Changing samples in ReWire?
Hi,
I am evaluating Fruity Loops to help me with some drum tracks. I figured out how to use Fruity separately including changing the sampled sound for a given channel. I figured out how to insert a ReWire device into n-track and actually get the sound from Fruity into n-track. The only problem is as a ReWire device, I can’t seem to change the sampled sounds from, let’s say, Flanged to one of the drum sounds from the “My Body” demo song. Can’t drag-n-drop it, can’t get it to load from the “Channel Settings” popup, which does popup I just can’t get the sample I want to override the defaults. Any ideas?
Paul
Paul
I’ve just had a look at this and I think I understand what you mean. I think the issue is that “Flanged” is a whole instrument rather than an individual sample and therefore doesn’t work in the same way. If you delete all the channels that you can see, then drag the drum samples from the FL browser over to the step sequencer and click on the steps that you want, then it should work OK (though I don’t think you can save it in the demo version). If you need drum samples then NSKit is well regarded. Let me know if you need further explanation and I’ll post some pictures.
I’ve also never found a way of properly time compensating FL from within ntrack either with Rewire or VSTi, so I have to record the FL track/s first and follow them with the ntrack tracks.
Let me know how you get on.
I always us FL as a VSTi. Not sure it the demo will do that though. As a VSTi, whenever you cahnge the tempo in N it changes in FL as long as you have it set to do that. I always have FL set to give me a two bar lead-in. It will play other the instruments in FL as well, ie Boo Bass, Crystal, etc. I’ve never tried rewire.
Blessings, Terry
Great answers, guys! Can’t try it tonight but will tomorrow night and let you know how it goes!
Paul
jmccullo,
I’m at work right now so I’m not sure exactly where it is, but in FL you can tell it whether to sinc with the host program or not. I’ll try to remember to check when I get home.
Blessings, Terry
That would be great as I’ve never got this to work right either through ReWire of VSTi. I have the 2 clocks (FL and n-track) running in M:B:T format using the same time signatures and they don’t tie up.
OK, here it is. Like I said I’ve never used rewire so I can’t help there but here is how to set it up as a VSTi.
First open n-Track, and then select Track>MIDI>New Instrument Channel> FL Studio (or Fruity Loops whichever you have)>FL StudioVSTi.
Once the plugin window opens double click on the fruit to open FL.
In FL select Option>Audio Settings and tick the Slave Tempo box. It should light up when selected. Go ahead and create whatever drum part you want in FL and then close it.
That’s it. Now that you are back in the N-track area, all you have to do is go past the point where you think your song will end, and record a short bit of silence. Now hit rewind. When you hit play, whatever you have set up in FL will begin to play at the tempo you have set in n-Track. You can jump in and out of FL while the song is playing by double clicking on the fruit.
Hope this helps. If it’s still confusing, ak some more questions.
Like I said, I’m not sure if the demo will do this, mines registered.
Blessings, Terry
Excellent!!!.. well, somewhat. I followed John’s instructions on deleting the existing channels, and added my own. That works fine. I am now getting FL to start when I hit Play on n-track and it SEEMS synch’ed… BUT… I can’t really tell what I get majorially sounds like huge feedback, like a humpback whale with a low C note hitting pretty steady at about -3 db on the playback meter for as long as I have the Play button active. I also hear my audio tracks as well as FL in the background, but the whale pervades everything. 1Gb RAm, P4 3.4Ghz HT et cetera… the power is there. Any ideas there?
One other problem is I had previously inserted FL as a ReWire. Now any time I bring up n-track, the FL program loads on top of it. I can hit the fruit (which looks like a chili pepper to me) and that will make the FL GUI disappear. But how do you “unload” a reWire installed device so n-track doesn’t try to use it anymore? Clicking the X button in the main FL screens and the ReWire popup does nothing but hide the FL GUI. Closing n-track I get a warning to “Close the ReWire application first.” Any ideas there either? Same type of question for VST devices. There aren’t n-track menu options to UnInsert ReWire device, et cetera.
