Oh trust me I know about it… Not my style of music production though. I guess you could use it as a poor man’s CDJ? Anyway, I’m trying to wrap my head around the workflow of Ableton Live first. So used to shift clicking on tracks to rename 
I usually make a drop and then create the intro and shit afterwards.
Me neither, but follow actions are a hell of a drug
This thing is far from finished, but I’m wondering: what would FL Studio users want in a livecoding interface?
(I know the true answer to that is ‘they don’t want one in the first place’, but we can pretend there’s a demand for this just for the time being, I hope 
).
So far, it can (in theory) do pretty much everything I can already do in Sonic Pi, but the incentive to actually make it arises from SP’s inability to work in time with the DAW (which VFX solves immediately) and SP’s tendency to start wigging out when you have too many patterns going at once (which is either a problem within SP or its backend, Supercollider).
Most of the time, a simple pattern is all you need to get ideas flowing, so that’s sort of the goal here. Any ideas are welcome, and as always, you’ll get to use it as well if it interests you at all 
. If any idea is too strange to cover in my version, I’d love to just make a custom variant for your purposes, too.
I’ve also pushed Patcher / VFX to some serious limits and have never experienced timing errors or anything like that, so I think this might be the perfect place for such a thing.
Very nice!
I’m not sure if my idea needs a sequencer, but I’d like a “chord arpeggiator”, let’s call it.
So what that does is, say I have a chord held for one bar, with 3 or 4 notes in it. One thing I like to do is make rhythmic stabs out of that chord, and invert the stabs. So move bottom note an octave up on the first stab, bottom two notes up an octave on the second, whole chord up an octave on the third, whole chord up on octave with bottom note up 2 octaves on the fourth stab, etc.
Right now, I have to program this manually, and it takes forever. A few basic patterns would be a great start (up only, down only, up/down, octave limits, 8ths, 16ths, triplets, etc). If you want to keep it easy, even just something that randomizes the notes within a set number of octaves would be helpful.
Have you used VFX sequencer? I think that might actually have you covered for all of this
The only real exception would be maybe switching between stabs and other things on the fly, but I think it pretty much does exactly what you’re describing by default!
I’ll add it to my to-do list to check out. Just started studying for my CPA so I’m basically back in school with 3-4 hours of study daily. So hopefully this weekend?
This is becoming a bit ambitious, but if I can get it to evaluate ‘live’ (I’m not sure if Python is fast enough for this, but it’s a hell of a goal to strive for) this could very well overtake all of the other stuff I use to generate sequences.
A few ideas I’m spitballing (as seen in the UI or otherwise):
The third one on that list maybe could be a sort of replacement for the arp feature, where the timebase gets skewed per note, but I need to figure out a clean way to handle this both for the user and on the backend.
Let me know if you hit any snags if you don’t mind and I’ll also try to help out where I can! I’d love to try to bring a sort of arp capability into this (and handle incoming voices), even if that becomes its own script entirely
As it turns out, it evaluates immediately, and I can’t believe it works. Provided you don’t give it some arbitrary value (although I’d like to create some safeguards), you can sort of ‘code’ (if you can call it that) on the fly!
I still need to work out some kinks, get more of the logic set up and whatnot, but this is going to fill a huge void for me. Especially if I can get MIDI out of FL studio just as easily
I’m thinking maybe resolution / timing and note lengths might be able to just be a list of values, too. Everything will just kind of wrap around to the next note and give you unexpected results. This is all I ever wanted, lol
I don’t suppose the midi out plugin works for you?
I’m a neanderthal and I can get my synths to trigger from the piano roll ok.
Does that just loop back into FL, though? I usually target loopbacks so that I can sort of base it on FL’s MIDI clock and send it to other weird places. I have a lot of plugins that can handle that, but if the native version allows MIDI to actually target hardware / external gear, I definitely need to RTFM on that.
The reason being that their native plugins are super lightweight, although most of the time I’ll probably just fire these off in Patcher
There’s also MIDI in, and I think that can be setup to receive from MIDI out if they’re on the same port/channel. I use MIDI in all the time to trigger stuff like STFU by notes instead of bpm for more complex kick patterns.
