FL Studio is one of the most widely-used pieces of music production software in the world. The MusicTech Guide To FL Studio features everything you need to put together a piece of professional-sounding music, from scratch, with step-by-step workshops on every process.
Whether you are new to FL Studio or a seasoned user, we will show you just why the software is so popular. We start by setting up the perfect FL Studio project and then deal with MIDI and audio recording and editing, before moving on to mixing and mastering. Along the way we also teach you how to make the most of the softwares brilliant effects and how to produce perfect beats, bass and lead lines three elements that are essential parts of most great tunes.
So boot up your software, turn the page and prepare to be blown away by one of the most fully- edged digital audio workstations around.
Enjoy the issue! Andy Jones Senior Editor Email andy. While we make every effort to ensure that the factual content of MusicTech Guide To is correct we cannot take any responsibility nor be held accountable for any factual errors printed. Please make every effort to check quoted prices and product specications with manufacturers prior to purchase. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or resold without the prior consent of Anthem Publishing Ltd.
MusicTech Guide To recognises all copyrights contained within this issue. Where possible we acknowledge the copyright holder. Go here p64 Automation and MIDI control Getting hands-on control over your mixes can reap dividends p60 Working with leads Getting a good lead sound into your mixes can help your tracks stand out p48 Mixing in FL Studio How to mix a great-sounding track.
Quite apart from that, its a very fully-featured music programming and production environment with some nifty tools and tricks to help you make the best music. But while it has literally thousands of different facets, you wont get very far without understanding the basics. That is, how to get audio and MIDI in and out of the software, and how to work with project templates.
How, for example, do you set up a controller device? These are all things that need to be looked at before you get started. Once you have mastered them, of course, they become second nature. FL Studio is quite unique in giving you a comprehensive breakdown of all the material available to you, from effect presets right through to complete project templates, in the Browser that appears by default down the left hand edge of the main window. Its also cleverly integrated with Windows as an operating system, so its possible to access Explorer-style commands from inside the Browser to locate and work with les without having to go back to the desktop.
You can dene custom search folders, control the way the audio buffers behave and enable all kinds of keyboard shortcuts to improve your workow and make everything run more smoothly.
You can manage Window Sets and even arrange the layout to suit a tablet view, if the device you are working on doubles as a Windows tablet. There are remote control presets, smart searching of the browser and many more features that will help you out if you know about them before you dive head rst into music-making.
You can save projects and audio les out, of course, and even zip a whole project on export for transfer or sharing. FL Studio is a fun and capable DAW and by following a few simple guidelines you should be up and running in no time. Select the MIDI section. Click on the Controller Type menu to reveal a dropdown list of natively supported controllers.
If yours appears in the list, select it. Otherwise, select Generic Controller. If in doubt, select the generic controller option. This means that you can quickly work with clips, loops and sequences exibly and intuitively rather than having to go into the main Project view.
Each channel also has a Channel Settings window which can be opened separately and provides control over things like plugin parameters, polyphony and the arpeggiator available to each track, in addition to many other things. You will become familiar with these tools as you learn to use FL Studio effectively. These are handy for setting up your own controller maps. Your connected device should appear. Make sure your drivers are all up to date. In the Advanced menu you get extra options like adjusting latency compensation and using the hardware buffer.
Leave these unless you denitely need them. This will ensure maximum audio performance. You can tell the mixer to work at higher resolutions up to point resampling, though this may be overkill. Starting out cont. Among the interesting stuff here is the option to change the levels of undo available, and to add the choice to undo knob tweaks as well as other actions.
You can change the skin of the app here too, which will alter its appearance. Theres also the option to add a secondary VST plug-ins folder search path and control how often an autosave is performed. Its a good idea to leave this on, though it can be switched off.
On the left is the Browser and if you mouse over the top of this area you will see several Snap options. Each one is a preset view of the same Browser and you can ip between them by choosing from this menu. So one view might show all your plug-in presets and another, might show audio loops. This lets you set the project data folder, where recorded and rendered audio les will be stored.
Click on the Info tab and you can enter metadata about a project such as title, genre, and author as well as seeing how much time has been spent working on any given project. Click on the tiny icon at the top left of its column to reveal the Browser Options menu. You can alter its size, make it auto-hide and choose to sort its view in any way you like.
