PLAYLIST
The playlist contains Clip Tracks where audio, automation and pattern clips (note, event or step) can be arranged (9). Clips display their target data with an simple preview (waveforms, automation shapes or notes). It is possible to slice clips into smaller pieces and arrange these in the Clip Track space. Each clip is an instance of either an Audio Clip generator, an Automation Clip or a Pattern (pattern & event data will superimpose if both are present in a Pattern).
Draw (
Shift+P);
Paint ( Shift+B);
Erase ( Shift+D);
Slip ( Shift+S);
Cut ( Shift+C);
Select ( Shift+E);
Zoom to selection ( Shift+Z);
Snap Selector; Under the 'down-arrow' menu icon at the top left corner of each Clip you will find a menu with the following options, depending on the Clip type selected:
) or paint () mode and left-click in a track. Paint mode allows you to draw multiple instances of the clip at once (hold the mouse button and drag).
) - Snap controls how clips move against the background grid. Set this to 'line'
if you want the clips to snap to bar boundaries or to 'none' if you want to freely position clips.
( Shift+S) button, then left-click and drag on the start and or end of the clip OR inside the clip and move
the mouse left/right. Note: The Snap settings will determine how the data slips. Holding down the ( Alt)
key will temporarily disable snap for fine-tuning. Perfect for aligning vocals to the beat.
) mode.
Right-click an automatable control and select Create Automation Clip. This will automatically create an automation clip channel, link that clip to the target control and if you then click inside the clip tracks area, place new automation clip in that track ready for editing. If you pre-select a range in the Playlist the placed clip will span that range.
FL Studio also provides you with a quick way to automate the volume/pan of an audio clip. Open the clip menu and select either Automate > Panning or Automate > Volume. Keep in mind that this creates an automation clip linked to the volume/panning placed over the audio clip, i.e. it overlays the audio clip and doesn't show the envelope curve inside the audio clip itself. You can use the focus switches (see section 7 above) to bring either clip in front for editing. Read below for more information about working with focus groups and overlayed clips.
Under the 'down-arrow' menu icon at the top left corner of each Clip you will find a menu. 'Make Unique' is one of the commonly used options for advanced users.
By default all instances of a Clips share the same channel or data. Sometimes you'll want to make edits to the source data without affecting the other instances. To do this, open the clip options menu (the triangle icon on top left of the clip) and select Make Unique. The clip channel will be cloned and the clone will be assigned to this instance, making it 'unique'.
The three buttons in section 7 allow you to select the focus of the mouse to audio, automation or pattern clips. Focus forces the Clip of the selected type to move to the top of any overlapped stack of Clips.
Use this feature, for example, to overlap an audio clip with its matching automatuon clip volume envelope and selectively bring either the wave or automation to the front as you work. Selecting CTRL+click will focus both clips so they can be moved together.
The options below are context-sensitive depending on the selected focus:
A powerful feature of both automation and audio clips is the ability to split them in pieces and arrange the pieces independently on the tracks. The following are some methods for splitting a clip into multiple pieces:
1. Using the Cut tool ()
- Select the Cut tool. Go to a clip, press and hold the left mouse button. Now drag to define the "cut line" slope and length,
then release the button. All audio clips that intersect with the line are split at the intersection point.
2. Split on each beat/bar - You can split your audio clips on even pieces for each bar or beat in the timeline. Open the clip menu and from the Chop into menu select Bar or Beat to split in bars or beats, respectively. Beat (Random) splits the audio clip in beats and reorders the resulting pieces in a random order.
3. Autodetect - FL Studio can split your audio clip using its integrated BeatSlicer engine. To auto-split an audio clip, open its menu and from the Chop into menu select Autodetect.
4. Precise split using external cue points - FL Studio reads the cue points embedded in all samples used as audio clips. Cue points can be inserted in most of the popular wave editors, such as Adobe Audition (previously known as Cool Edit®) and SoundForge®. Cue points allow you to create perfectly accurate regions inside the waveform. You can also take advantage of 3rd party tools which create those regions automatically based on a special analisys of the sample (for ex. BeatSlicer, which marks the start of each detected beat with a cue point) and then split the regioned clip in FL Studio.
To split an audio clip into regions, open the clip menu and from the Chop into menu select Regions (if the wave doesn't contain regions, this command is disabled).
You can also directly set an audio clip to show only a specific region contained in the sample. To do so, open the clip menu, and from the Select Region menu select a region name, or select Full Sample to show again the full audio sample (only Full Sample is available for clips without regions).
| Playlist action |
|---|---|
| Alt | Bypass snap (very useful when combined with other modifiers) |
| Alt+Up Arrow | Move selected pattern Up |
| Alt+Down Arrow | Move selected pattern Down |
| Alt+G | Grid Color |
| Alt+C | Color selected clip/pattern |
| Al+P | Edit selected pattern in Piano roll |
| Alt+Q | Quick quantize |
| Alt+/* and Ctrl+Alt+/* | Jump to Next/Previous song marker (if present) |
| Ctrl+A | Select All |
| Ctrl+Left-click | Select |
| Ctrl+Shift+Left-click | Add to selection |
| Ctrl+Right-click | Zoom on selection / Drag to make zoom selection (zoom on release) |
| Double Left-click on clip/pattern | Open clip/pattern properties |
| Double Right-click (on Playlist) | Popup menu |
| Left-shift+Left-click (on Playlist) | Add and resize clip/pattern (move mouse L/R after click and hold to resize) |
| Left-shift+Right-click | Pan view |
| Middle mouse button | Pan view (hold and drag left/right) |
| Right-click | Delete selected clip/pattern |
| Right-shift+Left-click | Slice clip/pattern (click above/below clip/pattern and drag vertical) |
| Right-shift+Right-click | Slice clip/pattern & delete smallest part (click above/below clip/pattern and drag vertical) |
| Shift+Ctrl+Del | Delete selected clip/pattern source data |
| Shift+Left-click (on clip/pattern) | Clone (drag while holding clip/pattern) |
| Shift+Left-click (on clip/pattern) | Clone (drag while holding clip/pattern) |
| 0 (zero) | Center playback to playing position |
| PgUp / PgDown | Zoom in / Zoom out |