IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hello, I'm Garrick Chow and
welcome to Up and Running with FL Studio.
| | 00:08 | In this course, I'm going to cover the basic
knowledge and skills you'll need to have under
| | 00:11 | your belt in order to use this
incredibly powerful digital audio workstation.
| | 00:16 | We'll start with a tour of the FL Studio
Interface to get our bearings, and I'll show you how
| | 00:20 | to show and hide the tools and windows
you'll be using throughout this course.
| | 00:24 | From there, we'll follow through the path
of a common workflow by starting with the
| | 00:27 | Step Sequencer and Channel window, where I'll
show you how to create patterns by programming
| | 00:31 | beats and recording MIDI keyboard performances.
| | 00:34 | Then we'll combine our patterns together
in the Playlist window and begin to edit and
| | 00:37 | assemble them into a song.
| | 00:39 | And once we have the sections of the song
combined together, we'll move to the mixer
| | 00:43 | to record a live performance, as
well as to apply effects to our tracks.
| | 00:48 | And we'll wrap up with a look at some of the most
commonly used effects and how to apply them in FL Studio.
| | 00:53 | By the end of this short course, you should
have the information necessary to start creating
| | 00:56 | and editing your own projects.
| | 00:58 | So, let's get started with
Up and Running with FL Studio.
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| About FL Studio editions| 00:00 | If you've already purchased or have just
started looking into purchasing FL Studio, you've
| | 00:04 | probably found that FL Studio 10 comes in
several different versions or editions, each
| | 00:08 | with a different set of available features.
| | 00:10 | For the details of each edition, you can
visit image-line.com/documents/editions.html.
| | 00:17 | The four main editions are the Express Edition,
the Fruity Edition, the Producer Edition, and
| | 00:23 | the Signature Bundle.
| | 00:24 | Now, as you can see, you can click on the
tabs of each one to read the details and to see
| | 00:28 | which features are and are not included.
| | 00:30 | For example, the Express Edition is the
entry-level version where you can program beats
| | 00:34 | and which comes with a limited number
of built-in instruments and effects.
| | 00:38 | You cannot, however, perform audio
recording, and you don't have access to the Playlist
| | 00:41 | window, which is used to assemble
patterns into songs or larger projects.
| | 00:45 | Stepping up to the Fruity Edition adds,
among other things, the Playlist window where you
| | 00:49 | can assemble your patterns and use automation,
but like the Express Edition, it doesn't give
| | 00:53 | you the ability to record live audio.
| | 00:56 | Now, the Producer Edition is the full-fledged
version of FL Studio where all the features
| | 00:59 | are unlocked and available.
| | 01:01 | And the Signature Bundle is a full-fledged
version of FL Studio that comes with the Producer
| | 01:05 | Edition, but it also comes with
a collection of plugin effects.
| | 01:08 | Now the nice thing here is that you can
download the Signature version completely for free
| | 01:11 | to test out everything
that FL Studio has to offer.
| | 01:14 | As they say here, you can save your
projects with a free demo, but you can't fully load
| | 01:18 | them until you purchase FL Studio.
| | 01:19 | But this will at least allow you to try out
all the features to see which one you'll need
| | 01:23 | and with the demo version,
| | 01:24 | you'll be able to follow along with all the
movies in this course, since I'll be using
| | 01:28 | the full Signature Edition.
| | 01:29 | But after you spend some time with FL Studio,
you may even find that you really don't need
| | 01:32 | the ability to record, say, live audio or
to play MIDI chords, and that the Express
| | 01:36 | Edition suits your purposes.
| | 01:38 | Or you may find that you really need to
access all the features FL Studio offers.
| | 01:42 | Whichever the case, you can return to
image-line.com to purchase your license and unlock the version
| | 01:46 | of FL Studio you want.
| | 01:48 | Now you can also upgrade to another edition at
any time, but it's definitely more cost-effective
| | 01:52 | to buy the highest level that
you think you'll need right away.
| | 01:55 | But like I said, if you're just getting into
FL Studio and want to figure out if it's right
| | 01:58 | for you, you can download the full
Signature Bundle demo just by clicking the link here,
| | 02:03 | and that way you'll be able to follow along
with all the movies in this course without
| | 02:06 | having to spend a dime.
| | 02:07 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium subscriber to lynda.com,
you have access to the exercise files for this course.
| | 00:05 | We'll be working on the same project
throughout the majority of this course, and I've included
| | 00:08 | versions of it at various stages.
| | 00:10 | I didn't include a version for every single
movie, but I did want to include key versions
| | 00:14 | where I either imported or recorded a sound
that you won't be able to duplicate on your own.
| | 00:18 | The files themselves are named by the
chapter and movie number they appear in.
| | 00:21 | Now, the files are also zipped up.
| | 00:23 | To use them, right-click on
them and choose Extract All.
| | 00:27 | Be careful that you don't just double-
click on the ZIP file here in the Windows, where
| | 00:30 | it looks like you have access to the files,
but if I try to open this project right now,
| | 00:34 | you'll see that I'm getting this
message that some data files are missing.
| | 00:38 | Instead, make sure you right-click on the ZIP
file and choose Extract All, then click Extract.
| | 00:46 | That extracts all of the files properly, and
then you can double-click the project file
| | 00:49 | to open it in FL Studio.
| | 00:52 | Also, be sure to keep all the contents of
the project together; otherwise, you may end
| | 00:56 | up with missing sounds or error messages.
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1. Understanding the InterfaceInterface overview| 00:00 | In this movie, I'd like to give you a quick
overview of the FL Studio interface and the
| | 00:04 | elements you'll be working with most frequently.
| | 00:06 | Now, we'll be getting into much more detail
with most of what I'm going to cover here
| | 00:09 | throughout this course, but in this
movie I just want to get our bearings.
| | 00:12 | Let's start with the toolbar, which is the
entire horizontal area at the top of the screen.
| | 00:16 | This is where you'll open the other
windows in FL Studio as well as where you'll find
| | 00:20 | various commands and actions.
| | 00:21 | This is a pretty non-traditional-looking
interface as far as Windows applications go.
| | 00:25 | For example, you'll find the minimize,
maximize, and close buttons right here rather than in
| | 00:30 | their usual place in the upper right-
hand corner of the application window.
| | 00:33 | We have many commands that
are located beneath that.
| | 00:35 | We will find File, Edit, and so on.
| | 00:37 | And again, this is a slightly different location
than in most other applications, but not really
| | 00:41 | that much of a big deal.
| | 00:42 | Now at first glance, the rest of the toolbar
may be a little intimidating, but fortunately,
| | 00:46 | rolling your mouse over any of the items
reveals the description below the menu commands.
| | 00:50 | For example, I can roll over these two
sliders here and see that they're the master volume
| | 00:54 | control and the master pitch control.
| | 00:56 | Next to that we have the Transport Display,
which lets me know the point in the project
| | 01:00 | I'm currently at, and I can click the
buttons on the left-side of the display to switch
| | 01:04 | between bars and minutes in the display.
| | 01:06 | Oh and by the way, it's entirely possible
and highly likely that your toolbar doesn't
| | 01:12 | look exactly like mine does here.
| | 01:14 | The layout here depends a lot on the screen
resolution you're using and whether you've
| | 01:17 | previously rearranged any parts of the toolbar.
| | 01:19 | Notice I can grab the handle next to any
set of tools to move it to another location.
| | 01:25 | You can also drag these tools out to
make them their own floating panels.
| | 01:30 | So if you don't see one of the panels I'm
talking about, go to the View menu, to Toolbars,
| | 01:35 | and make sure the toolbar you need is checked.
| | 01:37 | So for instance, I can hide the
Transport panel and I can bring it back.
| | 01:44 | Also, if you spend a lot of time messing
around and rearranging your panels, you can come
| | 01:48 | over to the View menu, choose Arrange Windows, and
select Default to send everything back the way it was.
| | 01:54 | But the Transport controls are where you
find the play, stop, and record buttons.
| | 01:58 | It's also where you find these two buttons
here to toggle between Pattern and Song modes.
| | 02:03 | And that becomes very important later on.
| | 02:05 | This display here is where you
set the tempo of your project.
| | 02:08 | Just click and drag up or down
to increase or decrease the tempo.
| | 02:14 | Now I'll be working with some of these other
tools throughout this course, but I want to
| | 02:17 | make sure I point out this set over
here, and this is the Shortcut panel.
| | 02:21 | This is how you show and hide the other panels
that you'll be using most frequently in FL Studio.
| | 02:25 | From here you can launch the Playlist
window, which is where you assemble the individual
| | 02:28 | patterns and recordings you make into tracks.
| | 02:32 | Next to that is the Step Sequencer button.
| | 02:34 | This window is already opened by default, and
this is where you create the patterns or step
| | 02:37 | sequences for your song or project.
| | 02:40 | The third button toggles the Piano Roll,
which is where you create and edit note data.
| | 02:44 | The next button opens the browser,
which is already open by default.
| | 02:47 | And it's here we can quickly access your
sample collections, presets, and any projects you've
| | 02:51 | previously created in FL Studio.
| | 02:54 | For example, with Packs open, I can see the
collection of Drums, Guitars, Orchestral, and
| | 02:58 | other sounds that are available.
| | 03:00 | And the last button here is for the Mixer.
| | 03:01 | This is where everything comes together and where
you mix and finalize your project before exporting it.
| | 03:07 | Now again, we'll be taking a much closer look
at all of these windows and more in the upcoming
| | 03:10 | movies, but it is important to know how to
open and close these windows as you need them.
| | 03:14 | It's a good idea to learn
the keyboard shortcuts too.
| | 03:17 | Now, it helps me to remember that there are five
main windows so the keyboard shortcuts start on F5.
| | 03:22 | F5 opens and closes the Playlist,
| | 03:25 | F6 opens and closes the Sequencer, and so on.
| | 03:30 | You'll find that it's much easier and
quicker to use the keyboard shortcuts than it is to
| | 03:34 | drag your mouse to the top of the screen
each time you need to open or close a window.
| | 03:38 | Now, just to give you a basic example of how
these windows work together--and let me stress
| | 03:42 | that this is just one example and how you work in
FL Studio depends a lot on what you're creating.
| | 03:46 | But for example you might start by finding a
sample you like in the browser such as a drum sample.
| | 03:51 | You can then drag it into the Step
Sequencer and add it to a channel, where you can then
| | 03:54 | program it and other samples into a pattern.
| | 03:57 | You could use the Piano Roll to
create melodies in the Channel window.
| | 04:01 | And each combination of beats and melodies
is considered a pattern, and you can create
| | 04:04 | multiple patterns in the Step Sequencer and then
combine them in the playlist to create an entire song.
| | 04:10 | For example, you might create an intro
pattern followed by a verse pattern, then a chorus
| | 04:13 | pattern, and so on, and then
sequence them together in a playlist.
| | 04:17 | And everything you hear is running through
the mixer, and you can use the mixer to modify
| | 04:21 | and enhance your sounds by
adjusting levels, adding effects, and so on.
| | 04:25 | Now again, this is just an example of a workflow,
but it should give you an understanding of
| | 04:28 | how these main windows all work together.
| | 04:30 | Over the following chapters, we'll dive
much deeper into the individual windows to see
| | 04:33 | how they work.
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| Setting up input/ouput settings| 00:00 | Although you could certainly create music
entirely within FL Studio, at some point or
| | 00:04 | another, you're most likely going to want
to record a real instrument like a guitar
| | 00:08 | or a vocal or a keyboard.
| | 00:10 | In order to do so, you'll need to connect
your instrument or microphone to your computer
| | 00:14 | via an audio input device.
| | 00:16 | These devices usually connect
to your PC via a USB connection.
| | 00:19 | Now, there are tons of different audio
input devices out there, and generally, FL Studio
| | 00:23 | should be able to work
with the majority of them.
| | 00:25 | If you have any doubts about the compatibility
of your particular device, try doing a Google
| | 00:29 | search of FL Studio and the
name of the device you want to use.
| | 00:32 | Chances are someone else has tried it and
they've reported whether or not it works
| | 00:35 | somewhere on the internet.
| | 00:37 | So in this movie, I want to take a look at
the settings in FL Studio that you'll need
| | 00:39 | to access and possibly adjust in order
to work with your audio input device.
| | 00:43 | Let's go to Options > Audio Settings.
| | 00:47 | That opens up the Settings window with
Audio selected as the category here on the left.
| | 00:51 | So at the very top of this window is the menu
for selecting your audio input/output device--
| | 00:55 | in other words, the hardware that you want FL
Studio to use both for receiving and outputting audio.
| | 01:00 | Now what you see in here is going to vary
greatly depending on your computer, what hardware
| | 01:04 | and soundcards you have installed, and what
external audio input devices you might be using.
| | 01:08 | But you can see that this menu is
currently divided into two categories.
| | 01:11 | We have Direct Sound Devices and ASIO devices.
| | 01:15 | Under Direct Sound Devices, I have my
Primary Sound Driver, which is just the soundcard on
| | 01:19 | my computer, and I have the speakers. And again,
depending on what you have connected or installed
| | 01:23 | in your computer, you may see additional
devices listed here under Direct Sound Devices.
| | 01:28 | Under ASIO devices, you may
see several options as well.
| | 01:31 | ASIO stands for audio stream input output.
| | 01:34 | Now, if possible, you do want
to select an ASIO driver here.
| | 01:36 | ASIO drivers provide a much better recording
experience because they cut down on latency
| | 01:40 | issues and CPU load.
| | 01:42 | Latency is an issue that can crop up when
the computer's being taxed too hard, and you
| | 01:45 | start hearing a delay between what
you're recording and its playback.
| | 01:48 | ASIO drivers allow FL Studio to have direct
access to your soundcard and audio input devices,
| | 01:53 | which in turn allows for much lower latency, meaning
you'll have less delay between your input and output.
| | 01:58 | So you'll want to choose ASIO if
your computer has that option.
| | 02:01 | Now in my case, I need to make sure Primary
Sound Driver is selected just because of the
| | 02:04 | way I'm recording this particular movie.
| | 02:06 | But again, if you do have the option,
make sure you choose an ASIO device.
| | 02:09 | This ASIO4ALL driver
is a good one to choose.
| | 02:13 | Now depending on what you select in the input/
output menu, you'll see different options appear below.
| | 02:17 | For example, with Primary Sound Driver selected,
I see the Sample Rate menu, a Buffer Length
| | 02:22 | slider, an Offset slider, and some checkboxes.
| | 02:25 | If I choose ASIO for all, I still see the
Sample rate menu--and we'll talk about Sample
| | 02:29 | Rate in just a moment, but the ASIO driver
has its own Settings panel, which I can open
| | 02:32 | by clicking this button.
| | 02:33 | And you might come in here if you need to adjust
the Buffer size if you're experiencing latency issues.
| | 02:38 | It is something that you'll
have to experiment with though.
| | 02:40 | I'll just leave these default settings for now.
| | 02:43 | Now, regardless of which input/output driver you
choose, you'll always see this Sample Rate menu.
| | 02:48 | Sample rate refers to the frequency
which samples of the audio source are taken.
| | 02:52 | The default here is 44,100 hertz or 44.1
kilohertz, which is the standard for CD-quality audio.
| | 02:59 | That means that for every second in music,
what you're really hearing is 44,100 samples
| | 03:04 | of the music, which is acceptable to the
majority of people in terms of sound fidelity.
| | 03:08 | If you're creating audio for a video
project, you'll want to go with 48,000 hertz.
| | 03:12 | So even though we have a half dozen sample
rate choices here, in most cases you're going
| | 03:15 | to stick with either 44,100 or 48,000.
| | 03:18 | The accepted rule is that you need a sample
rate that's at least double the highest frequency
| | 03:21 | you're going to capture.
| | 03:22 | 44,100 is considered the minimum that you should go
with, since human hearing tops out at 20 kilohertz.
| | 03:28 | So 44,100 kilohertz gives you a nice buffer.
| | 03:30 | Again, music CDs have a
standard sample rate of 44,100.
| | 03:33 | But you'll find that when you're working with
video files, those generally have audio recorded
| | 03:36 | at 48,000 kilohertz.
| | 03:38 | So if you're going to be working with video, again,
you should be working with 48,000 kilohertz as a rule.
| | 03:42 | But if you have the hard drive space to spare, some
people recommend going as high as 96,000 kilohertz.
| | 03:48 | Beyond that point is probably not worth
sacrificing additional hard drive space.
| | 03:51 | You're really not going to hear the
difference between 96,000 kilohertz and 192,000.
| | 03:54 | I'm going to leave mine 44,100, and I'm
going to switch back to my Primary Sound Driver.
| | 03:59 | Again, I just need to do that to make sure you'll
be able to hear my audio in the following movies.
| | 04:04 | If you have the option, make sure
you choose one of the ASIO drivers.
| | 04:06 | Okay, so before you record anything, you're
going to want to at least select your input/output
| | 04:10 | driver and the sample rate of your recording.
| | 04:13 | We'll be visiting these settings again
later as necessary, but for now, that's what you
| | 04:16 | need to know to get up and running.
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| Creating a new project| 00:00 | Throughout the rest of this course, I'm going to
be putting together part of a song, so in this movie
| | 00:04 | let's take a look at how to
create a new project in FL Studio.
| | 00:07 | As with most applications, you can do this by
going to the File menu, and to create a new project
| | 00:11 | you have two main choices.
| | 00:13 | You can choose New, which instantly creates
a new project with the same configuration
| | 00:17 | as the last project you worked on.
| | 00:18 | You can see that it seems like very little has
changed there. And the other option is New from Template.
| | 00:24 | I like this option because it offers you
several choices, and you can pick the one that best
| | 00:27 | suits the needs of what
you're planning to create.
| | 00:30 | For example, under Minimal, if you're going
to be generating, say, dance beats, you might
| | 00:34 | pick the Club Basic with limiter, which loads
the club Kick, Clap, Hi-hat, and Snare into
| | 00:39 | the Step Sequencer, and it also automatically
includes a limiter plugin on the Master channel.
| | 00:44 | If I open the Mixer with the Master channel
selected, you can see the Fruity Limiter is
| | 00:49 | in the last bank of the inserts here.
| | 00:51 | Or you might come to File > New from
Template and choose Delay and reverb, and that will
| | 00:56 | quickly create a project with delay and
reverb applied to two send inserts of the mixer.
| | 01:00 | It's either labeled Delay and Reverb, and you can
see those are applied over here in the plugins.
| | 01:05 | Or maybe I want to start programming
beats with an external MIDI controller.
| | 01:08 | You might go to New from Template > Other,
and select Patch Bank to immediately have
| | 01:15 | all these different sounds available to you.
| | 01:17 | Now, none of these options
provide anything special.
| | 01:19 | They just give you a way to quickly set up
some options that you would otherwise have
| | 01:22 | to set up manually.
| | 01:23 | I could just as easily go to File > New
from template > Minimal > Empty, and start with
| | 01:29 | a completely barebones setup and
build the entire project from scratch.
| | 01:32 | But in this case, I'm going to go
with the Basic with limiter template.
| | 01:37 | This gives me some percussion samples to work with
right away, and it routes the Master channel through a limiter.
| | 01:42 | Now we'll talk about the limiter in the
chapter on mixing, so I'm just going to close that
| | 01:45 | limiter for now, and I can close the mixer too.
| | 01:49 | Now, there are some other things you
might want to do to prep your file.
| | 01:51 | You probably want to set your tempo for example.
| | 01:53 | Now, if you know what tempo you want, just
drag up or down in the Tempo display to set it.
| | 01:59 | If you're not sure, you might want to try
programming a basic beat into the sequencer
| | 02:03 | and use that as your guide.
| | 02:04 | Now, a quick way to do this is to
right-click on one of the channels.
| | 02:07 | I use the Kick, and I'll
choose to fill each 4 steps.
| | 02:10 | You can see that places four beats in here.
And now if I click Play or press my Spacebar,
| | 02:15 | I'll get a looping playback of this pattern, and
I can use that to feel out the tempo that I want.
| | 02:20 | (music playing)
| | 02:30 | Now, once I'm done, I can
right-click those beats to get rid of them.
| | 02:34 | That way I can just start from scratch.