This is great if you use lots of some types of content but not others. In the Browser, zoom down to the Projects section and click on it. Inside this is the Templates folder, and within that a series of subfolders grouping templates by type and genre. Double click on any one to open a new project based on that template. This makes it easy to locate, duplicate or even delete that le, as well as to see if there are any previous versions of it contained in a backup.
The Minimal options are quite basic, and the Performance templates are designed to get you up and running with a variety of controller devices. If you have created one that you like, choose Save Current Arrangement from this menu and the Window Set will then be available as a preset for you to use in future.
Of course your PC needs to be online for this to work but its a good way to get the latest news at a glance. Set up these devices using the MIDI preferences section. You can also clone the currently selected channel or group, move, delete or label them as you prefer. Even though it also records audio, for much of its life it has concentrated on MIDI and this is still one aspect of the software that many people love.
This is partly down to the fact that it comes with such an amazing selection of MIDI-triggered instruments, and has a range of tools for programming and inputting data. It helps to be a great player, of course, but its far from essential with FL Studios Step Input mode and arpeggiator among many other clever ways to input notes.
The great thing about basing a lot of your composition on MIDI tracks is that they are so exible, with none of the limitations of digital audio les. MIDI can be copied, pasted, manipulated and re-routed easily. In fact the only thing that uses resources is whatever you send the MIDI to in order to make a sound, typically a software instrument.
This lets you incorporate older, more traditional hardware that might be ddly to program into the much more user- friendly world of FL Studio where putting together parts is much easier than it ever was using outboard kit.
FL Studio supports the connection of multiple devices, though to avoid conicts it can be a good idea to assign each one a unique MIDI channel to work on. These templates are loaded into the editor that came with your controller and will map it to FL Studio. So hook up your MIDI device and get recording parts right now! If you click on the Controller Type menu you will be able to assign it directly if its a device that has a template supplied.
Otherwise, just choose Generic Controller from this menu. Its also possible to set dedicated MIDI channels to control things like Omni Preview, Song Marker Jump and Generator Mute in this window, if you have additional controllers connected for these purposes. With it, you can create randomized patterns for whatever generator or instrument you currently have selected.
There are multiple options including chords, progressions, arpeggios, ips, humanization and interpretation. Each one has a set of tweakable controls and can be previewed. If youre happy with the results, accept them, or start over to do something entirely new. This is a great way to create complex and involving MIDI parts from only the most basic of input. It helps you to create music from nowhere, or to take the music you have already made and easily alter it.
Make sure that Score is selected so that notes will be captured. By default, recordings will go into the Piano Roll editor for a track. Here you can change this to send notes to the Step Sequencer if you like. Go to the Step Sequencer and set the length of the pattern using the box at the top left, check the master tempo of the project and edit if necessary.
Then click the buttons in each channel to trigger a note at a specic point. Try creating a bass instrument it will appear in the Step Sequencer window. Select it and then click on the Keyboard Editor button at the top right hand corner of the Pattern window.
This allows you to use the mouse to easily enter multiple chromatic notes. You can also apply swing to the whole pattern using the tiny variable slider at the top of the window, and activate looping for the pattern with the loop button by the length box.
Press this to reveal a window that lets you control the CCs for any of the notes in your pattern. Use the mouse to drag up or down to make individual notes louder or quieter using the pencil tool. Drag the Pattern window to make it longer if necessary. Use the pencil tool to draw in controller data for any of these and make your part more dynamic and interesting rather than just a straightforward set of notes.
Draw in a zero value to delete data. With your device set up, right click on the Record button and make sure that you are set to send data to the Piano Roll, by ensuring Record To Step Sequencer is off.
Then play some notes and record them, perhaps with a countdown. For example, if you go to the Options menu and then the Chord section, you can draw in any of a number of complex chords just by clicking with the mouse great for sounding like a pro player. You will see an arpeggiator window plus some controls.
You can dial in different kinds of settings to make simple parts more complex while keeping them in time. You might not think of this as recording MIDI, but it is in the sense that you are creating notes out of nowhere and using them in a pattern.
