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Despite being able to make music on DAWs, I'm awful at understanding MIDI or setting things up or knowing what anything does etc...

At the moment, I'm looking at moving forward with a bit of a one-man post-punk project I've had confined to the bedroom for a while and I was thinking about how to control drums on the fly.

Is it possible to use a MIDI foot controller like the Behringer FCB1010 or similar to cycle through drum loops I've programmed on FL Studio on the fly? I'd rather not have whole tracks worth of drums ready sequenced as a backing track and completely uneditable as I'd like to have a bit of malleability with what I'm doing.

A type of MIDI message that could probably be useful for you for that is "Program Change". You can assign almost any type of MIDI message to the FCB1010 and they should easily be mapped to change patterns in FL. Depending on how FL works you might be able to use whatever MIDI message you want, maybe even Control Changes (CC).

I don't know how FL Studio works in details but you should be able to either assign specific MIDI messages to specific patterns in FL (i.e. press a specific pedal to go to a specific loop) or maybe just use two messages to step up and down through a list of patterns (i.e. press a pedal to go the next loop, press another one to go to the previous loop).

You need to be able to get the MIDI messages *from* the controller to the DAW.

You'll need an interface that the DAW recognizes and is configured properly, then get the MIDI interface running with the controller, and map out the changes.

Not familiar with your specific app or intended use though, just general MIDI stuff.

I haven't used FL in nearly 15 years, buuuuut I'm wondering if the KMI Softstep would be an easier solution (or maybe even the 12 Step? Can you map drum loops to individual keys on a keyboard in FL?). You wouldn't have to worry about an interface if you are using a USB device.