Why is the FL Studio Piano Roll shunned?

J

JaftheGiraffe

New member
Hey guys,
I'm a bit new to this forum, but just from internet browsing popular opinions it seems that people have a problem with FL being a "point-and-click" DAW due to the piano roll. However, as true as this may be, I hardly see a problem with being able to chart out notes without an external controller. What are your guys' opinions? If you downright hate FL and the piano roll, lemme know why
 
i think some people are just jealous at the speed of laying down melodies via point and click in FL, ive tried a few different daws and FLs piano roll is the easiest and quickest to use. i also use reaper and sometimes i find it annoying that i cant record midis in the same amount of time as FL. some daws rely on you to use a controller which involves having some basic level of playing skill, trying to record midi in reaper for example is tough when you dont have one.
 
It's pretty funny that people accuse FL for this, while it's the users themselves who decide to "point and drag".
 
rayzer said:
i think some people are just jealous at the speed of laying down melodies via point and click in FL, ive tried a few different daws and FLs piano roll is the easiest and quickest to use. i also use reaper and sometimes i find it annoying that i cant record midis in the same amount of time as FL. some daws rely on you to use a controller which involves having some basic level of playing skill, trying to record midi in reaper for example is tough when you dont have one.
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That's kind of like saying people who drive cars are jealous of your bicycle because it's faster than walking.....Yeah, Fruity Loops makes drawing shit in to the piano roll with the mouse easier but who the hell wants to do that?
 
hollandturbine said:
That's kind of like saying people who drive cars are jealous of your bicycle because it's faster than walking.....Yeah, Fruity Loops makes drawing shit in to the piano roll with the mouse easier but who the hell wants to do that?
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Sometimes it's necessary. For example doing really fast paced arpeggiators parts is almost impossible for me to do in real time, and so I have to resort to clicking some into the piano roll. But there's no reason why I'd need anything more than a simple drawing tool in my daw piano roll to do that.
 
hollandturbine said:
That's kind of like saying people who drive cars are jealous of your bicycle because it's faster than walking.....Yeah, Fruity Loops makes drawing shit in to the piano roll with the mouse easier but who the hell wants to do that?
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I want to do that. i don't have a midi controller and/or the skills to play on a midi controller. Also, people forget that there this little menu on the top left of the piano roll, with some pretty neat features, like: chords. and arpeggiate. and riff machine. and stuff.
 
Wallengard said:
Sometimes it's necessary. For example doing really fast paced arpeggiators parts is almost impossible for me to do in real time, and so I have to resort to clicking some into the piano roll. But there's no reason why I'd need anything more than a simple drawing tool in my daw piano roll to do that.
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Assuming you don't want to use a real time MIDI Arpeggiator or modify preexisting MIDI using a similar preset or use MIDI step input then yeah I agree that it's very necessary to click that shit into the piano roll with a mouse, but doing that is going to be the same in almost any piano roll. I don't think Fruity Loops offers anything special when it comes to arpeggios, I mean that's some shit I can do on my old ass Atari from the 80's running Cubase in black and white, LOL.
 
hollandturbine said:
Assuming you don't want to use a real time MIDI Arpeggiator or modify preexisting MIDI using a similar preset or use MIDI step input then yeah I agree that it's very necessary to click that shit into the piano roll with a mouse, but doing that is going to be the same in almost any piano roll. I don't think Fruity Loops offers anything special when it comes to arpeggios, I mean that's some shit I can do on my old ass Atari from the 80's running Cubase in black and white, LOL.
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That was my point. I don't need any of the other functions that FL studio offers to do that. Only a drawing tool.

On a side note. I'd love to have a keyboard with an arpeggiator. That's high up on the to buy list now. :-)
 
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Ddream said:
I want to do that. i don't have a midi controller and/or the skills to play on a midi controller. Also, people forget that there this little menu on the top left of the piano roll, with some pretty neat features, like: chords. and arpeggiate. and riff machine. and stuff.
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You do know MIDI plugins make it possible to play chords with one finger into an arpeggiator and do shit like that right? I mean there are alternatives to squinting at your screen while you click shit into the piano roll with the mouse.

While Fruity Loops is the best DAW for mouse based composition it only really maters if you don't have a MIDI controller, in the same way a candle is better than a light globe if you don't have electricity.
 
I'm a long time supporter of FL Studio. Each DAW has it's strengths, one of which for FL Studio is being able to lay down a pattern SUPER EASY! Love it
 
The shunning was back in 2001. All the people now that shun it either read what people said about it then or heard from other people who said to shun it because of how it was in 2001.
It's not 2001, and FL is no longer considered shunable. :)
 
hollandturbine said:
That's kind of like saying people who drive cars are jealous of your bicycle because it's faster than walking.....Yeah, Fruity Loops makes drawing shit in to the piano roll with the mouse easier but who the hell wants to do that?
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Wouldn't it be more like people in cars stuck in traffic being jealous of people on motorcycles for being able to go between cars and validating their stance by brushing the motorcycles off as "bicycles" and talking about how dangerous they are? Being that the issue is how easily someone can arrive at a point that takes more work using another device?
 
I don't even use FL(on a Mac using Reason 7 and Pro Tools 11).

But I'm not going to pretend it lacks professionalism by givng easier approaches to creating patterns. I've owned midi controllers, MPCs, Workstation racks, ect. before the 1st time I ever set eyes on FL. IT MADE THINGS EASIER. I never understood step sequencing a drum pattern before, now I rely on it to the point I had to route things in Reason so i can use the step sequencer from Redrum to control Kong. I also play out notes and drums on QWERTY keys when i don't want them effected by velocity(in all fairness, Mac keys are kind of like drumpads, don't remember doing that much on PC). I've never been into drawing in notes, but I often used the piano roll in FL to fix things I screwed up while playing or to add to what I played, in Reason, I just have to replay it(more work)because it's not as simple to manipulate what you played IMO. Was alot easier in Reason 3.0, then they changed stuff around.

I'm not sure how people come up wioth the idea doing things easier is a bad thing as long as you arrive at the same destination. If taking the time to program an arp plug takes more work than clicking in notes(all left to individual opinion), you're working harder not clicking in your notes.
 
If you have controllers at your disposal and can compose live then there are plenty of DAWs that accommodate that workflow better than FL Studio. For mouse and keyboard production, FL is probably by far the best tool at your disposal. That being said, it doesn't matter if you record live or point-and-click. As long as the final product is solid then the process shouldn't matter.
 
When you follow DAW-specific forums, you'll frequently see threads or posts where users complain that DAW X's piano roll is not like FL's. It's often cited as one of FL Studio's best feature that is unmatched by no other software package.As for how music is made, it's very individual. Some people prefer controllers, others click in notes, and a bunch of people who have MIDI keyboards just punch keys without being able to really play the thing, which makes it essentially the same as using the mouse. It also depends on where you make music. There may not always be a controller around, or you may not have room for one. And the type of music matters, too.In the end, this is just another thing that insecure people use to artificially separate themselves from the allegedly inferior "mob". Like Skullkiid and others said, what matters is the result. If the product is good, no one cares how it came to be. Everything else is secondary, and ultimately up to one's workflow preferences. (I do some of my stuff in Renoise, which has no piano roll at all.)
 
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