working with fruity loop drums & cubase SX
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Posted on Feb 09, 2004 07:07 pm
musac_man
Member Since: Feb 03, 2004
I've heard lots of people saying they like to use fruityloops to create their drum tracks
So how do you incorporate FL drum tracks into creating music in Cubase SX?
Do you create your bass/voc/guitar tracks in cubase using a metronome, then create drums in FL by counting how may measures are between each change, then exporting?
How do you guys do it?
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Feb 09, 2004 07:30 pm Create the loop, export as a wav file and import into Cubase. However, I do believe that FL will also work directly in Cubase as a VSTi or DXi...but I am not sure as I quit using Fruity a few month back and have forgotten some of it's features...
LokiCone PokerMember
Since: Apr 07, 2002
Feb 10, 2004 02:13 am I usually just save each pattern as a wav file, and open them each in sonar (or cubase in your case) and then sequence them there...
Feb 10, 2004 06:10 am you could even solo each track in fruity and export them one at a time in song mode. by putting each one on a diff track in your multitracker this would give the greatest flexibility in mixing. i'm running an older version of cakewalk on an old machine so it's impractical for me to run fruity as a DXi, but try it both ways and see what works best.
generally you want to work out your fruity tracks first (before guitars and vox etc) so that it's easiest to sync everything up in time.
Feb 10, 2004 12:35 pm i dont know if you have fruity or not, musac, but i love it.
i usually come up with a riff on guitar, which i play along to the cubase metronome, then i immediately go into fruity--which i'm using as a VST plugin--and create a simple one-measure loop using kick, snare, and ride or hat, which i tell fruity to repeat for however many measures my riff goes on. then i move through the song parts in this way. keeping fruity open and editable the whole time. changing it as the riff changes.
my only complaint about fruity--and it is a very BIG one--is that it doesnt support time signature changes within the song. hugely important. and totally absent.
anyway, i'm not into splitting up the separate drum tracks and EQing them separately in cubase--i have enough problems. so i just add some effects in fruity, get the volume as close to right as i feel like, and let fruity play as a VST while i export the song as a stereo .wav from cubase.
Feb 10, 2004 05:28 pm excellent responses!
thats given me a lot to go investigate.
1 more question -
How do you synch up fuityloops and cubse? as in if you create a loop in FL, how do you get it to be 1 exact measure length in cubase?
(i am a newbie to VST's)
Feb 10, 2004 05:41 pm musac_man, make sure the tempo is the same in both apps. they should line up fine.
LokiCone PokerMember
Since: Apr 07, 2002
Feb 10, 2004 07:00 pm yeah forty, I wanna do some of that cool techno ish time changes in fruity but I can't figure out how...
Feb 10, 2004 09:04 pm it's a serious setback. i'm going to have to buy another drum program as soon as i figure out which one will let me change time sigs. even my little boss br-8 8 track had the ability to do a tempo map!
and yes, musac...fruity automatically aligns itself with cubase's tempo. it's a breeze to set it up and get going, and a breeze to change your drums just as quickly as you have a new idea.
Feb 11, 2004 03:27 am Quote:
I wanna do some of that cool techno ish time changes
wasn't techno was all in 4/4?
but yeah, that's fruity's achilles heel right there. you have do bizarre math to work time changes in. for instance if you want both 4/4 and and 7/4 in a song, you have to quadruple the actual tempo and then space your notes out 4 times as much. so for instance if your song was to be in 80 bpm you'd have to set fruity at 320 bpm and what was once a whole note is now a quarter note etc so you have to put a little thinking into your programming. fortunately the pianoroll lets you easy go beyond 1 bar per pattern so making a pattern 4 bars (1 actual) is no problem. tricky, but it works
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Feb 15, 2004 08:11 pm If you guys are serious about doing tempo mapping and such, I can tell you that so far I have been nothing but pleased and amazed with Project 5 from Cakewalk. It is basically just an extension to Sonar or whatever program you run that can support Rewire devices, which Project 5 is. Or Project 5 can run stand alone as well just like fruity only with way more tools and synths and such. There isnt much else I want other then a few odd softsynths, and I can almost build them with Tassman in P5 so I really do have it all.
Feb 15, 2004 08:45 pm it would work in cubase? it lets you change your tempo? i just work with drums, thats all i need this program for. i'm going to experiment with 'multiples' in fruity, but i don't like doing that, and may in the future invest in something a little more complete as far as time sig ability.
Feb 16, 2004 01:55 am yeah things like Fruity and Reason and not very good for doing rock drums. They're more geared towards dance music (which is very rarely anything but 4/4)
And yup you can Rewire to Cubase. :O)
flame...bringing sexy backMember
Since: Jul 01, 2002
Feb 16, 2004 01:03 pm depends on the samples you use though...
whats good for rock drums would ya say?
Feb 16, 2004 01:37 pm fruity sounds alright if ya have nice rock drum samples. there's just that time-sig issue. but fruity is a bit mechanical too. i dont know how much i would trust one of these, but does this project 5 have some sort of 'humanizer' that de-mechanizes the drum beats?
maybe that's what he's talking about. i don't think fruity has one.
i have never trusted such humanizers. but i've never heard one in action either.
Feb 16, 2004 01:44 pm I dunno if I would call it "humanizing" but what I do on occassion is in the sequencer which I am using P5 (generally Sonar) I just toss beats off by a couple milliseconds, change velocity slightly from beat to beat and things like that to shake it up a bit and make it a little bit more "human" and imperfect.
flame...bringing sexy backMember
Since: Jul 01, 2002
Feb 16, 2004 01:48 pm fruityloops has a humaniser, though ya gotta be gentle with it...
Feb 17, 2004 12:56 am i prefer to zoom into my pianoroll with the snap set to "tick" and manually scoot notes around to taste.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Feb 18, 2004 07:15 pm And both P5 and Sonar have a swing function that will give a more human feel to the sequance for your drums. You can vary the amount and even vary which measures are swung how far.
Did that make sense.
And forty, P5 has several options for doing drums. Samplers, real drum synths, and old school drum synths. That is what I like best about it.
Mar 26, 2004 02:16 pm can someone explain this whole 'rewire to cubase' thing? i've been doing research this afternoon to see if project 5 can be used within cubase AS a plugin. that's how i use fruity. i need to be able to write and edit my drum parts as i work on guitars and such, so i want my drum program to function as a plugin.
but i havent learned how this is done from my reading. i see that jamie mentions here something about rewiring.
also, how much $$$ is project 5?
Mar 26, 2004 02:18 pm Project 5 would be available in Cubase as a collection of VSTi's.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Mar 27, 2004 05:58 pm You simply open project 5 first, and then open cubase, and P5 will appear under your rewire devices list and when you open P5 it will be locked into cubase timing and control wise.
If you buy it from MF before march 31 you will recieve two free loop Cd's as well.
Anyway, it is on sale for $199.00 which is the lowest price I have seen for a it yet. It lists at $429.00 and has been as low as $299.00 but never this low before.