Trimming out the fat here since FL already provides a snap-to-scale script (although I could certainly modify theirs to make it more robust at some point), but the cool thing is they can still generate polyphony provided you use a few at once, and an added benefit is being able to create separate patterns for each of the voices.
I also made a chord generator at one point that might fit the bill for VFX sequencing experimentation, since it creates a chord once the song starts playing and bypasses the piano roll so that it can be used inside of patcher and hooked up directly to the VFX sequencer. I can either toss the code up (I’m pretty sure it was very tiny) or upload the preset if you want to try that!
Maybe having separate tools like this is the better approach (I knew I was being overly-ambitious about this one, I just couldn’t tell where exactly), because they’re way more powerful when used together.
And then… I’ll never have to make another script again 
. If only it were that simple
Fuck, it’s finally complete. Whew.
I had been trying to come up with a good way to implement this for way too long, and I can’t believe that it finally exists. This is the first thing I’ve ever made that actually feels fun and inspiring for me to use, so I’m hoping that actually translates to others in the process.
If I never make anything cool ever again, I think I can be happy with this. Even if it feels fresh and interesting to me for just 5 minutes, that’s a record
It’s up for free now, and if you get to this and it’s not free, I’ll set it back or give you a share link. IMO it’s a ton of fun to play with; you just punch in a few digits and you’re ready to go.
Also, the original price is mostly a joke. I just like to build up hype for people who enjoy that kind of thing
If anyone wants to trade my hype for their cash, send me a DM 
Haven’t done a proper video in a while, so… ahhh, here goes. It’s up.
Really nice overview of the process and a good demo for both VFX and your tools. All this stuff looks eminently usable even for people that don’t usually venture outside the standard UI.
I want to give props for the audio quality of this - it’s clear, crisp and well-mixed. You totally missed the trope of audio YouTuber with a studio full of expensive gear but it sounds like they recorded in a cereal box. Whole thing is very well put together and presented.
I recently from it and I miss Gross Beat so much ahhhhhhh… I like the program, and think the effects in the middle tier are more than enough for general production, I also like the ease of use its very easy to pick up and use well.
I believe you can buy it separately, so it should work in other DAWs? If not, Melda has pretty much the same VST available: MRhythmizer | MeldaProduction
Cool thing about Gross Beat is that it’s pretty much just a time / pitch shifter, so pretty much any DAW you’re using that uses a clip system (probably all of them) gives you similar access (along with even better tools) if you’re willing to do it by hand. Just copy a clip and change the loop points, pitch something up or down and you’ve got similar functionality anywhere.
(For slews and glides, just use your host’s sampler)
I use it in demo mode occasionally (since I don’t have the top tier), but don’t forget about using FL Studio as a plugin in any other DAW, even as a demo. Use your host DAW to freeze and flatten shit, and you never really have to go without it. FL’s demo even allows audio exports, so unless you really regret your permutations, you’ve got unlimited access to it.
I occasionally use HalfTime by Cableguys, but if I really wanted to I can pass it through it, and use gross beat. I’m one of those people who don’t like to commit to an export XD, I just feel like I might wanna tweak it or change it somehow, but thats a me issue lol.
The synths baked into FL are really good too, and I used FL 12 for like 7 years and then would update through the versions since like 2021, I never got the top tiered one, which I appreciate FL making the tiers easy to make decisions to not have to go to the £500 or so tier, unlike Ableton. I’m using Abletons rent to own program so its not so bad. I found though once I got Omnisphere and Serum around a year or two ago, I just stopped needing FL beyond its layout style. I think FL is a very good baked in software that needs minimal extra plugins to sound good, if you get the producer tier, but I do think it’s made more towards traditional Electronic and Hip hop/ Trap beats. I know in more recent updates they now finally allow you to adjust audio specifically to one rather than having a seperate instance, which seems great, once I am up to the same standard on ableton, I might go back and give it a proper go again.
