programs shift+scroll = scroll sideways, but not on fl, that’s for shifting notes (and tracks), i feel like it could be a better keybind
Nah, you have to hit like CMD+Q or something to get it to snap back. Pretty ridiculous when everyone keeps telling to manually shift the note back, like you only need to shift a single note or clip and not do it a million times.
I’ve been using ableton for going on 8 years and I love how I can just drag and drop and easily arrange tracks stretch audio and route fx this video has taught more about fl then any other tutorial I’ve cared to watch lol
@@stevie8271 Just learned about the "Layer" plugin and i will never use FPC again. seriously. it lets you assign each instrument on the channel rack to a different pad so you can still edit the sounds individually, and assign them to individual mixer tracks. highly recommend watching a 5 minute tutorial it will change how you write drums!
You are so right. This is the main reason why I don't use FL Studio. If you take a break for a few weeks, you literally have to rattle your head trying to remember all these weird ways of doing basic tasks. People make videos about features and requests, but to me, the biggest thing FL Studio needs is just to make sense.
I’m currently using LMMS, so imagine my total confusion when I tried to use FL Studio. Gonna switch to Ableton anyway. Also, isn't it kind of weird that while most of the FNF fanbase uses FL Studio, Kawai Sprite uses Ableton Live 11? Almost like it's a sign.
@@AUSE I do post my work to a different channel every once in a while, to see my improvement. I talk with some FL users on a daily basis, and they think my stuff is better than theirs.
I feel like most of the points in this video come from the assumption that when you sit down with a DAW you want to 'make a song' - some structured, finished recording - that your DAW should guide you towards the 'obvious next steps' in doing this. FL was my first DAW, I tried trials of *literally all the rest including several now-defunct super obscure ones*, came back to it, loved it. As a kid, I didn't want to make songs - I wanted to noodle around and work up to songs eventually. As a beginner, no steps were obvious to me regardless of the DAW, and I didn't appreciate other DAWs assuming what my priorities were. I didn't know what a piano roll was, what samples or VSTs were - I spent the first 3+ years of production never using a mixer because I wanted to learn to have good musical ideas first and saw mixing as this 'otherworldly engineering thing' that 'wasn't for me'. I liked FL because the easiest thing to do with it is just *make noises*. Most of all: FL was the only DAW where I could hold the escape key and be left with a blank screen. For me, nothing could top that! The completely freeform system means every project I make looks different - really different. It *is* a painting class - and with good reason! The patterns system is borrowed from oldschool trackers that I also liked to play with as a kid. It means I can just have ideas and not be burdened by the interface guiding me towards doing anything with them until I'm ready. That said, when I want to pull off needlessly convoluted multitasking, I'm more free to do that in FL than I am in any other DAW. FL doesn't try to be the best DAW for the masses - it tries to be the best DAW for people who love the unique things it has to offer. There are a bunch of things I think the devs should change about it, including some of your points - imo piano roll should be the default over the step sequencer for example, and the dragging the midi data to the start thing is really dumb. But you have to respect the dev's bravery to be so different when other DAWs are so similar. They write the darn thing in hardcore assembly code, line by line from the ground up - they clearly love their work to bits. FL is for beginners - if you're a beginner who knows literally nothing and wants to take music production skill-by-skill as opposed to project by project, and never have your DAW steer you towards something you might not have chosen yourself. In my experience this also makes FL better for folks who can't for whatever reason use online resources/communities to learn or teach themselves. Other DAWs and most educational content assumes you have, or want to be taught assumptions about how music should be made - for example "you'll use one program for everything, you'll start by sequencing midi and finish by mixing". But I didn't! I wanted to export synthesizer parts out as stems to mess up in Audacity. I wanted to make avante garde noise music where everything was janky and broken. I wanted something that would let me stick fake guitar amps on a stem recorded out of LSDJ and beef up the drums with .xi samples (to my knowledge few other DAWs can natively work with the .xi format). FL works well for folks like me who grew up with a dodgy internet connection and no friends who shared my interests, who had no choice except to learn entirely by "fucking around and finding out". When folks ask me for a recommendation of what to start with, I point them towards Reaper because it's cheapest. While I appreciate your experience and many of the concerns raised in the video, and while I enjoyed seeing your keen eye for design take apart things I've taken for granted for so long, I feel like you never quite reckoned with your own expertise, you made assumptions a beginner simply wouldn't know to have, and I get the impression you exaggerated your own frustration in several places to beef out your case. This didn't read like a detailed UI critique video (see: Tantacrul) so much as a music teacher voicing the personal quirks and preferences that they make their students follow because it suits them. This video reminded me a bit of one teacher I had who used to freak out because I didn't regularly practice my guitar in the dark. Practicing my guitar in the dark is nice sometimes, it helps some students a lot, for me it was take it or leave it... but the kid who had a phobia of the dark didn't get on with that teacher. Likewise the kid who finds Abelton and Logic too rigid and prescriptive isn't going to mesh with your teaching, and it would help folks all around if you could have started by acknowledging your own assumptions, and the consequences of your expertise. All in all though, good video, and hopefully one day I'll be back 👍
@@fibbintiggins2858 Haha I'll concede I sometimes have a problem with concision! Genuinely though, I take the process of giving folks feedback really seriously and I'll never write anything in response to a video that I wouldn't want to receive myself.
I feel like this deserves a heart from the creator more than all of the ones which he actually hearted which all seem.. to be agreeing with him unconditionally? Take this instead ❤
...you think.. that REAPER (aka something ive never heard of) is cheapest? well you havent heard of LMMS then, aka... the TRUE cheapest DAW!! and how cheap is it, you ask? well... ITS COMPLETELY FREE!! (ok i wrote a paragraph in the video comments so im not gonna do the same for every reply. but still USE LMMS, all the other DAWs either have a free trial or cost money at startup, but LMMS? ...NOPE!! COMPLETELY free!! ok bye lol)
Started doing EDM production as a hobby a year ago, using exclusively FL studio. Aside from the typical grievances that I agree with (I rarely go a week without it crashing) I think the fundamental problem with FL studio is that it doesn't put enough structure on what you're allowed to do. - You can put multiple instruments in the same pattern - You can route multiple instrument channels to the same mixer track. - You can put patterns from different instruments on the same playlist track. This poses two problems: 1) This extra flexibility almost always turns into extra responsibility: I always want one instrument per mixer track and per playlist track. But that's not the default. If I want proper organization in my project, I need to do it myself. While it's true that FL studio provides the option of setting channels as instrument tracks, because this isn't the default, the UI can't orient itself around it. Bringing me to the next point. 2) Because there's no built in structure tying instruments to playlist tracks to mixer tracks, the UI can't cleanly arrange mixer effects and automations so that you can see everything at once. I am constantly needing to reopen the mixer and reopen a plugin window. Sometimes it's open but minimized somewhere and FL studio doesn't automatically maximize it when I select it?? I need a bajillion playlist tracks for my automation. It becomes very painful to keep track of at times. I was recently thinking about giving Ableton a try, and writing this out made me realize how much FL Studio hamstrings me from being productive in it. I think it's about time I switch.
Everything that was mentioned besides the copy paste issue is a strength for FL Studio. As someone who wants absolute control over everything in my song and uses midi to drive my production, it’s the best DAW for my workflow. If you want an easy program that is powerful, GarageBand or Logic is the way to go.
Most of the things you covered here seem like what differentiate FL to other Daws. Every program has some Learning curve & it's a matter of how much time as a user you are willing to invest to it. I have tried Live, and went back to FL the second week. I respect your opinion tho.. Great video.
Personally had and don't have any of these Problems with FL Studio even when I was a beginner. I really enjoy FL studios workflow and I always thought Ableton was clunky. Sure it might be simpler but it's always felt off. But I'm not good at making music and I use FL so maybe I am wrong
Started on FL, moved to Abelton. Now I'm back to FL. I use both for different things, which is great because I used both days fairly extensively. I just can't mix at all in ableton, I need the FL mixer rack
Started with FL for a year, switched to reaper for 2 years and I'm about to switch to ableton. I produce everything from rock to hip hop, FL can do beats better than Reaper, and Reaper can do recording better than FL. Ableton can do both really well, so I actually prefer it personally
This video should be taken out of TH-cam, its kind of illegal to be this dishonest. Nothing he "screams" about is any problem at all, and most problems are simply made up and does not exist. Its a truly ridiculous video.
But he has used this daw many times. He tried to teach many students through the years how to produce in FL studio cause they asked him to do it. But he has a degree in music and in college he learned how to use protools. Every single daw except fl Studio has the sameish interface and workflow and that's why he has this take.
@@TerceiroLugar its not bad because its different. he doesn't understand the workflow, and trying to teach people how to use a program you yourself don't know how to use properly is going to be hell.
@@TerceiroLugar It depends on where you are starting at. I went to school for sound design as well and learning pro-tools was a struggle. Learning to use a real board was a struggle. Learning to use Logic was a struggle. Why? Because I started with Reaper and FL Studio. I never felt comfortable using Pro-tools to compose. And I never felt comfortable mixing in Logic.
I've been using fl studio since it was blocks and blips on the screen. It's become cumbersome to make beats. This video was on point and makes sense. Thanks for pointing out these small but major differences!
THANK YOU FOR OPENING MY EYES!! i wasnt even trying to make anything fnf related but i was struggling so god damn much- and everything abt ableton seems so much more beginner friendly
FPC or the vst that holds the drum kits, labels the drums within the piano roll as well. The layer option allows you to set "children" from a single midi track to play the same thing over multiple vst's. Also control + shift + Z let's you do more than one undo without looking at the undo history. Control + B allows you to paste a clip, selection, or notes directly after the original clip or shift + click allows you to duplicate things and pick where you want it. There is curved automation in FL along with multiple other settings that can help without writing it all in such as pulse, wave, etc. The warp and on-track automation for Ableton is very good, I just feel like i needed to rebuttal some of the claims within this.
i think his point is that being a begginer trying to understand FL is counter-intuitive all of the things you mentioned are only known by people that are using FL for a long time, not begginers so that makes it difficult when trying to understand the DAW and make some music
All of the gripes i hear about FL studio boil down to someone not knowing a default program already exists to do exactly what they are looking for. An example is i constantly hear people saying you cant do the ableton sample warp thing to put it perfectly in time. you can. its called newtime.
@@mhmm4303 I dont even use newtime, as long as you do the "detect tempo" of sample, remember what BPM FL spits out, and then use "fit to tempo" and input the found tempo into the "BPM", it will warp that sample perfectly to your project tempo. The way Ableton can shift the waveform in a sample is better, though.
@@SALEENS7GTR5 Or even drag a sample in, fit to tempo, click on the dropdown menu on the sample, select Chop and choose the desired method. Then you can select stretch on the top left of the playlist and then use the slip tool. Holding Shift+Alt and dragging the edges of each chopped sample allows you to do a similar warping thing that Ableton uses. FL Studio can do pretty much everything Ableton does, just differently or more modular (interpret that as either being annoying or a way to get more creative instead of having a linear workflow with a lot of other DAWs). It's understandable why new users find it confusing, because it is, but it's also why FL is pretty darn powerful.
I would have never guessed in 2007, that the same dude who covered entire Through the Fire and the Flames would also make my favorite comedy video in 2022.
You can use the instrument track or audio track type to automatically wire up the mixer to the channel and the arranger track. Clicking on the timeline switches to Song mode. FL has some problems (time signature changes are messed up), but most of the problems you point out have been addressed without breaking the original workflow.
FL has the greatest piano roll of all time. I didn’t appreciate it fully until I started using Ableton. FL has its problems but I do still think it’s more beginner friendly than other DAWS. Also, key short cuts solves a lot of the midi problems you described.
Been using Fl studio for 2 years and now using ableton, I still prefer the piano roll on fl for sure like If I'm pencilling in midi why do I have to click the playlist in the specific place instead of pressing space bar, and velocity randomization is better and generally the length of notes. One feature I do appreciate on ableton is the ability to hide any of the notes that aren't in scale highlighted, you can then move chords up or down semitones and still be in key and becomes easier to figure out progressions. Literally went through every single issue on fl before so can definitely appreciate his dismay for the daw. EDITING audio is PAINFUL. ableton makes it so fluid being able to stretch from transients and move around with ease.
As someone who learned production starting with FL and now using Ableton for almost a year, I can say that FL is anything but beginner friendly just like the video makes an attempt to describe it. Im saying "makes an attempt" because this video only barely hits on the tip of the iceberg of problems that FL can give you. FL is only useful once you have spent a LOT of time on working out all the problems you bump into during learning to produce music. And even then FL Studio finds ways to make your music "work" but only in the most obscure way ever. I always thought it was normal, until I tried Ableton. I would never go back to FL Studio.
