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Can't stress this enough. The mix sounds a bit...dry? Not much depth to the sound here; sounds Casio keyboardish. Not that the samples suck...I suppose it's part of the goofy charm, but a lot of it sounds like default preset Fruity business. Drums could come out a bit more too. I dunno...seems like a lot more work could go into this. The arrangement's pretty basic too, and those solos at the end sound obligatory rather than natural. NO

Drum work is really nice. Pads and sounds are really great and build a good texture. I can kind of see what Vig is saying about the arrangement, but I don't think that it's on such a scale where it's detrimental to the mix. I think that the calmer stuff framed by the more intense stuff works well. That 'guitar' sound is...unique. Great work. I give it a YES, which is SEY backwards.

Savior, did you buy all the extra plugins? Because you have to pay for a lot of the extra stuff like SFPlayer, Wasp, and Sytrus. If you did, go to FLStudio.com and post your problem there; they'll help you get it sorted out. If you haven't paid for it, then don't used the plugins, find alternatives, or buy the ones you want to use.

While people are making the connection to PoDW, I'm going to go ahead and say that when I was talking to Unknown, he talked about this mix as Dragon Roost Isle done in the style of the Pirate of the Caribbean score.

Oooh, rather sweet. Great texture you've got here; I really like your sounds. Like Coma mentioned, the synth that replaces the piano really works well as the continuo line through this mix. Effects are used quite well, and the levels are just right. ... Damn! It ended! I really wish this was longer. The pads come in and it sounds like you're going to do some kind of wicked breakdown in the percussion, but it just ends. Aw man. I really like what you have, but I'm gonna say NO along with a desparate plea for a longer version and resubmission. What you have here is a really awesome start, but you've gotta develop this more. PLEASE

Great work Ty, you ol' pirate! This really captures the sea-faring feel of Wind Waker; nice stuff all around. Great variation, excellent arrangement; everything here's absolutely gorgeous! You and I should combine efforts and do a Zelda Arrange album. XD

I don't like the dissonance in the beginning. I can see what you're trying to do there, but I think it would work if you changed that bass note to match your chord changes. The arrangement is a pretty straighforward rendition of the battle theme; not much in the way of change in the first half. This piece has a lot of momentum, which is great, but I wish that left-hand would lay off the eighth notes for a while and do something substantially different, because it gets tiring after a while. You definitely know what you're doing on a piano, no doubt about it, but I'd like to hear some more in way of variation in terms of the development of this arrangement. It just starts off and goes and goes and goes and doesn't let up the whole way through. Definitely not bad; I do like a lot of it, but I'm going to give it a NO for now and encourage you to take a look at some things and resubmit, particularly the opening dissonance Prot mentioned and harmony stuff Vig talked about.

I don't mind the bass sound so much. Some balance issues in this one concerning the instrumentation, though. Those strings could be made a bit quieter after a while. The drums are kind of in-your-face, which I wouldn't mind so much if the samples didn't suck. That hi-hat is too loud, and that kick sound is annoying. Most of the first two minutes of this mix sounds like it's just going through the motions; it doesn't really have a direction. The drum break in the latter half isn't bad, but the samples take some of the fun out of it. NO

Funkalicious. I really enjoyed this; there's a lot of kinetic energy here. Samples are pretty good, and those horn chords make me feel like a superspy. I also like how the song jumps right back in at 2:39 after the fake-out fade-out. Really groovy stuff. Only gripe is that snare sample; I'd have preferred something like a rimshot or something a bit more DnB sounding. Overall though, quite nice. YES

I'm probably one of the biggest Rocket Knight fans out there, so I was hoping this remix would rock my socks; unfortunately, I'm going to side with the majority on this one. This piece isn't really much of an improvement over the original; not much changes from section to section aside from the melody. It's also filling up my ears, but not in a good way. Sounds over compressed. As much as I'd love to see a Sparkster remix on OCR (especially of this track), I'm gonna have to give this a NO.

Hm, this is quite nice. I'm not at all familiar with the original, but it seems to me there's a good amount of arrangement going on here. There's a nice sense of momentum throughout the piece, but at the same time, it's broken up by a lot of neat rhythmic things that make me sit up and pay attention. I do agree with Malcos though; it lacks a bit on the higher end. That's a minor gripe though. Excellently done. YES

First, be patient. You only waited one hour before asking again, and nobody posted anything in the thread within that time. As for your question, automate the channel's volume to zero, then just bring it back up again, after a bar or two. It would probably make sense to automate any reverb or delay effects you have on the channel down to zero also using the effect's knob so that any residual sound gets killed too. If you need to know how to automate things in FL, check out the helpfile, or just search this thread. Automation should be in here somewhere.

Hey guys, lets try to keep the FAQ construction discussion in its own thread or something, and keep this thread as the FL101 thread, so as not to confuse people. Maybe use the Projects forum? A massive FL FAQ project would be fine there.

