10 Steps to Become an FL Studio Pro

1. [INTRO] 10 Steps to Become an FL Studio Pro: Hey, what's up? I'm gratuitous and welcome to my course called 10 Steps to become an FL Studio Pro. This course is by far my highest quality course. I now have a nice green screen. Is UCB behind me? I got a new camera which allows you to see me in a stand clear. In addition, I've also got a Wacom tablet which allows me to draw on the screen like Siri here fl Studio . I've broken it down into 10 sections which are fundamental to know off how to use fo studio . So we start each section with a pen and paper. So, as you can see, you know, it's gonna draw just like a little smiley face for you or something like that. I break it down like the theory behind of You know what you re doing. I kind of do some diagrams drawing for you and stuff like that, and then we get into actually, you know, going into fl Studio. So a little careful studio here and we actually talk about fl Studio. We explain that the different windows So this is what we actually cover in this court. So I first talked to you you know what is your mind? Set as a music producer. And as you see me right now, this is exactly how it looks like in the course I break down how music production works. We get into some music theory. Okay, So I talked to you about how to count beats, and I do. I always like the drawing first, and then we actually get into with NFL studio with a real examples. And then it also explain to you about, like, chords and stuff, too. So this is gonna be a really awesome course for someone who is newer to production. Like in all honesty, you would probably want to be producing for about a month or two already, so that you kind of have a general idea. But this course does start from a real super beginner level. Okay, we get into, like, programming notes with the step sequencer. I introduce you to something a term that I coined called safe spots. I've even written a book about this on Amazon. It teaches you how to create awesome drum loops. We talk about, like, the piano role as again cords, keys and scales and all that kind of stuff. Okay. We talked about the playlist. How to arrange the song. We talk about the mixer, I go in depth with drawing and you know what to be aware of with a mixer talked about, like signal flow and how professional mixing engineers how they're able to achieve the mix is that they are able to achieve through, like, always, their signal roading, whether it be like Syria's processing, parallel processing, all that different type of stuff we get into mastering, I explain to you know what is mastering? What's the goal of mastering going further? We talk about like, your sounds what kind of sounds you want to buy. And then I actually talked to you about, like, digital audio and how it works. So if you go back to the drawing here, I can select like a different color. So, for example, I talked to you about, like, a sine wave and how, like, you know, you can have, like, plus plus three up here and then you have, like, minus three down here on. Do you know, depending on if you're layering sounds, you could be getting phase cancellation on These are all just things just to be aware of so that you can achieve the highest quality mix master and beat that you could possibly create . So, like I'm saying, I've just acquired all this new gear. We're gonna be getting really nice, high quality videos in this course and courses in the future with me as well. So I'm gratuitous. I worked there Grammy nominated artist on the host of the podcast called Music Production Made Simple. I've written three books on Amazon at the moment as well as have created over 18 music production courses based on FL Studio, and this one is going to be by far the highest quality in terms of all this new year. So if you're excited about that, because I am, you know, like I'm saying all this gear has made just the creation process a lot easier. You guys can enroll and I'll talk to you guys mawr inside the course. So I hope you guys learn a lot in this one 2. 1-1 What It Takes To Become A Music Producer: all right. Hey, what's everybody? I'm gratuitous. Welcome to 10 steps to become an FL studio pro, and I will be your host in this course. Now, this video is going to be for someone mawr wanting to pursue this as a career someone warning to hopefully maybe make some money off their music and everything like that. So if you're just wanting to learn FL studio and how to make beats, you guys even skipped in the next video and I'm gonna break down. You know how to use fo studio? Um, you don't get up and running, but I want to talk to you about your producer mindset being in this industry because when you're first starting up, you know, for the most part you're pretty unaware of your actions. How they can, you know, stay with you forever. Ah, if you're not wise with your actions, okay? Because now, if you are trying to sell your music, if you're getting placements, if you're working with artists Ah, your brand and your name now matter. Okay, So the things that you say behind that Brandon name again, they can follow you in a positive or negative way. Okay, so I just have Ah, a little pencil here, which I'm gonna be ableto right on screen. Ah, this just kind of walk through. Ah, just some kind of mind set. Things that I truly believe that you should have going forward. Okay, Because again, like I'm saying, if you're just doing this for fun, um, you know, that's one thing. But if you're doing this, Jack should pursue it as a career. You want to make sure that you represent your brand professionally, someone, something that someone has always said. To me, it was like, It's like your persona. So it's like, you know, when you're in elementary school and stuff like that, typically you're always around, you know, the same kids growing