Try, for example, selecting some notes by dragging around them and then choosing the Flam, Strum or Claw tools. Each one introduces some tweakable new patterns to the proceedings and helps you to generate new parts with minimum effort. Now you will nd that your keys trigger notes in a chromatic fashion, which is handy for monophonic parts and beats.
This is a quick way of creating beats, and data can be shifted around or randomized once its inside the sequencer to quickly alter your beats, melodies or riffs. Simply right click on the desired command and select to link it, and a window will open allowing you to do this. This is great for recording automation as well as other parameter changes.
So you need never lose a performance again, even if you were just noodling! If you right click on the Tempo eld you can access a range of shortcuts to tempos, a tap tempo option and even an option to link the projects tempo to a controller so it can be sped up or slowed down dynamically on the y. In the previous workshop, we looked at how to get MIDI data into the application using various techniques, and now we will explore the many ways in which you can work with that data once it is inside the Piano Roll editor.
The great thing about MIDI is that it is virtually weightless and almost innitely malleable. It can be copied, pasted, shifted, tweaked and reassigned with a few clicks, all the while taking up virtually no le space at all. And with the wealth of virtual instruments that FL Studio provides, you wont be short of new ways to generate sound.
The Tools menu, accessible by clicking at the top left corner of the editor window, contains lots of handy features including articulations, quantizing and chopping, and shortcuts to create am, strum and other effects as well as scaling levels and introducing randomization to a part. New notes can be drawn in, of course, and along the base of this window you will nd a controller lane.
Right click on this and you reveal the different parameters that can be set here, including note pan, velocity and pitch, and channel volume, pitch and pan. The Piano Roll editor has other talents too, letting you draw in slide and portamento data as well as slicing up notes in the grid. Its also possible, by clicking on a generators name in the step sequencer list, to reassign any MIDI pattern to play any instrument, or indeed to clone it and duplicate the pattern using a second generator, perhaps tweaking the pattern to create some variation as you go.
Use the Zoom tool to select a range and zoom in on it, or double click to zoom out to see the whole part. Now youre ready to do some MIDI editing. Select one or more notes and then go to the Options dropdown menu and the Edit section.
Here, they have similar functions such as the ability to draw or paint entire patterns into the playlist, delete, mute or move patterns and indeed slice patterns up for easier arrangement across the timeline.
These can be imported into any other DAW, so you might for example use FL Studios great generators and MIDI processing tools to create backing parts, then export them to send to someone else to use to trigger the plug-ins they are using in their own setup.
If they too are using FL Studio you can, of course, send them raw project data. You can also duplicate, delete, cut and copy selected notes. If you have selected the controller area you will also see the option to insert controller values in this menu. Mouse to the right hand edge of any note and you can drag it to the right to make it longer.
If you grab multiple notes and perform any of these actions, all the notes are affected by the same amount. This is useful for quickly creating rapid successions of notes say, for example, for making a repeated kick drum part. Its also handy for monophonic bass parts. Click the magnet icon at the top left corner of the Piano Roll editor to set how notes will snap, from a ne resolution to snapping to bar markers. Right click on the bottom left hand corner of this window, or left click on the Target Control menu from the windows title bar to reveal a list of available controller parameters.
The parameters available to you will depend on the generator you are working on, though things like channel controls are common to all generators. Here there are various options for manipulating your MIDI parts. The rst options are Quick Legato and Articulate, which allow you to apply staccato and legato to all selected notes in order to change their playing style.
You can choose a Length Alteration Style from the Options menu and then specify a multiplication factor, gap and variation amount. Hit Accept and the notes will be changed accordingly.
Its a quick way to tweak performances. MIDI editing cont. Select it to reveal the Quantizer window. You can load a groove template, by clicking on the menu of that name. This is a great way to bring a specic type of swing like the Amen break to your beats and other MIDI parts. You can change the start time, sensitivity, duration and even quantize the different parameter levels including pan, volume and pitch controllers. Hit Accept to hear the changes you can always undo this and try again with a different value if you like.
The rst is an arpeggiator which has many presets available. Load one up or start from scratch and use the window controls to tweak the results. You can take simple MIDI parts and make them sound complex and interesting by adding arpeggiaton.