I feel like I had the opposite experience. I started making music originally in abelton from the copy line 6 had with its asio devices and absolutely had no idea how to make things, did sony acid for a bit (which I absolutely loved when I was only writing with instruments at the time) and when I started getting into trance, jumpstep, edm, dubstep I felt like switching from Acid to Fl was a breeze while reteaching myself a new daw. I did have a chance to dabble with Studio one for a little bit which I really did enjoy a lot with my limited experiences. I could be weird but fl studio just immediately clicked and was extremely intuitive for me, but that is just my opinion and experience.
i learned more about fl studio (and ableton) from this video than any other youtube video on the planet. Thank you, and keep cooking. ("The End of All Things" is fire btw)
Much of this could he avoided if you read the manual. Also there’s a ton of shortcuts that helps speed up your workflow, and that’s why producers like nick Mira can make a hit beat in 20 minutes.
@@nivo6379 thats a bloody hot take my g... If you want to really know the ins and outs of smt, the manual is your go to. However, all the points he made in the video are elementary. Literal minutes of clicking around and ALL those issues are fixed, at WORSE a TH-cam video or two. I myself have never read the manual of FL and am getting along way better than any of his so claimed "students"
I think every daw has it's difficulties when you're a beginner, but for me FL Studio was the best one, the plugins that it has are amazing, the piano roll is godly, sytrus is the best plugin ever made and FL just looks amazing, I love the little details and animations, there are some things that are not too intuitive, but when you get how they work, possibilities are just infinite, and I think it has more things than any other daw, you just have to really get into it. By the way, Ctrl + Alt + Z it's the shortcut that can undo more than one time (there's a thing called manual).
A lot of things what you mentioned here are so relatable, I had to deal with those things by myself. Well, I have been using it for a good amount of time to get used to everything and be confortable so I can see myself getting insanely confused over other music programs and react just like you, something like... "how do i control mixer"
I came from the old tracker scene and FL Studio felt the most natural when moving to a DAW. I tried others but they always felt like they had a steep learning curve compared to FL. Guess it all comes down to where you are coming from.
Man thank you. I thought I was just an idiot trying to use even the FREE TRIAL of FL Studio (which is also dogshit compared to Ableton's, only being allowed to use certain features and NOT SAVE THINGS, whereas Ableton will let you use it for 90 days with full access), and I am glad to know I was not the only one being confused. As I said before, thank you for showing me the differences, and I hope you have a good day!
a lot of the issues he's stated in the video have shortcuts and/or workarounds, FL is just different compared to how standard DAWs operate, its not inherently bad, nor good, like any DAW, it is dependent on the user, unless its a shit DAW XD
There is drum labeling on FL studio if you pick the drum kits on the packs folder which also opens them in an interface similar to an MPC (which if you prefer you can open that vst and load it with any samples you want and they will be labeled on the piano roll), also when using drum vsts like drumaxx or fruity DrumSynth
I believe that FL's system is a unique system that a lot of people gravitate towards and fall in love with. For me personally, I love it, though I do use Ableton at this current time because I find it's audio manipulation to be a little better and all my friends use Ableton and I like helping, so I want to learn Ableton as well as I know FL. Still, the free form feeling that FL has is something I constantly miss and love about it. The arguments made in this video are bordering on nitpicky and the statement made in the description by the video creator pretty much proves that his issues are minor for anyone that wants to learn FL, or whom enjoy the way it is and see it as a feature set, and not a bug list. Still, I can understand some of these issues he has, and FL clearly doesn't work for him, which is okay. He's just going to double down on the idea that these issues he has that are really minor in the grand scheme of music production, but to anyone who watches this and who isn't 100% sold by his gripes, I highly recommend downloading the trial and experimenting for yourself with an open mind💘
@@marquistutt9879 it may not be the best, and it's true that it has some limitations, but you can make good music with it. Plus, it has a better UI than FL studio, and that's the main reason I don't use FL
My take on the dislikes you mention, as a producer w 8+ years of experience in FL and it being my main production tool: * I really like the pattern+playlist way of arranging on FL studio, imo it's one of the DAW's strengths as it allows unlimited flexibility for organising your clips - i think this is just a preference thing. FL has supported instrument-based tracks for a while now as well so the option is there if you want it. * all (drum) samples being on middle C in the piano roll by default makes sense to me given that by moving them up or down you change the pitch of the samples (which imo is a handy feature in FL, eg for hihat patterns) * totally agree that copy and paste using ctl+c and ctrl+v is useless in FL studio, they should defo just make it paste at the playhead, the snapping atm is horrendous - to bypass this I usually just shift+click and drag to copy the selection, or ctrl+b to copy and paste to next bar - but defo they should improve the copypasting * I agree that auto-assigning channels to mixer track would be useful default behaviour, i think you can enable it manually but would be better as a default * the 1 undo thing has been (finally) fixed in a recent-ish update, though it's always been possible to multi-undo with ctrl+alt+z (but this isnt intuitive at all) * I agree that recording audio/midi is unnecessarily complicated (including the "everything" option, still dont know what it does lol) and prefer audio recording in eg Logic (haven't used Ableton). Also Ive personally had some issues with recording latency on FL which are not present at all in Logic but that might just be my setup Overall I agree with what some others have said that you seem to have some personal preference issues with FL which aren't very objective - still I agree with many of the things you say. I guess every DAW has its weaknesses and strengths. I'll personally keep using FL for production and mixing as I'm familiar with it and its plugins, though I might use Logic for audio recordings in future as I like its recording and comping workflow.
Ableton has a lot of awesome functionality, i respect that, but I'm still used to FL, the mixer in FL is way less confusing in my opinion. Also, *FL-chan*
While I completely agree with everything in this video, the ONE thing I love about FL (I use ableton now) is that you can trigger automation clips with midi. It sounds crazy but I used to use it a lot with sidechain and it makes it much easier to use one curve for everything without having to automate every change in sidechain, let alone trying to sidechain with a plugin in an odd time signature.
I could make a contrasting video point for point about any other daw. When something is new to you, you have to research and learn to use it. Tutorials are great for this, instruction manuals are even better.
crazy to think so many of us just learned how to get by in FL without much thought or care on how it compares to the UI of any other DAW. Whether we're FL or Ableton gang we're maybe going to want to learn pro tools at some point. Thank you for this video to compare the experience. I always wanted to try Ableton for fun, cool to know it's actually a lil simpler than I thought.
Started out on fl and moved to ableton, this video perfectly sums up a lot of my issues. Surprised about your market share comment though, fl studio is absolutely huge in EDM/electronic music, I can think of a ton of major producers that use it (Eliminate, Justin Hawkes, Skybreak, MUZZ, Buunshin, Imanu, Varien, even Porter Robinson)
Thank you so much, i've been searching for a good program to make music, and I found fl studio, and yes, it's a bit hard, I took a lot of time to make a song. I spent a lot of time to find the perfect program, and nobody showed what I wanted 'til you finally show me a good one, you are the only youtuber who actually has shown me this, thank you. Btw you make very good videos
Honestly gotta agree with a lot of this stuff as someone who uses FL studio I am just so used to all these little quirks and problems that they're no longer really an issue for me but when I first began using it, these were all things that were just SO confusing to me Though a lot of these issues have simple and intuitive solutions I actually prefer assigning the channels manually, I feel more in control for drums, using FPC drums work a lot better than the default samples they give you, those are my personal go to there isn't only 1 undo, you just press ctrl + shift + Z and it works fine confusing for beginners, but, that's pretty much any DAW in existence imo
I've been using FL studio for 2 years. the problems you mentioned are all right. I agree with you %100. I have been struggling with these problems for 2 years and not even got used to it a bit because it's really complicated and tiring. Automation is a big big problem. It's a headache!
Ctrl + Z, Ctrl + Alt + Z. That’s how you keep undoing. FL studio is a visually superior DAW in every way. Abletons piano roll is a half step away from GarageBand. Ableton is great for beginners and people who want a fast workflow but no matter what DAW you start with it’s going to be a foreign language. If it’s easy that means it’s not complicated. FL encourages complex tracks and meticulous organization while Ableton caters to the audience that use premade drum kits. Y’all got a media bin instead of a file browser and all of the menus and toggles across the UI are small and haven’t been refreshed in years. The people that praise Ableton only do so because there were only 3 daws on MacOS. Logic, Ableton, and Pro Tools. GB is logic lite. FL drops a video every month talking about updates and added features. I’ve never seen Ableton publicly care about their consumer
i think you’re misunderstanding the point. it’s not that ableton isn’t complicated and can’t do complicated things, it’s that on ableton and EVERY other daw, it is no where near as complicated to do a SIMPLE task as it is on FL studio. that’s not a good thing. also, i won’t acknowledge any of the other things you said, but do some research before just spewing words.
@@zepheriyah “Every other DAW” GarageBand is far simpler to use than Ableton. It’s easier to pick up and make something and always has been. Every simple task that he had a problem with has a keyboard shortcut. You said do some research but you didn’t give any facts or evidence to support your claims. Ableton is NOT the easiest DAW to use. And you’re too scared to address my other points. Speaking of points… You missed it! Ableton is not a better program. FL Studio has a steeper learning curve for 👉🏾BEGINNERS 👈🏾 which may be you if you think any DAW is better than others. They all ultimately do the same thing.
Really like this video tutorial. As a person who really wants to make music and is just using fl studio. I can't tell you how many times I got confused and gave up when I was using fl studio even when I was using a video tutorial I still get vey confused because it sounds like the person is explaining how to fly a spaceship and while I haven't used ableton live. I can tell just by watching this video that it is much more easier to use so I may get and start using ableton live now if I want to start making music also really great video with some really nice editing longestsoloever keep it up man really love your videos.
I've never used any other DAW besides FL Studio. I started learning to produce a few months back and I learned FL and had no other reference to the ridiculousness of the UI. It just all made sense to me because it was all I knew. Now its second hand nature to do all the tedious tasks and things to watch out for but I can only image how much easier it would have been to start in another DAW.
I get that those are the things that a beginner may stumble upon when first stating to use FL, but if you do a little bit of research, for pretty much everything shown here, there's a better way to do it (i.e. use instrument or audio Playlist tracks, use FPC if you want to see your drums in the PR with named notes, use Ctrl+B instead of Ctrl+C and V because yeah normal copy and paste indeed sucks, actually look up how undo works in FL to go up multiple levels or enable the "Alternate undo mode" in the settings, not recording in Edison lol, etc etc...).
I never knew Ableton was that easy, I might consider trying it sometime :) I still like using FL for now, but thanks for making this, I've definitely learned stuff!
I've been using FL studio on and off for 9 years and its my favorite DAW out of the few I've used. I am a production novice but I'm not really into technical music theory. HOWEVER the way you explained the difference between Ableton and FL makes me wanna try it but I cannot afford the standard Ableton and I already have everything I need in FL.
I think I liked FL Studio because of the free lifetime updates. I had a massive cookbook book that I used to study it and now am able to write tunes very quickly on it. I also play saxophone so record using it using it to record audio quite quickly. When I was studying at college and university, I tried using cubase and I (think) logic but they were so all over the place I couldn't be bothered. I'd previously used music 2000 on the original PlayStation to compose music in little blocks so FL Studio made more intuitive sense to me after that.
anyone saying "bruh it's easy just [do this obscure shortcut or submenu item]" is missing the point of this video.
I'm not saying FL is a bad program. I'm not saying you can't make great music with it. I'm saying is has UI problems that make it unnecessarily difficult for beginners.
If the _default_ way of doing something (using the drum samples they give you at the start of a session, using the first, *highlighted* option for audio recording) is the "wrong" way, you've f***ed up as a UI designer.
No, you didn’t. It means that, like every other daw, you have to *learn the gui and get used to it*
Did fl studio beat you up in high school or smth ? I have to say at some point you sound even worse like fl studio stole your girl . Joking aside, like every daw or anything really it is just matter of how much time you spend on it.
In my opinion fl works well for young beginners because it has a nice playful interface while ableton and a couple of other daws look like opening an excel document. Very ugly to the eye. I personally like all of them since they all have their strengths and weaknesses and i consider a good thing to own more than one daw of possible .
Anyway wish you all the best man
It’s only default because it’s default to you. This is like saying “if you used a lead synth for a bassline, you fucked up. You should have used a bass synth.”
You’re saying subjective opinions are wrong. FL is definitely confusing if you’re coming from other DAWs (especially if you’re a professional musician who’s been using them for years, like you), and while it can be unintuitive at first, someone might actually prefer FL’s workflow once they properly learn it. It’s known for having many different ways to do one thing, and my ADHD-addled brain greatly benefits from that. The steeper learning curve is worth it in my case, and it’s disingenuous to not recognize how different software might cater to someone with a different way of thinking than your own.