up. Whatever. Right. So it's like these people already know who you are, but when you get out into the real world, like, for example, like if this is the first time you have you ever seen me ever talk to me, it's like this is the first impression that you're getting from me, right? So that's like your persona that, you know, when you meet somebody, you know the impression that they get from you So it's really important that you established this per, you know, the sense of professionalism in my case. You know, hopefully, you know, you feel that I have some knowledge to give you. I've been in this industry for over 10 years now. Um, but okay, so that's kind of the mindset. I'm trying to get across to you that, you know, you have to stay professional because, you know, things can kind of bite you in the butt later on if you're not wise. Okay. So, again, this just kind of run on the screen here, so I just want to talk about your producer mindset. Okay, So your producer mindset and I just have some different colors here. Okay? So the first thing I want to talk about is your actions. Okay, So your actions now matter. So by this, I mean, you know, if you are going to share something on social media like your music or if you're going to state your opinion on a certain topic that is currently out there, you know, for example, right now it's like a anti vaccinations and stuff like that, just, for example, like one of making this video Those are the things that are being talked to boat. So you know, you as a producer, if you want to chime in, if you want to give your opinion, you know people are going to look at you as such. You know, there's gonna be two people, right? So, you know, here's the fence. You're gonna have people who are for it. There's going to be people who are against it. So if you state your opinion one way or the other, you know so again these are things that you just have to think about. So, you know, maybe you just don't want to state your opinion at all. You know, avoid all that drama and just focus on your music. Okay? So again, you know, it was just These are just things to think about because as you start to grow as a producer , if you start getting a following, if you start, you know, getting fans, people start looking up to you in a way that maybe you're not really used to people looking at you for right. You know, if you've always, you know, hung out with your friends and stuff like that, you know, you've maybe openly shared everything, and you always stated your opinion. But when you get into the business world, you've got to be careful about what you're sharing and what you're saying. OK, okay. So now that's our next point. So you have to be careful what you say. Okay, as well as you have to be careful what you are sharing. Okay? So again, you know, on social media, whether there's Blake, your music or your opinion on things that are going on now in terms of what you say, Ah, you have to be careful because the things that you say they can follow you like forever. Okay, so it's just important that you know what you're going to share. What you're going to say, you know, is it doesn't relate to you and your brand. Okay, because this also goes down to your morals. Ah, this is also you know, the words that are being said in your music. For example, let's say you're just the producer, right? But now you work with an artist and let's say the things that they're talking about, you know, maybe right now in life, you don't care, because it's just all about the money and, you know, realistically, for the most part, that it is what it is like. You know, if you want to make money, you got to make money, right? But let's say, 10 years from now, you've made lots of money, right? You're fully established. Now, looking back, you know you the songs are out there, right? So the thing is, once you release a song with these lyrics, you could never take it back. It's always gonna be on somebody's hard drive somewhere, right? So this is what I'm trying to say. It's like, you know, I truly believe that your morals or more more important than the money. Ah, because again, if you get established, well, now you can't really go back and change the actions of what it took to get to where you at today? Okay, again, I'm only saying this because with music production, it's really important that you do. Think ahead. Because again, these choices, the things you say, the things you share, they can follow you forever in your music production career. Okay, So, again, just be really, really careful what you say. Okay, so now another really important thing to talk about is before actually releasing your music . Okay, so again, when you just start up, it's totally fun, you know, making your music, sharing it with friends on social media with the Facebook or whatever the new Facebook is when you're watching this video, Um, but again, it all comes down to your brand, and you know how professional you want to be. So in my opinion, in my experience over the years, it's better to take the approach of you want to truly become, you know, really good at what you're doing. You want toe, you know, create a nice logo. You want to establish a solid brand before you actually release your music. Because here's an example you just downloaded FL Studio, for example. You know, you made a little beat. He started sharing it on social media. Now, this is what happens for a lot of people. You're going to catch them by surprise. They're gonna be like, Oh, wow, like I didn't know you made music, but they're going to listen to this beat that you just created maybe on, like, the demo version of FL Studio, right? And they're gonna listen to that song. They're gonna be like, man, you're just another bedroom producer Just trying to have fun with it. You know, maybe you're not going to stay with it. Um, you know. So