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  • March 15, 2023 at 12:13 am #84283
    William Smith

    How can you put a bass instrument on a certain number of keys on the left and say a melody instrument on the right on a certain number of keys. <–A long sentence. Or does FL Studio allow that? And is there any third party VST3 that does this?

    March 16, 2023 at 12:26 pm #84335
    GratuiTous

    Hey William!

    It depends on your MIDI Keyboard, but what you’re looking for is Zones.

    On a MIDI Keyboard, you have 16 MIDI Channels!  Typically we use a “Global MIDI Channel” to play any Virtual Instrument that is highlighted in FL Studio (this gives the easiest workflow).

    Most MIDI Keyboards allows you to assign a unique MIDI Channel to the Keys compared to the Drum Pads (if you want to play keys on the keys, and a drum set plugin off the drum pads).. you would set MIDI Channel 1 to the Keys, and MIDI Channel 2 to the Drum Pads (and set up each plugin to receive note info from each respective channel).

    For your question of using the keys to play different instruments if playing low notes or high notes:

    This is called ZONES.  Sometimes you can set this up on the MIDI Keyboard itself, or you’ll have to use your MIDI Keyboard’s software for this (like the M-Audio Oxygen Pro Preset Editor).

    This can allow the first 12 notes be on MIDI Channel 1, the next 12 notes be on MIDI Channel 2, etc..

    Then you’d have to open up two separate Virtual Instruments and set their MIDI Channel number to 1 and 2 respectively!  (Some Virtual Instruments allow you to use multiple MIDI Channels inside ONE virtual instrument to save CPU).

    On those zones, you can also usually assign what notes those zones play, too!

    Let me know if you’re still confused here!

    March 23, 2023 at 12:47 am #85531
    William Smith

    Wow! Good information. Yes, I was wanting to play a bass instrument in one zone and a piano in the other zone. This helps.

    As an aside, I got an older AKAI MPKMini and, as from what I read, you cant set the velocity on the hardware. However, just to pass it on, I found out you can set the velocity on the keys in FL Studio. I am still new at that, but you have to fiddle with some curve chart thingy. Haha

    Anyway, I will look into the zones thing more.

    I plan on getting a different keyboard in the future and considering the one in your course. However, it may be to big for my setup.

    I will say that I agree with you 100% about the number of the keys if your just making beats.

    However, as we both know, you don’t need to run out and buy one right away because you can do it all inside of the DAW.

    I remember reading about Deadmau and, at that time, he said that he didn’t know how to play piano and just programmed everything “in the grid”. So I am not going to panic if I am not 100% happy with my keyboard.

    Heck, I find myself using the laptop keys to make some melodies. But, you can be more expressive with a midi keyboard because you got the wheels and dials if you like synth tweaking.

    March 24, 2023 at 3:24 pm #85694
    GratuiTous

    Yeah, this seems to be a problem with some new MIDI Keyboard’s nowadays.. they don’t allow you to set velocity curves..

    I explain setting a custom velocity curve in FL Studio here (it was for my Native Instruments A49 Review).

    I’ve always liked a 49-Key for its price, and size..

    Here’s a list of Recommended FL Studio MIDI Keyboards I’ve personally tested (I like the M-Audio Oxygen Pro at the moment).

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