But that's the basic setup for the project I'm
| | 02:38 | going to be working on in this course.
| | 02:39 | I want to make sure to save periodically, so I'll
choose File > Save. I want to save this to my Desktop.
| | 02:47 | Now I'm going to base this on the song that
I played in my band called Ruin Us, so that's
| | 02:50 | what I'll call this project.
| | 02:52 | Notice it's being saved as a
Fruity Loops loop file, or an FLP.
| | 02:56 | Now, I like to create a folder to hold the
project files and anything else related to
| | 03:00 | it, so I'll create a new folder on the desktop.
| | 03:03 | I'll call this one Ruin Us Project, which
should be a funny name for a folder on your computer
| | 03:08 | desktop if someone didn't
know that this was a song.
| | 03:12 | But I'll just save my file in there.
| | 03:15 | So now it's saved, and here's my new empty
project, and we're ready to start getting further
| | 03:19 | into FL Studio.
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2. The Step SequencerCreating a beat| 00:00 | In this chapter, we're going to be looking
at the Channel window and Step Sequencer.
| | 00:03 | Again, you can open and close it using the button
on the toolbar or with the keyboard shortcut of F6.
| | 00:09 | And it's here where the instruments you're using
in a pattern are held and programmed or sequenced.
| | 00:14 | Each row here has a button telling you what
instrument is that channel, and to the right
| | 00:18 | of each button, you'll either find 16 step
sequence or buttons if you're programming
| | 00:22 | a rhythm or a piano roll if you're
programming a keyboard or other instrument part.
| | 00:26 | We'll be seeing piano rolls a little bit later.
| | 00:28 | The Step Sequencer is a powerful and fairly
easy-to-use tool for programming beats and simple melodies.
| | 00:33 | Let's take a look at how it
works by programming a basic beat.
| | 00:36 | So, each of these 16 buttons next
to each instrument represents a beat.
| | 00:39 | We see 16 of them by default,
representing 16th notes in a one-bar sequence.
| | 00:44 | So for example, if I click the first button on
the Kick channel and then each fourth button,
| | 00:49 | I get four quarter notes.
| | 00:53 | I can play the sequence either by clicking the Play
button or by pressing the Spacebar. (music playing)
| | 01:03 | So notice it just repeats itself endlessly.
| | 01:05 | We're listening to the same
measure over and over again or a loop.
| | 01:08 | And by the way, if you're following along
with me and you're not hearing anything, make
| | 01:11 | sure you're in pattern mode and not song mode.
| | 01:14 | You can tell by looking here and making
sure the pattern is the one that's selected.
| | 01:17 | If you're in song mode, you most likely
won't hear anything when you click Play.
| | 01:20 | In pattern mode, you edit and work on patterns.
| | 01:22 | In song mode, you're going to work in the
Playlist window where you combine the various
| | 01:26 | patterns you've created.
| | 01:27 | We haven't done that yet, so I'm working in
pattern mode so I can hear what I'm doing.
| | 01:30 | Now you can change the number of beats per
bar in your pattern by rolling your mouse
| | 01:33 | over the beats per bar display up here in
the upper left, and you can drag up or down.
| | 01:38 | So if I were working in a song with 6 beats
per bar, I could drag that up to 6, and you
| | 01:42 | can see that adds two more sets
of four buttons to the sequence.
| | 01:45 | You can actually drag this
all the way up to 64 beats.
| | 01:49 | The longer the sequence, the more space you
give yourself to build a beat that doesn't
| | 01:52 | sound as repetitive as a short sequence.
But maybe repetitive is what you're going for.
| | 01:56 | It's really a matter of preference
and what you're trying to accomplish.
| | 01:59 | Incidentally, to change the time signature of
your project, go to Options > General Settings,
| | 02:05 | and in here, click Project. Then select
General and here under Time division, you can choose
| | 02:10 | the total number of bars and
beats for the entire project.
| | 02:13 | Although it is still possible to set a custom
number of beats for each pattern that you create,
| | 02:17 | I'm going to leave this as is and close this
window, and I'm going to take the Step Sequencer
| | 02:21 | back down to four beats per bar.
| | 02:26 | And just as a reminder, you set the tempo of your
project by dragging the tempo display up and down here.
| | 02:31 | But we already set that to
126 in the previous movie.
| | 02:34 | So I currently have started a beat
with the kick drum playing quarter notes.
| | 02:37 | Maybe I want to change it so the snare drum hits
on the second and fourth beat instead of the kick.
| | 02:42 | To remove a note, right-click it. Then I'll
add those beats on the snare channel instead.
| | 02:47 | Now my pattern sounds like this.
(music playing)
| | 02:54 | So it's just a matter of clicking on an
instrument's channel at the point where you want it to play.
| | 02:58 | Now as we saw before, if you want to put down
a basic repeating pattern quickly, right-click
| | 03:02 | on an instrument name and here you can
choose to fill each two, four, or eight steps.
| | 03:08 | I'll choose two and you can see it
automatically fills out the Hi-hat for me, so now we have this.
| | 03:12 | (music playing)
| | 03:17 | You can also click and drag across multiple buttons
to add a continuous sequence, and now we have this.
| | 03:22 | (music playing)
| | 03:25 | Similarly, you can drag with the right
mouse button to remove contiguous hits.
| | 03:28 | So, maybe I want to get rid of these
three and these three. (music playing)
| | 03:38 | Now, you don't have to start
and stop as you build your beat.
| | 03:40 | Just start the playback and add or remove in
those to experiment with the pattern. (music playing)
| | 04:12 | So that's all there is to
laying down a basic beat.
| | 04:14 | Now there is a lot more to it than this,
but if you understand this, you shouldn't have
| | 04:17 | a problem building more complex beats
with additional sounds and instruments.
| | 04:21 | Now before we add to the sequence, let's take a
quick look at the rest of the channel windows interface.
| | 04:25 | We've already seen the
beats per bar display up here.
| | 04:27 | Next to that we have the
Repeat Step Sequence button.
| | 04:30 | I can't really demo this now, but when I turn
it on, the step sequencer will automatically
| | 04:34 | repeat itself throughout the length of any piano
roll sequences that are longer than the step sequence.
| | 04:39 | So what this means is, for example, if you
only have four bars in the step sequence but
| | 04:43 | 16 bars in the piano roll, the four bars of
the step sequence will repeat when you have
| | 04:47 | this button enabled.
| | 04:48 | With it off, the sequence will be silent after
those four bars, and you would only hear the piano roll.
| | 04:52 | Now we'll see this in action later.
| | 04:53 | Next to that is the Play button.
(music playing)
| | 04:57 | But again, I find it much easier to
just use the Spacebar on my keyboard.
| | 05:00 | Next we have the Pattern Selector menu.
| | 05:02 | This is where you can create new patterns
by clicking the plus button or you can select
| | 05:06 | previously created
patterns from the dropdown menu.
| | 05:09 | We only have the one right now.
| | 05:11 | You most likely will have multiple patterns
for different parts of your song, rather than
| | 05:14 | just one long pattern, and this is
where you're going to switch among them.
| | 05:17 | We'll talk more about this menu as we go along.
| | 05:19 | Next is the Swing slider.
| | 05:21 | One of the problems some people have with sequenced
rhythms is that they feel very mechanical and nonhuman.
| | 05:25 | There's very little feel or swing to the beat.
| | 05:29 | The swing slider takes away that perfect rhythm feel
and adds a little bit of delay to when the beats fall.
| | 05:33 | How much delay is
determined by dragging the slider.
| | 05:36 | Drag a little to the right for a subtle
result or all the way for an extreme effect.
| | 05:39 | I'll just play a little for you here.
(music playing)
| | 05:55 | You'll probably end up somewhere in
the middle here, if you use it all.
| | 05:58 | Now these last two buttons are for adjusting
the actual sound of the sample being triggered.
| | 06:02 | The first button is the Graph Editor.
| | 06:04 | This lets you set various properties
for the notes here in the step sequencer.
| | 06:07 | For example it's currently set to velocity,
which determines how hard the note is hit.
| | 06:11 | Also like the Hi-hat channel. We do this
by clicking the light right next to it.
| | 06:15 | You can see it's now selected. And let's
mute the other channels by clicking their Mute
| | 06:18 | buttons, which are these lights over here.
| | 06:21 | So all we hear right now is this.
(music playing)
| | 06:26 | Now by default, all the hits are
the exact same velocity or intensity.
| | 06:30 | If I want to introduce a little more of a
human feel to this beat, meaning just like
| | 06:33 | a real live drummer wouldn't
hit each beat exactly the same,
| | 06:36 | I can use the velocity bars to drag and draw
a graph here to indicate how loudly or quietly
| | 06:40 | I want each hi-hat to be.
| | 06:41 | Now, you can drag individual beats by
themselves like this, or you can click and hold down
| | 06:47 | and drag around to adjust
them all with one click.
| | 06:52 | So playing with the velocity of certain hits can help
make things sound slightly more natural. (music playing)
| | 07:01 | Now using the Scrollbar at the bottom of the
window, you can choose other properties to change.
| | 07:04 | All the way to the left we have panning
which lets you automate the position of each
| | 07:08 | hit in the stereo field.
| | 07:10 | You can drag up to move the sound to the
right and then down to move it to the left.
| | 07:16 | So if you're wearing headphones, you should be able
to hear the hi-hat move from the right to the left.
| | 07:20 | (music playing)
| | 07:24 | Now if you mess something up, one way to get
everything centered again is to start in the
| | 07:28 | left, center the position by keeping an eye
on the display up here--you can see this is
| | 07:32 | centered now--and then you
can right-click and drag across.
| | 07:36 | Just keeping everything centered.
| | 07:38 | Also if you want all the hits to be the
same value, you can hold down the Ctrl key and
| | 07:43 | you can see that sets
everything to the same value.
| | 07:45 | So if I want all the hits to be about 50% to the
right, I can leave it like that. (music playing)
| | 07:53 | I'll just drag them all across again.
| | 07:56 | The other options you can graph include
release, which determines how long a note is held;
| | 08:01 | MOD X which is a filter cutoff to block
certain frequencies; MOD Y is a resonance effect for
| | 08:06 | removing artifacts that result from using
MOD X; fine pitch for changing the note pitch;
| | 08:12 | and Shift which delays the playback of the note--
and these are all properties you can experiment with.
| | 08:16 | I'm just going to close
the graph editor for now.
| | 08:19 | And last button here is the keyboard editor,
which is used for setting the pitch of the
| | 08:23 | notes in the sequencer.
| | 08:24 | For example, maybe I think the kick is
a little too high pitched for my taste.
| | 08:28 | So I'll select the kick, make
sure I can hear it. (music playing)
| | 08:36 | And then I can change all the hits by holding Ctrl and
clicking the lower part of the keyboard. (music playing)
| | 08:44 | That's probably too low for me.
Let's try a little bit higher. (music playing)
| | 08:56 | As you can hear, that
changes the sound of each hit.
| | 08:58 | Of course you can also change the sound
of each individual hit too if you like.
| | 09:02 | Maybe I'll do the same thing to
the snare hits. (music playing)
| | 09:16 | So the dark orange areas represent the
points where the note is actually played, while the
| | 09:19 | light orange ones
represent the non-active notes.
| | 09:21 | Notice if I had a snare hit, the note turns dark
orange. I'll just right-click to take that away.
| | 09:27 | Now the row at the on top of the keyboard
lets you turn on slide and portmanteau effects,
| | 09:31 | but it only applies to
instruments that support those properties.
| | 09:34 | Okay so that's how to create a
basic beat in the step sequencer.
| | 09:37 | I'm going to unmute the other tracks,
| | 09:40 | and next, we'll look at how to add
more instruments to our pattern.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding samples| 00:00 | In the previous movie, I put together a basic
rhythm pattern using the default instruments
| | 00:04 | of the Kick, Clap, the Hi-hat, and the Snare.
| | 00:07 | Those are the four channels we've
worked with so far and they sound like this.
| | 00:10 | (music playing)
| | 00:14 | But FL Studio comes with much, much
more, in terms of sounds and instruments.
| | 00:17 | Let's take a look at how to browse
and add more samples to our beat.
| | 00:19 | To do this, we're going to use the Browser
panel here on the left side of the screen.
| | 00:23 | Now, if you don't see the browser, you can
click its button up here in the toolbar, or
| | 00:27 | you can use the keyboard shortcut of F8.
| | 00:30 | So the browser is where you can browse
through the included sample collections, presets, as
| | 00:34 | well as the other projects
you've created, and much more.
| | 00:36 | Now in this case, I'm looking for a section
called Packs, and here you'll find a ton of
| | 00:41 | samples and sounds you can use.
| | 00:42 | For example, you have Drum Kits 1 through 8 here,
each one containing different drum samples.
| | 00:48 | Just pop one open, and you can
click any sample to hear it.
| | 00:51 | (music playing)
| | 00:56 | If you don't hear anything you like,
just close it and find another one.
| | 01:01 | (music playing)
| | 01:05 | You're not limited to just drums.
| | 01:07 | You'll find guitar samples,
orchestral samples, piano samples, and more.
| | 01:12 | Again, just open one of these to sample them.
| | 01:16 | (music playing)
| | 01:22 | You can hit the Stop button to
stop the sample from playing.
| | 01:26 | Just close these folders up.
| | 01:28 | Now to add a sample to my pattern, I can
either drag it over an existing channel to replace
| | 01:32 | the current sound or I can drag it into
the blank space at the bottom of the channel
| | 01:36 | window to add it as a new channel.
| | 01:38 | So for example, maybe I want to replace
the Kick drum sound that we currently have.
| | 01:42 | I'll browse around in here again. You know,
I kind of liked that kick drum in Drum Kit 1.
| | 01:48 | (music playing)
| | 01:51 | Now before you replace the drum sound, I should
mention that you can't undo the change once you make it.
| | 01:55 | So first I'm going to click the name of the
sample and that opens up the Channel Settings window.
| | 02:00 | You can see the name of the
sample is Kick Basic wave.
| | 02:02 | Now if I click the folder icon next to
it, I can see where the sample lives.
| | 02:08 | It's in the folder called Club, which is inside
Legacy, which is inside Packs. Just cancel that.
| | 02:14 | Now I'm not saying you have to do this every
time, but if you haven't noted where a sample
| | 02:17 | is stored before you change it or what it's
called, and you think you might want to bring
| | 02:20 | it up again later, just
note its name and where it is.
| | 02:23 | Ultimately, once you know the name, you can
click the dropdown menu here in the browser,
| | 02:27 | select Find, and then type its name to find
it. And you can see, there's Kick Basic, right
| | 02:36 | inside Club, which is inside Legacy.
| | 02:38 | Again, I'm only noting this in case I don't
like the sound that I'm about to replace it with.
| | 02:42 | All right, so I'll go
back up here to Drum Kit 01.
| | 02:46 | So to replace it, I'm just going to grab
it and drag it on top of the existing kit.
| | 02:52 | And now I have a new kick sound that's going to
be triggered by the pattern I programmed earlier.
| | 02:55 | (music playing)
| | 03:02 | So that's how to replace
an existing channel's sample.
| | 03:04 | Now again, if I do change my mind, I can't go to
Edit > Undo; notice that's currently blanked out.
| | 03:09 | But another option I have is, with this channel
selected, I can come back to the Channel Settings
| | 03:14 | window you can see it's now
been replaced by FLS_Kick 01,
| | 03:17 | I can click this dropdown menu
and get back to my Kick Basic.
| | 03:21 | This menu remembers the most
recent samples you've used.
| | 03:24 | (music playing)
| | 03:29 | Okay so that's how to replace an existing
channel's sample and how to change it back.
| | 03:33 | Let's take a look at how to add
a new sample to a new channel.
| | 03:36 | I think maybe in this Legacy
folder I'm going to go into Effects.
| | 03:41 | (music playing)
| | 03:47 | I kind of like that Scratch sample.
| | 03:49 | So to add it to a new channel, I'm going to
drag it to the bottom of the Channel window.
| | 03:55 | There it is, and let's add it to the
first and the last beat of the pattern.
| | 03:59 | Let me right-click here.
| | 04:01 | I'm going to Solo this channel, meaning
this is the only channel we're going to hear.
| | 04:04 | And just remember, this button is used to
mute the channel, which would turn it off.
| | 04:08 | I'm just going to right-click and choose Solo
instead, which means this is the only channel
| | 04:11 | we're going to hear, and I'll play a bit of it.
(music playing)
| | 04:19 | And I'll unsolo it to hear it
with the rest of the pattern.
| | 04:22 | (music playing)
| | 04:27 | If necessary, I can use the dial
here to adjust the channel's volume.
| | 04:30 | (music playing)
| | 04:41 | All right, so that's how to replace a sample in
your pattern, as well as how to add a new channel.
| | 04:45 | Next, we're going to take a look at
adding instruments to our sequence.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding instruments| 00:00 | So far, we've seen how to add
beat-based sounds to the channel window.
| | 00:04 | We've been working entirely with drums and
percussion sounds that have short sharp hits
| | 00:07 | and decay quickly, but we don't really have pitches
in the way instruments like a piano or a guitar do.
| | 00:12 | We can't play melodies or tunes with drums.
And in most cases you probably will want to
| | 00:16 | program at least some
sounds that let you create notes.
| | 00:19 | One way to do this is to add channels
loaded with one of the instruments that come with
| | 00:22 | FL Studio and you can find them by going to
the Channels menu, choosing Add One, and then
| | 00:27 | choosing an instrument.
| | 00:29 | You can see there are many to choose from here.
| | 00:31 | In fact, this is an incredibly diverse
selection of instruments you have available here, and
| | 00:34 | each one has its own options,
settings, and capabilities.
| | 00:36 | I'm not going to be able to cover them all
here, but just let me show you one of them
| | 00:40 | so you can see how this works.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to select the 3xOsc.
| | 00:45 | Now, when you pick an instrument, as you
can see, it gets added--since we chose Add one--
| | 00:49 | it gets added to our Channel
window and its own channel.
| | 00:52 | It also opens up the Channel Settings window
for the particular instrument you selected.
| | 00:55 | Just to show you another example, I'll add
another instrument by going to Channels > Add
| | 01:00 | One, and I'll pick the Fruity DrumSynth.
| | 01:04 | Again, that adds another new channel, and
it opens the settings for that instrument.
| | 01:09 | (music playing)
| | 01:12 | But I don't really need that in this case,
so I'm going to right-click on the Fruity
| | 01:14 | DrumSynth, and I'll choose Delete.
| | 01:17 | I'll get a message telling me that I
can't undo this, which is okay in this case.
| | 01:22 | All right, so let me show you an example of how
one of these instruments works, using the 3xOsc.
| | 01:28 | The OSC is short for Oscillator, and
there are three of them in this instrument.
| | 01:31 | There's OSC 1, OSC 2, and OSC 3, and this is
a pretty common and popular synth instrument.
| | 01:37 | I can get a sample of what it sounds
like by default by clicking the keyboard.
| | 01:40 | (music playing)
| | 01:44 | So one way to use this is to dial in
sounds on each of the oscillators one at a time.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to turn down the volumes on OSC 2
and on OSC 3, and all I'm doing here is clicking
| | 01:54 | and dragging down with my mouse.
| | 01:56 | OSC 1 doesn't have a volume control because it's the
default instrument, so by itself, it sounds like this.
| | 02:02 | (music playing)
| | 02:05 | And by the way, you can also use your computer
keyboard to play MIDI-keyboard-based instruments.
| | 02:10 | Just make sure this button is
checked up here in the toolbar.
| | 02:13 | If it's not, you won't hear
anything. But with a check,
| | 02:15 | I can use my computer keyboard, as long as
I have the instrument selected starting with
| | 02:19 | the letter Z which gives me a C, and I can
tap the keys to work my way up the scale.
| | 02:25 | (music playing)
| | 02:30 | Basically, all the way up to the forward
slash, and then I can drop up to the letter Q and
| | 02:36 | continue working my way up to scale.
(music playing)
| | 02:43 | And so on. But anyway, that's
the default sound of Oscillator 1.
| | 02:46 | You can see here, it uses
the sine wave by default.
| | 02:49 | You can also select the triangle wave.
| | 02:52 | (music playing)
| | 02:56 | There's the square wave.