I get that this video is mostly to be funny, and I definitely felt all the same confusion in the first 2 weeks of using the program.. but as someone with a platform and an audience to speak to, I also think it’s irresponsible to never actually point out the potential upsides. “It’s fine if you like FL” doesn’t really cut it.
While I agree that Ableton gets a lot of things right with how straightforward and simple its UI is, the biggest turn off is the price. Not only is the price of entry much higher than FL, but you also have to re purchase every major update. You can get up and going producing music with FL for only $199. The only drawback is having to do a few extra steps that aren't clearly explained by the program(but that are easily figured out with a google search), which is basically all of what you had issues with in this video.
I'm an FL user for almost a decade and I don't understand why other users are acting butt hurt 😂 this video was hilarious and eye opening.. people are just overly emotional and invested on picking sides..grow up boys 😂
I can tell by the way he explains this, he definitely has personal issues with fl studio that goes beyond the program.
EXACTLY
Just seconds in i could tell that. Complaining about right click the note to delete a note... i mean come on that was so so minor and unnecessary
There’s reasons for it and you’re not listening because you’re belligerent and offended.
@@areobeats some of the stuff he complained about is absolute BS. If you don't know a software at all it's not their fault, you just have to practice. He also said that here is only one undo and that you can't snap copied patterns to grid, both of these statements are crap. I personally don't like FL Studio, I think it's not an industry standard DAW and lacks some major features. But this video is just pointless, all about personal taste and minor issues that you face when you're not used to how a software works. Also Ableton is not an industry standard DAW either, makes this video even funnier
@@kieranbyrne1593 what features would you say it’s missing? I’m new to all this and was looking into fl studio as I liked the workflow
FL was my first real DAW, I remember struggling with these when I first started making music, but I feel that any music production software has its weird nuance things that make it difficult for beginners to figure out at first. I don't feel like i would be any further than where I already am now with production If I started on another program like Ableton. I've gotten so used to FL that these things don't bother my work flow. Learning any DAW is a challenge.
i agree and ive only been making music for a few months XD
@@boogeymane6555 same
I started off using ableton (albeit the lite version) and then moved to FL Studio, and I I’ve also used Pro Tools a little bit as well. I actually hate using DAWs that force you to have specific things in one track now. Being able to move everything around freely is so much nicer, and you don’t need to have a huge list of tracks. Also the pattern system is sooo nice for layering. Want to have a drop with 10 lead sounds in FL? Put them all in one pattern and just move that one clip around when you want. Want to do that in any other DAW? Create 10 different tracks and select all 10 of them any time you want to change them. I also find the mixer channel system with the routing that only takes two clicks so much simpler than the bus system used in other DAWs, although they are very similar, but it’s more visual in FL. Also they did add “standard” undo in a new update, although I agree it took them wayyyyy too long for that.
@@pixthepenguin2935 You can accomplish that layering technique using less clicks, less UI space, and with more flexibility using MIDI sends in basically any other DAW.
@@DoctorSoctopus I can do all that with basically 0 clicks but ok
I ain’t gonna lie, I was confused when I first tried FL but when I first tried Ableton WITH years of music production experience I felt like I was lost in the Sahara Desert
I'm dumb and I thought Ableton was easy within half an hour and I'm new
Complete opposite for me. FL studio always felt weird and confusing to me but I understood Ableton in a day or two for most basic thing
Even looking at him explain Ableton live there, I'm thinking ok but that insert midi thing that started you off wasn't obvious. I was stuck with Ableton for ages trying to use something 'simple' for my friend to use with her Scarlett solo.
Also it's not so simple to know how to record audio and assign it to keys to sample against that, how to chain plugins on top of each other as effects on the mixer, how to control the volume or velocity of the instrument instead of the whole mixer track and not wanting to bother with automation.
I do like the drum thing though.
@@Beauweir yeah the midi thing really wasn’t obvious
First time i tried getting into music making i tried the fl trial, that day i learned that just because people use something doesn't mean you should use it
I love FL Studio. Something about building songs with pattern "blocks" appeals to me.
Yeah the way you make things in the program just suits me perfectly
You can do that with other software too
(e.g. Logic)
@@ggdk2865and minecraft
You can do that with basically any other daw tho
When you say Ableton is simpler to you, you’re forgetting that you have years of music experience to back you up. For someone who’s just starting out, Ableton can look like a archaic mess that doesn’t feel user friendly in terms of UI. I think people gravitate towards FL studio because the simplicity of the UI feels helpful to someone who doesn’t know what all of the knobs do.
Ableton scared the hell out of me when I tried it out it looked like some weird Star Trek console, Cubase, Protools and Reaper make far more sense.
But I stayed with FL Studio because I love it's quirkiness and have used it since version 4.
Studio One 5 has the best UI I.M.O. and is super user friendly. I started in FL a few years ago but never really gave it more than a month before giving up because it was just too difficult. Got Studio One last week and I love it. The stock features are amazing and the software makes sense with how to do things in it if that makes sense.
DING DING DING.
I find it funny he harps on FL studio when Ableton has just as many odd proclivities with it's UI and work flow.
You can't say left click to add a note and right to delete a note is confusing, and then turn around as say if you want to compose ANYTHING have to select a tiny section on the timeline, then right click.
@jadennotkiri yeah I was looking for a new daw last week to get back into making music, so I got the trial of studio one 5 and ableton. Ableton feels like an old program with a UI that someone who’s been doing music for a while could understand but a beginner would feel lost. Studio one 5’s UI felt modern and very intuitive. I jumped in it and was able to make a synth wave song fairly easy by just messing with stock instruments and stock effects without watching any tutorials. I ended up getting a person is audio interface and it came with the artist version of the software for free so that worked out pretty good. Hope this helped you at all. I’d definitely get the trial, and a few other daw trials to see which is right for you.
don't take the video seriously, just treat it as a really bad ableton advertisement. makes more sense that way tbh
I just hard disagree with SO MUCH of your problems with the program
"Ew, you have to use right click to delete sequencer hits." Why is that any less intuitive? Your mouse is already on the pattern.
"Think, you're hearing your song? wrong." This one just feels dumb. You can see the word PAT is highlighted and the word SONG is not. Only an issue if you ignore a whole section the UI makes very clear is important. Beginners will most likely quickly notice the big ol bar of buttons on the top, and can collect what shit means. They're not blind. And I personally prefer the ability to listen to my pattern on its own easily like that without having to just mute the rest of the song.
"Assume I know what these 100 different synthesizers is good for making a bass" I know you didn't list this as a problem, but you're clearly already in complaining mode but...the same fucking thing could be said for any DAW??? You don't know the instruments yet, you gotta figure them out.
"This isn't a drum, am I just gonna play the same note again." Again...people aren't blind? There's a little keyboard symbol in that top bar of the screen that makes itself VERY visually present. And that's on purpose. So you know to look at the very integral fucking buttons it gives you.
"Why are they all on the same line, this is terrible" ...because you have samples and you want to play them at their original pitch??? I don't get how that one's a problem. If you move them to to different notes, they'll sound different. kind of basic shit. to comment what you say later "oh, everything's labeled in ableton." Yeah...because you picked out a drum machine instead of samples. Shocking. FL studio's drum machines do the same freaking thing.
"This isn't a music program its a painting class." ...I would hate it if my DAW automatically threw the pattern I wrote into just...the entirety of the song? Cause that sounds like what you're suggesting. To not put the patterns in yourself, but rather to expect your DAW to do it for you??? Of course you're painting them in when you're working with patterns you should have control of where that pattern comes in. These aren't real issues.
"drag it back to the beginning of the session." ...okay yeah this one's kind of fucking annoying. Especially when you're trying to copy a section from the song, cause then you have to drag to the beginning of the song. OR, you can turn up quantization frequency and then gently click it into its place. But that's the first fair actual problem and not just a petty dislike with flow style.
"Manually assigning mixer tracks." Again, yeah, totally fair. Didn't really feel necessary. I will also say, if you add a ton of different samples and instruments, and given the mixer number limit of just over a hundred? If it was automatically dropping each and every sample and instrument into a new mixer track you'd run out real fast for some styles of music. BUT, I don't think that really excuses it because you could very well easily just group different things into the same mixer.
"You can just put stuff anywhere." This isn't a problem. You just don't like it. That's fine, but its not an actual issue.
"there's only one undo" that...that's just factually wrong......Have you never used like...any programs that use CTRL+ALT+Z for multiple undos? Like...that's pretty fucking standard tbh. A ton of professional grade software does this.
"What does Edison mean." Again...reading...its a thing...it literally says audio editor. And edison is "usable" but its better for editing an audio track like noise supression, cutting out pieces, sampling specific parts of audio. Its definitely not for recording a session into your playlist. That would be the playlist option.
"Where is it, its not in my song" Well yeah...you didn't click to record to playlist...where your song is.
You pull out kits from Ableton, which are just drum machines. If you look through your plugin options for drums, you have options for drum machines. And in those instances? They do indeed show up on different notes. Shocker.
ALL OF THIS is really just to say, a lot of these are just problems you have with workflow. That is personal problems. Not actual issues. You don't like them because they are not your style. And that is fine. But you're presenting them as problems with the program and not just things you don't vibe with.
I picked up Ableton and FL Studio as a kid to try them both out, and I HATED ableton. Why? because I hated the workflow. I hated that things locked into a section, locked forever more. Ableton's UI is mindnumbing due to my ADD. I don't think the idea of selecting a section and right-clicking to create a midi pattern/clip is intuitive at all, despite you saying that's obvious. I never thought it was. FL Studio gives icons of a paint brush, gives a pattern selection tool on top, it gives a piano roll on top, and those visual cues made it overwhelmingly obvious to me where I needed to go for what I wanted to do when I was learning. You pick up ableton, you go to drums. You grab a drum rack. And you look at it, confounded and stupid. There's no piano roll button. There's no clear way to pull up midi. You have to look up that you need to right-click a selected area. Ableton's visual assistance towards people learning the program is absolutely fucking atrocious, in my opinion. It's so strange to me that you'll sit there and say switching between a pattern and a song isn't intuitive when the big ol top section of the software has a bunch of clearly important buttons, including a pat-tern and song button next to the play button. And then turn around and say "oh just select and right click this region." As if ableton tells you to do that anywhere on the screen. That is how you get midi.
But yeah, FL Studio is probably the most beginner friendly software, it has its downsides, trying to record is horrible and they have terrible support for the vast variety of midi controllers. It pastes down copied clips and midi really fucking weird. You have to assign mixers manually. It is very not friendly to trying to record audio compared to just using plugins. but most of what he said today was "this is not my style of workflow, and therefore it is bad." Ableton is not my style of workflow, I fucking hate it. It is not bad. It is incredibly good.
I'm just gonna reiterate these two big mixups that just come from you not knowing the software.
FL Studio can do continuous undos. CTRL+ALT+Z is an incredibly common thing in software to do.
And of course Ableton has the drums labeled, you are picking a drum pack that has been made for you as a drum machine. If you pick the drum machine plugin in FL Studio, and you pick a kit that's been made for you, the drums will be labeled for you on the piano roll. You just don't about that plugin labeled in the drums section of the plugins. The samples are literally just playing the note of the sample so of course its not going to be a drum machine.
Ableton's warping algorithm is definitely something I'm super fucking jealous of as an FL user though. I wish I had such a great tool in FL Studio, quantizing audio loops instead of midi is probably one of the biggest weakest tools in FL Studio. FL's audio warping plugin has only recently become a thing and its not great, with NewTime.
U nailed it. This guy sounds like a complete idiot and I’m an Ableton user
Thank you, exactly what I thought throughout the video. 90% of his criticism made no fucking sense at all
Yes FL is absolutely terrible at recording audio although they are getting much better at it. If you can learn the shortcuts, it makes it a lot easier
Nah fl studio is equally good for beginners. Its workflow doesnt transfer to other daws perfectly but the sheer size of the fl studio user base makes it hella easy to hop on fl studio and immediately follow along to a top tier tutorial. I can say the same for ableton as well since it has an equally large userbase; but other daws lack those kinds of online resources imo.
dude the video is an ad for ableton minus a purchase link, let's not take this guy seriously
@@genmaicha_ fl studio is shit and protools mf's hype it up because it's industry standard and mf's just wanna be important let's be real bruh.
ayoo Exyl?!
You’re absolutely correct
Based Exyl
FL is challenging for a beginner like he said but once you're familiar with it, the workflow feels a lot more precise than other DAWs I've used.
