Writing Dance Music on FL Studio

Welcome to the new dance music writing / composition tutorial thread.

I've just installed FL Studio 11 and it looks pretty complex, which for me is nice   Lots of options and controls. I'm working on the music soundtrack for GS2 at the moment so I'll chat a bit about how I go about writing dance music and what sorts of processes I go thru to give you an idea of how it works from composition to final cut in the movie.

I started writing dance music on the first analog synths in the late 1960's and got my first synth the Roland System 100, with patch cords and knobs, and sequencer early 1970's

I then moved to digital synth programming early 1980's with the Yamaha DX7, The sound module going on to become the standard default synth kit in most of today's digital sound cards and computers.

My first computer synth was the 1983 CX5M Yamaha with the first Microsoft music program, including notation, sequencing, and standard FM synthesis tools.

[I'll post some pics and specs of the synths too]

Generally these days for pro work I use SONAR (Audio) combined with Sony VEGAS (Video and Audio), I often use an EDIROL MIDI Keyboard PCR-50 to play the notes. I'm a trained piano / keyboard player since the 1970's so it's the more natural way for me to program notes. I don't quantize much, when I use keyboard entry I want all the physicality in the playing and phrasing to be included for a human element.

 if I want accuracy I'll generally key in the notes manually one by one.

So I'm gonna start to have a play with FL (Frooty Loops) Studio 11 (The latest version May 2013) and see how it goes.

Anyone else using FL please contibute your experiences with FL and writing dance music and any tips you might have for bug fixes etc.

I'll be taking screen shots of some of the work too, the first thing I'm doing is trying to increase the tiny text size they have   It might look okay on a tablet, but on a 16:9 widescreen desktop moniter, my usual work screen, it's ridiculously small.

But first impressions, looks like something I'd like to spend some time learning, lots of toys to play with

I may even read the manual at some stage too

Okay so first on the list to FL Studio makers, I had some of my download file corrupted by bad local internet infrastructure. It's only a few graf files on some plug ins, and fixed by simply downloading again with a fresh file.

I have crap broadband internet access. The fastest I could download your file of some 300k online was, only 80-90kbps, that's ancient dial-up speeds, but I pay for broadband and 900kbps downloads. The fastest I've ever seen in this outer east hills area of Melbounre metro is 115kbps, I nearly fell out of my chair in shock. It lastest 23 seconds, oh so sweet it was, I keep paying premium dollars just to see it again. That plus we have a govt monopoly on the internet hardware and have no choice, but to replace the government and the infrastucture.

It's easy to replace the government - in 5 weeks, but the infrastructure will take many years

So for the other 80% of the worlds intenet users who get crap internet like me, and not the slick fast ones I can get in the city, if you could provide us with say the same file size split into 5 packets. Then when we get corrupted files downloaded, we just have to redownload the last small packet not the entire large file in one single go.

That'd be really nice

My initial interest in FL is it's ability to compose live dance tracks. I'm writing a live set for Global Shuffle Cruises. www.globalshufflecruises.com

I love playing live, it's just such a delight and pleasure like no other. I can't fly because of health issues, but I can cruise by ship.

The set is for a live act including shuffle crew routines and other live muscians particularly dance percussion musicians. Ideal for a typical 3000 -5000 passenger cruise ships live stage / theatre venue, with dance floor.

I can run SONAR easy enough on laptop, but I'm looking for other ways to interact with the music and dancers in real time in front of a live dance audience - with no mistakes   because they'll be loud ones if they are

yeah ^^
thats what i mmeant with, It,s to complex to explain this programm you have to much to play with it like synths , sounds, live play, block sequenzer, edit your midi files, using Fl like a KORG, and and and and and ... but in my opinion you have more overall view in this programm as in other programms like Cubase
If you want i can send you some nice tutourials of Fl studio like for fading with automation clip or for create some nice sounds like syth sounds or better kick sounds. you didnt have in the sample presets in Fl studio. or a tutorial for mastering the track because of the link methods and plugins you have there

I've just been having a stumble-around the program and I'm really impressed so far.

It's quite intuitive and responds nicely in real-time actions

Yeah and you will stumble in Future in so Much Setups you can make  
And i like this program too.
The real time Action are pretty Nice if you make a live Record of a Track with appregiato Sounds and gated Sounds. So you don't have to make too many Automation Clips in Song Editor ^^

Aaaaaah my Tablet and his autocorrect to German :'D

I've got my Edirol keyboard out and it works fine with FL, first try.

My only problem now is when I get started, I loose all sense of (real) time and suddenly hours have past just having fun

I have just bought myself a Microsoft Surface RT Win8,
very impressed with it, and the functions.

And I was wishing it had the power to run FL. About 30 mins ago it occurred to me to check the RT shop, totally not expecting to find any type software ...

 and now I've just spent a few dollars buying the FL Studio Groove Ver 1.0 and it's fantastic. Worked first time, very intuitive play along live with drum pads, keyboards on the touch screen edit, etc excellent,

Search: FL Studio Groove RT

Wow nice watched for something like that. Because i have an Win 8 acer inconia Tablet pc. And it was to difficult to use the touchscreen for that too little icons if i open fl studio on my tablet pc

Ah I've got an acer desk-top computer with XP. Runs really well but I'm wearing it out

I didn't think of trying the main fl program on Surface. I just assumed it wouldn't work.

I'll give it a try.

The fl groove has some nice sized icons and buttons for touch screen, works good, but the drag box for copy+paste is too fiddly. It interferes with the notes you have already, and can accidently shift them instead of copying.

I've been searching for an audio record app for the surface, none so far, but some interesting code in development at this link below

 http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/4889/A-full-duplex-audio-player-in-C-using-the-waveIn-w