(music playing)
| | 03:00 | Saw tooth (music playing)
| | 03:04 | Rounded saw tooth (music playing)
| | 03:09 | And noise (music playing)
| | 03:13 | The question mark button
lets you load your own samples.
| | 03:14 | I'm just going to cancel that for now, and
I'll switch us back to the triangle wave.
| | 03:20 | (music playing)
| | 03:22 | Now from this point, I can leave it as is or mix
in the other two oscillators to build my sound.
| | 03:26 | Now, each one is a full octave down from the
previous one. So maybe I'll mix in Oscillator
| | 03:30 | 2 also with the triangle wave, so we have this.
(music playing)
| | 03:40 | And we'll mix in Oscillator 3.
| | 03:41 | Let's make that a triangle wave as well.
(music playing)
| | 03:49 | That's another full octave down.
| | 03:50 | That's just with each
sound using the triangle wave.
| | 03:53 | I can maybe mix it up a little by making
Oscillator to the square wave and maybe Oscillator 3 the sine.
| | 04:00 | (music playing)
| | 04:02 | You can also change the pitch of
the tones using the core style.
| | 04:07 | (music playing)
| | 04:16 | Or you can do a more subtle
change to the tone using the fine dial.
| | 04:21 | (music playing)
| | 04:27 | All right, so that's just a very, very
brief overview of one particular instrument, and
| | 04:31 | I'm really barely scratching the surface here.
But you're probably wondering, how does this
| | 04:34 | apply to the sequencer, and
how do I use it in my song?
| | 04:37 | Well, as you can see, the OSC channel has
the same 16 beats as the rest of the channels.
| | 04:41 | Well, watch what happens if
I click some of that channel.
| | 04:46 | (music playing)
| | 04:56 | So I'm hearing the tone I
created, but it's just one note.
| | 04:59 | How do we get it to play different notes?
| | 05:00 | Well one way is by editing the channel in
the Piano Roll, and we'll take a look at that
| | 05:04 | in the very next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Piano roll| 00:00 | In the previous movie, we added a channel
for the 3xOsc instrument, but we solved it
| | 00:04 | by using the beat buttons.
| | 00:06 | We can only add a single note, and it sounds like
this right now (music playing)
| | 00:12 | So it's probably safe to say that in most
cases, you'll want to have more than a single
| | 00:15 | tone playing in your pattern.
| | 00:17 | Let's take a look at how to do this.
| | 00:18 | They're actually two ways.
| | 00:20 | The first way is to select the channel you
want to edit, just like that, and then opening
| | 00:24 | the Keyboard Editor.
| | 00:26 | Now, we looked at this earlier, and what this gives
you is a column of keys for each beat in the pattern.
| | 00:30 | And you can change the note of the beats just
by clicking the ones you want on the keyboard.
| | 00:34 | So by default, every note on every
beat is set to the middle C here.
| | 00:37 | As we saw earlier, the active notes are in
a dark orange, and the inactive notes were
| | 00:41 | in the light orange.
| | 00:41 | I'm going to clear them for a moment by
right-clicking the beats up in the Sequencer.
| | 00:44 | I'm just going to right-
click and just drag across.
| | 00:47 | So to add individual notes, I just click the notes
that I want to play (music playing)
| | 00:58 | So you can see as I click each one of
these notes, a beat marker is added up here and
| | 01:02 | now it sounds like this.
(music playing)
| | 01:07 | Now just to show a few other things here,
if I hold down the Ctrl key and drag one of
| | 01:11 | these notes, all the other
notes move along with it.
| | 01:14 | So that's a quick way to transpose your pattern.
| | 01:17 | (music playing)
| | 01:20 | And you can also click and drag the
draw notes across the entire pattern.
| | 01:24 | (music playing)
| | 01:26 | So now I have this.
(music playing)
| | 01:32 | All right, so that's one way to
program the notes into your instrument.
| | 01:35 | The problem here is that it only
lets you program one note per beat.
| | 01:38 | Clicking on another note in any
column moves that note to that key.
| | 01:42 | (music playing)
| | 01:44 | I'm going to clear all these beats here
again by right-clicking and dragging across, and
| | 01:49 | I'll close the keyboard editor.
| | 01:50 | Now, I'm going to right-click the
instrument and choose Send to Piano roll.
| | 01:55 | That gives me the Piano Roll window
with my instrument loaded into it.
| | 01:57 | You can see it says 3xOsc up here.
| | 01:59 | Now, let's just make this window a little
bit bigger, so you can see what's going on.
| | 02:04 | So what we're seeing here is a grid representing
each beat and note that's available in the pattern.
| | 02:08 | If you've ever worked with MIDI editors and other
programs, this should look pretty familiar to you.
| | 02:12 | They pretty much work all the same way,
but in case you've never done this before, I'll
| | 02:15 | give you a quick rundown here.
| | 02:16 | Now the default tool is
the Pencil or the Draw tool.
| | 02:18 | It allows me to add and
edit the notes that are played.
| | 02:21 | They keyboard displayed to the left tells
me where I am on the scale, and also notice
| | 02:24 | up here in the display you can see what note you're
currently over when you move your mouse around the grid.
| | 02:29 | So the piano roll is also subdivided.
I'll move this playhead out of the way here.
| | 02:34 | So you can see there's a
one, two, three and so on.
| | 02:37 | So our pattern--
(music playing)
| | 02:40 | --as we know, it's just a four beat pattern,
so it's going to be one, two, three, four,
| | 02:46 | and then just repeat itself.
| | 02:48 | That doesn't mean I'm limited to drawing
on my piano roll for just that measure.
| | 02:51 | I can actually make this
piano piece as long as I need to.
| | 02:53 | In this case though, I'm just going to stick
to the one measure. So I can click to place
| | 02:57 | some note maybe at the first beat of C5
here (music playing)
| | 03:00 | Like so. And let me undo that once.
| | 03:03 | I'm going to come up here to the toolbar,
and I'm going to have this snap to 1/4 beats to
| | 03:08 | make it line up a little better.
| | 03:09 | You can see that now just creates a quarter
beat divisions on each one of these beats.
| | 03:13 | So again, I'll click here
(music playing)
| | 03:15 | And that places a note in my
pattern so now it sounds like this. (music playing)
| | 03:23 | Not very interesting, but
we'll keep building on that.
| | 03:25 | Now, notes can be moved, lengthened,
or shortened, or removed entirely.
| | 03:28 | I can move it up and down the scale.
(music playing)
| | 03:32 | Or to the right so it
plays later in the pattern. (music playing)
| | 03:39 | And let's lengthen this out a little bit, and
let me turn Snapping off just a moment here
| | 03:45 | so I can line that up a little bit
better, right there, and I'll turn it back on.
| | 03:49 | There we go, so now we have this.
(music playing)
| | 03:57 | Now when you change the size of a note, the
subsequent notes you add get added at the same length.
| | 04:00 | (music playing)
| | 04:02 | So there's my second note, and you can see it's the
same length as the first one and now we have this.
| | 04:06 | (music playing)
| | 04:10 | I'm going to lengthen the end of that note
to reach the end of the first note there,
| | 04:14 | so they're all lined up.
| | 04:15 | So notice now we have overlapping sounds, which
is something that we couldn't do when we were
| | 04:18 | adding notes with the keyboard editor.
| | 04:20 | Let's throw another note in here.
| | 04:23 | And I'll shorten that one so it ends
with the other two, see how that sounds. (music playing)
| | 04:32 | And we can just continue adding notes this way.
| | 04:33 | Let's just add two more notes here.
| | 04:35 | Keep it on the same note there.
| | 04:38 | And actually I'm still getting the default
length, but I want these to be short notes.
| | 04:42 | So let me get rid of that by right-clicking
it. And by the way, to remove many notes, you
| | 04:46 | can hold down, right-click, and drag
through the ones you want to get rid of.
| | 04:49 | You can see I just get rid of
them all that way. Let's undo that.
| | 04:52 | So to draw the length of the note that you want
as you're drawing it, hold down the Shift key.
| | 04:55 | In this case again, I just
want one quick short note.
| | 04:59 | As you can see, it allows me to draw out.
| | 05:02 | In fact, I want it a little bit shorter than it.
| | 05:03 | Let me right-click on that and
then get rid of the snapping here.
| | 05:06 | I'll just draw like right there, and then I
can put one right after it. And the nice thing
| | 05:12 | here is because I just drew the size and
note that I wanted, I can just click now without
| | 05:16 | holding down any keys on my
keyboard and get the same length and note.
| | 05:19 | I'll turn the 1/4 beat line up again.
| | 05:23 | Lock that place and now we have this.
| | 05:27 | (music playing)
| | 05:30 | Then maybe we can just make this a little
more tonally interesting by making these two
| | 05:34 | short notes a chord.
| | 05:35 | Let's make that an A sharp.
You can see the notes right here.
| | 05:38 | Just click there and there.
| | 05:40 | And now we have this.
(music playing)
| | 05:46 | And by the way, if you want, you can expand
the height of the notes so you can see the
| | 05:49 | tones they're sitting on, by using this button
here in the upper right-hand corner of the
| | 05:53 | window. Just drag up. You can see that expands, and
then you can see now this is a D5, A4, D4, and so on.
| | 05:59 | Similarly, you can drag the ends of the horizontal
scrollbar to expand or contract the display horizontally.
| | 06:05 | Now another thing I want to mention is that
you can also group notes together to easily
| | 06:09 | move or change them.
| | 06:10 | First, get the Select tool, which is this one here,
and then drag a rectangle that touches all
| | 06:15 | the notes you want to group together.
| | 06:20 | Then hit Shift+G on your keyboard.
| | 06:23 | Now, I can switch back to my Draw tool and
place my cursor over any of these notes, and
| | 06:27 | you can see they all
highlight, and I can drag them around.
| | 06:30 | This makes it very easy to transpose your notes.
| | 06:35 | (music playing)
| | 06:39 | I'll just move that back for now.
| | 06:41 | Now the thing that threw me early on was I
couldn't figure out how to ungroup the notes.
| | 06:45 | Even with the Select tool selected and when
I click of the select, when I roll my mouse
| | 06:48 | over note, then click on it, they all
highlight again because they're grouped together.
| | 06:53 | To ungroup them, it's not Shift+G.
| | 06:56 | You can see, if you come up to the menu up here
and choose group, it's actually Alt+G to ungroup.
| | 07:02 | And now when I select them,
I can select them individually.
| | 07:05 | And I just mentioned that here because the
first time I group notes together, it took
| | 07:08 | me a while to figure out how to ungroup them.
| | 07:09 | But ok, so there's my basic piano roll pattern.
| | 07:12 | Now, the notes we've been drawing
are only part of the information.
| | 07:15 | These bars I've drawn represent where the
notes begin and how long they're held for.
| | 07:19 | We also have this panel at the bottom
of the window--make that a little bigger.
| | 07:23 | Currently, it's displaying the velocity of
each note, or how hard each one is being played.
| | 07:27 | Now if you don't see these shapes, use this
menu at the top of the screen and make sure
| | 07:31 | Note Velocity is selected.
| | 07:34 | So down here, I can drag these circles up or
down to increase or decrease the velocity of a note.
| | 07:39 | Now, I need to grab my Pencil tool here.
| | 07:42 | So for example, I could drag this first note
down, say one step and a second one down maybe
| | 07:46 | half that distance, and I can
leave the third where it is.
| | 07:50 | And maybe also drag the first of
the two short notes down as well.
| | 07:55 | I'll even drag these up a little bit.
| | 08:01 | So now, I have a little bit more dynamic range in
my sequence. (music playing)
| | 08:09 | And this is something that you can't get just
by drawing notes or even by playing the keys
| | 08:12 | on your computer keyboard, because the computer
keyboard can't tell how hard you're hitting the notes.
| | 08:16 | This becomes less of an issue if you
actually connect the real MIDI controller keyboard
| | 08:20 | to your computer, and we'll
look at that a little bit later.
| | 08:22 | Now as you saw, you can also select and change other
note properties by selecting the properties from this menu.
| | 08:26 | For example, you have panning, which
allows me to automate the placement of the notes
| | 08:30 | in the stereo field.
| | 08:30 | So for instance, I can move the second note maybe
50% to the right, by dragging up--and go move
| | 08:35 | it a little bit further than that.
| | 08:37 | Let's go 75%. And I'll move the third
note the same distance to the left.
| | 08:43 | And maybe I'll go to the far extremes with
the last two notes and set the first one all
| | 08:46 | the way to the right, and the
second one is all the way to the left.
| | 08:54 | Now, if you're listening to this with headphones, you
should be able to hear the stereo shifting of the notes now.
| | 08:58 | (music playing)
| | 09:04 | Now, if I close the Piano Roll, notice how
this channel now looks in the Step Sequencer.
| | 09:08 | I can see the MIDI notes here now instead
of the step sequencer buttons, and you can
| | 09:11 | reenter the piano roll just
by clicking this MIDI bar.
| | 09:14 | I'll just close that again.
| | 09:15 | So, like most of the other windows, panels,
and tools, there's a lot more to the piano
| | 09:19 | roll than what I've covered in this Up and
Running movie, but I encourage you to experiment
| | 09:22 | with your own sounds in here.
| | 09:24 | Also, you don't have to just bring
instruments like the synth into the piano roll.
| | 09:27 | You can right-click on any instrument, say
the Snare, and open it in the piano roll.
| | 09:32 | So if I wanted it to have more control
over the velocity or panning of my snare hits,
| | 09:35 | or if I wanted to have overlapping snare
hits with slightly different tones, I could do
| | 09:39 | that by drawing them in here.
| | 09:40 | (music playing)
| | 09:44 | You see how many different
snare drums I can choose from here?
| | 09:49 | I got something like this.
(music playing)
| | 09:57 | And now when I close the piano roll, I can see
the MIDI notes and the step sequencer for the snare.
| | 10:01 | Now, I should also mention that if you
want to undo this--and you've discovered that
| | 10:04 | the Undo button only takes you back one step
and then becomes a redo button. So for example
| | 10:08 | if I hit undo, that just changes the snare
notes and I have to hit the undo button again
| | 10:13 | which is now the redo button, it just sets the
snare back to the way it was when I left the piano roll.
| | 10:17 | But you can step back further by going to
your History over here in the browser, and
| | 10:22 | here I can see several of my last changes.
So I just click right before the last send
| | 10:26 | in the piano roll and now my snare is
back to its original appearance.
| | 10:30 | And in case you're wondering, you can set
the levels of undos under Options > General
| | 10:34 | Settings, and you can
see the default here is 20.
| | 10:37 | Now, adding more undo levels gives you freedom to
experiment, but it can also impact FL Studio's performance.
| | 10:43 | I'll leave it up to you to experiment
to see how much of a safety net you want.
| | 10:47 | But okay, there's an overview of the piano roll.
| | 10:49 | Now one question you might have is, well,
yeah that's great, but drawing notes is kind of
| | 10:52 | a pain; can I play a real
keyboard to program these notes?
| | 10:55 | And as I mentioned before, you can, and we'll
take a look at how to do that in the next movie.
| | 10:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Connecting and recording a MIDI keyboard| 00:00 | In the previous movie, we saw how to use the
piano roll window to draw and edit MIDI notes,
| | 00:05 | but that's probably not the best way to
create apart from scratch, especially if you want
| | 00:08 | to record anything but the most basic melodies.
| | 00:11 | It's much easier to play an actual keyboard.
| | 00:13 | Now, if you don't have a MIDI keyboard, I previously
mentioned that you can use your computer keyboard to play notes too.
| | 00:18 | So with the 3xOsc selected, I can tap most
of the letter keys and some of the special
| | 00:22 | characters on my keyboard
to play that instrument.
| | 00:25 | (audio playing)
| | 00:27 | We can even also select other instruments,
such as the Snare, and play that as well with
| | 00:31 | my computer keyboard.
(audio playing)
| | 00:35 | Now I'm going to clear the notes I drew in
the last movie so I can record a fresh part.
| | 00:38 | I'm just going to right-click and just drag
to touch all those notes, and they're gone.
| | 00:43 | So to record to this pattern using my computer
keyboard--and make sure we're in Pattern mode--
| | 00:47 | then I click the Record button.
| | 00:49 | I get this message asking me what I want to
record today and in this case, since I'm recording
| | 00:53 | MIDI notes, I'm going to
choose Automation and Score.
| | 00:55 | So, you can see the Record button is now
enabled, and when I'm ready, I'll tap the Spacebar
| | 01:00 | or I'll click Play here to start recording.
| | 01:02 | I'll get a 4-beat count in and
then I'll play a couple of notes.
| | 01:05 | Now, since I'm recording to this pattern,
it's only one measure long so I don't need to record much.
| | 01:09 | All right, so here we go.
| | 01:10 | (audio playing)
| | 01:15 | I am going to stop it.
| | 01:17 | Now, let's turn off the record button to
get out of Record mode and we'll listen. (audio playing)
| | 01:26 | All right! So there's a short recording that I was
able to play by tapping keys on my computer keyboard
| | 01:30 | instead of drawing notes.
| | 01:31 | This can give my keyboard part a more human
feel, in the sense that I wasn't exactly on
| | 01:35 | time with any of these notes.
| | 01:37 | You can look at the grid here and you can see I
was ahead of the beat here, definitely ahead there.
| | 01:41 | It's pretty much on the beat right there.
| | 01:43 | And that's probably okay in most cases.
| | 01:45 | It depends on how perfect or
precise you want the performance to be.
| | 01:48 | Now, there are a couple of ways
to fix or quantize the timing.
| | 01:51 | Quantize means to take the
notes and line them up to the beats.
| | 01:54 | One way is to grab the Pencil tool and
drag the notes to line up to the beat markers.
| | 01:58 | (audio playing)
| | 02:00 | And again, if I want them to snap to the markers,
I can come up to the tools menu, where it currently
| | 02:05 | says None, and I can choose the time
division that I want to line up to.
| | 02:08 | So I'll choose a 1/4 beat.
| | 02:10 | Now, you can also choose Steps if you
want to line up to fractions of beats.
| | 02:16 | So that's actually giving me
quarter steps between beats snap to.
| | 02:19 | Now I can just kind of drag around. (music playing)
| | 02:20 | Now, we can also have FL studio
quantize all the notes for us at once.
| | 02:25 | To do this, we click the
dropdown menu and choose Tools > Quantize.
| | 02:30 | Here you can choose exactly how precisely
you want the notes to line up, and you can
| | 02:33 | even quantize the length
of the notes themselves.
| | 02:35 | So for instance, I can choose Quantize duration.
| | 02:38 | You can see that shortens all the notes to
the same length. Or I can choose Quantize end
| | 02:43 | time, which cuts the end of the
note off at the closest beat.
| | 02:46 | I'm going to choose Leave duration so each
note will be held exactly as long as I held it.
| | 02:51 | I'll click Accept.
| | 02:53 | So that lines up all of my notes. Let's listen.
(audio playing)
| | 03:01 | Now, if you don't like what this might have
done to the position of your notes, you're
| | 03:04 | still free to drag them around.