After watching this whole thing, I gotta say, respectable opinion, but there’s only really a handful of things I agree with, namely the limited undo and the faults of the recording process. Maybe also the sequencer, but I don’t use the sequencer to begin with so I’m indifferent on it.
Personally I feel like many of the things you described as “issues” with FL are really just differences. For example, patterns. You said patterns made the whole process confusing, but as someone who has actively tried many other DAWs in the past, I’ve always found a lot of trouble in writing each part of the song for a single instrument in one confined space. It’s made it LEAGUES harder for me to just find the part of the song I want to change and change it, because I’m constantly staring at a huge number of midi notes instead of just one isolated section that I want to alter. Obviously that’s a personal thing, but in honesty a lot of the “issues” you say FL has have actually really helped me grasp my workflow in a way I simply can’t do in any other DAW. In fairness, I’ve been using FL since I was a little kid, I’ve had a lot of time to learn it, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have had a simpler time using anything else if I had started with it, but I don’t think it’s fair to say FL is “worse” than these other DAWs like Ableton or Cubase or Logic or any of them. It is fundamentally different, you said it yourself, being a loop based tool that sprawled into a full DAW, that’s why producers who use any of the other DAWs you mentioned look at it in confusion and resentment. But is that really a bad thing? It’s a unique tool, and many people who haven’t been able to get the gist of other big name tools have been able to comfortably work with FL *because* it’s so different from the rest, and I feel like calling it worse just because it doesn’t follow the usual formula and it is so far out from other DAWs is simply unfair.
I can totally get the frustration, I totally get why someone as seasoned as yourself looks at it and cringes, because it is simply nothing like other DAWs, but it does have its uses, it has its audience, and I think it’s as serious as a tool as any other DAW (speaking from a viability standpoint and not the opinion people have on it).
That’s all, not a big attack, just my honest opinion on the matter, hoping you have a great day :)
Agree with you on pretty much everything, except the limited undo isn't a thing for me? It's really confusing me why everyone's talking about it
Fun fact: If you press Ctrl + *Alt* + Z you can undo further without having to go to your history
@@WhoStoleKirya73 It's because people don't know they can hold Alt when pressing Ctrl + Z to undo further
@@vCherrykAI16 and they even added an option to change it to make the undo unlimited
Totally agree, I started music production from FL and even though I've had problems I couldn't be any happier with it. If it just stopped being a performance hogger and had no limited undos I'd be even happier
3:36 - In almost all DAWs you have to place your MIDI patterns in the arrangement. Even in Ableton. That is literally how you build your track's structure.
4:08 - Press F8 and drag and drop your desired VSTi into one of the grey track squares in the arrangement view. Autmatically makes a new pattern with piano roll, assigns it to a mixer channel, renaming + coloring it affects it in all places.
5:42 - CTRL + B , and there are options for MIDI snapping in the top view ☠️
7:18 - As stated earlier, if you brought in your VSTi with F8 function it would already be there. Even your drums in the drum machine have already been nicely arranged in the mixer for you.
8:30 - Being able to place anything wherever is a plus for me. If you have a tidy workflow you can make sense of anything you put down in your session. Also, I'm sure you know this but grouping tracks helps to keep order.
8:40 - CTRL + SHIFT + Z is undo, CTRL + Z is redo. Back and forth, simple. If you don't like it there is an option for you to change it to just CTRL + Z in the settings.
9:42 - Like Twitter told you, very few ppl use Edison. Select a mixer channel you would like to record to, select your input and then record audio to mixer track. The everything button records... Idk.. everything??? If you have hardware and assign some MIDI knobs to automate parameters while playing a melody all of that stuff gets recorded in 1 go, pretty handy.
10:46 - Nothing 'secret' about the audio panel lol, once you got 40+ elements in your track this sorting system helps out a lot to find the exact thing you are looking for. Or you could just select the 'all' option so it displays everything, sorted or unsorted.
14:25 - I actally prefer this system with 'pieces of string' as it visually tells me where my audio signals are going. In Logic Pro for example, when you want to route channels in the mixer you have a drop down list with all the names, and that to me is more confusing than a couple of lines. Plus if I have my audio going to several group channels and/or parallel channels and/or sidechain mixer channels it gives me a better feeling of control. Sidechaining in FL isn't particularly hard either and theres several ways to go about it.
15:02 - I've used many other DAWs such as Ableton and yes, FL Studio's piano roll takes the cake. Judging by the fact you were struggling to properly copy and paste a section of notes earlier makes me think you havent really fully figured out the workflow and potential of the FL piano roll.. I agree that the drums being sorted automatically on different notes is cool if you use a drum machine, but for the other half of producers who just use samples to make drums, that little function doesn't matter as much.
16:20 - Automation on the tracks themselves in Ableton , similar to Logic, is handy and convenient. That doesn't mean the automation clips system in FL isn't. It's a different workflow, but not necessarily unhandy. I've use both and both have their upsides and downsides, it comes down to preference. And yes believe it or not you can curve your automations in FL Studio 🤯🤯 you can even oscillate them, and have multiple curve style options.
16:25 - FL also has plenty of warp algorithm options.
In conclusion, it is a totally different workflow, but from what I can see you're making your own life harder while using FL Studio by not approaching different situations in the correct/optimal way. Learning the correct shortcuts, all the functions and such for each situation is one of the first things you have to master when learning any DAW. It is what I did when I learned to use Ableton, plus any newbie is deffo gonna have their Google tab at the ready to help them make sense of the software, no matter what DAW they're trying to learn. Everyone knows just winging it and pressing random buttons is only gonna get you so far..
I agree that in general, Ableton has a more simple and speedy workflow, but for some people the more intricate and manual workflow of FL Studio is more appealing. It might be a bit harder to learn for beginners, but it is deffo not inferior. It all comes down to preference!
I've been using FL for 7 years and didnt know about the F8 trick. Thank you. I also see a lot of FL producers (and I started doing it, realizing it makes swing and "drunk" drums far easier) is arranging samples versus re-writing patterns a million different times. Just taking a sample and placing it exactly where you want in time in the arrangement helps to add so much more life and musicianship immediately instead of always writing a pattern. The ALT button is the most powerful button to learn in FL.
love the f8 shortcut
@@SALEENS7GTR5 Yeah 100% thats exactly what drew me in the first place over other DAWS. Hell I was even making shit in other DAWS and resampling it into FL just to use the sequencer before Reason Plugin was a thing.
fr this whole vid is so annoying
Problem is, I can usually find my way around every major daw other then FL studio because they all work in a logical way from my point of view. They are all so different but the core concept is kept the same - track view and channel view should be the same, not assigned in some patten editor.
I like how he plays braindead during the FL studio section, but when he gets to ableton he says that he "just" has to select part of the timeline and "just" rightclick and find the "insert midi clip" option. Bozo. The average beginner, like you are trying to portray in the first half, would not know how to do this either. 💀
True
I mean it really did look like he JUST had to do that. But he also made it look easy so
@@dooddoingstuff ur right. he did just have to do that. But my point is that a beginner would not know that
@@zigafide as a beginner who tried ableton for first time i didnt know what to do but fl studio was simpler for me
@@lilpeikko349 i learned basics in fl studio in one day but i couldn't do anything in ableton
Ok being someone who used FL for years and has switched to ableton, I have to completely disagree. Every bit of FL was easier and more user friendly, as much as FL doesn’t have the work flow I now enjoy. If FL didn’t give me an extremely comprehensive understanding of how a daw works, ableton would have never made sense to me. It’s definitely the most basic and user friendly daw, and that’s its flaw sometimes it’s too basic. But complicated ? Compared to logic or ableton or pro tools ? That’s an insane take that I just can’t understand.
Agreed.
I remember trying Ableton 10 years ago. Very confusing. Tried FLS too, but I did not get that either. Then Bitwig came and I could learn it from scratch. Orherwise, I probably never got into it.
It's a fair point. I started with Ableton and found it very frustrating.
As someone who also switched (I was a beginner in FL at the time that I switched so I learned most of production in Ableton) I intensely disagree with the sentiment that FL is in any way more user friendly than ableton in terms of UI and workflow, based on my experience.
The pattern system and routing in FL studio is super confusing for most beginners if you ask me. Ableton is pretty self explanatory. I started in FL and the only thing I miss is the piano roll and a few of the plugins
as a fl studio user, I was trying to calm down my anger with you navigating fl studio but I respected your opinion with it and I just kind of let it flow, I like these types of videos :) 👍
I felt like he was being dramatic about basic issues...I can make this seem video with any daw and be like "what wait ughhh" for anything i dont like lol
FL has an audio warping feature as well. You can do curved automation in FL (there's even a bunch of different curve-styles you can apply, and even different wave patterns). You can do more than one undo with ctrl + alt + z. Moving stuff off the grid / ignoring the snap to grid is as easy as holding alt while you're dragging your selection around. Ctrl + b lets you paste your selection at the end of said selection. Also, FL is really popular in the Hip-Hop and EDM world. I agree that FL is not perfect, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. Idk if it's just me but when something bothers me in a program then i google how to fix it and usually find a solution/feature for that within 10 minutes. While you did critisize FL, almost all of the things you mentioned are very easily fixable and you failed to point out a lot of the actual problems that I feel come with FL, like the very limited effects slots in the mixer which forces you to use patcher most of the time for sound design purposes which is just annoying (and my main reason why I want to switch to Ableton tbh) or making samples unique but then its the whole thing and not just the bit you selected and you have to go to make unique as sample and then save it seperately... Just to name a few things that imo are actually valid criticism.
imo I feel like patcher is a monster within a monster, like u need to learn all these inputs and outputs, but when u do, you become an unstoppable force
He critisized FL from the POV of a beginner. It's not that they aren't fixable, he is just comparing how it feels starting out on ableton vs starting out on FL. He did a great job showing the issues that beginners have with FL
Ya
also if u use a drum rack in fl im pretty sure it labels the drums in the piano roll
@@dandevito6023 FPC.
I'm using FL for 7 years and I find it super easy, I recommend FL to any new music producer
I opened the program and tried to record my voice. Took me 20 minutes to figure that out before realizing I didn't push the tiny little "song" button in the top corner. Shit it so convoluted it's insane
4:51 - It makes sense for the drums to all be on C, they’re individual samples that can be pitched up and down in the piano roll the same as any other sample. If it was a drum kit from a plug-in it would make more sense to assign each part of the kit to a respective note
Also if it is a drum kit it labels the drums lol he just didn't select a drum kit. Granted it is a bit more tedious to select a drum kit, but I also always found it more uncomfortable to add individual samples to a Logic or ableton project if I wanted to paint notes for it with my mouse.
If you want cleaner drums you also pitch your drums to the key the song is in, it is was pros do, so a pro calling out an easy way to pitch drums is odd
he’s literally never heard of fpc lmao
@@-BigTMoney- it’s almost like he has no idea what he’s actually talking about
@@Milla4life2 I found it funny when he was taking about no one really USes FL when about 20% of the top 100 was made with FL and like ab live is like 4%. With the younger Gen moving to FL in it could be number 1 in the next decade or so. A pro of the industry would know that. there is many things that he clamed that goes against hard number data points that he is just flat wrong on
The pattern system is amazing! It's so organized and allows you to edit melodies in greater detail, and you can splice them on the playlist to avoid copying and pasting notes on the piano roll.
FL is so nice because it's so organized, I find that when using Ableton, you can't really start using it until you have learned what every button and every icon means
Yup, that's the reason why other DAWs are kinda confusing to me because I am always like, WHERE DA PATTERNS?! xD
how does the pattern system allow you to edit melodies in greater detail? you don't do that in the pattern, you do that in the midi sequencer (or piano roll). Splicing them on the playlist is another thing you can do in other daws, as you can cut clips. I really don't see how these things have anything to do with the functionality of the pattern system.
@@sks1795 pretty sure they mean instead of creating a MASSIVELY long midi playlist for whatever synth or vocal chop sample thing but instead you can use the same playlist and chop parts of it splicing it in different ways to create a new pattern while still using the original pattern
@@sks1795 When all my instruments are layered over I can make a complete beat with all the patterns (relative to each other) and lay it out in the playlist after the fact. Watch a quick Nick Mira video of him making a beat, and it'll show you how fast and simple the workflow is.
As someone coming from music tracker programs I agree so much. Yes, renoise exists, but something more visually intuitive like FL is great for people like me
im a fl studio user and this is funny as hell lmao. Keep up the great content
i agree
Hi there
Yea iam Broke lmao
03:16 just extend the channel rack and you can write however many measures you want.
03:22 - you can build everything in one pattern and then split by channel which will split every instrument and drum into its own pattern and rename it. So you can tgen "paint" to arrange your song.
