So I made a quick proof-of-concept beat using the FL Granulizer. I didn't know what it was or what it would be used for until like yesterday, and after messing around with it for a bit, I realized it might be useful for chopping samples.

Normally, the way I'd chop something is:

If it's a drum beat or something I'd want to loop, drop it into Slicex. It figures out the tempo, puts each slice into the Piano roll, sounds good -- cool. But I like reversing shit. And changing the pitch on shit. To do that, I have to clone the Slicex unit, flip the sample backwards, move the last marker to the beginning to not lose that first chunk, and then play with it. For different pitches, I have to clone it for each pitch I want to mess with. And each pitch has a different tempo going on. HOLY SHIT.

So Plan B is:

Go through the sample in wavePad, chop it up in chunks myself, save each one as a different wav file, load up a different sampler for each one, play around with it. If I want something reversed, clone the sampler and play with that. Not as bad.

But then I find this Time knob on the Granulizer. And I mess around with it. And it lets me start the sample WHEREVER I WANT. OOOOOOOH. I already have to power to END the sample whereever I want (set that ADSR envelope to a rectangle by cranking everything one way or another, end the note in the piano roll) so now I can just save one big ass wav file, and "chop" it by cloning Granulizers and adjusting the time knob to start it where I want. I can fine tune it inside the project instead of elsewhere. This is so fucking based.

So here's a picture of the grannies I made, each named according to a different part of the track I sampled (You've Got the Magic Touch by doo-wop group The Platters). 

You might not be able to see it from here, but I modified the FL template file I start every project as (the templates -> Minimal -> Nothing template) by opening it in the Projects/Templates directory and changing it to put in all the shit I normally put in. 4 samplers with an OOH from Otis Williams' Heart of Stone (from the Goodfellas soundtrack) mapped with 4 corresponding MIDI units to 4 tracks on the mixer (labeled 1 - 4) with matching Gsnap units. That's for when I record acapella stuff and need the pitch tightened.

Several tracks on the mixer prestuffed with the compressor (already compressing a bit) and Parametric EQ 2 (preset with very narrow Q).

An FL Keys and Directwave Suitcase for when I want to compose stuff and want to jump right to the notes.

15 or so samplers (now granulizers, lol), normalized, trimmed, with DC offset removed (whatever that is) and the ADSR envelope set such that everything is 0 except HOLD which is max. I'll collect a batch of samplers and drop them in sequential samplers, rearranging them so the drums (kick, snare, hats) are next to each other, the bass is next, and then whatever else is after.

Here's the link to the track I pooped out. I didn't bother mixing it or anything, I'm not really gonna do much with it: https://soundcloud.com/scrubnpuff/magic-touch