PC/FL Studio Producer trouble getting files into ABleton

[lancerc88]

Hello all!

I started off with a PC and Fruity Loops Studio. I have just recently purchased Live Suite 8, a Macbook Pro, and an APC 20. Now, with that being said I have two different operating systems and two different DAW's. All my good tracks that I want to perform at an upcoming show are projects in FL Studio on my PC, how can i take these songs, samples, midi clips, .wav files, etc from FL Studio and integrate them into ABleton Live on my new Macbook? I know i could render out all my patterns from Fl studio in .wav files and stick them into audio tracks in ableton, but this doesnt seem very efficient. ( if this is a viable option then please mention it to me!) Thank you for all your help. Im only about a month old Ableton User so go easy on the noob.

Thanks!

[savyurrecords]

There is no easy way, you will have to do some work. It depends on how you want to approach this. If you are intending on just DJing your tracks live than I would render each song in FL as a single wav file and then import and warp each track. Now if you want to do improvisation within those songs then things can get tricky. What I would do is separate my songs into stems, ie Bass, Lead Synths, Pad Synths, Drums, Percussion, etc. then render each stem in FL seperately. Then you need to import each stem as a separate channel in Ableton.

As I said before there is no easy way if you want each song to be able to be rearranged.

[savyurrecords]

Edit: Double Post

[agent314]

As I said before there is no easy way if you want each song to be able to be rearranged.

Depending on the contents of the original FL files, there may be an easy way.

If it's mostly MIDI, you can run the "prepare for MIDI" macro, which will convert all of your tracks into MIDI out tracks, and if you save+export a MIDI file from that while in Song mode (as opposed to Pattern), you have the full song's MIDI data separated out into tracks, and you can just move that MIDI file over to your Mac and drag it in from the browser. Then you can drop VSTs onto the tracks and rebuild it from there.

Only problem there is if you're using a single sample to play notes without using a sampler/VST, you won't get any MIDI data from that.

If it's mostly audio, you will probably just need to export .wavs and reimport them all into Ableton.

[lancerc88]

Well i'm glad im atleast on the right track. i've begun rendering all my patterns into .wav files and i suppose ill just run them in categorized audio tracks in live. Also, what do you mean by warping? =/ and will my performance be nerfed because Im using audio files instead of Midi clips?

[Donnie]

For this type of stuff I typically Rewire the channels and record them all in Live. Not sure how extensive you want to get with it, but it seems like this will probably suit your needs. Might be a little tricky at first if youve never Rewired but once you get the hang of it its easy. Either way its much easier than rendering each thing out separately and importing it in one by one.

[agent314]

Either way its much easier than rendering each thing out separately and importing it in one by one.

I've found that it's less work up front, but having to manage two separate DAWs quickly becomes a pain in the ass, especially if you have any kind of complex routing going on and want to separate out channels.

I've pretty much stopped using FL for anything except exporting my stuff to play with in Live, which makes it easier. If I were still gung ho for FL, I'd probably have a different outlook.

[Donnie]

Yeah, thats all im suggesting...to use rewire to facilitate the task of bring his stuff over to Live from FL. If he has all the channels rewired at once then he can record them all in one take, much easier than rendering each channel one by one

As far as working in both softwares side by side, I typically only do that when rehashing old FL tracks or when writing the pattern in FL will be quicker for me.

[pencilrocket]

Make stem from fl and cut them in live and bring some parts into session view.
Solved. I don't recommend you to use virtual inst with midi because of CPU usage and not stable.

[agent314]

If he has all the channels rewired at once then he can record them all in one take, much easier than rendering each channel one by one

Yeah, definitely. If he's using MIDI though, there's no good way to get it out of FL without bouncing out the whole project as a .mid file

I don't recommend you to use virtual inst with midi because of CPU usage and not stable.

Depends on what you're doing. A few instances of Operator, you'll be fine. A set of Kontakt and the full Spectrasonics suite, maybe not so much.