04:41 ghost notes - which are helpful when making melodies and bass lines etc you can see your main chord progression and build off of it. Especially when you're a beginner. But can be turned off if you want.
05:09 can be solved by simply hitting ctrl+b after highlighting what you want to copy, or holding alt while dragging the notes around.
06:27 by highlighting your bars or beats in the piano roll and pasting, FL will paste it directly after what you highlighted. Ie if you highlight the first 4 bars it will paste at the beginning of the 5th bar.
I could keep going but I don't wanna type that much 😭😂
I taught myself how to use FL, it is super easy to use if you pay attention. Where as even after making music for years, using ableton or logic is nowhere near as simple, intuitive, or user friendly as FL. There are numerous simple ways to do everything you listed as a problem in this video if you actually tried a bit. And that's one of the best things about FL, there a many many different ways to do what you want to do depending on the users preference. 👌👏
Also also, as someone who's used different piano rolls. You sir, are very wrong
@@captain1607 Wrong about what? Everything he said is true.
As someone who has never used any software and has no idea what you just said, what do you recommend as a beginner?
This pretty much summed up my first year of learning FL Studio 😂
bro deadass, the entire thing was hating on FL Studio LMFAOOOOO
You gotta do a vid where you try ableton bro
I never had that issue because the program I used before it had a similar structure, aside from not having a piano roll among other things.
it took you a year to learn fl? i learned It in like a month
@@Official.MagzBeats it depends on when you learned FL vs when Prax learned FL. It was heeella different 10 years ago; nobody wanted to share shit about producing and how to use FL compared to today
i was always under the impression that FL was simpler than Ableton, but now that you've broken it down like this I sorta wanna try Ableton
Just so you know, most of the things showed in the video aren't really that way in FL if you just take a little bit of time to figure them out. Not being able to undo? Nope, it's entirely possible. Not being able to choose where you paste? Also nope, it just works differently. Having to manually assign tracks? I'd say it's actually helpful, especially in those situations when you want to apply same effects to multiple tracks. Ableton being capable of curved automation and displaying drums? Guess what, FL can do that as well, it just works a bit differently. Drums being on the same note? That's only the case with samples, making different pitches of them possible, and if you want a different default note, you can just change it in the sample's settings.
You could make this exact same video about Ableton. Nothing in that DAW is intuitive. He acts like this is about beginners, but the struggles he's pointing out are due to assuming this DAW should work like Pro Tools. No one with no experience opens a DAW for the first time and knows how to do everything.
He just overexaggerating every single new software u use will be weird and unfamiliar, fl studio can be easy to understand in less than a week of u follow tutorials
@@WhoStoleKirya73 is there a way to have FL studio automatically match the sample to your your tempo? I've been using fl studio since 2019 and i recently tried ableton trail and i was amazed at how any sample i dragged in just matched the tempo without me having to manually find the bpm and set it like I do in FL studio.
@@dondanana9573 yes, you can just stretch the audio sample manually, there is multiple way of doing it, just search it up on how to stretch a audio clip in yt
I'm an FL studio user and I picked it up quickly and was never really that confused. However, a lot of my friends have mentioned that it's kind of overwhelming for them.
yeah i feel like it appeals to a very specific type of analytical thinking (which i really love)
Currently learning FL Studio and is so new to every single thing but I’m not going to switch. Idk I just accepted it’s going to be tough. Learning a DAW is going to be a learning experience either way ig
As a person using FL for 2 years, i can say this guy has some back story with FL🤣
6:15 Or... you could hold the Alt key... I figured that one out on my own tbh
8:47 Again, the Alt key is your friend
Edit: Tbh FL Studio doesn't make their shortcuts clear, but once you figure out those nifty shortcuts, it's actually pretty comfortable to use. Doesn't make it any less complex, just comfortable.
This.
Also the ctrl alt z to do multiple undos
i think fl got updated a few days ago so you can toggle thte type of undo in your general settings. i have it changed to control+z for multiple undos like in most programs.
6:15 or just CTRL + B to paste selected notes consecutively
Don’t. He already knows there’re better ways to do it but if he mentions those, he couldn’t have made FL Studio look so bad, would’ve defeated the purpose of his video altogether.
When I was a kid I watched one or two tutorials that basically taught how to handle all these problems and I've had no issues since its extremely easy to use once it clicks just takes a bit of using it and getting comfortable with it. I can understand coming from different DAWs why it makes no sense seeing that when I looked at people use Ableton it was vastly different (yet i still pretty much understood what they were doing all be it way different then how I would in FL) but yeah most of these issues highlighted are things I didn't even know would be considered problems cause they are very (at least for me) intuitive and not that complicated things about it.
Some things I will highlight specifically especially because another comment I saw had most of it covered already:
The playlist can have everything stacked as you mentioned because it is meant to be used to arrange a piece. It isn't a software just for making tracks its meant to do it all aka production, recording, mixing and mastering. What I mean is, you can make a pattern with a bunch of drums then separate the pattern entirely to each individual component and layer them top to bottom on the track list, adding or removing specific elements for specific parts of the song (hooks, countermelodies, extra sounds, etc etc). This includes adding the vocals and automations any additional sounds, you could make a full song only putting .mp3 drums in the playlist without patterns if you so choose. There's lots of options and lots you can do.
Mixer doesn't automatically add new sounds to it because you can put similar things onto the same mixer track allowing them to share effects, volume, panning, automation, sidechains, etc. There are easy ways to organize these sounds with minimal effort like clicking the name of an instrument in the channel rack and clicking the track text on the top right.
All in all.
I understand why you feel that way but the video just kind of rubbed off the wrong way for me and that's only because when I first decided what DAW I was going to use I was told to just use the one I liked and that all them can do the same things if you spend the time to learn how to use the specific DAW. As soon as you went to Ableton to compare you immediately did things that to you were extremely simple but someone that uses FL could do the exact same thing just as simple as you did and make it look easy because they know how to use it which is crazy when the comparison is said to be "night and day, thousands of times easier" which to me as someone who uses FL is just not even close. It's all in the eyes of the beholder and fully agree that Ableton IS easier for 90% of beginners but overall you aren't going to be a beginner forever so at some point it won't matter which DAW you use and all of them will get the job done. I could go on and on comparing apples to oranges each and every thing in the video but as I said someone else covered most of it already. No hate, just had to clarify and I hope most of it is understood to be just constructive.
Straight fax
I consider myself proficient in Ableton, Pro Tools, Logic, Bitwig, and Renoise. I cannot use FL Studio. Every FL user I’ve ever met cannot use other DAWs because they do not share or conserve any aspects of the workflow. Using FL feels like reinventing the wheel. I like rotating between DAWs to keep it fresh and FL is just too different for me.
That being said, I think the opposite of this video’s takeaway is true - FL Studio is better as a first DAW because you really only will want to put up with its unique workflow if you haven’t become proficient with the other more traditional DAWs.
And to everyone saying “the industry uses X DAW,” nobody cares. Mastering houses use Pro Tools because they’re run by dudes in their 40s. That doesn’t give legitimacy to making fun of any DAW. You can use any DAW to make any kind of music.
I agree that FL Studio is a better first DAW. Because I had to learn to set up mixing chains manually and was forced to set up everything, forced to arrange patterns, I actually learned more and have an appreciation for the stuff Ableton does automatically for me, but with the added benefit of understanding the underlying concepts that make them work.
That being said, I will never record with FL Studio, it's a goddamn nightmare. Ableton or even Audacity are so much better for that.
Fuck this DAW war man I'm going back to Atari cubase
Well i use FL for 19 years and using Reaper as my sub, but i was a former Cubase user before FL yet still I cannot wrap my head on using Live... bitwig was more user friendly IMO despite they're sharing the DNA, Bitwig was more of a Ableton Live 2.0 to me when i tried it
That last statement is fake news, it depends on the approach. The more you rely on the daw to actually create the music, the problems you run into. This shit is for the birds.
As a Music Engineer and Producer who is quite fluent in Fl, I'm Also Fluent in Pro Tools, Studio one, Reaper, Reason, Bitwig and Sonar cakewalk.
You are right, Any daw can make the same quality music
I can definitely see how fl studio could seem unintuitive to some, but once you get used to the workflow it's insanely fast.
@BlissedToBePissed yep
Like any other DAW :)
I used Ableton for 4 years to get my audio degree and almost stopped composing as a result. FL is incredibly liberating.
Ableton’s interface forces you to work a very specific way. It seems like your brain works that way. FL kinda forces you to define your own workflow. Not for everyone but it’s loved for a reason
Oh god just got to the piano roll bit at the end. Honestly feels like you haven’t actually used FL for more than a few hours.
This video is borderline irresponsible
@@t3dotgg It probably is under the assumption nobody watched a tutorial before they bought software
Honestly, ableton looks (I don't own it I'm poor) intuitive, maybe only to me but as someone who works with band lab it looks natural, easy, and for beginners. Sure I'm biased but i tried the fl trial and didn't even know where to start, In band lab I started making music right away, click "virtual instrument" chose an instrument, start playing on the piano roll, simple! Even if you didn't understand bandlabs ui, there was a tutorial, I'm pretty sure fl doesn't have one, even if it lacks features it still works.
Exactly my thoughts
Points mentioned in the video and how to do it easily.
1. Adding A New Pattern:
Hover mouse to the pattern nelector, then scroll wheel up.
2. Duplicate midi in piano roll:
1st method:
Ctrl+A to select all, then hold shift + click on a note and drag then "decide where you paste it"
2nd method:
Ctrl+A to select all, them Ctrl+B to duplicate.
(NOTE: duplicate will appear directly after last midi note, same goes for patterns, samples, and automation in the playlist)
3. Snap to grid:
When a sample, pattern, midi, or automation is off grid, hold Alt to temporarily disable grid snapping.
4. Sequencer to Mixer:
When you're in the squencer, you can see where a specific sound is sent to in the mixer to its LEFT. Use scroll wheel (or click and drag) to send to a spacific mixer track.
(NOTE: the drums that are automatically added when you open a new project are automatically sent to the mixer)
(NOTE 2: if a sound is not sent to the mixer it will be send to the master)
5. Solo in the Mixer:
To solo a single sound in the mixer, right click on the green light. Right click again to un-solo.
6. Undo multiple instances:
Ctrl + shift + Z
7. Recording from mic:
Right click on the record button next to the play/stop button. A menu will appear, allowing you to select what to record. (automation, midi, or audio from mic)
The recording will appear on the Playlist.
8. Edison
Edison is an audio tool. Anything recorded into Edison will not be played unless it is on the Playlist.
You can drag and drop the recoded audio within Edison by clicking and dragging the upper-right button.
9. Audio Sample to Mixer:
Double click on a sample. This will open sample controls. On the upper-right corner will be "track" where you can scroll-wheel up (or click and drag) to send it to a Mixer track.
10. Why are samples in C in the sequencer?
Because C is the sample's "default pitch"
Regadless of its actual pitch, when you play C in the Piano Roll, it will play the sample as it is.
It will NOT be tuned to the note C.
11. Automation:
You can literally automate almost anything in FL. Right-click on any parameter then "Create Automation"
For 3rd party VSTs or Effect Plugins:
Move the parameter, then on the top-pannel will ba a button that looks like a knob. Right-click then "create automation"
(NOTE: You can also do curve automation and other types of curves)
12. Warping audio samples:
Double-click on a sample. Below "track" will be different stretch modes. The best mode in comparison to "Complex Pro" is "Stretch"
FL Studio License:
One-time payment + free lifetime updates.
Ableton License:
6-month installment
Conclusion
Its not about how difficult you think using a vertain DAW is, it's about how determined you are to learn it. The points mentioned in this video against FL can similarly be said to Ableton.
6-month installment is false.
very good comment
I was basically screaming this entire comment in my head the entire way through the video
Thank you.
Every bad design of FL he mentioned, could have been handle it better. It seems that the most times, hes just scraching the surfaces of knowledge. If youre willing to put more effort into it, it gets smoother everytime.
But i can totally understand it, that beginners are just suffering. Sometimes it makes no sense, and if u have not the workflow in your memory, you can struggle.
I cant compare it to other daws, since fruity is my only daw i‘ve ever used. Hows ableton in comparison for beginners?
6. Undo multiple instances:
Ctrl + Alt + Z (in latest FL Studio version)
It's like Photoshop for nothing
as someone who is self taught in fl studio it all makes perfect sense nowadays
1. I will leave the part about patterns, right click to delete and playlist without comment as it all came down to you not knowing the basics and expecting it to "just work".
2. There are snapping options in the top left or you could just hold alt and position notes without snapping. The same applies to playlist.
