Exporting loops from FL Studio (FruityLoops) to Ableton Live
FruityLoops is a great tool for prototyping and sequencing but when it comes to mixing or laying down guitar tracks nothing beats Ableton Live. A quick and dirty way to import loops in Ableton is as follows:
- create a new MIDI track. Call it “FLP Studio”. Drag in the “FL Studio VSTi (Multi)”.
- create a new AUDIO track. Call it “P1-drums” (assuming you are going to capture the drums from pattern 1 in FLP).
- Set the input of the track to be the “post mixer” for 1-FLP-STUDIO
- Double-click the FLP-Studio track and hit the wrench to open FruityLoops:
- then hit again the (acorn?) to start the main FLP interface.
- Load your project in FLP.
- Select “pattern mode” in FLP (click on the “PAT” LED):
- Back in Ableton, arm the “P1-drums” track for recording.
- Arm the main recording function.
- Press “play” and let it run for at least double the size of the pattern
- Your FLP pattern should be recorded in Ableton Live.
- You will probably notice that there is some silence at the beginning of your pattern (at least I had this problem). Seems to be because a lag between Ableton and FLP. Solution is to crop the first iteration of the pattern (this is why it is important 2 record at least twice the size of the original pattern).
- Rinse and repeat for each FLP pattern.
I know this is a bit tedious and it also assumes your patterns in FLP are pretty clean (ideally you have only one instrument in each pattern). But this avoids having to run FLP as a plugin in Ableton (or to introduce Reason and Rewire), which in my case is almost impossible since FLP is so CPU-hungry (which introduces cracks and distortion in the overall mix).
I’m sure there are more clever ways to achieve the same result, using drum racks and channel recording but I haven’t had a lot of success with this (if you know of good instructions please add link in comments - thanks!).