Following my last post, son Plague, an FL expert, sat down and saw for himself how FL as a VSTi wasn't working in Cubase but insisted it would be better to do it in Rewire. But, he says, instead of trying to record in Cubase with FL's instrument/voices, I should record them in FL. With Rewire that would be easy. He patiently showed me how and as an extra, got my Nanopad and NanoKontrol working.
Tonight I sat down to follow his instructions and, as every reader now expects, it didn't work. I couldn't start the tracks in Cubase, then get to FL and record and stay in sync. And if I tried to play patterns in FL, they couldn't be heard in Cubase. BUT I found to my surprise that what I originally wanted to do – see the FL instruments as available for tracks in Cubase, hear them in Cubase and record them in Cubase – I now could do! This was what I'd sat down three days ago to do. So at last I was able to spend a happy hour or so on several takes of a simple 'live' drum track for 'Started A Fire'.
But would it be there when I closed them down and went back in? I saved them both, did so, and went downstairs to reacquaint myself with reality. Returning, I opened Cubase. Or rather I asked Cubase to open. It wouldn't. I shut down the PC. The PC wouldn't shut down. On Olympus, the gods were rolling on the floor helpless with laughter. Eventually, a hard reboot. Because it was the only thing I hadn't tried I Googled 'Cubase Essential 5 and Windows 7' and found a patch had been released. I installed it. It almost consumed all the resources of my PC but eventually completed. I reopened Cubase and FL successfully and my song was still intact, and still working! The playing could have been better but it was working. A small success at last.
Tomorrow night I shall probably just go out!