(audio playing)
| | 03:08 | And line them up as you need to.
| | 03:09 | Okay, so that's how to record yourself playing the
computer keyboard, but again, this isn't ideal either.
| | 03:14 | It feels much more natural
to play a real MIDI keyboard.
| | 03:16 | So if you have a MIDI keyboard controller,
you can connect it to your PC with a USB cable.
| | 03:20 | Make sure you've downloaded and installed
the drivers from the keyboard manufacturer,
| | 03:23 | if you haven't done so already, and then make
sure you do that before starting FL Studio.
| | 03:27 | It's also possible that windows
automatically installed a generic driver when you first
| | 03:31 | plugged your keyboard in. But if you have any
problems using your keyboard with FL Studio,
| | 03:34 | you should Google the name of the keyboard
with FL Studio and see if you can find a solution.
| | 03:39 | Chances are someone out there has right into the
same issue as you and they may have found a workaround.
| | 03:43 | But in this case, I already have an external
MIDI keyboard connected to my computer via USB.
| | 03:47 | Now, to set it up here in FL Studio, I'm
going to go to Options > MIDI settings.
| | 03:51 | I can also press F10 to get here. And here
under Input, I'll locate my MIDI keyboard,
| | 03:56 | and it's the only one here.
| | 03:57 | And I'm just going to make sure it's enabled.
| | 04:00 | So now when I close this window--I'll
just close the piano roll for a minute here.
| | 04:05 | I'll make sure my instrument is
selected, and now I can play my keyboard.
| | 04:08 | (audio playing)
| | 04:10 | And you don't have to take my word for it
that I'm playing a MIDI keyboard and not my
| | 04:14 | computer keyboard, because you can look up
here in the display as I play some notes.
| | 04:18 | (audio playing)
| | 04:21 | You can see the change in velocity,
indicating that I'm working with a real keyboard that
| | 04:25 | can sense how hard I'm hitting the notes. (audio playing)
| | 04:29 | Now this is something you can't get with
your computer keyboard, because it can't detect
| | 04:34 | how hard or softly you're hitting
the keys, but a MIDI keyboard can.
| | 04:37 | So let's clear out these notes again.
| | 04:39 | By the way, another way to do that--I'll
just undo that there--is to get the Select tool,
| | 04:46 | select all the notes you want to get
rid of, and just hit the Delete Key.
| | 04:49 | You might find it faster to draw a marquee
around notes if you have a lot of notes to get rid of.
| | 04:53 | And now I'll click the Record button again,
choose Automation and scroll once more, and here we go.
| | 05:00 | (audio playing)
| | 05:03 | And I hit the Spacebar
again to stop the recording.
| | 05:06 | Then again, here are my notes, but this time
notice the differences in velocity down here.
| | 05:09 | This note's a little bit quieter, the rest
of the notes are pretty consistent, but you
| | 05:12 | can see that one note
here is a little bit quieter.
| | 05:15 | Let's unarm this and listen to what we played.
(audio playing)
| | 05:22 | Now, I still have this problem with my
timing being a little bit off, but in addition to
| | 05:25 | being able to manually fix the notes or by
using the Quantize command, we can actually
| | 05:29 | have FL Studio fix the timing as I'm recording.
| | 05:32 | Let's click Undo, get rid of what I played,
and now I am to come back up to the toolbar
| | 05:37 | and I'm going to choose 1/2 beat.
| | 05:39 | Now, I'll record that part again, and I'll
use the Spacebar again to start the recording.
| | 05:45 | (audio playing)
| | 05:48 | Notice how everything is now
lined up to the quarter beat divisions.
| | 05:52 | (audio playing)
| | 05:56 | But that actually sort of messes
up the feel that I was going for.
| | 05:59 | I'm losing that syncopated feel with all the
notes falling in that quarter beat division.
| | 06:03 | Let's undo that one more time and now
try snapping to the sixth beat division.
| | 06:07 | So I'll come with the Record > Automation and
score one more time, and I'll record my part.
| | 06:13 | (audio playing)
| | 06:17 | Now, let's listen to that.
(audio playing)
| | 06:26 | Now you notice that instead of looping just
this first measure, it's now looping two measures.
| | 06:31 | That's because the tail end of this note has
actually creeped over into the second measure.
| | 06:35 | So FL Studio is now
including that measure in the loop.
| | 06:37 | I'm going to drag the tail end of this over so
it's not encroaching into measure two there.
| | 06:42 | (audio playing)
| | 06:49 | So that's more of the feel that I was going for.
| | 06:50 | Now, some of these notes came out a little bit
short for me, but of course I can lengthen them out.
| | 06:55 | (audio playing)
| | 06:59 | We want to make this two
notes instead of just one.
| | 07:02 | (audio playing)
| | 07:05 | Try that. (audio playing) I'm going to make that one a
little longer and this one a little bit shorter.
| | 07:16 | (audio playing) Okay, so I'm much happy with that.
| | 07:22 | All right, so that's how to actually
perform and record MIDI parts rather than drawing
| | 07:25 | the notes the by hand.
| | 07:26 | I've also shown you several ways you can
edit and fix your MIDI performances in this and
| | 07:30 | in the previous movie.
| | 07:31 | Next, we'll take a look at
creating additional patterns.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating multiple patterns| 00:00 | So far, we've been working with a single
one-measure pattern, and it sounds like this.
| | 00:04 | (audio playing)
| | 00:07 | So, it's safe to say it's pretty repetitive.
| | 00:10 | Now, we've seen that you can increase the
length of any pattern to add more beats and
| | 00:14 | introduce changes, but in FL studio, it's
useful to separate the sections of your song
| | 00:18 | into individual patterns when possible.
| | 00:20 | That makes it easy to then rearrange your
song if you decide that you want, say, two verses
| | 00:24 | in a row before the chorus, or if you want
to place a bridge in the middle of the song.
| | 00:28 | To create a new pattern, just click the Plus
button at the top of the Step Sequencer, give
| | 00:31 | the pattern a name--I'll call this one Intro
Drums--and now I'm looking at a new empty pattern.
| | 00:38 | Now, I can easily get back to the other
patterns in this project by clicking the name of the
| | 00:41 | current pattern and selecting the one I want.
| | 00:44 | Also, notice that it keeps all the same
instruments that I had in the first pattern, so you'll
| | 00:49 | continue seeing the same channels
regardless of which pattern you're working in.
| | 00:52 | All right, so let's start with the kick pattern.
(audio playing)
| | 01:09 | Now let's get a snare going too.
(audio playing)
| | 01:18 | Now let's quickly add some Hi-hat by right-
clicking the channel and choosing Fill each 4 steps.
| | 01:24 | (audio playing)
| | 01:29 | Okay, so there's my intro drum beat.
| | 01:32 | Now, let's add another pattern.
| | 01:34 | I call this one Intro Keys, and I'm going to
play some MIDI keyboard onto this pattern.
| | 01:41 | Now, I'm going to leave this at four beats
to the bar, even though the part I'm going
| | 01:44 | to record is actually longer than that.
| | 01:46 | It's going to be four bars long.
| | 01:47 | Now, we'll see what the
result will be in a moment.
| | 01:49 | Also, since I'm about to record keys by
themselves with no beat to accompany me, I need to turn
| | 01:53 | on the metronome so I can keep to the tempo.
| | 01:55 | We do this by clicking the metronome button here
in the toolbar, and I've hit the Spacebar to play.
| | 01:59 | We can hear it.
(audio playing)
| | 02:06 | You can also right-click the Metronome button to
choose from these three sounds. There's Hi-hat.
| | 02:12 | (audio playing)
| | 02:19 | That's beep, and I kind like the tick better.
| | 02:22 | Let's stick with that.
| | 02:23 | Now, you might find you want to pick one of the
other ones depending on what you're recording.
| | 02:27 | Some sounds will stick out better than
others based on the instrument you're recording.
| | 02:29 | All right, so now I'll click the Record button
and once again, I'll choose Automation & score
| | 02:34 | since I'm recording MIDI.
| | 02:36 | Now, when I hit play I'll get four beats
and a count-in and I'll start playing.
| | 02:39 | (audio playing) Of course, I want to make sure
I have my instrument selected.
| | 02:43 | So again, I'm playing
the 3xOsc. And here we go.
| | 02:49 | (audio playing)
| | 02:59 | Press Spacebar to stop, and there's my recording.
| | 03:02 | Let's listen to that.
| | 03:03 | Take this out of Record mode.
(audio playing)
| | 03:13 | Okay, since the metronome was still on,
I can tell that was pretty sloppy, but as we
| | 03:17 | saw earlier, I can fix that either
manually or automatically by quantizing my notes.
| | 03:21 | I'll right-click on that track, go to the
Piano roll, and I'm going to make sure I line
| | 03:25 | up to 1/4 beat. Then I'll come up to the menu
in the Piano roll, choose Tools > Quantize.
| | 03:33 | You can see that already lines them up.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to quantize the end time too so
they're all the same length. Theere we go. I'll accept.
| | 03:43 | Now let's hear how that sounds.
(audio playing)
| | 03:58 | I'm actually ahead of the beat here, so
let's shift that over. I'm going to zoom out
| | 04:02 | a little bit here so I can see all my notes.
| | 04:05 | (audio playing)
| | 04:09 | Stretch the end there.
(audio playing)
| | 04:14 | I might as well stretch that all the way to the
end of fourth measure. Let's hear how that sounds.
| | 04:23 | (audio playing)
| | 04:31 | Okay, I just need to stretch
that out, and that should be good. (audio playing)
| | 04:41 | All right! And you can see I have different
velocities down here, so I still have that sort of human
| | 04:45 | touch here, even though it's
perfectly on the beat now.
| | 04:47 | I'm going to turn off the metronome.
| | 04:49 | All right, so that sounds pretty
good, and it loops seamlessly now too.
| | 04:53 | Now even though this pattern was set up to
be only one measure, I played four measures;
| | 04:56 | yet FL Studio recorded the whole thing.
| | 04:58 | When you record an instrument,
the pattern will play as long as you play.
| | 05:02 | Notice what happens though if I,
say, add a hi-hat to every two beats.
| | 05:08 | (audio playing)
| | 05:19 | So it only plays the
hi-hat for the first measure.
| | 05:22 | If you want the sequence to repeat itself
and match the length of the longest recording
| | 05:25 | in the pattern--in this case the MIDI notes--
you need to click the Repeat step sequencer
| | 05:29 | button. So with that selected,
bow when I play this pattern...
| | 05:31 | (audio playing)
| | 05:40 | ...now the sequence repeats itself.
| | 05:42 | Now, this is fine as long as you want the
same single measure of beats playing over
| | 05:45 | your entire instrument performance.
| | 05:47 | If you want more variation in the beat,
you'll have to extend the beats per bar, using the
| | 05:51 | Beats per bar setting here.
| | 05:52 | Well, you might have four because actually
you don't want any beats in this pattern,
| | 05:57 | so I'm just going to right-click and drag
through to get rid of that Hi-hat, and this
| | 06:01 | pattern will just have the keys in it.
| | 06:02 | All right, so now I have a
couple of patterns created.
| | 06:05 | In the next chapter, we'll start
assembling the patterns into a song.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Using the PlaylistExamining the Playlist window| 00:00 | In the previous chapter, we looked at how
to create multiple patterns in the Channel
| | 00:03 | window using the step
sequencer and by playing the keyboard.
| | 00:07 | One way of using patterns is to create
individual sections of a larger project separately.
| | 00:11 | The place where everything comes
together is in the Playlist window.
| | 00:14 | You can open it using its button in the
toolbar or with the keyboard shortcut of F5.
| | 00:20 | So here you can combine and loop the
patterns you've created, as well as audio clips, and
| | 00:25 | you can also add things like automation and
combine everything together into a song or project.
| | 00:29 | But before we get into the specifics,
let's take a quick tour around the Playlist window.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to make this
window a little bit bigger.
| | 00:35 | All right, so at the top of the Playlist
window is the toolbar, and this is where you'll find
| | 00:40 | tools for editing and arranging your project.
| | 00:43 | You might notice that these tools are very
similar to the tools we saw in the Piano roll.
| | 00:47 | You can see them right here.
| | 00:51 | And they are nearly identical, with a
few exceptions, but more on that later.
| | 00:54 | Below the tools we have three tabs.
| | 00:56 | These are the Focus tabs, and you use them
to determine which elements are displayed
| | 01:00 | here in the main portion of the window.
| | 01:02 | The default is pattern clips, which you'll see
when you're adding patterns that you created
| | 01:05 | in the step sequencer.
| | 01:07 | Automation allows you to program or automate
certain properties or behaviors of your song.
| | 01:12 | For example, you can automate the volume
levels of a track so it gets louder or quieter at
| | 01:16 | specific points of the song.
| | 01:17 | The other tab is Audio clips.
| | 01:20 | This tab becomes selected when you
manage your audio clips and live recordings.
| | 01:24 | So again, these three tabs determine what you see and
work with in the main section of the playlist window.
| | 01:29 | So the main portion of the window is comprised
with these tracks, and they are labeled Track
| | 01:34 | 1, Track 2, Track 3, and so
on, all the way up to Track 99.
| | 01:40 | So you can have up to 99
tracks in your playlist.
| | 01:43 | Each track has a Mute button so
you can quickly silence its contents.
| | 01:46 | Now, the cool thing here is the Mute button
works not just for sounds, but also for automation.
| | 01:51 | So if you have automation data on a track
and you want to hear what the playback sounds
| | 01:54 | like without it, you can just click the
Mute button to temporarily turn it off.
| | 01:57 | The mute button also acts a solo button if
you right-click it. That means all the other
| | 02:02 | tracks except the one you click.
| | 02:04 | I'll right-click it again to unsolo it.
| | 02:06 | Now, in terms of viewing your project's pieces,
you can scroll left or right, you can grab
| | 02:12 | the handle at the end of the scrollbar to
adjust the width of the divisions and zoom
| | 02:16 | in or out of the display, and you can do the same
thing vertically with this button here. All right!
| | 02:26 | So that's a rundown of the Playlist window.
| | 02:27 | Next, we'll take a look at some ways to
use it to combine our patterns into a song, or
| | 02:31 | at least the start of one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining patterns| 00:00 | If you've worked with other digital audio
work stations, or DAWs, it will definitely
| | 00:04 | take some time to get used to
the way playlists work in FL Studio.
| | 00:07 | Unlike in many other apps, you don't have to
dedicate a track to each individual instrument or sound.
| | 00:11 | Instead, you can create patterns that
contain parts already mixed together and then drag
| | 00:15 | those onto a single track in the
Playlist window to assemble your song.
| | 00:18 | For example, I previously put together this
pattern we called Intro Drums, and it contains
| | 00:23 | a simple Kick, Snare, and Hi-hat beat.
| | 00:26 | (audio playing)
| | 00:32 | All right! So I want to
make that part of my song.
| | 00:33 | Let's go back to the Playlist window, and here you have
two main tools for getting your patterns into your project.
| | 00:38 | We have the Draw tool and the Paint tool.
| | 00:41 | Let's start with the Draw tool.
| | 00:43 | You can see it looks like a pencil.
| | 00:44 | Now, with this tool is selected, I'm going to
go the menu at the top of the Playlist window
| | 00:48 | and make sure Intro Drums is selected.
| | 00:51 | That way FL Studio knows
which pattern I want to place.
| | 00:54 | So to place the pattern, I'll just click
once at any point on any track, and there I have
| | 00:59 | one instance of the pattern.
| | 01:00 | If I click somewhere else on
another track, I get another instance.
| | 01:03 | Now, I want to play this back, but in order
to listen to my song, I need to switch from
| | 01:07 | pattern mode to song mode.
| | 01:09 | Now notice if I leave pattern
mode selected, and I hit Play...
| | 01:13 | (audio playing)
| | 01:21 | So that's just the pattern
itself looping over and over again.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to switch to song mode.
| | 01:25 | This time you can see a playhead has appeared,
and when I click Play, you'll see the playhead
| | 01:28 | moved across the Playlist window,
indicating where I am in the song.
| | 01:34 | (audio playing)
| | 01:41 | So that's very important. In order to hear
what's going on in your Playlist window,
| | 01:44 | you have to be in song mode.
| | 01:45 | Okay, so the Draw tool lets me play single
instances of the selected pattern into my song.
| | 01:49 | Now, if I want to line them up better,
I can come up here to the Snap menu, and you can
| | 01:54 | see here, it's already
set up to line up to beats.
| | 01:56 | So if I drag this around, you can see it's
snapping right to the beats. And now it sounds like this.
| | 02:06 | (audio playing)
| | 02:11 | Now, depending on the pattern and what you want to
do, the Draw tool might be the right tool to use.
| | 02:15 | If you only want to drop a single instance
of your pattern into the song, just click
| | 02:18 | and drag it where it needs to be.
| | 02:22 | But if you want to loop a pattern out so
that it repeats itself several times in a row,
| | 02:25 | you'll want the Paint tool instead.
| | 02:27 | Let's first delete these three instances by right-
clicking on them, and then I'll select the Paint tool.
| | 02:33 | Now, the Paint tool works similarly to
the Draw tool if you just click and release.
| | 02:39 | Each time you click, you get
one instance of the pattern.
| | 02:41 | I'll go ahead and delete those. I'm just
holding down, right-click, and touching the ones I
| | 02:46 | want to get rid of.
| | 02:47 | But if you click and drag with the Paint tool, you can
paint continuous loops of your pattern onto the track.
| | 02:52 | So maybe I'll start here on
Track 1 and just drag to the right.
| | 02:57 | I'll keep going here so it scrolls over a
little bit, and I think I only want 12 measures,
| | 03:03 | so let me right-click on the 13 there.
| | 03:04 | Let's make sure I didn't put down 14.
| | 03:06 | Okay, so we've got 12 measures of the beat now.
| | 03:09 | So, my track now has several
repetitions of this one pattern.
| | 03:12 | (audio playing)
| | 03:19 | Now, it's important to keep in mind that FL
Studio really is just playing the pattern
| | 03:22 | you created note for note.
| | 03:24 | I didn't create anything by
using the Paint tool here.
| | 03:26 | All I've done is tell FL Studio to look at
the pattern called Intro Drums and play that
| | 03:30 | pattern each time an instance appears.
| | 03:32 | So, if I were to change this pattern,
its instances in the playlist would also change.
| | 03:36 | For instance, I'll go back to the step
sequencer here, and I'll delete the hi-hat beats.
| | 03:43 | You probably even saw the notes change
slightly here in the playlist, and now the pattern in
| | 03:46 | the playlist sounds like this.
(audio playing)
| | 03:52 | So we no longer have that
Hi-hat beat. All right!
| | 03:55 | So next I'll add the keyboard part.
| | 03:56 | I'm going to switch to Intro Keys.
| | 04:00 | You might have seen that it switched to intro keys
there in the background too, here in the step sequencer.
| | 04:04 | But now with my Paint tool selected, I'll
click to have it start on, say, the fifth measure,
| | 04:09 | or right around there, and I'll have it
repeat twice. I'll just drag to the right.
| | 04:13 | We have two repetitions. I'm going to drag that over,
but you can see they're linked together. And let's have that
| | 04:19 | line up to measure 5, and
now it sounds like this.
| | 04:21 | (audio playing)
| | 04:46 | And then it loops back.
| | 04:47 | So, now I have two tracks of content, and I could
keep adding patterns to continue building my song.
| | 04:52 | Now, let's say I do want to have that Hi-hat
part back, but I don't want it to start until
| | 04:55 | the keyboard part begins.
| | 04:57 | Now, there are at least two ways I could do this.
| | 04:59 | I could open the keyboard part in the
step sequencer and then add the Hi-hat here.
| | 05:05 | Now, as a side note, I want to switch back
to the Playlist window, but you have to be
| | 05:08 | careful when you have the Paint Brush tool
selected, because if you're used to clicking
| | 05:11 | the window to bring it to the front, like
I'm going to do here, notice it did bring the
| | 05:15 | window to the front, but now I added
another instance of the keyboard part.
| | 05:18 | I can just right-click it to get rid of it,
but it would be kind of annoying to have a
| | 05:21 | new part appear everytime you
bring the window to the front.
| | 05:24 | This is why it's a good idea
to know the keyboard shortcuts.
| | 05:27 | I'll bring the step sequencer to the
front again, but this time I'll press F5.
| | 05:31 | You can see that brings
the playlist to the front.
| | 05:32 | So the F5 again is the Playlist shortcut button.
| | 05:34 | And that allows me to bring it to the
front without accidentally adding any parts.
| | 05:38 | All right, so now that I've added the Hi-hat to
the keyboard part, I'm going to click Forward
| | 05:42 | so we can hear what it sounds like.