3. Unassigned plugins/samples don't come from "nowhere", they are assigned to master by default. It has it's benefits as you can manually assign anything you want wherever you want without mess. Ctrl+L assigns and names all of that automatically, if you will.
4. Actually playlist tracks and mixer channels can be contacted by right clicking and choosing track mode - audio track/instrument.
5. Recording... Just select "record to playlist" and "don't ask later" and voila.
Most of the "issues" you presented are just things that are done differently or only differently by default and can easily be changed.
But you expected it to work the way Ableton works and got furious everytime something didn't the way you wanted.
out of the memes, I think this is a great video, it shows like everyone's reaction to FL studio, but I think we are forgeting something, that is FL studio has its own unique workflow, if you use flstudio expecting it to follow the exact same workflow than other daws then it will be oviously more complicated to use, but if you use fl studio, and learn how to go with its own flow, it turns out to be an extremely comfortable daw, mostly becouse of it's "hidden tools" or it's keyboard shortcuts or the way you "do" things on it, I admit it, you need more steps to do the same things on fl compared to ableton but in my experience trying both I prefer taking the longer way becouse es confier than the short one, is a hard to explain feeling, and I'm not defending FL studio and deacrediting you video / points stated, I'm just sharing what I think and why I think FL studio works that way.
just think about it, many new users struggle with FL but in the end of the day, they say "FL is simpler" but they are actually referring to the comfort they get when using it.
in other words, and long story short:
FL studio IS more complex to use, but once you master its own unique way to work, it's a really satisfying and comfy proccess, unlike other daws 🤝
Absolutely! Once you learn what you're doing with FL, it's a perfectly capable program, and even has some cool stuff that nothing else has (Patcher, polyphonic note slide, fantastic synths like Harmor and Sytrus)
My big beef with it is that FL fights you every step of the way to learning this stuff, especially as a beginner.
@@longestsoloever harmor and sytrus are available as vsts if you know where to look, and stuff like patcher is not an fl studio exclusively patented thing *like they often try to do...*
if you are able to find the abandonware that is the image line plugin pack, which even if pirated is fair play due to it being discontinued abandonware, it makes transitioning from fl studio to any other daw a breeze
Yeah, a lot of the criticisms is that it is completely different (like the pattern function) which, I understood in like a week.
I actually love FL mostly BECAUSE of this because there is 0 fear losing my drum patterns or samples, when I ALWAYS have it in the patterns menu, which felt like a lifesaver.
FL looks more colorful and fun compared to many other DAWs that look like Microsoft Word, so it seems more like actual fun than work.
But everyone has a different workflow, and if a DAW supports yours, that is the best for you to use, for example, I would never suggest for Hans Zimmer to use FL, or Tay Keith to use Pro Tools.
def agree. i also really like FL's animations and looks overall (but I wish they made it easier to add themes like Ableton can...)
As an fl studio user, this brought me back to when i first used it. I was also very confused and over time got used to it
Thinking back on it, fl studio does seem to be a little complicated for no good reason
Rn im thinking about switching to either pro tools or ableton
To be fair he explained the problems with using FL Studio 100% accurately when you're a beginner at music. I'm a FL studio user and these were EXACTLY the same problems that I had to face when learning how to use the DAW (Automation is still the biggest problem I have had with 6 years of using FL Studio). I'm glad Dean mentioned that even if you use FL it doesn't mean you can't make bangers with it, but I have to agree aswell with not using FL Studio as your first DAW to try out. cant wait to see more like these on here and your second channel :D
I'm primarily an FL Studio user so when I started using Ableton it was difficult as heck. FL Studip also labels drum when you choose a drum machine. Basically to me he sounds like someone who has never really used FL just like an FL user would act towards Ableton
what did the channels have a music note on a channel
I found automation to be the easiest to learn
I'd have to disagree with several of his arguments here. Compared to every DAW in existence I've tried, Ableton is actually WORSE. I would agree that Pro Tools is BETTER for both, especially for pro music making, but *FL was never meant to be any better than Ableton*, Reaper, or LMMS. Have yet to test other DAWs outside those mentioned above.
FL makes more sense to me because
1. Its COMPLETELY CUSTOMIZABLE
2. The Program is always updating to match or outlimit other DAWs. It was always meant to be like a Sandbox DAW, not necessarily a starter DAW.
Ableton makes sense for those who:
1. Wanna be lazy and not learn all the MASSIVE shortcuts in FL
2. Wanna limit thier configuration capabilities (becomes apparent the more you work with Ableton).
3. Spend more money on a software that's pretty much on equal or lesser ground than FL.
The only legit argument he makes here is the pattern layering issue. Past that the arguments honestly sound like someone who isn't willing to learn a DAW. Based on his complaints, the closest equivalent to FL that I recommend ANYONE to use is LMMS (which btw, is free)
I clicked the video expecting some revelation that oughta make me change the DAW I've been working with for the last four years.
Instead, you made me more attached to FL. Your video deterred me from change.
you can paste a selection directly after that last placed note, by pressing CTRL + B. Also, the Piano roll grid is controlled by the magnet at the top. you can also bypass the grid by pressing ALT while dragging the notes.
As an FL studio user, this was so fun yet infuriating to watch. Good job.
for real. I got so mad in parts but then in other parts I was like damn, he's right about the copy paste thing.
@@codyfedeler2915 why didn’t he just Ctrl B
@@codyfedeler2915 EXACTLY
@@mpan2258 what he was saying was that ctrl+v does what ctrl+b does in other daws. i will admit the fact that it isn't that way in FL is a bit ludicrous
FL Studio is not really hard to use but you must know how to use it
Explained 0% from this video
I mean, it ain't hard once you're used to it, but the other DAWS are waaay more understandable
i mean yeah, no daw is hard to use when you understand it, but while ableton's learning curve is pretty shallow, fl studio's learning curve is like trying to climb up a 30ft wall made of ice
@@nyeeeeeee9346 ableton is a good daw for beginner because its simple to use and you can understand it in minutes but you can just make simple songs with it but fl studio takes really long to learn how to use it but you can make really cool songs with it. So i like fl studio
@@iampoggers6906 what are you talking there is no way you can seriously think you can only make “simple songs” in abelton
I learned production on FL and this made me chuckle because I've had these problems and more with it for so long. The more I've come away from watching FL tips and towards general production/design/mixing tips, the more I'm seeing Ableton and feeling like that workflow would be so much better for me. I'm so jealous of your method of automation because FL so often feels like a frustrating pain in the arse in that respect.
Let me react to what you did in Ableton with the average questions a beginner of Ableton would have:
11:35 how would I know to do that and how would I also know that the kit changed over there?
11:48 how would I know how to insert the midi clip until after I randomly clicked around the program?
12:09 you can make the track loop by dragging it? I did not know that
12:21 wait that's where the bass is? I thought the bass would be in instruments, since that's what the instruments are for right?
12:29 what did you press in order to play that on your keyboard how did you do that?
12:42 wait that's the mixer? how would i have known that without a tutorial?
12:45 i can turn down the track right there? that's so small and not entirely noticeable
13:09 what if I wanted more than one mixer channel?
13:11 after asking all of these questions it sounds pretty complicated
13:16 how do I even enable that track for recording without already knowing that?
13:57 how do i copy a loop in Ableton without looking it up?
I've been producing for about 6.
I started using FL Studio when I was in the 5th grade, and with no tutorials, I completely learned the software.
When I decided I wanted to switch my DAW after about 3 - 4 years of producing I decided to try Ableton first, and as an experienced producer I couldn't figure out what I need to do.
If I could learn FL Studio from scratch as a 5th Grader but not Ableton as an 8th grader, it's obvious that FL Studio is not the problem.
I'm really out here watching this grown act like a complete fucking idiot just to make a DAW look bad. There is no way that this is not trying your hardest to make the software look bad.
I have now switched to Logic. I can admit that the recording features are way better and there are more built-in presets, but Logic (even though it's also great) is probably less user-friendly than FL-Studio.
When you switched to Logic you act like everything is very easy and user-friendly, BUT OF COURSE, YOU'RE GOING TO KNOW WHAT BUTTONS TO PRESS WHEN THIS IS YOUR MAIN DAW.
Also, maybe FL Studio is not the most popular DAW for whatever genre you're producing, but FL Studio is by far the most widely used daw in Trap music, which if you haven't noticed is pretty much the most popular music genre as of right now.
Btw, by the track you made in Ableton, it's clear that whatever you did in FL Studio was not to the best of your ability.
In FL Studio you just used the stock template drums and a synth you probably know is shitty, and in Ableton, you just picked the drum sounds you liked and used a bass preset, and just straight up wrote a better bassline and drum pattern than you did in FL Studio, showing that you know how to make things sound good, you just aren't trying.
You haven't even bothered trying to learn FL Studio before making yourself look like an idiot by saying that only Ableton has features you can find in both.
Here's a list of the things you missed about FL:
You haven't even bothered to look for the shortcut Alt Z (Undo button for more than one thing, a shortcut in many other programs)
FPC (FL Studios drum plugin) Automatically labels your samples.
FL Studio has curved automation.
Oh, and FL Studio piano roll is by FAR Superior with all of the built-in features like the strumming, arpeggiator, randomizer, limit, flip, quick legato. A Fold feature does not make your Piano Roll better, if you don't wanna use a drum sound, just delete it.
This is a terrible video.
this is my favorite comment respect
and he acts like you cant make music at all in fl when you can literally do every step of music production in it, from playing a guitar to singing to making beats many of the things he complained about were actually useful which i dont see how he doesnt understand of he knows the program at least a little bit and has good knowledge of production
@@disastreee ahahaha thank you
Acts like a little girl the whole time Jesus Christ
Thank you for pointing all of this! Perfectly summarizes this video's problem
When moving any highlighted notes, you can hold shift and move the mouse wheel up for fine movement to the left, or down for fine movement to the right, or simply hold the Alt key for fine adjustment while dragging. The grid snaping is based on zoom level. If you zoom in all the way, you automatically have fine tuning when you drag. I usually drag plugins from the database on the left right onto the mixer channel. I agree with many of your points, because it's not really intuitive and most of the shortcuts have to be discovered.
I agree with this big time
Funny how the official forum didnt know this.
yea, as someone who doesn’t use fl studio, i found that out by accident. because on most programs shift+scroll = scroll sideways, but not on fl, that’s for shifting notes (and tracks), i feel like it could be a better keybind
@@VoxelMusic probably a blatant lie. Everyone in Looptalk (the official forum) knows this.
Nah, you have to hit like CMD+Q or something to get it to snap back. Pretty ridiculous when everyone keeps telling to manually shift the note back, like you only need to shift a single note or clip and not do it a million times.
This is like watching a trombone player get annoyed with an oboe for not being a trombone
I’ve been using ableton for going on 8 years and I love how I can just drag and drop and easily arrange tracks stretch audio and route fx this video has taught more about fl then any other tutorial I’ve cared to watch lol
FL studio is a VERY capable DAW if you understand it, but I agree that Ableton is better for beginners (also FPC labels your drums too)
FINALLY SOME ONE TALKING OF FPC F*CK YEAH
to be fair, ya gotta dig for FPC stuff, and i think FPC's kinda jank
@@stevie8271 Just learned about the "Layer" plugin and i will never use FPC again. seriously. it lets you assign each instrument on the channel rack to a different pad so you can still edit the sounds individually, and assign them to individual mixer tracks. highly recommend watching a 5 minute tutorial it will change how you write drums!
“Buuut I am too lazy to learn anything new, can you make a tutorial that makes fl good?”
Haha, I couldn’t stop laughing in the first half. I guess all the steps have become automatic to me after using FL for almost a decade.
You are so right. This is the main reason why I don't use FL Studio. If you take a break for a few weeks, you literally have to rattle your head trying to remember all these weird ways of doing basic tasks. People make videos about features and requests, but to me, the biggest thing FL Studio needs is just to make sense.
I’m currently using LMMS, so imagine my total confusion when I tried to use FL Studio.
Gonna switch to Ableton anyway.
Also, isn't it kind of weird that while most of the FNF fanbase uses FL Studio, Kawai Sprite uses Ableton Live 11? Almost like it's a sign.
My thoughts exactly on the Kawai thing
@@longestsoloever id agree except Kawai sprite used fl for years before switching and said that he would recommend it as a starting DAW
@@AUSE I certainly am not a god, but I'm pretty alright with LMMS
Tbh FLS is an *okay* starting DAW for people who want a free DAW but that's it
@@AUSE I do post my work to a different channel every once in a while, to see my improvement. I talk with some FL users on a daily basis, and they think my stuff is better than theirs.
I feel like most of the points in this video come from the assumption that when you sit down with a DAW you want to 'make a song' - some structured, finished recording - that your DAW should guide you towards the 'obvious next steps' in doing this.