For example the Strum command, which processes MIDI to make it appear to have been strummed, is obviously better suited to a guitar. Similarly Flam is better on drums. But you are free to try any effect and you may get some unexpectedly great results.
This allows you to restrict the MIDI notes within any given pattern to a specic scale or range of notes. Its useful if, for example, you have recorded or generated a complex part but want to quickly get rid of any notes or accidentals that may not t with the scale of the piece as a whole. Here you can change pan, velocity, release, mod x y and pitch of a note as well as activating slide and portamento.
You can also manually enter a note duration. These are good for accurately setting up a note more precisely than playing from a keyboard would allow. This shows a list of all the channels that can accept Piano Roll input.
From here you can quickly select another Piano Roll to view and work on without having to open a new window. If you want to open multiple windows for more exibility, this is possible as well. These can be used to quickly change notes or draw in controller data such as pan, velocity or mod x and y. As good as the MIDI sequencer on FL Studio is, most users will nd it incredibly useful to be able to capture audio parts into their projects, whether its a simple guitar line, a full vocal track or even multitracking a live band.
Its often in blending real and synthesized sounds that the most interesting results are achieved, and you can then process any audio using the many supplied audio effects. FL Studio Producer Edition has two main methods for recording audio, plus a third technique for printing audio internally. If you are working with one or just a couple of audio parts, or working with a loop, its recommended to use the Edison recorder module.
This acts as a sort of mini wave recorder and editor and has a range of sample editing tools. It can then be triggered inside the Playlist, a bit like a very advanced version of a MIDI hardware sampler setup.
You can use as many instances of Edison as you like. If you are recording longer parts or multitracking audio through a multi- input audio interface, perhaps a drum kit or several musicians at once, it can be a better idea to record arm mixer tracks in the Playlist and record directly into these.
This is a more conventional, linear approach to recording and is preferred by some. Although it doesnt have all the bells and whistles of Edison, its better for some kinds of audio recording tasks.
Last but not least, using the softwares internal routing features you can freeze audio tracks internally to new, simple audio parts. This is really useful for conserving CPU power on tracks where you might have lots of effects going, so that you can lower your buffer size for more latency-free recording of new parts.
However you approach audio recording in FL Studio Producer Edition, theres sure to be something for you to learn, so read on!
To record multiple tracks at once you will need the corresponding number of physical inputs. Go to the Audio Preferences and check your device is set up. Generally this means a smaller buffer. To avoid feedback you will need to switch off any speakers and use headphones to monitor on unless you DI an instrument, say by plugging a guitar straight into the interface.
This can be done in realtime or non-realtime modes, with the latter providing a slower but higher quality render. Essentially what you do is record arm the mixer tracks you wish to record, then in the Mixer menus Disk Recording submenu, select Auto Create Audio Tracks as this will place a copy of the track into the playlist after recording has completed. There is also an option in the Export Project menu called Split Mixer Tracks which will create a separate WAV le for each track in a project : great for creating stems for moving a project to another app, or for backup.
First we will look at recording into Edison, so create an instance by dragging it into your project. Or, click on the Record button on the Transport panel to be shown recording options.
FL Studio will show you audio input levels at the top left and also in the mixer if you happen to have that open. Check your levels you should be aiming for a decent signal, into the yellow but not hitting the red at the top.
To record along with a click, activate the metronome or have a beat playing in a track, then press the record button in Edison and perform. The sounds you make will be captured and you will see the waveform display update. On Input allows you to set a threshold trigger level by left clicking on the peak meter and dragging up and down. You will see the level displayed in the Info area at the top left of the app.
On Play will start recording when play is pressed useful for recording multiple takes. Since it operates in RAM, its better suited to working with shorter sections of audio than long takes. For that, use the Mixer recording mode. Activate the loop button on Edisons transport if you want to loop playback within the module.
If you click on the button with the spanner icon you can access a range of functions including time and pitch stretching, normalization, noise gating and more. Interestingly, at the bottom of this list is the option to analyse the clip and send it to the Piano Roll as score data.
These are both ways to take captured and edited audio clips and make them part of a project. Use Edison to work on audio clips prior to sending them elsewhere in a project.