(audio playing)
| | 05:50 | All right! So that's one way to do it, but what if I
wanted the Hi-hat part to start two measures before the keys?
| | 05:55 | In that case, I can't have the Hi-hat part be
part of the keys, so let's start by removing them.
| | 05:59 | Let's go back to the step sequencer.
| | 06:01 | I'll just drag to remove that, and
now I'll create a new pattern.
| | 06:05 | Click the plus button, call it Hi Hat,
and I'll have this appear every two steps.
| | 06:13 | Now, another way you can bring the
playlist to the front is to click its title bar.
| | 06:17 | That way I don't accidentally
draw another pattern on there.
| | 06:19 | So as long as you can see the title bar,
that's another way to bring a window to the front.
| | 06:23 | And maybe I'll have this start
on measure three of its own track.
| | 06:26 | So with the paintbrush, I'm just
going to click and drag to the right.
| | 06:29 | I have got a couple of extra in there, so
I'll just right-click to get rid of them, and
| | 06:36 | now the hi-hat has its own track.
| | 06:39 | (audio playing)
| | 06:54 | All right! So that's how you add patterns to your
playlist, and now we're well on our way to assembling our song.
| | 06:59 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding audio clips| 00:00 | Not all of the sounds you use in your FL Studio Project
will be generated from within FL Studio every single time.
| | 00:06 | Instead of programing a beat or playing in
a MIDI keyboard, you might want to import
| | 00:09 | other audio files like sound effects, samples,
or even performances you recorded in other apps.
| | 00:15 | So in this movie, I'll show you how to
import an audio file into your project.
| | 00:18 | Let's start by choosing Channels > Add one,
and then from here, I'll choose Audio clip.
| | 00:22 | Notice that adds one
channel to the Channel window.
| | 00:25 | It's called Audio Clip. And remember, no
matter what pattern you have selected, you always
| | 00:30 | have the same channels in each pattern.
| | 00:32 | It's just a matter of whether you
use this channels in those patterns.
| | 00:34 | But currently, this channel is empty because I
don't have a sound assigned to that Audio Clip channel.
| | 00:39 | So I'll click it to open
the Channels Settings window.
| | 00:40 | Then I'll click the Folder button to
browse for the file I want to import.
| | 00:44 | Now here, under Files of type, you can see all
the different audio formats that are supported
| | 00:49 | by FL Studio, and you can
see it supports quite a few.
| | 00:51 | I have a wave file of a guitar
track sitting here on my Desktop,
| | 00:54 | so I'll select it, and we'll bring that in.
| | 00:57 | So, you can see, it's now loaded into the
Channel Settings window for that channel.
| | 01:01 | The channel itself has
changed to the name of the file.
| | 01:03 | Now, I could click the place of beat here
to trigger that guitar part, and if I switch
| | 01:07 | back to pattern mode, you can hear it.
| | 01:10 | (audio playing)
| | 01:19 | But that doesn't really work in this case
because the clip is longer than the pattern,
| | 01:22 | and each time it loops, it
starts playing another instance.
| | 01:24 | Now I could create a new pattern and extend
its length to fit the entire guitar clip in
| | 01:28 | here, but I want to be able to add the audio file
directly to my project so I can edit or manipulate it.
| | 01:33 | So, let's unclick that beat,
and we just right-click.
| | 01:35 | Instead, I'm going to go to the Channel
Settings window and down here at the bottom, I'm going
| | 01:40 | to grab the audio waveform preview and drag
it onto its own track in the playlist window.
| | 01:44 | (audio playing)
| | 01:50 | And we are going to line that up
with the keyboard part, right there.
| | 01:53 | And now, I'll switch back to
song mode, and let's listen. (audio playing)
| | 02:09 | All right! That's lining up, but I really don't
like the way the guitar sound is combining with
| | 02:13 | the key sound right now.
| | 02:14 | It kind of makes it sound
that something is distorting.
| | 02:15 | Let me just play a little bit here.
| | 02:19 | (audio playing)
| | 02:31 | Okay, it's not really distorting,
but it's just the tone of the keyboard,
| | 02:34 | now that I have introduced another instrument, that
actually makes it sound like it's kind of distorting.
| | 02:38 | So, let's go back to the step sequencer.
Then I'll click 3xOsc to bring its settings up.
| | 02:44 | Now, let's go back to the Pattern mode, and we can
loop this a couple of times so I can listen to it.
| | 02:48 | Oops, of course, we have to switch
to the keyboard part. There we go.
| | 02:54 | (audio playing)
| | 03:00 | Okay, so I don't think the square wave is
really working now, so let's make it something
| | 03:04 | a little less harsh.
(audio playing)
| | 03:14 | All right! That works a
little bit better for me.
| | 03:16 | Okay, so now I've changed
the sound of the keyboard.
| | 03:19 | Let's go back and put this back into song
mode, and see how the two are blending now.
| | 03:24 | (audio playing)
| | 03:45 | All right! That sounds better to me.
| | 03:47 | Now you saw that I went into the step sequencer
here, and I was playing around with the volume
| | 03:51 | controls for each particular channel.
| | 03:52 | That just lets me set the initial
levels for each one of these channels.
| | 03:56 | In reality, when I actually go
to mix, I'll be using the Mixer.
| | 03:58 | But we'll be talking about
the Mixer in the next chapter.
| | 04:01 | In this case, I just wanted to set the initial
levels of the sounds here in the step sequencer.
| | 04:06 | This actually proved to be a pretty good
example, because you might find that when you start
| | 04:09 | combining different parts or sounds into
your playlist, that they don't really sound that
| | 04:13 | great when combined together, and you might
have to do some kind of manipulation to one
| | 04:16 | or the other to make them
really sync up together well.
| | 04:19 | But in any case, that's how you
bring an audio file into your project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing audio clips| 00:00 | Once you've added patterns and audio clips
to your project, you're free to manipulate
| | 00:04 | and edit them as needed.
| | 00:05 | Let's take a look at some of
the tools you might need to use.
| | 00:07 | Now, we already know that with the Draw
and Paint tool selected, you can hover over a
| | 00:11 | clip and move it both horizontally on its
current track or move it to another track.
| | 00:17 | If you place your cursor over the left or right
end of a clip, you can drag to shorten the clip.
| | 00:24 | And right now my moves are snapping to the beat--
| | 00:25 | you can see this is jumping to each beat marker--
because I have beats selected here in the Snap to grid menu.
| | 00:33 | And by the way, you can snap to divisions other
than the divisions selected here in the toolbar.
| | 00:37 | You can see it's currently set to None.
| | 00:39 | But this is the main Snap menu
that governs the entire project.
| | 00:42 | If I want the Playlist window to match this,
I could select Main from here, or you can
| | 00:46 | choose a separate snap division.
| | 00:47 | I'll leave it set to Beat.
| | 00:49 | Now another way to
shorten a clip is to slice it.
| | 00:51 | The Slice tool is right here, and it
looks like a little utility knife.
| | 00:54 | And with that, I can click and drag
straight down where I want to make the slice.
| | 01:00 | Now my guitar clip has
been changed into two clips.
| | 01:03 | This can make it easy to make different parts of
the same clip play at different times in your song.
| | 01:07 | It's much easier than putting down two
complete instances of the same clip and then dragging
| | 01:11 | the edges in for both of them.
| | 01:12 | Now I should also point out that this is
nondestructive, meaning you can always restore the clip back
| | 01:17 | to its full length at any time.
| | 01:18 | So, if I wanted this clip to go back to
its whole original state, I could just delete
| | 01:22 | one of them, by right-clicking it, and
again I'm doing that with the Draw tool, but
| | 01:25 | you can also do it with the Paint tool.
| | 01:26 | And I'll just drag the left border of this
second clip back to the left, and that reveals
| | 01:31 | the beginning of the clip again,
sonow my clip is whole once more.
| | 01:34 | Now, each clip also has its own built-in command
menu, which you can access by clicking right by its name.
| | 01:39 | You can see my cursor turns into this finger-
pointing icon, and here I'll find several commands
| | 01:44 | related to your clip.
| | 01:45 | One that I found useful is Make unique.
| | 01:48 | We saw earlier that each one of these clips
are just instances of the original pattern.
| | 01:52 | But if I want to change one instance of this
pattern without changing the others, I can make it unique.
| | 01:56 | Notice this is now called Hi Hat #2.
| | 01:57 | If I go to the step sequencer, I
can see Hi Hat #2 has now been created.
| | 02:02 | There's the original Hi
Hat, and here's Hi Hat #2.
| | 02:05 | And right now, it's still a duplicate of the
original pattern, but I'll make a change here.
| | 02:09 | Say, Fill each 4 steps, and now if I go back to
the playlist, I can see those changes reflected
| | 02:15 | just by looking at the clip,
and it sounds like this now.
| | 02:19 | (audio playing)
| | 02:25 | Now, if you bring up the menu on in audio
clip like the guitar clip here, you'll see
| | 02:29 | additional commands are available.
| | 02:31 | For example, we also see the Make unique
command here, but I can find some other cool things
| | 02:34 | like Chop, which has several options for
automatically chopping your clip up to create things like
| | 02:39 | a stuttering effect.
| | 02:40 | I'll choose Stutter 2,
and now it sounds like this.
| | 02:44 | (audio playing)
| | 02:57 | I'm going to grab the Zoom tool
and drag a marquee around the clip.
| | 03:03 | You can see that a little bit better.
| | 03:06 | And you can see how this is really
chopped up into individual pieces now.
| | 03:10 | Let's click off in there once.
| | 03:12 | Each of these is actually an individual clip.
| | 03:15 | And this would be a huge pain to
manually do with the Slice tool.
| | 03:18 | We'll go back to my History though and just
undo that chopping, select the to whole again.
| | 03:24 | But that's an effect you might
find fun to play around with.
| | 03:26 | Again, that's just going the menu here, choosing Chop,
and you can choose different types of Stutter effects.
| | 03:32 | Now, another ability you might find useful
is the Edit Sample command, which I'll find
| | 03:38 | here under Sample, and I'll choose Edit sample.
| | 03:41 | This opens up the clip in the Edison Editor.
| | 03:44 | This is a plugin that ships with FL Studio,
and it's a very powerful audio editing mini-
| | 03:48 | application in here.
| | 03:49 | We have access to tons of tools to
manipulate and clean up the sound of the clip.
| | 03:52 | For example, maybe I want to EQ the clip a
bit. I can click the Equalize button, and
| | 03:57 | I'll click Preview to
hear how it currently sounds.
| | 03:59 | (audio playing)
| | 04:03 | It just gives me a little sample there.
| | 04:07 | Now, let's do something extreme
here so you can hear the difference.
| | 04:09 | Let's drop the Bass.
| | 04:10 | I'll just raise this up.
| | 04:14 | We'll hear how that sounds.
(audio playing)
| | 04:24 | So, if I wanted to apply this effect
to my clip, I could click Accept here.
| | 04:29 | I'll just click Reset and close this for now.
But that's the Edison Module.
| | 04:34 | Again, it's a very powerful set of tools
here that you have available in FL Studio.
| | 04:37 | All right, I'm going to get the Zoom tool
again, hold down Alt on my keyboard, and click
| | 04:42 | to zoom back out, and there you have a
handful of ways you can edit your patterns and audio
| | 04:46 | clips once they're
sitting here in your playlist.
| | 04:48 | Be sure to take some time on your own to play
around with the tools and the menus I showed you here.
| | 04:51 | There are a ton of cool things to discover.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Automating volume| 00:00 | So far we've seen how to add patterns to clips
on our playlist, as well as how to add audio clips.
| | 00:05 | Notice when I select the guitar clip--I am
going to make sure I have my Pencil tool selected
| | 00:08 | here. Notice when I select this, our focus
changes to the audio clip focus, and if I click
| | 00:13 | on a pattern, it changes to the pattern focus.
| | 00:17 | The third type of clip you
can use is an automation clip.
| | 00:20 | Now, unlike the pattern and audio clips,
automation clips are not sound sources.
| | 00:24 | They don't cause sounds to
be played in you project.
| | 00:26 | Instead they play the important role of
letting you automate how the sounds are played back.
| | 00:30 | Using automation clips, you can have properties
like the clip volume and panning change automatically
| | 00:34 | during the playback of your song.
| | 00:36 | Let's take a look at how this works.
| | 00:37 | Now, automation does work a little
differently depending on whether you're automating an
| | 00:40 | audio clip or a pattern.
| | 00:42 | Let's start with an audio clip.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to open the menu here on the
guitar track, which is an audio clip, and here we'll
| | 00:48 | find Automate, and you can see we
can choose between Panning and Volume.
| | 00:52 | Let's go with Volume.
| | 00:53 | Now it kind of looks like the clip has
changed colors, but what's really happened is we've
| | 00:57 | added an automation clip to the project.
| | 00:59 | Notice we're now in automation focus.
| | 01:01 | If I switch back to the Audio Clip Focus,
you can see the actual audio clip comes back
| | 01:05 | to the front, and you can kind of make out
that the automation clip is sitting behind it.
| | 01:09 | In fact let me get the Zoom tool here,
zoom in on that. So there's the audio clip, and
| | 01:16 | that brings the automation clip into focus.
| | 01:18 | So, I'm going to select the Draw tool.
| | 01:20 | Notice when I roll over the animation clip,
it kind of highlights, and we see three dots
| | 01:24 | appear at the beginning, the middle, and the end.
| | 01:28 | This line connecting them represents the
volume, and I can use these notes to adjust the line
| | 01:32 | and draw how I want the volume
to proceed throughout this clip.
| | 01:35 | For example, I can grab the one on the left.
| | 01:36 | You can see it looks like a
little pinching finger there.
| | 01:39 | Let's drag that straight down.
| | 01:40 | So, I've just indicated that I want the volume
of the clip to start low and then get increasingly
| | 01:45 | louder until it reaches full
volume at the end of the clip.
| | 01:48 | Let's hear what that sounds like.
| | 01:50 | (music playing)
| | 02:06 | So you should have been able to hear the
guitar getting increasingly louder there.
| | 02:09 | So I can grab either end--and I'll just grab
the right end this time--and make adjustments
| | 02:13 | to the start and end volumes.
| | 02:15 | Now, just note in the middle is used to add a
curve so that transitions happen more quickly
| | 02:19 | or more gradually. So I can't drag that
left and right; I can only drag it up or down.
| | 02:24 | But right now, I can only
control two points of volume.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to come up here and check Step.
| | 02:28 | I'm going to throw a slide for a moment.
| | 02:30 | Now, what step allows me to do is to click on
the line and add additional control points.
| | 02:37 | And you can see that the control points
are the larger circles. In between each larger
| | 02:42 | circle is a handle that I can use to
adjust the curve between those points.
| | 02:47 | Now with Steps Select, I could also just
ignore this existing line and draw my own.
| | 02:50 | You just maybe start clicking
right here and just drag across.
| | 02:56 | And you can see that puts a whole series
of control points across my volume control.
| | 02:59 | We can also get rid of them by
right-clicking and just dragging across.
| | 03:04 | You can see, let's just quickly delete some all.
| | 03:08 | Let me add a couple more points here,
and let me turn off Step and turn Slide on.
| | 03:20 | Now ,slide lets me grab a node and adjust
it left or right, and the points before and
| | 03:26 | after it shift along with it,
| | 03:28 | as long as I adjust it horizontally.
| | 03:29 | I can also move up and down at the same time.
| | 03:32 | And you can see when I move vertically
that the handle between the two points moves up
| | 03:35 | and down as well. Let's slide that back there.
| | 03:38 | Now, with both Step and Slide unchecked, grabbing
one of those handles just moves independently
| | 03:44 | of the ones around it.
| | 03:45 | So that's how to draw
automation curves on an audio clip.
| | 03:48 | Now, when it comes to patterns, the
process works a little bit differently.
| | 03:50 | I'm just going to mute this guitar track
for the moment, and let's zoom back out, and I'm
| | 03:55 | going to hold out Alt of the Zoom tool.
| | 03:56 | Oops, that's the select tool. Alt and I get
the select tool and click off of there, and
| | 04:02 | let's automate the keyboard track.
| | 04:04 | So if I want to automate this clip,
I need to open up the pattern in the Sequencer.
| | 04:07 | So I go back to the sequencer, go to Intro
Keys, and I'll click the 3xOsc Keyboard channel
| | 04:13 | to open up the Channel Settings window.
| | 04:15 | Now, at the top of this window,
I have dials for pan, volume, and pitch.
| | 04:19 | If I right-click on the volume dial, you see one
of the options here is to Create an Automation Clip.
| | 04:24 | In fact you can actually right-click on lots of
the different dials here and create automation clips.
| | 04:29 | So we can automate panning, pitch, the
individual line controls for the different models in
| | 04:36 | the keyboard itself.
| | 04:37 | So if you see that automation command appear,
you can automate the property you clicked on.
| | 04:42 | So, we're not limited to
just volume and panning.
| | 04:44 | Let's stick with volume in this case though.
| | 04:45 | So, I'll right-click on that and choose Create
Automation Clip, and that creates an automation
| | 04:50 | clip here in track five
that's tied into the 3xOsc keyboard part.
| | 04:54 | You can see right here its name:
3xOsc Channel Volume Envelope.
| | 04:58 | An envelope is another
name for an automation curve.
| | 05:01 | And you will see the same line here
representing the volume of the clip.
| | 05:04 | And from this point, it works pretty much
the same as it did for the audio clip, but
| | 05:07 | in this case the automation clip
is as long as the entire project.
| | 05:10 | So, I want to make sure my control points
are placed in relation to the position of
| | 05:13 | the keyboard part above.
| | 05:14 | So for example, if I want the keyboard part
to swell up at the beginning, you could turn
| | 05:18 | on Step and click to add a point right here
on the beat where the keyboard part starts.
| | 05:23 | Of course I have to have my Draw tool there.
| | 05:26 | So I'll click to add a point right
where the keyboard part starts.
| | 05:29 | I'll just drag down, and add
another note here and drag up.
| | 05:33 | Let me grab that handle there and drag
down so you have a little bit more of a swell.
| | 05:39 | So, and maybe I have to dip down again
right around here and then have it come back up,
| | 05:46 | or however I want to draw it.
| | 05:49 | Adjust some of these nodes.
| | 05:51 | Let's turn this step off
so I can grab this point.
| | 05:56 | Let's bring it back up. And we should
be able to hear what that sounds like.
| | 06:02 | (music playing)
| | 06:13 | All right, so there's my
automation curve for volume.
| | 06:16 | Now you can add multiple automation curves
and go back to the Channel Settings window,
| | 06:21 | right-click on pan, and choose
Create Automation Clip again.
| | 06:24 | You can see that it adds another automation
clip, this time to Track 6. You can see this is
| | 06:28 | a panning envelope.
| | 06:30 | So I could create points and drag up to move
the panning to the right or drag down to move
| | 06:33 | the panning to the left.
| | 06:36 | Turn on Step and I could do stuff like this.
| | 06:46 | And if you are wearing headphones
you should be able to hear this effect.
| | 06:49 | (music playing)
| | 07:06 | Now, also, as I previously mentioned, since
the automation clips appear on their own tracks,
| | 07:09 | you can easily temporarily disable
the automation by just muting the track.
| | 07:14 | And now the keyboard will play full volume so I
can focus on listening to the panning automation.
| | 07:18 | (music playing)
| | 07:25 | All right, so that's working with automation
on both patterns and audio clips in FL Studio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Using the MixerExamining the mixer| 00:00 | So up to this point, we've assembled the various
patterns and audio clips into the playlist of our project.
| | 00:05 | In this chapter, we're going to focus on
the mixer, where everything comes together and
| | 00:09 | where you can put finishing touches on your song
or project before you export it out of FL Studio.
| | 00:13 | Let's start with a look at the mixer's layout.
| | 00:15 | I can bring it to the front using the
button in the toolbar or you can press F9, and I'm
| | 00:18 | just going to hide all the
other panels for a moment here.
| | 00:23 | Just close that. And I'll make the mixer a
little bit bigger so you can see it better.
| | 00:30 | All right, so this is the Mixer window.
| | 00:32 | Starting on the left,
we have the Master channel.
| | 00:34 | That's the master channel
for your entire project.
| | 00:36 | You can see its labeled Master here.
| | 00:38 | Now, this is the final channel that all of
your audio passes through before it goes to
| | 00:41 | your speakers or your
headphones, or before you export the file.
| | 00:44 | However, the audio sounds when it passes
through the Master channel is how it's going to sound.
| | 00:48 | Next, we have Insert channels.
| | 00:50 | Pretty much all of your instruments, samples,
synths, and so on--just about all of your sounds,
| | 00:54 | will pass through one of these channels.
| | 00:56 | So, just as we can have up to 99 tracks in
the playlist window, you can view up to 99
| | 01:00 | corresponding Insert channels in the mixer.
| | 01:02 | You can see the other channels by using
the scrollbar in the upper left-hand corner.
| | 01:05 | So you can see that I'm scrolling. We're seeing
the different Inserts, all the way up to Insert 99.
| | 01:12 | Just take that back. If you're using a
lot of tracks, you'll probably find it useful
| | 01:15 | to make the window wider like I've done so here.
| | 01:17 | So next to the Inserts,
we have the Send channels.
| | 01:20 | There are four of them, and these work pretty much
like they do in other digital audio work stations.
| | 01:24 | Sends are used primarily for effects
processing or for additional audio outputs.
| | 01:27 | Now, the right side of the mixer is where you
find the plug-in Inserts for adding effects
| | 01:31 | to the selected channels.
| | 01:32 | Now, this section of the mixer changes to
reflect which channel you're currently working
| | 01:35 | on and the changes you're making to it.
| | 01:37 | For example, I have the
Master track selected here,
| | 01:39 | so you can see that it already has the
Edison and Fruity Limiter plugins applied to it.
| | 01:43 | Edison, as we've seen, is an audio editor
plugin, and the Fruity Limiter is one of FL
| | 01:47 | Studio's compressor plugins.
| | 01:49 | But if I select one of the other channels,
you see they have nothing else applied to
| | 01:52 | them at the moment, so nothing
appears over here in plugins.
| | 01:56 | Now, each channel also has a
series of dials and buttons.
| | 01:59 | There's a meter at the top of each channel,
so you can keep an eye on your levels.
| | 02:01 | If I click Play, you'll see the meter start
dropping (music playing)
| | 02:10 | Now you can toggle between seeing meters and
seeing waveforms by clicking the Mixer window's
| | 02:15 | dropdown menu and choosing View > Waveforms.
| | 02:18 | So now we see waveforms here instead.
