I’d like to be able to create drum loops on my iPad and transfer them to the BB. I have both Fl studio mobile and Fl studio producer ed for pc.
FL Studio mobile has an export to midi function, however, when I tried that, the notes from the different drums all ended up jumbled into a single “unsupported” midi number in BB.
I’ve downloaded the spreadsheet posted on the forum that shows the BB drum mapping to midi numbers, but I can’t figure out how to configure the Fl studio export so that the drums get mapped to the right midi numbers for BB
does anyone use Fl studio this way? I’ve tried posting to the image line forum to no avail so far, and the documentation hasn’t been much help either.
Alternatively, has anyone found an iOS step sequencer/piano roll that easily exports to BB manager?
I really just want to be able to create a beat/drum part wherever I am and port it to my BB. Even better would be if I could create drum kits that reasonably match the bb kits in the iOS app…but I’d be fine if I could even just do something basic like general midi drums and clean it up in the BB manager.
Hey there!
Question what are you sending to the BB? Note On commands in the general MIDI drum mapping format are going to map perfectly to most controllers, I’ll include info from our MIDI Maestro manual’s MIDI section. Let me know if you’re using all of this as explained in the text or if there’s something else wrong.
Also, some questions, are you on the latest BB version 3.8.0, and have you enabled Note On commands in the BB (Main Pedal > MID Settings >MIDI IN >Note On)? How is the BB sending the MIDI out, as audio or to another MIDI device? What channel is BB on?
Let me know thanks!
- Note On/Off - Much like what it sounds, a Note On command starts the playback of a MIDI note, while Note Off cuts off the sound.
- Without a Note Off command, some sounds will never stop playing back, or will follow their original decay rate and that can make things sound very messy.
- Note Off commands are not always needed with percussive sounds. Adding the Note Off command should not cause any trouble even if it’s not necessary. If for some reason you’d like to omit sending the Note Off command, refer to the target device’s MIDI manual to confirm.
- Middle C (aka C4) is note 60. (61 is C#, 62 is D, so on and so forth)
- Velocity is measured from 0-127, 0 being so “soft” it probably is not audible, 127 being as “hard” as the note can sound. Imagine the difference between a drummer tapping a snare with their drumstick lightly and them hitting the snare with all their force. Although velocity and volume are related, they are not the same thing.
General MIDI Drum Map
Midi Note - Drum Instrument
35 - Acoustic Bass Drum
36 - Bass Drum
37 - Side Stick
38 - Acoustic Snare
39 - Hand Clap
40 - Electric Snare
41 - Low Floor Tom
42 - Closed Hi Hat
43 - High Floor Tom
44 - Pedal Hi Hat
45 - Low Tom
46 - Open Hi Hat
47 - Low Mid Tom
48 - Hi-Mid Tom
49- Crash Cymbal 1
50 - High Tom
51 - Ride Cymbal 1
52 - Chinese Cymbal
53 - Ride Bell
54 - Tambourine
55 - Splash Cymbal
56 - Cowbell
57 - Crash Cymbal 2
58 - Vibra slap
59 - Ride Cymbal 2
60 - Hi Bongo
61 - Low Bongo
62 - Mute-Hi Conga
63 - Open-Hi Conga
64 - Low Conga
65- High Timbale
66- Low Timbale
67 - High Agogo
68 - Low Agogo
69 - Cabasa
70 - Maracas
71 - Short Whistle
72 - Long Whistle
73 - Short Guiro
74 - Long Guiro
75 - Claves
76 - High Wood Block
77 - Low Wood Block
78- Mute Cuica
79 - Open Cuica
80 - Mute Triangle
81-Open Triangle
Hi thank you for your quick reply. To be clear, I am not attempting to use Fl studio as a real time controller (although that might be cool!). I am using Fl studio as a composition tool, saving the composition as a midi file, then importing the midi file in BB manager to create a new song part. I was hoping someone else was using the same workflow and had already worked out the bugs.
I really think the issue is on the Fl studio side - where the midi output file isn’t assigning the notes to midi numbers that BB would recognize as valid.
I think I may have a work around by converting to piano first, aligning to the piano notes that match the correct midi numbers, then importing into BB manager. Will report back if that works
Cool! Let us know, have you tried searching for your issue on the forum?
yes i scoured the forum pretty thoroughly and didn’t see anything.
in any case, i think i have an approach, but its a bit clunky.
for anyone else who comes across this, here’s what i did, based on some help from the image line forum:
- Create a beat in FL Studio Mobile using the drum sequencer (optional - snap a screen grab of the sequencer so you can remember which pattern goes with which drum)
- Export as a midi file by save->midi->save
- Import the midi file back into FL studio by import->chose the midi file you just exported in step 2. This will convert the drum track to a basic piano track.
- Now transpose the piano notes to match the midi numbers corresponding to the BB drum mapping. This may take some experimentation, but in my case, C3 on the FL Studio Piano roll corresponded to midi note 36, which is the kick drum in the standard BB drum kit. So, find the notes that look like the kick drum pattern and transpose them to C3 on the piano roll (use the screen grab from #1 above, unless you can tell just by looking)
- when finished, save->midi->send to dropbox
- When at pc, open BB manager and open a new song. Click on the main drum loop, navigate to drop box for the file exported in #5, and open.
- IMPORTANT (maybe) - when BB manager asks if you want to quantize, say no. For some reason, letting BB manager quantize the midi file moved all the notes around for me.
Note: i downloaded a simple free 3rd party midi note editor to try to figure out what was going on in the export/import process (its literally called midieditor). This helped in troubleshooting somewhat.
Hi! I know this is a few years in the future, but I just made a topic that addresses a simplified way to use FL to create beats for BBManager using FPC. I’ve had success this way, even with the knottiness of BBManager itself.
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