FLstudio Masters II: Something For ALL

[Kevin A]

OKay were back again trying to get the best out of our FLstudio. If you didn't know, FLstudio is not called studio for no reason, it really is a studio. Aside from being able to create your tracks in FLstudio, you can also do record vocals. Yes that means flstudio is a multitrack software as well, with a 64 track mixer that you can route any which way you wanna. Let me put this in perspective for you. When Dr. Dre is at his big mixing board and eminem says, " yo, turn my hi hats up a little bit" then later on he say, yo turn those background vocals down a little," this is what you can do in FLstudio. What does this means? more versatility when you are mixing(mixing needs to be taking more seriously). Most digital musicians have to export their track, then take it to a multitrack to do vocals (depending on software of choice). Once you export your instrumental, that's it. You have to master the instrumental as a single file now (cannot tweak singular instruments by themselves), and your mix is what it is. You record your vocals in a multitrack, but you have to mix them based on a instrumental track you can no longer mix with. So you can make fluent changes mixing your instrumentals and your vocals together as they do in the big studios with the big mixing boards if you go this route. So for people who normally have to render waves to transfer into a multitrack, I'm just saying you have more versatility doing it this way, and the end result being that you have a better mix to be mastered. Also, with you audio files in FLstudio, you can set then up to open in other programs for instance, in my tools I have cooledit, and in FLstudio I have it set to open up with current sample, so if I'm doing a vocal track, or just some instrument I want to edit, on that channel I'll select cooledit, sound forge, or any editor that I have use for, and FLstudio will open that program with the current sample in it. Now when you come back to flstudio, all you have to do is reload the sample (after you've saved it ofcourse)in your channel options and it's there. I normally go in to cooledit to do some noise reduction and so on. You also have realtime effects too for vocal as with everything else. You can also use other software effects right in FLstudio, so I can use sonar,soundfoundry, or just about anyone else's effects right through Flstudio without opening those other softwares.
If you've gotten this far in the read, good for you because this is the best part yet. If you know enough about Flstudio already, at this point your probably saying yeah that's find and dandy but you have to have a asio soundcard in order to record vocals into fruityloops. This has been a problem for me as well but I've come to share this solution with you. I actually thought about buying a external soundcard for my labtop because of this until I found this website that made a asio driver for all soundcards. As crazy as it sounds it is the truth and I have it installed and I'm using it with Flstudio recording vocals and everything. My labtop has a soundmax soundcard, and I'm running windows xp. you can get the drivers from http://asio4all.com If you have a soundblaster Live! or Audigy, the KxProject drivers are worth looking at http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/
So wether you use FLstudio or not, you can benefit from have asio drivers because of the low latency. I almost bought a new soundcard because of this, I'm glad I waited. Good luck

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention,these drivers are free. I hope this can save some of you a couple of dollars.
Peace

 

[UnOwn]

Hey,
Thanks for the tip. My question is how do you do this? I've read the whole manual and can't figure it out. Maybe, I need to go back and re-read but I haven't been using FL Studio long. I thought it had something to do with inserting and audio layer but I'm not quite sure about the recording process. Vocals is the only thing I'm not doing in there right now. Thanks for the help...

 

[Kevin A]

Never insert a audio channel unless you want to put in audio you have already recorded. Try to think of it as a real mixer. You have to set your audio tracks to pop up in the step sequencer after you record a take. Up in the left hand corner of your mixer is your options. Press that and select Disk Recording> then select auto-create audio track then select a empty mixer channel. At the bottom of FL's mixer select your input, leave your output as master (output really doesn't matter, if it doesn't work on master, try what ever options you have left, whatever it takes to work) then press the record icon on the mixer, it's in the lower right hand corner of the mixer, it should turn yellow. Also when you press record on the FL mixer, it's gonna prompt you and it's gonna basically wait for you to name the file and set it's destination. Make sure you are in song mode to record in the playlist, press record at the top of the screen, Press play to start the recording, speak into your mic, when you stop, your audio channel should appear in the step sequencer and you should see your vocals at the bottom of the playlist.
I hope it's a clearer now.
I have to catch ya'll later. Peace

 

[UnOwn]

^^^^ Hey, thanks a lot dog. It is much clearer now. I remember reading about that stuff but was confused as to what it was used for. I'm pretty sure I can figure it out now. Thanks again.

 

[SpinDoctor]

Nice one Kevin, I have been wondering how to record vocals in FL for a bit, that cleared it up nicely.