(music playing)
| | 02:29 | There's also some other
configuration things that you can do in here.
| | 02:31 | Like if you want the
names at the bottom instead.
| | 02:33 | That sort of reverses the order here.
| | 02:35 | I'm not really used to working like that,
so I'm going to switch that back.
| | 02:39 | Then I'll switch it back to seeing the
meters instead of the waveforms.
| | 02:43 | Now below the meters on each channel, we
have a Pan dial, which is this arc that you see
| | 02:47 | here. You can click on it to drag it up
or down to signal to the right or to the left.
| | 02:52 | It will snap back into the center.
| | 02:54 | So, if I click and move it by
accident, it's easy to set back.
| | 02:56 | Now, don't confuse it with the Stereo
Separation dial, which is this dial right here.
| | 03:01 | While panning is for moving a sound more to
the right or left of a stereo mix, the stereo
| | 03:05 | separation dial is for increasing or
decreasing the stereo effect of a stereo track.
| | 03:09 | This lets you make the left and right tracks
sound further apart or closer together, and
| | 03:13 | it only works for stereo tracks;
it has no effect on mono tracks.
| | 03:16 | And between the panning and the stereo
separation dial is the Mute and Solo button.
| | 03:21 | Left-click the button to mute the channel
or right-click it to solo it, which basically
| | 03:25 | mutes all the other channels.
| | 03:26 | And of course, we have the Faders, which we drag
up and down to set the overall level of the track.
| | 03:32 | Next to the fader we have several other
buttons, like the polarity or phase reverse button.
| | 03:37 | We have the arm for record button down here.
| | 03:39 | We have a button to swap left and right
channels, and we'll get to some more of these a little
| | 03:44 | bit later in this chapter.
| | 03:45 | Also, I should mention that you'll find
redundant controls over here on the right side of the
| | 03:48 | mixer for each channel.
| | 03:50 | So we have the same
reverse polarity button here.
| | 03:53 | See, it lights up there when I click.
| | 03:54 | Notice if I move the fader over here,
it moves the fader there and Insert 3 as well.
| | 03:58 | And the same goes for panning, but on this
side I use this graph to adjust my panning.
| | 04:03 | You can see I can drag left to right to
adjust the panning or use the graph to drag up and
| | 04:08 | down to adjust the volume.
| | 04:10 | I'll just set that back by
centering it. There we go.
| | 04:14 | Now, you do however, have an EQ unit over here
for each channel, and that doesn't appear elsewhere.
| | 04:18 | And that's for setting the
EQ of the selected track.
| | 04:21 | And at the top and bottom of the right
side here, we have the IN and OUT menus.
| | 04:25 | In is for assigning which audio input from
your audio input device or sound card you
| | 04:28 | want to use, so if you have an audio input
device with multiple inputs--maybe one for
| | 04:32 | a guitar and one for a microphone--you
can choose which one you want to use.
| | 04:36 | Now, Out here is generally going to be set to none,
so the audio will go through your master channel.
| | 04:40 | But if you want to send the output
directly to another device, say your sound card or
| | 04:44 | some other external device, you can
select it from here, if it's available.
| | 04:47 | Okay, so there's an
overview of the mixer interface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Routing| 00:00 | In the last movie, we looked at the mixer and
we kind of saw that each individual instrument
| | 00:04 | ends up on each Insert, which allows us to adjust
the levels of the instruments relative to each other--
| | 00:09 | in other words, to mix the sounds together.
| | 00:11 | But what determines which instrument
gets routed through with insert channel?
| | 00:14 | Let's play the song for a moment, but before
I do that, let me go back to my playlist here.
| | 00:18 | Let's set my playhead back to the beginning.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to unmute the guitar track, and I'm
just going to mute the automation tracks for
| | 00:25 | now, so we can just listen to
the instruments. THere we go.
| | 00:28 | I'll bring the mixer back,
and let's give it a listen. (music playing)
| | 00:48 | All right, so by listening to that, we
can hear that the kick drum is on Insert 1.
| | 00:52 | Now we're also hearing the guitar and the
keyboard there, and they didn't seem to be
| | 00:56 | on their own inserts, and I'll
address that in just a moment.
| | 00:59 | Now, let me just play again.
(music playing)
| | 01:05 | So we can clearly hear that the
kick drum is on Insert number one.
| | 01:09 | Now how did it end up there?
| | 01:10 | Let's bring the sequencer to the
front and take a look at this.
| | 01:13 | Now, it really doesn't matter which pattern
I'm looking at, because remember, each pattern
| | 01:16 | has the same channels, whether I use the
channel in a particular pattern or not.
| | 01:20 | Let's click the kick channel
to open up the Channel settings.
| | 01:22 | Now, at the top of the Channel settings window
there is an Fx display, and it is currently set to 1.
| | 01:28 | That means that is being sent to Insert 1
on the mixer, and that's all there is to it.
| | 01:32 | If I select Clap, you can see
that's being sent to Insert 2.
| | 01:36 | Hi-Hat is being sent to Insert 3 and so on.
| | 01:38 | Now this is a very different way to work than
what you see in other digital audio workstations,
| | 01:42 | and it definitely takes
some time to get used to.
| | 01:44 | It also definitely helps if you
name the Inserts as you work with them.
| | 01:47 | To do so, right-click on a track and choose
Rename/color. And I'll label this first track Kick.
| | 01:54 | I'll leave the rest of these off for now,
but it's definitely a good and useful habit
| | 01:58 | to name your tracks as you go along.
| | 01:59 | Now, also regarding routing, I have
occasionally run into an issue, as we just saw here, were
| | 02:03 | the Fx display is blank.
| | 02:05 | So if I go to the 3xOsc and select it,
| | 02:08 | notice the Fx display is blank, which is why
we kept hearing the keyboard even when I was
| | 02:12 | soloing the other channels.
| | 02:14 | And with this field blank I'm not going to
be able to adjust its settings in the mixer
| | 02:17 | because it's not routed to any specific channel.
| | 02:19 | So if you run into this problem, just go
through each channel and make sure it's being routed
| | 02:22 | to an insert that isn't blank.
| | 02:23 | I'll just route this to
number 5, so now when I play. (music playing)
| | 02:44 | So now the keyboard is on its own channel.
| | 02:45 | Now I'm also hearing the guitar by itself.
| | 02:47 | So let's fix that as well, I'll select it.
| | 02:49 | We'll set that to Insert 6.
(music playing)
| | 03:11 | Okay, so now my parts are being routed to
their own channels. And again, it's probably
| | 03:16 | a good idea to go through and name
them as you're working with them.
| | 03:21 | But that's an explanation of how
the channels get into the mixer.
| | 03:27 | Now I also want to talk about the path or
route of the signals once they get to the
| | 03:30 | mixer, because the mixer in FL Studio works
very differently than mixers in other digital
| | 03:34 | audio work stations.
| | 03:35 | It's kind of hard to wrap your brain
around it at first, but once it clicks, you'll be
| | 03:39 | able to see that it actually gives you an
enormous amount of flexibility in terms of
| | 03:42 | how you can process your signals.
| | 03:44 | So the main thing to remember about the mixer
is that what it shows you is based entirely
| | 03:48 | on which insert you have selected.
| | 03:50 | Its job is to always display
where the selected channel is going.
| | 03:54 | So it's probably easy to show you what I
mean than to try to explain anymore than that.
| | 03:57 | So in the mixer, I'll select,
say, the Kick track, Insert 1.
| | 04:01 | Now when you select an Insert you also see this
yellow icon here, which is sort of a down-pointing arrow.
| | 04:05 | That represents an insert.
| | 04:07 | With it selected, you can also see this
up-facing arrow on the master channel.
| | 04:10 | This indicates that the selected Insert is
being routed through the master channel, and
| | 04:14 | as you'll recall me saying earlier, we only
hear things that go through the master channel.
| | 04:17 | By default, all of the Inserts go through
the master channel, which is why I'm able to
| | 04:20 | hear all of them when I play the project.
| | 04:22 | But if I click off that arrow in the master
channel, you won't be able to hear the kick
| | 04:26 | anymore because it's not being sent anywhere.
| | 04:29 | (music playing)
| | 04:34 | But you could hear all the other instruments
because they are being routed to the master channel.
| | 04:38 | So right now the kick drum
is not being routed anywhere.
| | 04:41 | If I click to select another insert like
Insert 2, I can see its being routed to the master
| | 04:45 | channel, because its arrow light is up again.
| | 04:48 | The same goes for the rest of
the Inserts, but not for Insert 1.
| | 04:53 | So, why is this important?
| | 04:55 | Well, what this allows you to do is to
route the signal to as many other inserts as you
| | 04:58 | like, which allows you to apply nearly
limitless effects and processing to the sound before
| | 05:03 | it goes to the master channel.
| | 05:04 | So for example, with Insert 1 selected,
notice what it says up here in the helper display
| | 05:08 | when I roll over this
button here in say Insert 7.
| | 05:11 | It says Enable send from Kick to Insert 7.
| | 05:13 | Now I'm just picking Insert 7
because it's the next unused track.
| | 05:17 | What this means is when I click this, it says I am
now sending the signal from Insert 1 to Insert 7.
| | 05:22 | That makes this knob up here, which I can use
to adjust how much signal is being sent from
| | 05:26 | Insert 1 to Insert 7.
| | 05:27 | And because I just created the send, now
when I click play I'll hear the kick again.
| | 05:31 | (music playing)
| | 05:35 | Because the kick is coming into Insert 1, being routed
into Insert 7, and then going to the master channel.
| | 05:41 | Before it gets to the master channel, I might go to
Insert 7 and then select some effects to apply to it.
| | 05:46 | Now if you've work with other DAWs, the
implication of this might be starting to dawn on you.
| | 05:50 | But essentially, you can send the signal from one
Insert to as many other Inserts as you have available.
| | 05:55 | With Insert 1 selected, with the kick selected,
I could send that to as many other inserts that I like.
| | 06:00 | And to each one of these inserts,
I can apply different effects.
| | 06:04 | And each insert has a plugin slot, as you
can see over here, and that gives you access
| | 06:07 | to so many different plugins and effects--and
we'll be looking how that works in an upcoming movie.
| | 06:11 | Now on top of this, you can route
multiple inserts to the same Insert.
| | 06:14 | So for example I could route the kick, the
snare, and the Hi-Hat to the same Insert and
| | 06:18 | apply reverb to them all at once.
| | 06:20 | The possibilities really are endless.
| | 06:22 | So I want to stress again that the display in the
mixer overall is based on which insert you have selected.
| | 06:27 | So with the kick insert selected, the
information I'm seeing here is that its output is not
| | 06:30 | going to the master channel, but
that it's going through Insert 7.
| | 06:34 | With Insert 7 selected, I can see its
output is going through the master channel, which
| | 06:37 | is why we're able to
hear the kick at that point.
| | 06:39 | I hope this makes sense because this is
really a fundamental way of working with the mixer.
| | 06:43 | But for now, I'm just going to
undo that by selecting Insert 1.
| | 06:46 | I'm going to stop sending it to Insert 7, and
I'm going to send it back to the master channel.
| | 06:51 | So now we can hear the kick again going
directly from Insert 1 to the master channel.
[00:06:55..0]
(music playing)
| | 06:57 | So, that's how a routing
works in FL Studio's mixer.
| | 07:00 | Again, it's very different then what you'll
find in other audio apps, but it gives you
| | 07:03 | so much more flexibility.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recording a live instrument| 00:00 | One aspect of creating sound in FL Studio
that we really haven't touched on yet is how
| | 00:03 | to record live audio into your project.
| | 00:06 | We did touch on how to connect and play a
MIDI controller like a keyboard, but in this
| | 00:09 | case I'm talking about recording external
audio, either out of the air with a microphone
| | 00:13 | or by plugging in an instrument like a guitar.
| | 00:15 | So the first thing to discuss here are the
prerequisites for recording external audio.
| | 00:19 | First, you need to be using at
least FL Studio Producer Edition.
| | 00:22 | If you are using the Express Version or
the Fruity Edition, you'll need to upgrade in
| | 00:26 | order to enable full
audio recording capabilities.
| | 00:28 | Secondly, you have to have an ASIO Sound Card
Driver selected as your sound card in FL Studio.
| | 00:33 | If you recall, you can get to those
settings by going to Option > Audio.
| | 00:37 | I'm just making sure Audio is selected here
and then going to your Input/output menu and
| | 00:42 | choosing one the ASIO drivers here.
| | 00:44 | So it's not possible to record external audio in
FL Studio using anything under direct sound devices.
| | 00:49 | You'll have to choose one
of the devices under ASIO.
| | 00:51 | Now, tied into this is the third requirement,
which is the hardware you'll need to connect
| | 00:55 | the instrument or
microphone you want to record from.
| | 00:57 | Computers generally don't have soundcards with
built-in quarter-inch instrument connectors,
| | 01:01 | so you'll most likely be using
an external audio input device.
| | 01:04 | This can be something like a USB microphone
or any number of USB audio input devices that
| | 01:09 | let you plug in quarter-inch
instrument cables and XLR microphone connectors.
| | 01:12 | But in this case, I'm using an
old M-Audio Fast Track USB device.
| | 01:16 | I can't really recommend a specific device because
the one you use is going to depend on your needs.
| | 01:20 | But as you search around for one, I do
recommend googling the name of the device along with
| | 01:24 | FL Studio to see if people who have had
success or issues using the device with FL Studio.
| | 01:28 | Now, once you have a device selected,
it's important to install the latest drivers for it.
| | 01:33 | I've already installed the drivers for my fast track,
so M-Audio USB ASIO shows up here under the drivers.
| | 01:38 | In some cases you might be able to get away
with the ASIO for all driver, which is kind
| | 01:42 | of a generic driver that should have
been installed when you installed FL Studio.
| | 01:45 | If you don't have it, you can download it
from asio4all.com. But you'll usually have
| | 01:49 | much better results using the
driver for your specific device.
| | 01:52 | So, I'm going to go ahead and
select my M-Audio USB ASIO driver.
| | 01:55 | All right, so those are the requirements you'll
need to fulfill before you can record external
| | 01:59 | audio in FL Studio.
| | 02:01 | Let's close our Settings, and now
I'm going to come over to my mixer.
| | 02:05 | Now there are a couple of different
ways you can record into FL Studio.
| | 02:08 | You can record directly onto a track in your
playlist, which is probably the most simple way to do it.
| | 02:12 | You can also record it
through the Edison plugin.
| | 02:14 | I mentioned this earlier, but the Edison
plugin is a built in sound editing plugin where
| | 02:18 | you can process and edit your recordings.
| | 02:20 | For this example, I'm going to
record directly onto the playlist.
| | 02:22 | Now to do this I'm going to select an
Insert in the mixture that we haven't used yet.
| | 02:26 | I'll go with Insert 7.
| | 02:28 | Now remember, the mixture display
is based on what you have selected.
| | 02:31 | So, when I select Insert 7,
I'm seeing its settings over here to the right.
| | 02:34 | So in order to record through Insert 7, I
need to come up to the In menu and select
| | 02:39 | my fast track device.
| | 02:40 | I'm going to be recording bass guitar in
mono, so I'm going to select Line In 2.
| | 02:45 | Now this is just the input
name for my particular device.
| | 02:47 | You'll see different options here
depending on what device you're using.
| | 02:50 | Notice that lights up the Arm disc button
here on Insert 7. That just confirms that I'm
| | 02:54 | going to be recording to this channel.
| | 02:56 | And if I want to be able to hear what
I'm doing, I also need to set the Out menu.
| | 02:59 | In this case, I can only
select my fast track device.
| | 03:03 | When you're recording you can't output your
own internal soundcard; you have to plug your
| | 03:06 | headphones or speakers into your external
device if you want to hear the playback or recording.
| | 03:10 | Okay, but that's all we need in terms of setup.
| | 03:12 | Now if you want to, you can also select
plugins to run your signal through as you record
| | 03:16 | if you want to hear
processing as you're playing.
| | 03:18 | But you can always add the
processing after you record to this.
| | 03:20 | I'm going to leave all of these empty.
| | 03:21 | Now let me show you a couple
of other things before I record.
| | 03:24 | In the dropdown menu, we have an option
here for Disk recording, which is what I'm about
| | 03:27 | to do here; what I record
here will be saved to my disk.
| | 03:31 | The options that are all checked here by
default include Auto-unarm, which will take the Insert
| | 03:35 | channel out of record automatically when I stop
so I don't accidentally record over it again.
| | 03:39 | Auto-create audio clip will place
the recording into the playlist.
| | 03:43 | Latency compensation will automatically
shift your recording to make up for any latency
| | 03:46 | or delay introduced by your audio input device.
| | 03:48 | All devices do have some latency,
| | 03:50 | so this option compensates for that to make sure
your recording lines up with the rest of the tracks.
| | 03:55 | Lastl,y is 32Bit float recording, which is one
setting you can probably uncheck if you want to.
| | 03:59 | Now, currently 32-Bit
soundcards don't exist yet.
| | 04:02 | So 32-Bit float is actually 24-Bit resolution recording
with an additional 8 bits for headroom and dynamic range.
| | 04:08 | FL Studio uses 32-Bit float to get the optimum sound
quality and dynamic range out of your 24-Bit hardware,
| | 04:13 | although in reality you probably won't
notice the difference in sound quality, but unless
| | 04:17 | you're really worried about hard drive
space, you can leave this option checked.
| | 04:20 | So, I'm going to leave everything the way
it is, and at this point I'm ready to record.
| | 04:24 | So I'll click the Record button.
| | 04:25 | I'll see the dialog box
asking me what I want to record.
| | 04:29 | Now as I said, I want to record directly
into the playlist for this example, so I would
| | 04:33 | click Audio into the playlist as an audio clip.
| | 04:36 | Now when I click that option the
recording is going to start right away,
| | 04:39 | so I need to make sure I'm ready to go.
| | 04:39 | So I'm going to get my bass ready
you can hear it, (music playing) and here we go.
| | 04:52 | (music playing)
| | 05:12 | Okay, so if I go to the playlist now,
here's the waveform for the part I just recorded.
| | 05:17 | You can see its named Ruin Us Insert 7 since
I recorded onto Insert 7. I'm going to take
| | 05:21 | us out of the record mode,
and let's listen to our track.
| | 05:24 | (music playing)
| | 05:46 | All right, so that wasn't my greatest performance ever,
but that's how to record live audio into FL Studio.
| | 05:51 | Now, notice in the Channel window,
we now have a channel called Ruin Us Insert 7.
| | 05:56 | You can't see the whole name here, but you
can actually see it up here in the display.
| | 05:58 | I'm going to click it to open
the Channel settings window.
| | 06:00 | You can see, here's the file.
| | 06:02 | It's called Ruin Us Insert 7 wave.
| | 06:05 | Now, FL Studio automatically saved this file in
this folder called Recorded, which is located
| | 06:10 | in Patches/Data/FL Studio 10 and so on.
| | 06:13 | I'm just going to cancel that.
| | 06:15 | Now that's fine, but if you like to stay
organized or want to keep the external recordings of
| | 06:18 | your project saved elsewhere, you can right-
click on the waveform down here and choose Save as.
| | 06:24 | I'm going to save this to my desktop in my
Ruin Us Project folder, like so, and now I
| | 06:31 | can click the folder icon up here, navigate to that
folder, and use that version of the file as the audio.
| | 06:39 | So, it'll still sound exactly the same, but I
now have it saved to a location of my choosing.
| | 06:43 | Last, I'm going to make sure this is going
to Insert 7 on the mixer, just clicking and
| | 06:48 | dragging up, so I can mix the bass
along with the other tracks.
| | 06:53 | I'm going to right-click
on it and rename it Bass.
| | 06:56 | All right, and that's how to record
directly into the playlist in FL Studio.
| | 07:00 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting plugins| 00:00 | Once you have your channels routed to your
mixer, you'll most likely want to run at least
| | 00:03 | some of the sounds through any
number of FL Studio's built in Fx plugins.
| | 00:07 | Plugins are modules for processing your sound.
| | 00:09 | FL Studio comes with a large number of effects
for doing things like adding reverb, compression,
| | 00:14 | and EQ, as well as processors for fixing pitch,
adding or enhancing stereo effects, and a lot more.
| | 00:20 | As I discussed earlier, you can apply up to
eight plugins to each track in the mixer.
| | 00:23 | These are the plugins slots over here on
the right of the mixer. But as we also saw,
| | 00:26 | you can route any track to any other track
if you need to apply more effects to a sound.
| | 00:30 | For this example, let's use the guitar track.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to right-click on its mute solo
button to solo it, and let's just jump ahead
| | 00:38 | in the playlist a bit and have a listen to it.
| | 00:41 | (music playing)
| | 00:46 | We should also go to the automation track,
and I'm just going to right-click on that
| | 00:51 | to get rid of automation on there because I want to
hear the guitar as it is, and I'll click play again.
| | 00:56 | (music playing)
| | 01:02 | Okay, so that's how the guitar sounds as is.
| | 01:06 | So, to add a plugin to it, I just need to
make sure that track is selected, and I'll
| | 01:10 | click the menu next to one of the Inserts.
