I am in love with FL Studio but I like how in Ableton you can put things in groups and it is more organized. But I tried the demo and I can’t find out how to work anything and all the Youtube tutorials suck. Any advice would be great!
With regard to grouping, look at the previews of FL12, the additions to the mixer may be what you’re after. And upgrading will probably be less hassle than starting with a new DAW. Upgrades are also free if you’ve paid for FL.
I’ll just ramble for a while about both workstations.
I’ve tried and failed before. Made a lot of tunes in ableton too, I just like FL’s piano roll and step sequencer better. Ableton’s mixer sounds a little cleaner, but their effects are pretty weak on the control side of things.
I also prefer the windows in FL and how you can move them around and hide them, I’ve only ever had small computer screens and I find ableton’s UI a little cramped. Good thing about ableton is that recording midi and audio is suuuuuuuper easy, though with a few extra clicks FL’s good for it too.
The playlist in ableton gives me a headache because of automation, you can’t ever get things on the grid and clicking around is fiddly too, but I do like that it gives you specific info like the exact frequency rather than just percentages on the close-up, but I do copy values a lot in FL and replicating this method in ableton is fucking tedious as fuck.
Midi controllers are generally easier to setup for ableton.
Ableton’s drum-pad > FPC, the sampler, the automatic mixer routing (if samples are added properly tbf), the internal controls. Most people don’t use fpc anyway, but food for thought nonetheless.
Ableton’s midi sampling > FL’s in that you basically get a sampler within a sampler and you have to re-cut externally using stuff like Edison, the playlist, and/or Slicex in FL. The playlist samplers are about the same.
If you’re into controllerism, Ableton will have more options in terms of fluent controllers.
tl;dr
If you really want to go ahead with it then just keep fiddling; think back to those early FL days when you also couldn’t work anything out and there weren’t any useful tutorials for you.
no
in the middle of making the switch right now, still strongly prefer the FL user interface over the ableton clusterfuck but the ableton effects are sooooooooooo good. plus midi effects are a nice crutch when your songwriting/creativity isnt at peak performance
Yes
It was worth it for me, but i have mad respect for the dudes that truly operate all of FL’s capabilities.
I could never figure out how all of FL’s tools worked together. When i moved on to ableton and finally figured out the clusterfuck interface, it actually became quite simple to understand and manipulate (or at least the bare minimum i.e. clip view). It was easy for me to throw a Drum Rack and an Instrument Rack on and just throw effects on them.
I’m still shit with the arrangement view though. I now heavily rely on the Push for my process
Is that what the string methods stuff has been?
Nah I have yet to get to the point where I can build tracks I’m happy with but it shouldn’t be much longer hopefully
Could you give me any links that would help me figure out Ableton at least a bit?
I switched to Ableton from FL last November, since the production school I’m attending this fall requires you to use either Ableton or Logic. I got seriously frustrated at first, and it honestly did take me a while to get used to the new DAW, but after about 4 months I felt waaaay more comfortable using Ableton. Granted that 4 months I wasn’t even producing that much, so it could very well have been 2 months if I just put the time in. Both DAW’s have a lot of useful tools, but I prefer Ableton. Also switching to a new system helped me learn and understand a lot of concepts I never knew before.
honestly, with the FL videos Ive seen…it’s just as capable if not more than Ableton. Just a matter of your knowledge with them. I personally use Ableton because i started with it, but I was for whatever reason to switch it would be over to FL.
of course they’re just as capable. if you ignore the bundled effects/instruments, all DAWs can literally do the same things (aside from reason w/ its lack of vst support).
the difference is just in the workflow (which can be make or break for some people), and as I mentioned, included plugins. that might not matter to a lot to some people either, but personally that’s what’s most attractive to me about ableton. they’ve got pretty much all the effects you could need and they all sound top (which is not so easy to say for most of the image line FL plugins which are extremely dated). I find myself ditching a lot of the VSTs I’ve collected over the years because the ableton ones are for the most part better
Yeah the workflow in Ableton is extremely nice. Ive definitely tried Logic and FL…I felt like a retard lol. Got back onto Ableton and it just felt so natural and easy to come up with something.
It is definitely worth it. The workflow is so much more smooth.
There are just so many reasons why. You literally have to experience working with the DAW to feel how great they are. Me telling you is one thing but actually working with the tools is extraordinary lol.
Been using Ableton suite for 4 years now, even got the push. Can’t really see how anyone could call the interface a clusterfuck, imo FL is way less logically laid out but that’s probably since I’m so used to ableton. On a side note I do own a copy of Logic pro x and Pro tools 11, and the only real benefits i see in those daws are better native mixer-views and dedicated tools for i.e cutting, glueing etc.
That being said I think automation in everything outside of Ableton is super slow and tedious, not to mention working with audio clips, bouncing midi to audio. Also the warp-engine in Ableton is great.
All this being said I think it’s more important to ask yourself what kind of workflow, what are you mainly going to focus on, and base your choice of daw on that.
I.e would I recommend Logic to people that like to spend more time on composing/arranging, Ableton to people who like to get to the more easily to the nuts-and-bolts level of things etc.
Writing this on mobile so excuse any typos
FL and Ableton are like the same thing essentially, can do the same things…
IMO there’s no really need for you to do it if you’re already acquainted with FL. just do your thang with that and master it. I can’t see any use for knowing how to use several different daws since at the end of the day they are all capable of pretty much the same things as stated before. I myself use ableton because I think it’s cool and IMO the gold standard of electronic music production.
Can make collaborating a lot easier if you know how the other person’s DAW works.
good point and believe it or not I had that thought in my head when I wrote that post just forgot to write it lol