FL was my first DAW, I tried trials of *literally all the rest including several now-defunct super obscure ones*, came back to it, loved it.
As a kid, I didn't want to make songs - I wanted to noodle around and work up to songs eventually. As a beginner, no steps were obvious to me regardless of the DAW, and I didn't appreciate other DAWs assuming what my priorities were. I didn't know what a piano roll was, what samples or VSTs were - I spent the first 3+ years of production never using a mixer because I wanted to learn to have good musical ideas first and saw mixing as this 'otherworldly engineering thing' that 'wasn't for me'.
I liked FL because the easiest thing to do with it is just *make noises*. Most of all: FL was the only DAW where I could hold the escape key and be left with a blank screen. For me, nothing could top that!
The completely freeform system means every project I make looks different - really different. It *is* a painting class - and with good reason!
The patterns system is borrowed from oldschool trackers that I also liked to play with as a kid. It means I can just have ideas and not be burdened by the interface guiding me towards doing anything with them until I'm ready. That said, when I want to pull off needlessly convoluted multitasking, I'm more free to do that in FL than I am in any other DAW.
FL doesn't try to be the best DAW for the masses - it tries to be the best DAW for people who love the unique things it has to offer. There are a bunch of things I think the devs should change about it, including some of your points - imo piano roll should be the default over the step sequencer for example, and the dragging the midi data to the start thing is really dumb.
But you have to respect the dev's bravery to be so different when other DAWs are so similar. They write the darn thing in hardcore assembly code, line by line from the ground up - they clearly love their work to bits.
FL is for beginners - if you're a beginner who knows literally nothing and wants to take music production skill-by-skill as opposed to project by project, and never have your DAW steer you towards something you might not have chosen yourself.
In my experience this also makes FL better for folks who can't for whatever reason use online resources/communities to learn or teach themselves. Other DAWs and most educational content assumes you have, or want to be taught assumptions about how music should be made - for example "you'll use one program for everything, you'll start by sequencing midi and finish by mixing". But I didn't!
I wanted to export synthesizer parts out as stems to mess up in Audacity. I wanted to make avante garde noise music where everything was janky and broken. I wanted something that would let me stick fake guitar amps on a stem recorded out of LSDJ and beef up the drums with .xi samples (to my knowledge few other DAWs can natively work with the .xi format).
FL works well for folks like me who grew up with a dodgy internet connection and no friends who shared my interests, who had no choice except to learn entirely by "fucking around and finding out".
When folks ask me for a recommendation of what to start with, I point them towards Reaper because it's cheapest.
While I appreciate your experience and many of the concerns raised in the video, and while I enjoyed seeing your keen eye for design take apart things I've taken for granted for so long, I feel like you never quite reckoned with your own expertise, you made assumptions a beginner simply wouldn't know to have, and I get the impression you exaggerated your own frustration in several places to beef out your case.
This didn't read like a detailed UI critique video (see: Tantacrul) so much as a music teacher voicing the personal quirks and preferences that they make their students follow because it suits them. This video reminded me a bit of one teacher I had who used to freak out because I didn't regularly practice my guitar in the dark.
Practicing my guitar in the dark is nice sometimes, it helps some students a lot, for me it was take it or leave it... but the kid who had a phobia of the dark didn't get on with that teacher. Likewise the kid who finds Abelton and Logic too rigid and prescriptive isn't going to mesh with your teaching, and it would help folks all around if you could have started by acknowledging your own assumptions, and the consequences of your expertise.
All in all though, good video, and hopefully one day I'll be back 👍
This might be the longest reply I've ever seen in a TH-cam comment, congratulations! Bro wrote a whole novel
@@fibbintiggins2858 Haha I'll concede I sometimes have a problem with concision!
Genuinely though, I take the process of giving folks feedback really seriously and I'll never write anything in response to a video that I wouldn't want to receive myself.
I feel like this deserves a heart from the creator more than all of the ones which he actually hearted which all seem.. to be agreeing with him unconditionally?
Take this instead
❤
@@intangiblematter_misc that’s very kind 😅 I’m sure he has a lot of crap to wade through though and my comment is very long 🤷♀️
...you think.. that REAPER (aka something ive never heard of) is cheapest? well you havent heard of LMMS then, aka... the TRUE cheapest DAW!! and how cheap is it, you ask? well... ITS COMPLETELY FREE!! (ok i wrote a paragraph in the video comments so im not gonna do the same for every reply. but still USE LMMS, all the other DAWs either have a free trial or cost money at startup, but LMMS? ...NOPE!! COMPLETELY free!! ok bye lol)
Started doing EDM production as a hobby a year ago, using exclusively FL studio. Aside from the typical grievances that I agree with (I rarely go a week without it crashing) I think the fundamental problem with FL studio is that it doesn't put enough structure on what you're allowed to do.
- You can put multiple instruments in the same pattern
- You can route multiple instrument channels to the same mixer track.
- You can put patterns from different instruments on the same playlist track.
This poses two problems:
1) This extra flexibility almost always turns into extra responsibility: I always want one instrument per mixer track and per playlist track. But that's not the default. If I want proper organization in my project, I need to do it myself. While it's true that FL studio provides the option of setting channels as instrument tracks, because this isn't the default, the UI can't orient itself around it. Bringing me to the next point.
2) Because there's no built in structure tying instruments to playlist tracks to mixer tracks, the UI can't cleanly arrange mixer effects and automations so that you can see everything at once. I am constantly needing to reopen the mixer and reopen a plugin window. Sometimes it's open but minimized somewhere and FL studio doesn't automatically maximize it when I select it?? I need a bajillion playlist tracks for my automation. It becomes very painful to keep track of at times.
I was recently thinking about giving Ableton a try, and writing this out made me realize how much FL Studio hamstrings me from being productive in it. I think it's about time I switch.
Everything that was mentioned besides the copy paste issue is a strength for FL Studio. As someone who wants absolute control over everything in my song and uses midi to drive my production, it’s the best DAW for my workflow. If you want an easy program that is powerful, GarageBand or Logic is the way to go.
Most of the things you covered here seem like what differentiate FL to other Daws. Every program has some Learning curve & it's a matter of how much time as a user you are willing to invest to it. I have tried Live, and went back to FL the second week. I respect your opinion tho.. Great video.
Personally had and don't have any of these Problems with FL Studio even when I was a beginner. I really enjoy FL studios workflow and I always thought Ableton was clunky. Sure it might be simpler but it's always felt off. But I'm not good at making music and I use FL so maybe I am wrong
yeah thats my biggest problem with ableton. its SUPER uninspiring. i want it to feel like im making music, not a spreadsheet.
@@mhmm4303 my brother in christ
use reason
Started on FL, moved to Abelton. Now I'm back to FL.
I use both for different things, which is great because I used both days fairly extensively. I just can't mix at all in ableton, I need the FL mixer rack
Started with FL for a year, switched to reaper for 2 years and I'm about to switch to ableton. I produce everything from rock to hip hop, FL can do beats better than Reaper, and Reaper can do recording better than FL. Ableton can do both really well, so I actually prefer it personally
This video should be taken out of TH-cam, its kind of illegal to be this dishonest. Nothing he "screams" about is any problem at all, and most problems are simply made up and does not exist. Its a truly ridiculous video.
someone tell this man what a personal presence is
I actually learned a lot from this tutorial, thanks.
Dean sounds so angry but stay calm 💀
i feel this but also booting up a daw you never used before and going why is this so complicated isn't valid criticism
But he has used this daw many times. He tried to teach many students through the years how to produce in FL studio cause they asked him to do it.
But he has a degree in music and in college he learned how to use protools. Every single daw except fl Studio has the sameish interface and workflow and that's why he has this take.
@@TerceiroLugar its not bad because its different. he doesn't understand the workflow, and trying to teach people how to use a program you yourself don't know how to use properly is going to be hell.
@@TerceiroLugar It depends on where you are starting at. I went to school for sound design as well and learning pro-tools was a struggle. Learning to use a real board was a struggle. Learning to use Logic was a struggle. Why? Because I started with Reaper and FL Studio. I never felt comfortable using Pro-tools to compose. And I never felt comfortable mixing in Logic.
I've been using fl studio since it was blocks and blips on the screen. It's become cumbersome to make beats. This video was on point and makes sense. Thanks for pointing out these small but major differences!
THANK YOU FOR OPENING MY EYES!! i wasnt even trying to make anything fnf related but i was struggling so god damn much- and everything abt ableton seems so much more beginner friendly
FPC or the vst that holds the drum kits, labels the drums within the piano roll as well. The layer option allows you to set "children" from a single midi track to play the same thing over multiple vst's. Also control + shift + Z let's you do more than one undo without looking at the undo history. Control + B allows you to paste a clip, selection, or notes directly after the original clip or shift + click allows you to duplicate things and pick where you want it. There is curved automation in FL along with multiple other settings that can help without writing it all in such as pulse, wave, etc. The warp and on-track automation for Ableton is very good, I just feel like i needed to rebuttal some of the claims within this.
i think his point is that being a begginer trying to understand FL is counter-intuitive
all of the things you mentioned are only known by people that are using FL for a long time, not begginers
so that makes it difficult when trying to understand the DAW and make some music
All of the gripes i hear about FL studio boil down to someone not knowing a default program already exists to do exactly what they are looking for. An example is i constantly hear people saying you cant do the ableton sample warp thing to put it perfectly in time. you can. its called newtime.
The undo thing is ctrl + alt + z for me
@@mhmm4303 I dont even use newtime, as long as you do the "detect tempo" of sample, remember what BPM FL spits out, and then use "fit to tempo" and input the found tempo into the "BPM", it will warp that sample perfectly to your project tempo. The way Ableton can shift the waveform in a sample is better, though.
@@SALEENS7GTR5 Or even drag a sample in, fit to tempo, click on the dropdown menu on the sample, select Chop and choose the desired method. Then you can select stretch on the top left of the playlist and then use the slip tool. Holding Shift+Alt and dragging the edges of each chopped sample allows you to do a similar warping thing that Ableton uses.
FL Studio can do pretty much everything Ableton does, just differently or more modular (interpret that as either being annoying or a way to get more creative instead of having a linear workflow with a lot of other DAWs). It's understandable why new users find it confusing, because it is, but it's also why FL is pretty darn powerful.
I would have never guessed in 2007, that the same dude who covered entire Through the Fire and the Flames would also make my favorite comedy video in 2022.
The number of hits in the charts produced with Fl studio is growing every year
You can use the instrument track or audio track type to automatically wire up the mixer to the channel and the arranger track. Clicking on the timeline switches to Song mode. FL has some problems (time signature changes are messed up), but most of the problems you point out have been addressed without breaking the original workflow.
FL has the greatest piano roll of all time. I didn’t appreciate it fully until I started using Ableton. FL has its problems but I do still think it’s more beginner friendly than other DAWS. Also, key short cuts solves a lot of the midi problems you described.
Not everyone can learn hidden rules and shortcuts and keep that shit in their head. Problems need to have obvious solutions.
@@bloodyidit4506 --- FL Studio is like trying to navigate a maze. I'd rather just use Reason + Ableton in Re-Wire Mode.
Been using Fl studio for 2 years and now using ableton, I still prefer the piano roll on fl for sure like If I'm pencilling in midi why do I have to click the playlist in the specific place instead of pressing space bar, and velocity randomization is better and generally the length of notes. One feature I do appreciate on ableton is the ability to hide any of the notes that aren't in scale highlighted, you can then move chords up or down semitones and still be in key and becomes easier to figure out progressions. Literally went through every single issue on fl before so can definitely appreciate his dismay for the daw. EDITING audio is PAINFUL. ableton makes it so fluid being able to stretch from transients and move around with ease.
FL’s piano roll is absolutely goated, it’s huge, it has good shortcuts, it’s easy, it’s simple
As someone who learned production starting with FL and now using Ableton for almost a year, I can say that FL is anything but beginner friendly just like the video makes an attempt to describe it. Im saying "makes an attempt" because this video only barely hits on the tip of the iceberg of problems that FL can give you. FL is only useful once you have spent a LOT of time on working out all the problems you bump into during learning to produce music. And even then FL Studio finds ways to make your music "work" but only in the most obscure way ever. I always thought it was normal, until I tried Ableton. I would never go back to FL Studio.
I feel like I had the opposite experience. I started making music originally in abelton from the copy line 6 had with its asio devices and absolutely had no idea how to make things, did sony acid for a bit (which I absolutely loved when I was only writing with instruments at the time) and when I started getting into trance, jumpstep, edm, dubstep I felt like switching from Acid to Fl was a breeze while reteaching myself a new daw. I did have a chance to dabble with Studio one for a little bit which I really did enjoy a lot with my limited experiences.