And now I'm looking at the huge list of plugins.
| | 01:14 | Now I can't go through the use of every
single one of these here, but I will go over some
| | 01:17 | of the more commonly used
plugins in the next chapter.
| | 01:20 | Just know that using plugins and effects
is a learned skill set just like any other
| | 01:23 | skill set, and it will definitely take some
time to learn what's available and possible,
| | 01:27 | as well as how to apply them effectively.
| | 01:29 | For much more in-depth coverage on this topic, be
sure to check out the courses in our Foundations
| | 01:33 | of Audio series on EQ and Filters,
Reverb, and Delay and Modulation.
| | 01:37 | Okay, so for this example
I'll choose the Fruity Phaser.
| | 01:42 | Now, just by applying that filter and without
changing anything here, my guitar now sounds like this.
| | 01:47 | (music playing)
| | 01:55 | And if I wanted to adjust this while it is playing,
I could just play it and play with some of the dials.
| | 02:00 | (music playing)
| | 02:13 | And that's just one plugin.
| | 02:14 | Let's close that for a
moment, and let's add another one.
| | 02:17 | I've got a slot 2, and this time
I'll select the Fruity Chorus.
| | 02:21 | And again, just by adding it,
my guitar now sounds like this.
| | 02:25 | (music playing)
| | 02:31 | I'll close that. Now, if you want to make any adjustments
to any of the effects you've added, just click its name.
| | 02:37 | I can open up Fruity
Chorus there or Fruity Phaser.
| | 02:42 | We can also adjust the amount of any effect
that's being applied to the track using the
| | 02:46 | dial to the right of each effect. Both are
up all the way right now, but I'll play the
| | 02:50 | guitar now and adjust the dials.
| | 02:52 | (music playing)
| | 03:10 | Clicking the light next to any of the
plugins will also disable that effect altogether so
| | 03:13 | you can hear what it
sounds like without the effect.
| | 03:16 | (music playing)
| | 03:28 | Now the order of effect also
sometimes plays a role in the final sound,
| | 03:31 | so you might want to
experiment with changing the order.
| | 03:33 | One way to do so is to click the menu for
the effect and then choose Move Up or Down.
| | 03:39 | Another way to do it is to place your
mouse over the effect you want to move and then
| | 03:42 | just use the scroll wheel on
your mouse, if you have one.
| | 03:44 | So, I'll just place my mouse over the Fruity
Phaser and I'm just turning the scroll wheel.
| | 03:48 | I'm not clicking down or
anything, just turning the scroll wheel.
| | 03:51 | Now you may or may not hear much of a
difference when you change the order of your plugins.
| | 03:54 | It really does depend on the
combination of the effects you are using.
| | 03:57 | Now, if you want to remove an effect or
replace it with another, you can click the menu and
| | 04:01 | choose Replace to get the list of effects back.
| | 04:04 | Choose None if you want to remove the effect, or
choose another effect to replace the current one.
| | 04:10 | (music playing)
| | 04:15 | When the plugins window is open you can also
use the menu here to replace the effects as well.
| | 04:23 | Now another more visual way to browse the
effects is to right-click on the menu and
| | 04:28 | that opens the plugin picker, which
organizes the plugins into these categories you see
| | 04:31 | running along the bottom of the screen.
| | 04:33 | The first one we have is Amp, and I can roll my
mouse over any of these to read what they are.
| | 04:41 | So just pick a category, and you'll see all
the plugin effects that fit that category.
| | 04:45 | And again, rolling your mouse over the description of
the plugin to give you a general idea of what it does.
| | 04:49 | To add one to the track just simply click
on it or press Escape on your keyboard to
| | 04:53 | leave the plugin picker.
| | 04:55 | FL Studio also supports a wide range of
third-party plugins, so once you get comfortable
| | 04:59 | working with the built-in plugins or if you
just can't find what you're looking for from
| | 05:02 | the built-in plugins, you can look
into installing third-party effects.
| | 05:06 | Now I'm not going to cover the process in
this course, but FL Studio supports VST and
| | 05:10 | DX effects, and you'll find details for installing
those and other effects in the FL Studio help file.
| | 05:15 | All right, so that's working
with plugins in the mixer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing it all together| 00:00 | Okay, now let's talk a little bit
about the basics of actually mixing.
| | 00:04 | When you're done recording and creating
your tracks, you'll most likely want to be able
| | 00:06 | to share your creation with the rest of the
world, or at least you want to be able to listen
| | 00:09 | to your own recording without
having to launch FL Studio each time.
| | 00:13 | Before you export your project
though, you'll want to mix it down.
| | 00:16 | Mixing involves adjusting the levels and
effects of each individual track so that they all
| | 00:19 | combine or mix into a single audio file that sounds
full, balanced, and well-arranged like a finished song.
| | 00:26 | Now one option you might want to consider is to
duplicate your project before you start mixing.
| | 00:30 | It's not necessary, but if you plan on
making some radical changes, you might feel more
| | 00:33 | comfortable knowing you have
a backup copy of your project.
| | 00:36 | To do so, just choose File > Save New Version,
and you can see I'm now working with Ruin
| | 00:42 | Us_2. And again, that's not absolutely necessary.
| | 00:45 | It's just one of those
precautions you might want to consider.
| | 00:47 | Now before you get started, it's also a good
idea to make sure the overall levels you're
| | 00:50 | hearing are all set.
| | 00:52 | There are two main places in FL Studio that affect
how loudly or quietly you're hearing the overall mix.
| | 00:56 | We have the Master Volume Fader up here in the
toolbar as well as the Master Fader here in the Mixer.
| | 01:02 | It's important to understand
the difference between these two.
| | 01:04 | The Master Volume controls the volume of FL
Studio's output to your computer speakers or
| | 01:08 | whatever your listening device is.
| | 01:10 | It doesn't have any affect on the
individual tracks, sounds, or anything else.
| | 01:14 | It's kind of like the
volume buttons on your computer.
| | 01:16 | But if you have the Master Volume control
set too low or too high, it could influence
| | 01:20 | you to make your mix too loud or too quiet.
| | 01:22 | So it's a good idea to set the Master
Volume slider back to its default position.
| | 01:25 | And you can do this easily by
right-clicking it and choosing Reset.
| | 01:29 | Then if you need to hear your mix better,
you can turn the volume up on your computer
| | 01:32 | speakers instead of using
the Master Volume slider.
| | 01:34 | So again, the whole idea of mixing is to
get each sound at a relative level so that it
| | 01:38 | mixes nicely with the other sounds.
| | 01:40 | But you might want to start by making sure
the sounds sound okay on their own by soloing
| | 01:44 | tracks in the playlist.
| | 01:45 | So I might start by soloing
Track 1, which is the Kick and Snare.
| | 01:53 | It's not playing because back here in my Mixer,
I still have with the guitar soloed from the
| | 01:57 | previous movie, so let's
unsolo that, and here we go again.
| | 02:01 | (audio playing)
| | 02:05 | Now, because in this case the Snare and the
Kick are on the same track as part of a pattern,
| | 02:10 | I might want to go back to the Step Sequencer and
adjust the relative levels to each other from there.
| | 02:16 | Go back to my Into Drums pattern just so I'm
looking at the right one. I'll switch back to Pattern.
| | 02:19 | (audio playing)
| | 02:35 | Now, once those are set, we can also go to the
Mixer, where we have the kick and snare assigned
| | 02:38 | to individual tracks.
| | 02:40 | You can see I've already gone through here and
I've named each of the tracks here in the Mixer.
| | 02:43 | And that's also something else you should
make sure you have done before you start mixing.
| | 02:46 | So here in the Mixer I can again adjust the
levels of each sound relative to the other sounds.
| | 02:50 | I actually like to drop all the faders down, so I can
bring them up gradually and add them back into the mix.
| | 03:05 | Now as I bring them back up, I want to
keep my eye on the meters for that track.
| | 03:08 | As a general rule, you want your levels to
be loud enough so they're somewhere in the
| | 03:11 | yellow area, but not so loud that they hit
the red area where they might clip or distort.
| | 03:15 | You can also keep your eye
on the meter on the right.
| | 03:18 | Ideally, your fader should
be around the 0 dB mark.
| | 03:21 | But just to be safe, you might
want to keep it around, say, -3.
| | 03:24 | But I'll play and bring
that kick fader up first.
| | 03:28 | (audio playing)
| | 03:40 | Now if you're not getting enough level,
I can come back here and turn this up a little
| | 03:45 | bit more, bring my Mixer back. There we go.
| | 03:49 | Of course I should be listening
to the song and not the pattern.
| | 03:53 | (audio playing)
| | 03:59 | And now let's bring up the Snare.
(audio playing)
| | 04:24 | Now, as you're doing this, you might also want
to start adding some effects to the tracks.
| | 04:26 | Like for instance, I'll add a
little reverb to the snare.
| | 04:29 | So I come over here and make sure the
snare is selected, come over to my plugins, and
| | 04:33 | I'll choose the Fruity Reverb, and
I'll play so we can hear as I adjust it.
| | 04:40 | (audio playing)
| | 05:00 | After you've added the effects, you might have
to adjust the fader again because the effect
| | 05:03 | may have increased or decreased
the overall level of your sound.
| | 05:06 | Now obviouslym I'm doing this all very quickly.
| | 05:08 | In a real mixing situationm you might spend
an hour or two just getting your drum sounds.
| | 05:12 | But the idea here is to just keep
adding instruments back into your mix.
| | 05:15 | (audio playing)
| | 05:27 | Okay I'm not hearing my hi-hat.
| | 05:28 | Let's go see. I knew it;
I still have it all muted.
| | 05:31 | That's why. There we go, back to the Mixer.
| | 05:35 | So you can see, sometimes it's hard to keep
track of what's muted and what's not, so you
| | 05:37 | have to check all of the different panels
to make sure you have the sounds turned on.
| | 05:41 | (audio playing)
| | 06:23 | And again, we just keep
adding instruments into the mix.
| | 06:26 | (audio playing)
| | 07:05 | Now as you're doing this, also keep an eye
on the Master Track level. You have to make sure that
| | 07:09 | it's also not getting into the red.
| | 07:11 | Now if you recall, we originally created
this project from a template that included the
| | 07:14 | Fruity Limiter plugin on the Master track.
| | 07:16 | We can see that if I select the Master track,
and you can see the Fruity Limiter is in the
| | 07:20 | last bank. So that's the very last filter
everything goes through before we hear it.
| | 07:24 | And the way it's set up here is to
compress the signal to a nice even level.
| | 07:27 | Basically, this means that the quieter parts
of the mix are made louder and the louder
| | 07:30 | parts are squashed down a bit so
they don't push the meter into the red.
| | 07:33 | It gives your mix an overall
more even and punchier feel.
| | 07:36 | Listen to the difference as I
toggle the Limiter on and off.
| | 07:39 | (audio playing)
| | 07:56 | So if you don't have the Limiter in this last bank,
try adding it and see how it affects your mix.
| | 08:01 | It's a plugin just like the other ones;
I can click it to bring up its settings.
| | 08:03 | But it really does a nice
job of evening out your sounds.
| | 08:06 | It's just a good way to control the output
level of your mix, even just using its default
| | 08:09 | settings, especially if you don't
have a lot of experience in mixing yet.
| | 08:13 | But that's the basic gist.
| | 08:14 | Now, if you really want to get into the
down-and-dirty details of mixing skills, be sure
| | 08:18 | to check out the course called
Audio Mixing Bootcamp at lynda.com.
| | 08:21 | You'll find nearly nine hours of
instruction on everything you need to know to mix your
| | 08:24 | songs effectively and efficiently.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting the final product| 00:00 | Once you're satisfied with your mix,
you'll most likely want to share it with others, or
| | 00:04 | at least have a copy for yourself that you
can play or burn to a disc outside of FL Studio.
| | 00:08 | FL Studio gives you several options for
exporting your mix project, and you can choose the method
| | 00:12 | and file format that works best for
what you intend to do with the file.
| | 00:15 | So let's say I'm happy with the mix as it
is, or maybe I just want to create a rough
| | 00:18 | mix and review it and come back later.
| | 00:20 | I'll choose File > Export,
and here we find several options.
| | 00:24 | Let's run through them.
| | 00:25 | Zipped loop package is for when you want
to back up or archive your entire project so
| | 00:30 | you can open it up and continue
editing it in FL Studio at another time.
| | 00:33 | Basically, this zips up the FLP file, which
is the FL Studio file format, along with the
| | 00:38 | folder containing all the
samples that you might have used.
| | 00:40 | This is also a good way to send the file to
someone else to work on in their copy of FL Studio.
| | 00:44 | But of course this requires you to
have FL Studio in order to open it.
| | 00:47 | So again, this option is for backing up
your entire project with the intention of being
| | 00:51 | able to open it up and work on it again.
| | 00:53 | Next is the Wave format.
| | 00:55 | Wave files are uncompressed files that can
be played on any PC or Mac. Use this format
| | 00:59 | to generate a single file of your mix that
you can then burn to a CD or convert to an
| | 01:03 | MP3 using conversion software of your choice.
| | 01:06 | Or if you like, you can
export an MP3 directly from here.
| | 01:09 | MP3 of course is still probably the most used
audio format in the world, and it can be opened
| | 01:14 | by just about any audio
application on any computer.
| | 01:17 | It's a compressed format that still sounds good,
but it gives you a smaller file size so it's
| | 01:21 | useful if you want to
email your song to someone.
| | 01:24 | OGG is short for Ogg Vorbis, which is
another semi-popular audio file format.
| | 01:28 | OGG is an open-source format that many
people swear by, but it can't usually be played in
| | 01:32 | many audio apps without
plugins or special software.
| | 01:35 | We also have a MIDI File option, but you only
choose this if you project is all beats, keyboards,
| | 01:39 | or other MIDI parts.
| | 01:41 | MIDI doesn't save any audio
or sounds; it's purely data.
| | 01:44 | So you might choose this option if you wanted
to bring your MIDI data into another MIDI app.
| | 01:48 | Project bones is for exporting all the
effects settings your project uses as presets and
| | 01:52 | all the automation data as score files,
which you might want to do if you want to merge
| | 01:55 | components from one project into another.
| | 01:57 | And Project data files saves copies of all of
your samples, your presets, and other plugin
| | 02:02 | data into a single folder.
| | 02:03 | For the most part though, you'll most
likely be choosing either wave or MP3 from here
| | 02:07 | most of the time, depending on whether you
want to export an uncompressed or compressed
| | 02:11 | version of your project.
| | 02:12 | Now, both of these have a couple of settings
you can play around with. I'll choose Wave.
| | 02:16 | Now, I'm prompted to pick
a location to save a file.
| | 02:18 | I'll just choose the Desktop, I'll
click Save, and now I get this dialog box.
| | 02:24 | Now, if I change my mind, I can pick a different
format from right up here, or I can even choose
| | 02:28 | to export multiple formats.
| | 02:29 | For example if I wanted to export both the
wave and an MP3 file, I can select Mp3.
| | 02:33 | And there a couple of options down here
that might be of interest to you as well.
| | 02:37 | Under Looping mode, you can determine what
happens to the tail end of audio that loops.
| | 02:42 | What this means is that you might have a track
where the tail end of a sound fades out beyond
| | 02:45 | the end of the song or the point
where it loops back to the beginning.
| | 02:48 | Use this menu to
determine how to treat that sound.
| | 02:51 | You can choose to leave the remainder, which
will let the note end naturally; you can cut
| | 02:54 | the remainder, which cuts the sounds off
abruptly on the least beat; or Wrap remainder.
| | 02:59 | Wrap remainder will actually put the
remainder of the end of the sound at the beginning of
| | 03:02 | the track, which won't really be useful unless
you plan on making the exported sound a loop.
| | 03:07 | Now, I'll keep it on Leave remainder.
| | 03:10 | Now, if you're exporting a Wave file,
you can also choose the bit depth of the wave.
| | 03:13 | If you're planning on burning the wave to an
audio CD, you can leave it at 16-Bit, which
| | 03:16 | is the highest-quality
format that's compatible with CDs.
| | 03:19 | If you're planning on incorporating the wave
file into another audio project, choose 32-Bit float.
| | 03:23 | The only reason to choose 24-bit is if the
program you're bringing the file into doesn't
| | 03:28 | support 32-Bit float.
| | 03:30 | And if you're exporting an MP3 or an OGG file,
you can choose the bit rate with this slider.
| | 03:34 | 160 kilobits per second is generally the
point where the audio file is around CD quality.
| | 03:38 | Very few people can tell the difference
between an MP3 at 160 and an actual CD.
| | 03:43 | If you are one of the people who can, or
thinks you can, you can always up the bit rate to,
| | 03:47 | say, 224. Just remember that the higher
the bit rate the larger the file size.
| | 03:51 | So if you're exporting an MP3, you're
probably concerned with file size, so you might want
| | 03:54 | to experiment to find the balance
between file size and audio quality.
| | 03:58 | The only other option I want to
point out here is Split mixer tracks.
| | 04:01 | This is useful if you want to export each
track of your project as an individual audio file.
| | 04:05 | With this option selected,
each track will become a Wave file.
| | 04:08 | So I'll have a wave file for the kick drum,
one for the clap, one for the Hi-Hat, one
| | 04:12 | for the snare, and so on.
| | 04:14 | Exported individual files from the same
project are often referred to as stems.
| | 04:17 | Now, this is useful if you want to bring the files into
another program that's not compatible with FL Studio.
| | 04:21 | But okay, so I've selected Wave and MP3 as my
export options. I'll click Start. And it may
| | 04:27 | take a few seconds to a few minutes for FL
Studio to process and export your song, but
| | 04:32 | since this is just a short project, it
finished before I even finish my last sentence.
| | 04:35 | If I go look on my desktop, there's the
Wave file and there's the MP3 version.
| | 04:41 | So again, if you want a version of the
file to email to someone that can be played on
| | 04:44 | just about any audio
application, you'll want to choose MP3.
| | 04:48 | If you want the highest-quality uncompressed
version to burn to a CD or otherwise review,
| | 04:52 | choose the Wave format.
| | 04:53 | But you do have other export options
available if you need to select a different format or
| | 04:57 | create a backup of your entire project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Common and Useful Effects and PluginsPlaying with compression| 00:00 | Here in this final chapter, I want to give
you a quick overview of three of the plugins
| | 00:04 | that are most commonly used in nearly all
audio projects, regardless of the particular
| | 00:07 | application you're working in.
| | 00:09 | These are Compression, EQ, and Reverb and Delay.
| | 00:12 | Now, I want to stress that these are just
going to be overviews to introduce you to
| | 00:15 | these tools and how to operate
the modules here in FL Studio.
| | 00:18 | Compression, EQ, and Reverb and Delay are each
complex topics, and if you really want to understand
| | 00:23 | the details and specifics, I encourage you to
check out the audio courses from our Foundations
| | 00:27 | of Audio series that cover them.