Peace

 

[eXampuL_oNe]

Good Looks man. But you know you can export your instrumentals in seprate tracks right? This way you can take your instrumental into another multi-track program like Acid or What i use Logic. and edit it there But, if Fl is the route you take thats cool too. Whatever fits your feel best is the way for you, u know? This is a slick way though. Im gunna try it for the fuck of it and see how it is. Thanx again dude.

 

[SpinDoctor]

You know when u export your instumentals into seperate tracks, when i do it it jus does 2 different ones, it does the fx and the actual song, what am i doing wrong?

 

[eXampuL_oNe]

Do you have each track in the fl mixer? Get them into the mixer and then when you export you just click the tab saying "split mixer tracks." Ya feel me? They will all seperate. Usually i put them into song mode with all my dropouts and change-ups then export the instrumental that way. It's real convinient. Let me know, if that cleared it up for u.

 

[Kevin A]

The only way I would render that way was unless I was going into another studio. Then the engineer would take over from there. I already posted that tip aswell https://www.illmuzik.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4812&highlight=kevin
That way is a excellent way to work when your going to another system, but if your staying on the same computer, it not really worth it. Me I wasn't use to it, and the only way for me to get around to exploring this was to get out of my comfort zone. To export all tracks for use in another multitrack on the same computer would really be like chasing your tale. The effects that you use in those other programs can be accessed right inside of Flstudio. There are more advatages to stay inside of FLstudio than to leave, also check this example. If you want something that sounds studio quality, you cannot record at a sample rate below 44100. A 2channel wav file with the length of 1 minute equals 10mb. People don't make 1 minute songs consistantly so your talking anywhere from 3-5mins. Lets say our song is 4 minutes long and and we have eleven instruments in our song. When we render each instrument as a wav, each instrument will be 40mb(4mins) so you have 40mbx11=440mb.
That's a 440mb file before you even begin to add vocals to it. This is all dependant on the amount of flexability you want when your working a project. So depending on how many takes you have to do, and how many artist are on the song, you can end up with a big file you can't even back up unless you have a dvd burner. Plus some people don't even have that much ram. With the process of using another multitrack program after you've exported each sound, you may not loose the ability to edit or process, but you do loose the ability to re-arrange sound. With the ability to arrange sound and record vocals, you will be able to better compliment the artist you are working with. FLstudio can bend over backwards for you if you let it. Nowwa days when I sit down at my computer, I turn everything on, my amp, my mic, my controllers and all that stuff. With the ability to record instantly into FLstudio means just that, I don't have to be working on the final vocals for the songs, I can document the idea for the hook if it pops up in my head while I'm making the song. I can do a rough draft or a final draft if I want. I don't know if ya'll have this problem, but sometimes with me, I'll right down the lyrics to a rap or a hook, and when I get back to it I forgot how to say it, so I use it to document ideas firstly so those jewels don't get lost forever. Not to mention you can select sections of your playlist and render them, so if you select a section, then remove all the instruments from that selection and just leave the vocals. By doing that, you can export vocal loops that will fit exactly into your song when you bring them back in a sample channel. There are somemore advantages, but I'll let you discover those yourself. But having that complete editability is something wonderful. One thing I forgot to mention before is that if you want to see how the wav looks when it's in the playlist, after you record it, select the audio channel and desellect "keep on disk" and it will no longer look like you recorded nothing, you will see the actual audio signal.

 

[sparks]

i dont have a input

 

[UnOwn]

For some reason I am either doing this wrong or FL isn't recognizing my soundcard correctly. I have and Audigy Platinum 2 Ex. I tried changing to different drivers in the Audio Setup, but I couldn't figure out which was the right one. There were about 10 of them. I would really like to do this cuz I hate using Plasma for this type of thing. Thanks...

 

[Kevin A]

You need to use asio drivers. If have a sound blaster card, which I think the Audigy is, use this link http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/ and the software they recommend for your card. I myself used the the first link because I don't have a soundblaster card. But the basic idea for these drivers is that they will intercept your soundcard (whichever one you select)while still using it's resources, but acting like the front runner. Like I said, I use the asio4all so you will have to do your homework at kxprojects. Try to explain your problem a lil bit more, but I do know that you would want to use the drivers you downloaded, so look at those 10 options carefully.

 

[HaZwaiOh]

sounds interesting, but what about the soundquality? I don´t expect fl to implement a great sounding recording algorithm. can anyone comment on that?

 

[Kevin A]

You can do that research yourself at the FLstudio website. Very easy @Haz