For future reference, for anything that's a demo version in FL and won't save, you've gotta pay money to get the full version. That's just how it works. Also, the fact that you're still using FL3 leads me to believe you've acquired a copy through other means. I'm not gonna try to give you a guilt trip, but seriously, make the purchase so you don't have to ask us how to work around the limitations of illegally obtained software. If you DID buy FL however, then go download the latest version (4.51). FL has free updates for life for online purchasers.

So in fruityloops you're just feeding it a MIDI file and editing the way it sounds? Not necessarily a MIDI file, but yeah, you're sequencing notes and FL plays it back. With CEP, you drop wave files onto channels and specify when they play. It's a mixer. You can't WRITE NOTES with CEP. With FruityLoops, you actually write the notes using the piano roll, and those notes are rendered using generators like samplers, soundfont players, and assorted VSTi's.

The peak controller outputs the volume level of a channel as a number which can be linked to a knob or something. For example, I use the peak controller to make some cool gated synth brass sounds. Here's what I do. I make a sampler channel and load up a high-hat sample into it. I set that to FX channel 5 (this is arbitrary). In FX channel 5, I add the peak controller. Then I write some kind of cool pattern in the hit hat channel using piano roll. I add a soundfont player and load up one of my synthy brass soundfonts. I set this to a different FX channel than the peak controller is set to, like FX channel 6. Now I write some sustained chords into the soundfont channel. Then I right click on the volume knob for the soundfont channel and go to "Link to controller..." In the dialog box that pops up, I go to the internal controller option and select the peak controller on FX5. I hit all the checks and everything to get out of that dialog. Now, when I hit play, I hear the synthbrass chord sounds coming in following the pattern I wrote into the high hat line. Note that you can't hear the high hat here. The peak controller automatically mutes whatever you feed into it. There's an option on the Peak Controller window to unmute it, but I never use that. The mute might be your problem. Remember though, you usually don't want to use the peak controller in the same FX channel as the sound you want to hear. Keep the PC in it's own FX channel, like 16 or something, and label it so you know what it is. The controller is something that sends the numerical data to another channel in order to control a certain option like volume. Hope that helps.

Valentines Day! Grab "It's Been Years..." off my site, since it was written for a special someone.

The $49 version is a waste of money; its just a beat machine. Get the $99 version. You absolutely need the piano roll if you want to use the program by itself to make something serious.

You won't find good free ones I'm afraid. =( It's very hard to make a good brass sample to begin with; the very very good ones that exist are quite expensive.

Information about buying FL is available at http://www.flstudio.com/ They break down exactly what you get for the edition you buy. I use the Fruity Loops edition of FLStudio, and I find it suits my needs just fine. I paid $99 for it, and $35 for the soundfont plugin, because I'm more of a sample guy than a synth guy. All of my mixes here at OC are done with FLStudio Fruity Loops Edition and a collection of soundfonts, if you want an indication of what just that can accomplish. I'd recommend that if you're just starting out and don't want to fork over the full price for the entire full Producer edition of FLStudio, at least get the FruityLoops edtion, because that has the piano roll, which is absolutely indespensible.

BIZ-NIDDLY-UMP PIMPIFICATIONS. Go listen. I am ten ninjas.

Please don't confuse the word 'soundfont' with the term 'sample.' Soundfonts are a specific file format (.sf2). Not all samples are soundfonts.

Your question was pretty clear. Here's a picture of the piano roll window from FL's help guide. The button in the upper left corner (#5) is what you want to make use of. Notice how they have a long blue note at the bottom, and then a smaller blue note near the top (#9). The smaller note has a small triangle in it, which indicates it's a slide note. This means that it will take the pitch the large note will start on and start bending the pitch to where it's located for whatever duration it's set to. In this case, it will bend the pitch from G# upto C# in one beat (four little boxes). You can make one of these notes by hitting the #5 button in the picture. It has a triangle on it. In order to make a note get louder or softer, you can overlap the slide note with the note you already have (example, put a B slide-note right on top of a regular B note). Set the regular note's velocity to the starting volume of the note, and set the slide note's velocity to the volume you want it to fade to. The fade start at the slide note and will last for the duration of the slide note. Hope that helps.

Listen up people! My stuff is gonna be played, so tune in!!

Ooh, this pulse is strong. The triplet feel in the percussion is really nice, and accents what's going on really nicely. I'm not too crazy about that flute sample. Sounds kinda tinny. When the piano comes in with the choral sounds, it's pure heaven. The guitar also adds a really nice touch. Your sounds (for the most part) are excellent, and you really build a nice texture by combining them properly. A few things; for the most part, the song seemed to have a lot of highs and lows, and not enough midrange. It may have been a levels issue. Not too serious, just something to think about. Also, it was a bit short. I would have loved to hear the part with the chorals developed more. All in all though, great work, Helen.