But let's start with compression.
| | 00:30 | Compression helps get you a consistent
volume level throughout your audio file.
| | 00:34 | Compression attenuates, or reduces, the
loudness of the loudest portions of your recording
| | 00:38 | so there's not as much of a difference
between them and the quietest portions.
| | 00:42 | This allows you to then increase the
overall volume or gain of the entire file so it can
| | 00:46 | be as loud or even louder than
the loudest parts originally were.
| | 00:49 | You've probably heard recordings of vocal
performances where the singer sings both loudly
| | 00:52 | and quietly, yet you can hear both
ends of the spectrum easily well.
| | 00:56 | That's because of compression.
| | 00:58 | Compression evens out the dynamics of the
performance, allowing both the loud and quiet
| | 01:01 | parts to be heard at
around the same volume level.
| | 01:03 | Let me show you an example
using the bass track I recorded.
| | 01:06 | So I've got the bass selected. I'm going to go to the
playlist, and just move the playhead here so
| | 01:11 | I'll be able to start where the bass starts.
And I'm going to solo that track by right-clicking
| | 01:17 | on it, and let's listen to
it once without compression.
| | 01:20 | (music playing)
| | 01:30 | Now, I'll come over to the plugin effects
area, and I'll choose the Fruity Compressor,
| | 01:35 | and this is the one of FL
Studio's built-in Compressors.
| | 01:38 | So, now we're seeing the Fruity Compressor
interface, which is basically a series of six dials.
| | 01:42 | Now let's run through these.
| | 01:44 | The first one is Threshold, and you
can see it's determined by decibels.
| | 01:48 | Threshold is the decibel level at which
the compressor reacts or is triggered.
| | 01:52 | When the amplitude or level of your audio
rises above that threshold, the compressor
| | 01:55 | applies the compression settings.
| | 01:57 | When the amplitude of your audio is below
the threshold, the compressor does nothing.
| | 02:01 | Now, how do we figure out the
decibel level of the sound in FL Studio?
| | 02:04 | I can't look at the
meter over here on the right.
| | 02:07 | (music playing)
| | 02:12 | Because that's affected by the fader. (music playing)
| | 02:16 | Instead we can use another
plugin called Fruity dB Meter.
| | 02:20 | That just gives me a meter that I can look
at right here, and this has absolutely no
| | 02:24 | effect on your sound.
| | 02:25 | It's just a plugin that
lets you see your levels.
| | 02:27 | So, now I'm going to play the bass, and I'm going
to keep an eye on the meter to see how loud it gets.
| | 02:32 | (music playing)
| | 02:49 | So, it looked like the
loudest part of the audio reached -6dB.
| | 02:53 | So with that knowledge, I can go back to the
compressor and I would know that a threshold
| | 02:57 | setting of -5dB or higher would have no
affect whatsoever on any part of the recording.
| | 03:03 | On the other hand, a threshold setting of,
say, -15, would affect the louder portions
| | 03:08 | but would have no affect on the
softer sections that don't go over -15 dB.
| | 03:12 | So, the threshold determines when
the compressor actually compresses.
| | 03:16 | But how much it compresses is determined by the
ratio settings, which is the next knob over here.
| | 03:21 | The ratio determines how much any
signal over the threshold is attenuated,
| | 03:24 | and it's usually expressed as a
larger number over one, or a ratio.
| | 03:28 | Now, right now the ratio is simply 1:1.
| | 03:30 | There's no change. Now the higher the
ratio the more severe the compression.
| | 03:33 | So, a ratio of, say, 2:1
reduces the original signal by half.
| | 03:38 | A ratio of 4:1 reduces the signal to a
quarter of its original amplitude and so on.
| | 03:42 | Generally, a setting of
2:1 to about 4:1 is common.
| | 03:46 | Anything higher than that is considered
extreme compression. But where you set your ratio
| | 03:50 | is really going to depend on your
recording and what you are trying to achieve.
| | 03:52 | So, if I'm looking at the dynamics of my recording,
I know it gets as loud as -6dB, and it looked
| | 03:56 | like it dropped down to about
maybe -16 for the quieter parts.
| | 04:00 | In fact, let's just double-check that.
(music playing)
| | 04:11 | Yes, so right around there.
| | 04:12 | So, I'll leave my threshold where it is,
but I'm going to increase the ratio to about
| | 04:16 | 8:1, because there's a fairly large degree
of difference between the loud and quieter
| | 04:20 | parts in this recording.
| | 04:21 | So, now when I play the bass, you
shouldn't see the meter jump quite as much.
| | 04:25 | (music playing)
| | 04:40 | See, it didn't quite hit the -6 mark there.
| | 04:43 | Now, if I wanted to, I could increase the
ratio even more, but I think it's okay right there.
| | 04:47 | But now, because we don't see the meter jump
quite as wildly from low to high, it's also
| | 04:51 | made my bass part quieter overall.
| | 04:53 | That's what the Gain knob is for.
| | 04:55 | It's used to make up the difference in
the volume level caused by compression.
| | 04:58 | So, maybe I'll increase the gain a bit,
maybe about 3 or 4 dB or so. Let's try that.
| | 05:05 | (music playing)
| | 05:18 | The idea here is to get the meter up to about
between -3 and 0 dB, but definitely not over
| | 05:23 | 0 dB, at which point you might
cause your signal to clip or distort.
| | 05:26 | So, I'm pretty comfortable with
the gain increase we've added there.
| | 05:29 | Now I also have the
Attack and Release knobs here.
| | 05:32 | The Attack setting determines how quickly
the compressor reacts when it detects a signal
| | 05:35 | that goes above your threshold.
| | 05:37 | The Release knob is for specifying how
quickly the compressor lets go of that signal and
| | 05:40 | returns it to its original uncompressed state after it
detects of the audio is no longer above that threshold.
| | 05:45 | Notice that these are measured in milliseconds.
| | 05:48 | So Attack and Release happen very quickly
in most cases, but they can have a noticeable
| | 05:51 | effect on the sound of your recording.
| | 05:53 | Too long an attack time and the compressor may
not attenuate the louder signals quickly enough.
| | 05:57 | Too long a release time and the compressor
effect might be applied to quieter sounds
| | 06:00 | that don't need compression.
| | 06:01 | Again, it's something you'll have to experiment
with, and I'll leave those settings here for now.
| | 06:05 | Now, the last knob here is to set
the knee type of the compressor.
| | 06:08 | This controls the rate at
which the compressor is applied.
| | 06:11 | So, the Attack controls the
speed and the Type controls the rate.
| | 06:15 | For example, Hard applies the
compression very, very quickly.
| | 06:18 | If I switch it to medium or vintage or soft,
| | 06:21 | it will become more gradually applied.
Even though the Attack might have the compression
| | 06:25 | being applied right away, the level of the
compression being applied will be more gradual.
| | 06:29 | Again, this is something
you need to play around with.
| | 06:32 | Now, I also want to stress that you
shouldn't get to caught up in the numbers.
| | 06:35 | Applying compression has a lot to do with just
using your ears and looking at the meters as a guide.
| | 06:39 | It's really about training your ears.
| | 06:41 | For most basic compression tasks, you can
generally start by lowering the threshold
| | 06:44 | to a level that achieves about 4
dB to 6 dBs of gain reduction.
| | 06:48 | Then use the Gain knob to raise the output
to about the same level as the highest peaks
| | 06:51 | before the compression.
| | 06:53 | But again, that's just a starting
point, and you can experiment from there.
| | 06:56 | So, that's the basics of compression.
| | 06:58 | Now, as you start to get more comfortable
with compression, you can start working with
| | 07:00 | FL Studio's multiband compressor.
| | 07:02 | Let's replace the meter here for a moment.
| | 07:06 | Now, it's divided into different bands of
frequencies, and you get an individual compressor
| | 07:10 | for each frequency band, from low to mid, to high.
| | 07:13 | The available settings under each band are
the same ones we were just looking in the
| | 07:16 | single band compressor: you have Threshold,
Ratio, Knee, Attack, Release, and Gain.
| | 07:21 | It's just that here they apply
to a specific frequency ranges.
| | 07:24 | I'm not going to go into the details of the
multiband compressor here, but if you understand
| | 07:27 | the basics of what we've just gone over,
you'll get the idea in this compressor as well.
| | 07:31 | But again, compression is a huge
topic and an important one to understand,
| | 07:34 | so be sure to check out Foundations of Audio:
Compression and Dynamic Processing to get the full story.
| | 07:39 |
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| Learning the basics of EQ| 00:00 | Now, let's talk about equalizers, or EQs.
| | 00:02 | Think of equalizers as volume controls
for specific frequencies in your recording.
| | 00:07 | So, instead of turning the entire recording
up or down, EQs allows you to get fine-grain
| | 00:11 | control over various
specific ranges of frequencies.
| | 00:14 | You can boost the low levels to get more bass or cut
the high end back if you're recording sounds too trebly.
| | 00:18 | EQ effects are often referred to as filters
because they filter specific frequencies relative
| | 00:22 | to the rest of the signal.
| | 00:24 | Let's solo these snare drum for
this example, and let's listen.
| | 00:29 | (music playing)
| | 00:32 | Now, since this is a sample, it already
sounds pretty good to me, but that doesn't mean we
| | 00:37 | can't change the characteristics of its sound a little
bit and see if we can make it sound better in the mix.
| | 00:41 | Now, each track in the mixer
actually has its own built-in EQ module.
| | 00:45 | It appears here under the Insert area.
| | 00:47 | It's a very basic EQ, but
sometimes this might be all you need.
| | 00:50 | The graph here represents the low to
high frequencies from the left to the right.
| | 00:54 | You can adjust the EQ either by clicking or
dragging in the graph or using the three faders here.
| | 01:08 | The faders on the left and the right are
the low and high shell filters respectively.
| | 01:11 | You can see they only affect the
frequencies to one side of them.
| | 01:18 | That's because they're on the ends of the
graph, while the middle fader is notch filter
| | 01:21 | and it affects the frequencies on either side.
| | 01:23 | But basically, you can drag within the graph to
choose the frequencies you want to emphasize or cut back.
| | 01:29 | You can also use the two knobs under each
slider to determine whether the curve of the
| | 01:32 | graph is going to be more rounded or more
like a spike, which lets you focus on a very
| | 01:38 | specific frequency range, and I
can use this knob to move it around.
| | 01:42 | I'm just going to set everything back to the
middle for now. And again, you don't have get too
| | 01:49 | caught up in thinking about numbers and
frequency range as much when you're adjusting EQ.
| | 01:53 | Start just by listening to your audio.
| | 01:54 | If you think you need more low end,
try dragging the left side of the graph around to see how
| | 01:57 | it sounds in your ears.
| | 01:59 | (music playing)
| | 02:10 | And maybe I want a little
more snap to the snare drum.
| | 02:12 | I might try dragging the mid-range
point up and the right a little bit.
| | 02:16 | (music playing)
| | 02:28 | Again, it's just a matter of using your ears.
| | 02:30 | So, that's the EQ that's built into each track.
| | 02:32 | Let me just set that back to the middle again.
| | 02:35 | Now, FL Studio also comes with a
handful of other EQs as plugins.
| | 02:41 | For example, we have the Fruity Parametric
EQ, and as you can see, this immediately gives
| | 02:48 | you more control over your frequencies
because it has seven faders as opposed to three.
| | 02:52 | And again, we just play around with faders.
| | 02:53 | (music playing)
| | 03:11 | We also have the Parametric EQ 2.
I'll replace the current one.
| | 03:15 | And this one is interesting because while
it has seven points you can drag around, this
| | 03:18 | is on a graph and when you play your audio,
you can see the frequencies that are most
| | 03:22 | prominent based on the intensity of the color.
| | 03:24 | (music playing)
| | 03:30 | This can allow you to drag the points to
increase the frequencies that aren't as loud or reduce
| | 03:34 | the ones that are to loud.
| | 03:36 | (music playing)
| | 03:52 | I'll replace this again--and
there's also one called EQUO.
| | 03:54 | I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly,
but this is another visual EQ that you can
| | 03:59 | use to analyze the
frequencies of your recording.
| | 04:02 | (music playing)
| | 04:08 | You can draw across the
interface to create your EQ setting.
| | 04:14 | (music playing)
| | 04:25 | And there are also banks here down at the
bottom that allow you save your EQ settings,
| | 04:28 | so you can apply them to
your other audio sources.
| | 04:30 | And again, that's just a sampling of some of
the EQ-based filters you'll find in FL Studio.
| | 04:34 | Again, a lot of the time EQ is more
about your ears than anything else.
| | 04:38 | But if you want some in-depth instruction
on the ins and outs of EQs and filters, check
| | 04:41 | out our course called
Foundations of Audio: EQ and Filters.
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| Understanding reverb and delay| 00:00 | Now, let's talk about reverb and delay effects.
| | 00:03 | Both have a number of
purposes in audio engineering.
| | 00:05 | Reverb and delay can be used to fill out the
sound of a singer's voice a little bit more.
| | 00:08 | They can be used to give the impression that
a speaker is speaking in a specific acoustic
| | 00:12 | environment like a large auditorium,
even if they weren't recorded in one.
| | 00:16 | And they can generally just make
your audio sound a little bigger.
| | 00:19 | But what's the difference?
| | 00:19 | You'll find that many people often
confuse reverb and delay with each other.
| | 00:23 | Basically, reverb, short for reverberation,
is an effect that mimics the sound of your
| | 00:27 | audio bouncing off the walls and other surfaces
in the room and then coming back to your ears.
| | 00:32 | Delay, also called echo, is an effect that
takes your audio and plays it back or echoes it
| | 00:36 | several times in succession.
| | 00:38 | But it's generally the same sound
being played over and over again.
| | 00:41 | It's the sound of the initial echo.
| | 00:43 | Reverb is different in that it
assumes more of a natural room sound.
| | 00:46 | Most of the times, you are not recording
your subjects in the dead center of a room,
| | 00:49 | so there are going to be walls and ceilings at
different distances from the source of the sound.
| | 00:53 | Therefore, the echoes reverberating off the
closer surfaces will get back to you sooner
| | 00:57 | than the echoes reverberating off the
walls and ceilings that are further away.
| | 01:01 | Reverb takes all of these echoes
into account to create the effect.
| | 01:03 | Delay is usually more focused
on the first or initial echo.
| | 01:06 | Now, I still have the snare drum soloed from
the last movie, but I'm going to remove all
| | 01:10 | the plugins from it so we have
its original sound to start with.
| | 01:18 | Let's give that a listen.
| | 01:19 | (music playing)
| | 01:22 | Okay, so that's a pretty dry drum sound.
| | 01:25 | Let's begin with delay.
| | 01:26 | FL Studio has a couple of nice Delay modules.
| | 01:29 | I'll choose Fruity Delay 2.
And this is a pretty basic delay unit.
| | 01:33 | In the input section, Panning and Volume
adjust the panning and volume of the input signal,
| | 01:38 | which is basically the dry drum
signal coming into the module.
| | 01:42 | The Feedback section is for
setting the options for the echo effect.
| | 01:44 | For example, if I choose Ping Pong, and if
you're wearing headphones or have stereo speakers
| | 01:49 | on your desk, you should be able to hear
the echo effect bouncing from left to right.
| | 01:53 | (music playing)
| | 02:01 | So that's what a delay or
echo effect sounds like.
| | 02:04 | The sound of the snare drum is pretty much
the same each time you hear it, with each
| | 02:07 | subsequent echo being a
little bit quieter or fading out.
| | 02:10 | Now let's look at reverb.
| | 02:11 | I'm going to switch this to the Fruity Reverb.
| | 02:17 | Now, there are a lot of knobs
here, but let's listen first.
| | 02:20 | (music playing)
| | 02:25 | So, you should immediately be able to
hear the difference between reverb and delay.
| | 02:28 | While delay is an echo effect that repeats
the sound, reverb is more of a room effect.
| | 02:32 | It changes the overall character of the sound.
| | 02:35 | So, for example, I can change the size of
the room to change the sound of the Reverb.
| | 02:41 | (music playing)
| | 02:58 | The Reverb knob determines how
much of the effect we actually hear.
| | 03:01 | (music playing)
| | 03:13 | And the Dry knob controls how much
of the original or dry sound we hear.
| | 03:16 | Notice when I drop it to 0%,
we'll only hear the reverb effect.
| | 03:21 | (music playing)
| | 03:31 | So, if you want to hear both the initial
attack of the original signal and the reverb, you
| | 03:36 | can bring the dry signal up to about
100% and then play with the Reverb setting.
| | 03:40 | But again, it's just a matter of taste.
| | 03:41 | But you can see this allows me to take this
initially dry snare drum sound and make it
| | 03:45 | sound like it was recorded in
anything from a small room to a large cavern.
| | 03:48 | Wehther this is a good thing or a bad thing
depends on what you are trying to achieve.
| | 03:51 | You will find that adding a little reverb
to a singer can fill out the voice and hide
| | 03:55 | weaknesses sometimes,
| | 03:56 | but neither reverb nor delay are
magic solutions to fixing bad vocals.
| | 04:00 | So, that's the difference
between reverb and delay.
| | 04:02 | These are effects that you'll learn a
lot about by experimenting on your own.
| | 04:05 | But if you want to learn more about reverb
and delay and get the necessary background
| | 04:08 | so you understand what the available
settings do in each one of these effects, be sure to
| | 04:12 | check out the courses in our library called
Foundations of Audio: Reverb, and Foundations
| | 04:16 | of Audio: Delay and Modulation.
| | 04:17 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | And there you have it!
| | 00:01 | I hope you've enjoyed this quick look at FL
Studio and that you'll be able to take what
| | 00:04 | you've learned here and apply it
to your own songs and projects.
| | 00:07 | And again, we've only just scratch the surface
of what this incredibly powerful digital audio
| | 00:11 | work station is capable of.
| | 00:13 | I encourage you to play
around and explore on your own.
| | 00:16 | And also, be sure to check out the other
courses in our audio channel at lynda.com.
| | 00:19 | I've mentioned some of them throughout this
course, but we have several courses that cover
| | 00:22 | fundamental skills and knowledge, such as
Audio Recording Techniques, Audio Mixing Bootcamp,
| | 00:28 | and our Foundations of Audio series that
all contain tons of valuable information that
| | 00:32 | can be applied to any digital audio workstation.
| | 00:34 | Visit lynda.com/audio to browse our
entire selection. But that does it for now.
| | 00:39 | So until next time, I'm
Garrick Chow. See you soon.
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