Thanks
Paul
One more thing if I can do so on this forum… what plugins did you buy when you bought FL, why, and how do you like them? They have a BOAT load of plugins and I don’t know which ones are essential fo someone who is mainly acoustic guitar, James Taylor/Harry Connick Jr voice, FL drums, Emu Esynth instruments, songwriter…
Okay, I found out how to get rid of the ReWire inserts. I just delete the six of them I had inserted by deleting them in the Mixer window! 
Could that be more intuitive?! Also, no more “whale” sounds. BUT… and it always seems there is a BUT… when I go into the FL VST plugin and get everything set up then the FL Play button there is no sound. If I go back into n-track and hit the play button everything is synched fine and FL plays along with n-track. Any idea why there is no sound in FL?
Paul
Okay, figured that out too… but there HAS to be a better way. I figured since FL is being controlled by n-track that I would have to hit Play on n-track, then bring up FL to make changes in the sequence. Very messy!! There has to be a better way than this to be able to ITERATIVELY (1) create patterns in FL and hear the patterns as you create them including what the sample sounds like (2) create a playlist in FL using the patterns created (3) sync FL and n-track and (4) play them together to hear how it sounds (5) go back to step 1. Terry?
Paul
First open n-Track, and then select Track>MIDI>New Instrument Channel> FL Studio (or Fruity Loops whichever you have)>FL StudioVSTi.
Once the plugin window opens double click on the fruit to open FL.
In FL select Option>Audio Settings and tick the Slave Tempo box. It should light up when selected. Go ahead and create whatever drum part you want in FL and then close it.
I already had this selected, but it is still not running at exactly the same clock as ntrack. If I open up the FL VSTi and set the offset to 0, the ntrack clock and the FL clock should be running at exactly the same times, but there is a lag. It's as if FL is not sending compensation information back to ntrack (I have the compensate for latency setting on within ntrack). The sync is OK but there is an offset that I can't fine control. This is not a problem if I start with drums, but if I want to add FL drums to some old tracks that had MIDI drums then there is nowhere to enter an precise offset - this means adding the FL track and then moving all of the audio tracks individually to line them up.
(1) create patterns in FL and hear the patterns as you create them including what the sample sounds like
You can just do this in the standalone FL - outside of ntrack.
(2) create a playlist in FL using the patterns created
Again you can do this standalone - you use "playlist" screen.
(3) sync FL and n-track and (4) play them together to hear how it sounds (5) go back to step 1
You then load the FL VSTi or ReWire, do File/Open the *.flp file that you saved in (1)&(2) - you can then make any further changes that you want "on the fly" from within ntrack.
Is that what you mean?
Once the plugin window opens double click on the fruit to open FL.
In FL select Option>Audio Settings and tick the Slave Tempo box. It should light up when selected. Go ahead and create whatever drum part you want in FL and then close it.
I already had this selected, but it is still not running at exactly the same clock as ntrack. If I open up the FL VSTi and set the offset to 0, the ntrack clock and the FL clock should be running at exactly the same times, but there is a lag. It's as if FL is not sending compensation information back to ntrack (I have the compensate for latency setting on within ntrack). The sync is OK but there is an offset that I can't fine control. This is not a problem if I start with drums, but if I want to add FL drums to some old tracks that had MIDI drums then there is nowhere to enter an precise offset - this means adding the FL track and then moving all of the audio tracks individually to line them up.
(1) create patterns in FL and hear the patterns as you create them including what the sample sounds like
You can just do this in the standalone FL - outside of ntrack.
(2) create a playlist in FL using the patterns created
Again you can do this standalone - you use "playlist" screen.
(3) sync FL and n-track and (4) play them together to hear how it sounds (5) go back to step 1
You then load the FL VSTi or ReWire, do File/Open the *.flp file that you saved in (1)&(2) - you can then make any further changes that you want "on the fly" from within ntrack.
Is that what you mean?