As well as getting to the audio processing functions from the previous step, this allows you to import a sample from your hard drive into Edison and also export the current sample as a le out to your desktop.
Here you can set things like panning, volume and stereo envelopes plus an all-purpose envelope which can be assigned to parameters like setting volume fades or pans within a clip. In Edisons toolbar, click the Regions button for options. These include audio slicing, loop selection and the ability to manually identify a downbeat.
These will help FL Studio accurately incorporate rhythmic and other loops into a project. For a track, select it and then go to the Input menu at the top right and choose the input. To multitrack, assign each input to its own mixer track. This can be handy for sending different takes to different locations. All drums to one folder for example, all vocals to another and so on. You could, for example, record several versions of the same take, but process each one differently using effects.
It would also be possible to set a separate record location for each one, giving you more control over your recordings. This is perfect for longer recordings since it records directly to disk. The tools that you use to edit MIDI clips in the playlist can also be used to manipulate the audio takes. Select Song Mode and then create a loop area using the markers in the Playlist.
To toggle audibility of recorded parts as you loop, go to Options and turn Blend Recorded Notes on or off. From the waveform display at the base of this window you can drag and drop the clip anywhere into the Playlist area to duplicate it.
Once its there, you will almost certainly need to edit it in some way, either to correct any problems with performance or timing, or to make it more exible than a regular audio clip. This might be, for example, so that it can have a groove extracted or be replicated as a MIDI part. FL Studio has a range of tools available to help you with this. The more basic ones deal with things like normalization of a clip, reversing or fading clips. The Channel Settings window also lets you control time and pitch stretching, which are both essential for making audio parts conform to your project even if they start off being recorded in the wrong key or at the wrong speed.
For detailed editing you can move to the Edison module, FL Studios dedicated audio manipulation tool. Here you will nd a much more advanced selection of functions that can be used to take control of audio parts before they are played back using the sequencer.
The spectrographic view in particular is handy for understanding whats going on inside an audio clip and how to x any potential problems. In the Playlist editor its also possible to edit audio clips insofar as they are sequenced as blocks of data on a timeline. So between these various tools and techniques you will nd it quite possible to manipulate every aspect of your audio track whether its simply normalizing a clip thats been recorded too quietly, removing hiss or rumble using effects and EQ, or slicing loops to the sequencer to make them playable as instruments in their own right.
Read on to nd out how it all works. Its also useful for specic tools like acquiring the noise prole of an audio clip and subsequently removing specic sounds from it or gating it to get rid of unwanted background noise. Other tools like Izotopes RX or Sonys Spectralayers have spectral capabilities, Izotopes Iris synth actualy uses spectral technology to generate sound but there are some built right into FL Studio as well.
Then click on it to open the Channel Settings window and you will see a number of options. Start by going to the very base of the window, and experimenting with using the In and Out knobs to create a fade at the start or end of the clip.
If you turn this to the left or right you will hear that your audio clip speeds up or slows down as it goes. Its sort of like a rubber band effect, and can sound really cool.
To reset any of these knobs back to their default position, hold the alt key while clicking on them. Normalization is useful for when a clip is too quiet, to raise the volume without having to push the channels fader all the way up.
The two can work independently. Move the Pitch knob to change pitch but not time, and the time knob to alter duration but not pitch you can alter both. In the Stretch Type menu choose the algorithm suited to the material youre stretching.
You can also drag the wave display into a project to place the track into the sequencer. To make more detailed edits, right click and choose Edit, which will open the Edison module. These work on the selected part of the waveform so you can select some or all of it.
Some are similar to those found in the Channel Settings window. You can do more with channels, declicking and normalization. Using these you can acquire a noise threshold to identify parts of a clip where you want to gate out unwanted background noise, then either gate it in real time or have it trimmed out of the clip great for vocals, where background bleed can be removed when no singing is taking place. Go to the Detection section and you can choose to slice a clip up using different sensitivity settings.
From here you can also detect beats and pitch regions, making it easier to slice a clip up. Choose this and you can place a marker inside any audio clip where the rst beat of the bar occurs.