I could be weird but fl studio just immediately clicked and was extremely intuitive for me, but that is just my opinion and experience.
Same. The patterns actually give a ton of flexability.
The updates are definitely interesting 👌🏿
i learned more about fl studio (and ableton) from this video than any other youtube video on the planet. Thank you, and keep cooking. ("The End of All Things" is fire btw)
Much of this could he avoided if you read the manual. Also there’s a ton of shortcuts that helps speed up your workflow, and that’s why producers like nick Mira can make a hit beat in 20 minutes.
I agree, I'd even say ALL of this could have been avoided with much less than reading the manual.
If you need to read a manual to use something, that thing has terrible UI/UX
@@nivo6379 thats a bloody hot take my g...
If you want to really know the ins and outs of smt, the manual is your go to.
However, all the points he made in the video are elementary. Literal minutes of clicking around and ALL those issues are fixed, at WORSE a TH-cam video or two.
I myself have never read the manual of FL and am getting along way better than any of his so claimed "students"
@@nivo6379 *IKEA has entered the chat*
@@nivo6379 I need to read a manual any time I use a new DAW. Lol
I think every daw has it's difficulties when you're a beginner, but for me FL Studio was the best one, the plugins that it has are amazing, the piano roll is godly, sytrus is the best plugin ever made and FL just looks amazing, I love the little details and animations, there are some things that are not too intuitive, but when you get how they work, possibilities are just infinite, and I think it has more things than any other daw, you just have to really get into it. By the way, Ctrl + Alt + Z it's the shortcut that can undo more than one time (there's a thing called manual).
You’ve described all the reasons I jumped across to Logic years ago ❤️😉👍
A lot of things what you mentioned here are so relatable, I had to deal with those things by myself. Well, I have been using it for a good amount of time to get used to everything and be confortable so I can see myself getting insanely confused over other music programs and react just like you, something like...
"how do i control mixer"
I came from the old tracker scene and FL Studio felt the most natural when moving to a DAW. I tried others but they always felt like they had a steep learning curve compared to FL. Guess it all comes down to where you are coming from.
Man thank you. I thought I was just an idiot trying to use even the FREE TRIAL of FL Studio (which is also dogshit compared to Ableton's, only being allowed to use certain features and NOT SAVE THINGS, whereas Ableton will let you use it for 90 days with full access), and I am glad to know I was not the only one being confused. As I said before, thank you for showing me the differences, and I hope you have a good day!
You can save things in trial mode uhh what
@@BastianTheGreatestCreatorEver iirc only audio export works. Trial cannot save fl projects files (.flp)
@@valovalexey it can’t reopen projects, but yes they can be saved. And once you upgrade you can reopen them, even the ones saved in trial mode
a lot of the issues he's stated in the video have shortcuts and/or workarounds, FL is just different compared to how standard DAWs operate, its not inherently bad, nor good, like any DAW, it is dependent on the user, unless its a shit DAW XD
There is drum labeling on FL studio if you pick the drum kits on the packs folder which also opens them in an interface similar to an MPC (which if you prefer you can open that vst and load it with any samples you want and they will be labeled on the piano roll), also when using drum vsts like drumaxx or fruity DrumSynth
I believe that FL's system is a unique system that a lot of people gravitate towards and fall in love with. For me personally, I love it, though I do use Ableton at this current time because I find it's audio manipulation to be a little better and all my friends use Ableton and I like helping, so I want to learn Ableton as well as I know FL. Still, the free form feeling that FL has is something I constantly miss and love about it. The arguments made in this video are bordering on nitpicky and the statement made in the description by the video creator pretty much proves that his issues are minor for anyone that wants to learn FL, or whom enjoy the way it is and see it as a feature set, and not a bug list. Still, I can understand some of these issues he has, and FL clearly doesn't work for him, which is okay. He's just going to double down on the idea that these issues he has that are really minor in the grand scheme of music production, but to anyone who watches this and who isn't 100% sold by his gripes, I highly recommend downloading the trial and experimenting for yourself with an open mind💘
Everyone talking about FL studio, ableton, etc, and here I am, using LMMS
id rather wat dog shi then use lmms lmao its so bad
@@marquistutt9879 it may not be the best, and it's true that it has some limitations, but you can make good music with it. Plus, it has a better UI than FL studio, and that's the main reason I don't use FL
@@BoneZone_ nah not better than fl it was way more complicated and confusing
As someone who loves FL studio and has used it for several years I still found it hilariously accurate
true lmao i also use fl studio and i hate that you can only undo once
@@Anemunt you can press ctrl + alt + z to undo multiple times
@@raindubz yeah but in my version. It won't let me do that
@@Anemunt then update its free
@@raindubz then I'd have to import 642 vsts seprately.
My take on the dislikes you mention, as a producer w 8+ years of experience in FL and it being my main production tool:
* I really like the pattern+playlist way of arranging on FL studio, imo it's one of the DAW's strengths as it allows unlimited flexibility for organising your clips - i think this is just a preference thing. FL has supported instrument-based tracks for a while now as well so the option is there if you want it.
* all (drum) samples being on middle C in the piano roll by default makes sense to me given that by moving them up or down you change the pitch of the samples (which imo is a handy feature in FL, eg for hihat patterns)
* totally agree that copy and paste using ctl+c and ctrl+v is useless in FL studio, they should defo just make it paste at the playhead, the snapping atm is horrendous - to bypass this I usually just shift+click and drag to copy the selection, or ctrl+b to copy and paste to next bar - but defo they should improve the copypasting
* I agree that auto-assigning channels to mixer track would be useful default behaviour, i think you can enable it manually but would be better as a default
* the 1 undo thing has been (finally) fixed in a recent-ish update, though it's always been possible to multi-undo with ctrl+alt+z (but this isnt intuitive at all)
* I agree that recording audio/midi is unnecessarily complicated (including the "everything" option, still dont know what it does lol) and prefer audio recording in eg Logic (haven't used Ableton). Also Ive personally had some issues with recording latency on FL which are not present at all in Logic but that might just be my setup
Overall I agree with what some others have said that you seem to have some personal preference issues with FL which aren't very objective - still I agree with many of the things you say. I guess every DAW has its weaknesses and strengths. I'll personally keep using FL for production and mixing as I'm familiar with it and its plugins, though I might use Logic for audio recordings in future as I like its recording and comping workflow.
You just showed how powerful FL Studio is. Love FL Studio 🤩🤩🤩
Ableton has a lot of awesome functionality, i respect that, but I'm still used to FL, the mixer in FL is way less confusing in my opinion.
Also, *FL-chan*
There are no flaws. This video is simply “here is a daw which i dont like and have zero experience with”
While I completely agree with everything in this video, the ONE thing I love about FL (I use ableton now) is that you can trigger automation clips with midi. It sounds crazy but I used to use it a lot with sidechain and it makes it much easier to use one curve for everything without having to automate every change in sidechain, let alone trying to sidechain with a plugin in an odd time signature.
I could make a contrasting video point for point about any other daw. When something is new to you, you have to research and learn to use it. Tutorials are great for this, instruction manuals are even better.
he did this in the most cringe way possible
Fr
crazy to think so many of us just learned how to get by in FL without much thought or care on how it compares to the UI of any other DAW. Whether we're FL or Ableton gang we're maybe going to want to learn pro tools at some point. Thank you for this video to compare the experience. I always wanted to try Ableton for fun, cool to know it's actually a lil simpler than I thought.
I'm an fl user and I'm amazed by the efficiency of Ableton
Started out on fl and moved to ableton, this video perfectly sums up a lot of my issues. Surprised about your market share comment though, fl studio is absolutely huge in EDM/electronic music, I can think of a ton of major producers that use it (Eliminate, Justin Hawkes, Skybreak, MUZZ, Buunshin, Imanu, Varien, even Porter Robinson)
Thank you so much, i've been searching for a good program to make music, and I found fl studio, and yes, it's a bit hard, I took a lot of time to make a song. I spent a lot of time to find the perfect program, and nobody showed what I wanted 'til you finally show me a good one, you are the only youtuber who actually has shown me this, thank you. Btw you make very good videos
Honestly gotta agree with a lot of this stuff as someone who uses FL studio
I am just so used to all these little quirks and problems that they're no longer really an issue for me
but when I first began using it, these were all things that were just SO confusing to me
Though a lot of these issues have simple and intuitive solutions
I actually prefer assigning the channels manually, I feel more in control
for drums, using FPC drums work a lot better than the default samples they give you, those are my personal go to
there isn't only 1 undo, you just press ctrl + shift + Z and it works fine
confusing for beginners, but, that's pretty much any DAW in existence imo
I've been using FL studio for 2 years. the problems you mentioned are all right. I agree with you %100. I have been struggling with these problems for 2 years and not even got used to it a bit because it's really complicated and tiring. Automation is a big big problem. It's a headache!
Ctrl + Z, Ctrl + Alt + Z. That’s how you keep undoing. FL studio is a visually superior DAW in every way. Abletons piano roll is a half step away from GarageBand. Ableton is great for beginners and people who want a fast workflow but no matter what DAW you start with it’s going to be a foreign language. If it’s easy that means it’s not complicated. FL encourages complex tracks and meticulous organization while Ableton caters to the audience that use premade drum kits. Y’all got a media bin instead of a file browser and all of the menus and toggles across the UI are small and haven’t been refreshed in years. The people that praise Ableton only do so because there were only 3 daws on MacOS. Logic, Ableton, and Pro Tools. GB is logic lite. FL drops a video every month talking about updates and added features. I’ve never seen Ableton publicly care about their consumer
i think you’re misunderstanding the point. it’s not that ableton isn’t complicated and can’t do complicated things, it’s that on ableton and EVERY other daw, it is no where near as complicated to do a SIMPLE task as it is on FL studio. that’s not a good thing.
also, i won’t acknowledge any of the other things you said, but do some research before just spewing words.
@@zepheriyah “Every other DAW” GarageBand is far simpler to use than Ableton. It’s easier to pick up and make something and always has been. Every simple task that he had a problem with has a keyboard shortcut. You said do some research but you didn’t give any facts or evidence to support your claims. Ableton is NOT the easiest DAW to use. And you’re too scared to address my other points. Speaking of points… You missed it! Ableton is not a better program. FL Studio has a steeper learning curve for 👉🏾BEGINNERS 👈🏾 which may be you if you think any DAW is better than others. They all ultimately do the same thing.
@@zepheriyah Maschine Software and Serato Studio beg to disagree. So does Reason ...
Visually, FL looked better before they went for the flat design.
@@Cont0rt but ain’t nothin flatter than ableton 😂😂😂
Really like this video tutorial. As a person who really wants to make music and is just using fl studio. I can't tell you how many times I got confused and gave up when I was using fl studio even when I was using a video tutorial I still get vey confused because it sounds like the person is explaining how to fly a spaceship and while I haven't used ableton live. I can tell just by watching this video that it is much more easier to use so I may get and start using ableton live now if I want to start making music also really great video with some really nice editing longestsoloever keep it up man really love your videos.
I've never used any other DAW besides FL Studio. I started learning to produce a few months back and I learned FL and had no other reference to the ridiculousness of the UI. It just all made sense to me because it was all I knew. Now its second hand nature to do all the tedious tasks and things to watch out for but I can only image how much easier it would have been to start in another DAW.
this is a great fl studio tutorial thanks
I get that those are the things that a beginner may stumble upon when first stating to use FL, but if you do a little bit of research, for pretty much everything shown here, there's a better way to do it (i.e. use instrument or audio Playlist tracks, use FPC if you want to see your drums in the PR with named notes, use Ctrl+B instead of Ctrl+C and V because yeah normal copy and paste indeed sucks, actually look up how undo works in FL to go up multiple levels or enable the "Alternate undo mode" in the settings, not recording in Edison lol, etc etc...).
I never knew Ableton was that easy, I might consider trying it sometime :) I still like using FL for now, but thanks for making this, I've definitely learned stuff!
I've been using FL studio on and off for 9 years and its my favorite DAW out of the few I've used. I am a production novice but I'm not really into technical music theory. HOWEVER the way you explained the difference between Ableton and FL makes me wanna try it but I cannot afford the standard Ableton and I already have everything I need in FL.
I think I liked FL Studio because of the free lifetime updates. I had a massive cookbook book that I used to study it and now am able to write tunes very quickly on it. I also play saxophone so record using it using it to record audio quite quickly.
When I was studying at college and university, I tried using cubase and I (think) logic but they were so all over the place I couldn't be bothered. I'd previously used music 2000 on the original PlayStation to compose music in little blocks so FL Studio made more intuitive sense to me after that.