FL STUDIO BASICS

How to use FL Studio - Making music

This section covers the FL Studio desktop and basic workflow. In short, FL Studio allows you to load instruments and samples, play these live or manually enter the note data, record external sounds (from a microphone for example) and play the while mix back through the 64 channel mixer (adding effects). The final result is saved to a wave, MP3 or MIDI file.

Main Screen

The FL Studio desktop is based on a number of windows, most of these are movable (with overlap), resizable, zoomable and switchable so if a window isn't visible retrieve it using the Shortcut toolbar (or the function keys as noted in brackets below). The three main windows involved in FL Studio music creation are - Channels ( F6), Mixer ( F9) and Playlist ( F5).

Workflow

Once you have mastered the FL Studio interface, the next step is to learn the procedure for to creating music - the FL Studio 'workflow'. The five main activities involved are outlined below:

1. Instruments – Instruments (generators) make the sounds used in a song and are loaded in the Channel window. In the screen-shot above, the instrument interfaces are minimized and appear as buttons down the left side of the window. To open an instrument left-click on the Channel button. Instruments may include native FL plugins, samples or 3rd party virtual synthesizers (VSTi, DXi etc). You can think of the Channel window as a rack of synthesizer/sampler modules that can be routed to any one of the 64 Mixer Tracks using the Channel settings FX (Mixer Track Selector). To add a new instrument click on the Main Menu Channels > Add One and select from the pop-up list.
   

   

2. Composing/Sequencing – Musical elements can be played live via a controller keyboard or entered manually in the Piano roll (right-click the Channel buttons to open the Piano roll) or the Step Sequencer. When editing patterns, make sure you are in Pattern Mode so that when you press play the currently selected pattern is played. To the right of each instrument button in the Channel window is either a step-sequencer display (rows of squares) or a mini-preview of a Piano roll (green lines).

   Step Sequencers and Piano rolls are interchangeable for each Channel. New instruments start with an empty Step Sequencer pattern by default. Step Sequencers and Piano rolls hold the note data only for the instrument they are associated with. Step-sequencer 'steps' are activated by by left-clicking the squares to turn them on, or right-clicking to turn them off (great for percussion programming). To open an existing Piano roll, left-click directly on the mini-preview window.

   Changing patterns - Left-click hold and slide up/down on the Pattern Selector (shown above) to change the pattern number and work on a new pattern. Up to 999 unique patterns can be created. Note that the complete stack of channel instruments and their Step sequence/Piano roll data is a single pattern. In the example above, Pattern '1' consists of a Sytrus channel being played by a Piano roll and two Step Sequence patterns playing the Kick and Hat channels. In the example below Pattern 2 consists only of step-sequence data playing the Clap & Hat channels. As you step through the patterns with the Pattern Selector, the appearance of the channel window will change to reflect the note data associated with each pattern. The length of each pattern can vary and is determined by the number of bars spanned by the longest data in any one of the channels. Piano rolls may be of any length. The 'LCD' window showing '--' in the top left corner of the Channel window changes the number of Steps in the pattern (4 to 64 are possible).

3. Arranging - Select the pattern to be placed in the Playlist with the Pattern selector (as shown in the screenshot above) then left-click on a blank area of the Playlist (as shown below) to place and arrange Patterns, controller data and audio clips, such as track-length vocals. The clip-track area of the Playlist window is by default the top half. Make sure you are in Song Mode so that the patterns are played from the Playlist. The Playlist allows you to re-use patterns throughout the song without needing to enter the basic note data into the sequencer repeatedly. However, FL Studio is not limited to pattern-based sequencing, you can also enter an unused pattern block or clip into the Playlist and play song-length data (patterns). Thus, FL Studio has the flexibility of being either a 'track-based' sequencer, a pattern-based sequencer, or a combination of the two.





4. Mixing - Sound from the instrument channels is routed (using the Channel settings FX send, shown below) through the Mixer, where levels are set and Effects (FX) such as reverberation (reverb), chorus and delay are added. Almost all aspects of mixing are automatable, so fader movements and knob changes become part of the overall performance. The Mixer is also the place where external audio from a microphone, guitar or synthesizer can be recorded along with the internal instruments. The recorded sound is displayed in the lower part of the Playlist as an Audio Clip.





5. Exporting/Rendering - The final mix is exported from FL Studio to a WAV, MP3 or OGG file format by selecting the export option from the file menu in a non-real time process called rendering. Please note that if you want to make an Audio CD you need to render 16 bit, 44.1 kHz WAV files. FL Studio does not burn audio CDs - you will to use a 3rd party application.

That's it, go make some organized noise!