This is great for correctly-slicing and aligning rhythmic clips which may not at rst be correctly cut, and may have an irregular length.
Try, for example, applying an effect directly to a clip using the EQ, Blur or Reverb buttons. This renders an effect onto a clip so that it is always played back as part of it rather than working as an insert on an audio channel useful for reducing CPU overhead. These include pan, volume and stereo separation and an assignable envelope. Right click to add a point and right click on a point to choose a curve or shape for that point.
Use envelopes to modulate parameters in realtime. So once you have made your edits you can make the clip a part of your track. You can always re-open it in Edison at any point to make changes. FL Studio provides you with a number of great tools to shape your beats. And the multiple programming options mean that whether you prefer to play your beats in using the mouse, a step sequencer or an auto generator, theres sure to be something that works for you.
In addition to the various virtual instruments provided for making beats, you can also import your own loops and slice them up or time stretch them to make new variations and patterns. When you have your beats in the Playlist, you can quantize them. Straight quantization will give you a more mechanical feel, which you might want for certain types of electronic music like house or techno.
For a more human feel, say perhaps for hip hop, dubstep or even rock you can add groove quantization and swing so that the music doesnt sound like its been made by a machine. FL Studio also makes it easy to layer up patterns, create variations and add percussion and other, non-drum sounds to your beats to keep things interesting. The bundled plug-ins allow for drum synthesis as well as sample-based beat creation.
When you have a kit built from synth modules you can really get to the heart of the sound, detuning and morphing each element of the kit in ways that arent possible with samples, in order to get a really unique sound. So, however you approach beat making in FL Studio, theres sure to be something on offer that will get you the best results possible. This might be as simple as a USB keyboard with drum pads, a dedicated drum pad controller or a full MIDI drum kit that you can play in the same way as a real kit.
Go into the MIDI setup and see if your controller is natively supported. If not you can add it and make MIDI assignments manually, or you may nd that the manufacturer has created an FL Studio-specic template that you can download and adapt to suit. Programming beats using a more drum-centric hardware unit is a great way to get better sounding beats.
We have chosen Fruity DrumSynth Live, which is a simple drum synth for making electronic beats. Open the Piano Roll editor and use the Pen tool to draw in some beats. They will default to one measure in length. If you double click on any note you can open the note properties window where you can set various parameters including velocity and release on a note-by-note basis.
To get a more human feel, go to the Piano Rolls Tools menu and choose Quantize. In the lower part of the window you can adjust quantize strength, which may be enough for some purposes. These will affect not only the timing of the beats but also the velocity, and alter what kind of emphasis is placed on the different beats.
Fire features a dedicated browser function to navigate, audition and load your audio samples, recall project files and open plugins. Simply select browser and use the Select rotary encoder to preview and load content and devices within FL Studio - The graphical OLED display makes for easy browsing and controlling the various files, menus and parameters within your session a breeze.
Discover more using the step sequencer with the Fire. Great… hmm…. I spent hours writing and working on this post.
According to time sink I spent hours using FLStudio in 42 days. That worked out to almost exactly 8 hours a day for 42 days. If you have any questions or comments, please comment below! FL Studio features a graphical user interface based on a pattern-based music sequencer. Image-Line also offers other VST instruments and audio applications. The first version of FruityLoops 1. Its official launch was in early , when it was still a four-channel [15] MIDI drum machine.
FL Studio has undergone twenty major updates since its inception. FL Studio processes audio using an internal bit floating point engine. Not only that, but FL 20 represented the DAWs first introduction to the Mac platform so there will be a lot of Mac owners considering the jump too.
So where do we begin? Follow along with us and make a complete track right down to the polished mixdown and master. This course will help you become a better producer! Only FL Studio stock instruments and samples used. Instant Download. Easy to follow step by step guidance designed to give you all the nesessary skills to make your own music. FL Studio has a strong and vocal fanbase - one that propelled it to another victory in our vote to find the best DAW in the world last year.
The software may be easy to pick up if you're a music production novice, but there are plenty of power features on offer, too. Here are 20 tips for getting more out of Image-Line's fruity beast. The plugin database is comprised of just a couple of folders on your hard drive, so you can add, move, rename, and copy entries just using Windows Explorer.
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