Hi,
Thanks for the answer. What I was hoping was that there was a more synergistic method. To me having to try to guess what will sound good on the drums and then hearing the song to see if you are right is the equivalent of trying to play lead guitar without hearing the rhytm track… difficult to do for me at least, especially since drums pervade the entire song.
Are you having any problems with FL looping at the end of your last pattern? I can set the loop point early in the song with a right click (say after the second pattern), add a dozen or so additional drum patterns, click “song” instead of “pattern”, click Play in FL and everything is fine… loops perfectly. However, if I then Stop FL, go into n-track, and hit Play, FL will walk through all of the patterns but will not loop back to the loop point. I can watch it march right past the last pattern in the playlist. Have you had this same problem?
Paul
Just had a thought… I guess one way to do what I want would be to create a simple tick track in n-track, record scratch rhythm and vocal tracks, mixdown to a WAV file without the tick track, then import that audio file into FL Producer to use as a template. Anyone think of a more elegant way?
Paul
There’s nothing to stop you programming the whole thing from within ntrack, but I find the following method the easiest (I’m a guitarist):
1. Run FL in standalone mode along with me playing the guitar until I have a basic set of patterns that fit my song. The patterns have to be fairly accurate, but I don’t have to worry about the actual samples at this point.
2. Link FL to ntrack via VSTi or ReWire and program any tempo or time signature changes (VSTi seems to deal better with time signature changes).
3. Record any audio and/or midi tracks from within ntrack whilst playing along to the FL VSTi/ReWire drums.
4. Select the samples for the drums and try them against the “actual” song (within ntrack), as well as using multiple samples to make them sound realistic.
I don’t use “loop points”, I just program the whole song into the “playlist”. FL allows copy/paste within the “playlist” view to make this easy.
Yep, I might try it the same way. I’ll let you know how importing a scratch track into FL works as well.
Once you close n-track and then bring it up again, how are you opening the FL plugin back up again? The only way I found to do it was to (1) bring up the Mixer window (2) double click on the Synth channel representing FL (3) click on the Effects button within that window (4) double-click on FL Studio VSTi in the Group Effects portion of the pop-up. Easier way? Opening FL back up outside of n-track opens it in standalone mode.
I’m afraid that’s pretty much the way - closing it and re-opening it as a ReWire device sometimes even gives me an error as well. You can always leave it open but keep it somewhere on screen where it’s unobtrusive and maximise it when you need it. Sorry - not much help.
PS: If you’re using ReWire and FL was open when you saved the ntrack song, it will open again when you re-open the sng file. You have to re-open the VSTi manually.
About opening up the VST: if I open it from the track itself via the Effects button instead of going the way I describe above I get “VSTi already opened” or some such error (even if it displays in the effects window) whereas I get no error message the way I describe above via Mixer.
Recording the scratch track then importing it into FL is DEFINITELY the way to go for me!!! It is SWEET! All from within FL I can iteratively listen to the audio and FL together, stop playback, change a pattern, change the playlist, hit start FROM ANYWHERE WITHIN THE AUDIO/DRUMS, adjust volumes on the fly for the patterns, create new patterns and add them to the playlist, et cetera… DEFINITELY recommend giving it a try.
For those who don’t know Fruity lingo, you might put bongo #1 & bongo #2 on Pattern 1, ie, two separate sounds (it can get a LOT more complicated). Then you might make Pattern 2 be a Cymbal #1 and Bass Drum #1. The way you string pattern repetitions together is via the playlist, either as a loop or as one long string of patterns.
Paul
The way I’ve always done it is to make a simple loop first and let that serve as a click track to record the rhythm guitar line or something. once I get a good protion of the song down, I then go back into FL and start creating different pattern for the different parts of the song. The tough part of this is starting and stopping the song, which has to be done in N. I will try Tall Pauls’ suggestion of importing part of the song into FL. I can see where that would make building the drum track easier with being able to start and stop from within FL.
Thanks Paul, I’ll give that a try.
Blessings, Terry