Doing The Unthinkable - Trying FL Studio

[bones]

Yeah, I hadn't realised what a huge rut I had been in. I did a bit of beta testing on DUNE 2 but I never bothered even going through the presets when it was released. I was even worse with The Legend, I installed the demo but never bothered registering it and I didn't even load it up to listen to it before the demo expired.

Over the weekend I got them both up and running and spent some proper time with them and DUNE 2, in particular, left me speechless. It is utterly amazing what it can do and how incredible it sounds while it's doing it. And The Legend is possibly the ballsiest sounding thing I've ever heard. I can't believe I have totally ignored them for such a long time. I am a complete idiot.

It's quite scary how easy it is to get lost in your own little world and miss out on so much that is going on around you. The last few weeks have been a real wake-up call for me. Sadly, it seems that Orion is likely to be a casualty of that re-awakening but if that's how it ends up, at least Rich's awesome sound will still be a big part of what we do going forward.

And it definitely will be. The song I chose to experiment with in Bitwig was sounding like garbage until I swapped the main bassline synth to The Legend. After that, it took no time at all to get it sounding nearly as good as it does in Orion. I still need to get rid of two more instances of Bitwig's rubbish Polysynth and add some better effects but now, at least, I know that I can make it sound just as good without too much more work.

[Christophe]

welcome back to the synapse sound Bones

[funky koval]

Damn, Bones considering switching from Orion. Hell hath frozen over.

[bones]

No longer "considering", the decision has been made and the money has been spent. Bitwig's support is a little sucky but I'm up and running now and I don't intend to look back.

[Kriminal]

How are you finding the move from pattern based to linear?

[Christophe]

what differences do you see with ableton ?

[Touch The Universe]

Technically, it should still be both, linear and pattern.

[funky koval]

Bitwigs clip matrix is essentially pattern mode. Same with Live.

[bones]

How are you finding the move from pattern based to linear?

Working with patterns was never a critical issue for me, it was just something I did because that's how Orion works. That said, I do like the pattern/song mode workflow and you get the same thing in Bitwig via it's Clip Launcher. In the main sequencer you can drag the bottom corner of a clip and it clones the notes, leaving a visual marker where it's looped back to the beginning. If you edit any section, all the cloned sections update, too, so it's bit like having patterns anyway. So, as Touch the Universe says, it's a combination of both things, which I actually find very handy. e.g. We regularly get to 15 or more drum patterns but most of them are just variations on the main drum part, with a quick fill or instruments removed. It gets quite fiddly doing that in Orion, whereas it's much easier in Bitwig to just copy/paste the clip and do the variation where it's needed, instead of copying the pattern, making the changes and then loading the pattern in the Playlist. It feels a lot more like the way the sequencers in my Korg workstations worked, where you could "Place" a pattern in an arrangement or copy it's contents to create a variation.

what differences do you see with ableton ?

The difference for me is that Bitwig was easier to understand. I've installed Ableton a couple of times but never got comfortable with it but it only took a single evening for me to get my head into Bitwig. Bitwig was also about half the price of Ableton, which was definitely a consideration.

[funky koval]

That's strange that Live didn't click with you since Bitwig is really a Live clone. It was developed by a few guys that left Ableton. Maybe the separate session/arrange views are tripping a lot of people up. Bitwig has everything on the same screen.

[cooliadh]

I'll stick to Orion as long as my workhorse synths are running within. No need to change to another DAW. Orion 8.6. has and runs everything I need.