these are the things that people will think about your your music, right? And then you let's say you release your second beat your third beat. You know, you keep sharing it. You know, for everyone to see people are gonna start to become kind of immune to it. So, in other words, you know, the first time you released it, people are probably always commenting liking. They're really excited for you, you know, 3rd 5th 7th be in. You know, you're not getting much. Um, you know, feedback from thes potential fans. Even if they their friends from your life from a long time ago. Right? So what I'm trying to say is, before you release your music, you want to really know what you're doing before you release it. Okay, so, you know, make sure you understand. You know the basics of music production in a sense of, like, compression e que. How to mix your music. How do you know? Making your beats if you compare them to? You know, these industry, you know, the industry music, dessert music, actually kind of, you know, compete with it. And, you know, in my opinion, I would probably kind of keep this stuff kind of quiet, like, Don't get me wrong. You can share it with friends and stuff like that. Ah, but just maybe keep it on the down low until you really know that you are becoming, like, really good at this craft. Okay, so here's some things which I want to share with you to kind of prepare you for before you actually released your music. I feel that this will give you a better jump start, and it might help create mawr kind of Ah, mo mentum behind your brand. Okay, because that's the thing with his music industry, it's all about momentum. Once you start going, you got to kind of keep flowing with it. You've got to kind of keep people entertained a little bit. Always keep them updated for the most part. So when you release your music, the first things which I recommend to you is a nice logo. Okay, let's just say a good logo and it's really, really important that you have an awesome logo, because again, people will establish this with your brand. Uh, what goes into a good logo? Many times you can use your logo in many different areas and within many different sizes and shapes and stuff like that. So, for example, you know, sometimes you can have a logo, which is you no longer and with, so I'll just read it here. So sometimes you can have a logo that is like, you know, has a has width, right with this way. But, you know, it's like a small height, But then a long time that you have, like, a little local here, besides, like you know, your little producer name, right? So sometimes, you know, now you want, like, a square of that logo. So, like, you know, from here to hear, you know, they're like this. It's the same size, right? But a good logo kind of ah. Allows you to be really flexible in your branding in addition to your logo. You know, I would say that you want, like, a website. Okay. Um, you know, you want away for someone to listen to your music for them to kind of, you know, for you to have a home base. In addition, it's really important for you guys to have a newsletter. Okay, so a newsletter is like an email lists mail. Chimp is an awesome platform. Uh, for this it allows you to get, you know, 2000 free subscribers. At the moment, their business bottles kind of always changing. But what an email list allows you to do is these are the people that want to stay up to date with you, right? So when they come to your website, you know, maybe you can offer them or if you sign up, you can get, like, my beat tape for free or again, It all depends on the industry you're trying to reach. Are you trying to reach listeners or you trying to reach artists where you're selling your music to them? Okay, so you kind of got to think that way. But by establishing on email list, it's really powerful, because then you can send an email off to these people and you know, either market to them, reach up to them, share with them some stuff like that. Okay, So, by establishing kind of like a base like this, it's going to allow you to be more professional and again kind of keep that momentum going . Now, the last thing I want to talk about before we wrap up this video is before you actually release your music. Here's some things which you can do to kind of give you an idea if you feel that you're ready to release your music. Okay, So the 1st 1 I have here is you want to compare your music to music that you like from favorite artists. Just listen to it, you know, in a sense of the master. So we're gonna be covering a little bit of mastering in this course if you don't want mastering is. But if you do know what mastering is, it's just like the last process in music production. It's kind of like we're like, you bring up the levels, you kind of polish three overall track, like if the track needs some compression for some balance or some kind of geek, you adjustments to kind of balance the music. But what I mean by compare the tracks is like, you know, like listen to their song, listen to your song is their song. Does it sound more polished and stuff like that? If it sounds more polished, it's like maybe you have to learn more about, like, the mixing and mastering before you start getting your music out there. Okay, on, by doing this is just gonna let you know where you're at and then also what you have to work on. If your music is close to these releases like, you know, if you're listening and you're just kind of like Oh, you know, maybe they're mix is just a little bit better Then you're doing good right now. You just have to know, you know, what do you have to work on to improve where you know, What do you have to read about? What do you have to practice? And as a music producer, that's that's what you have to do. Okay, you kind of have to listen to other people's music and then compare it to your own Now for myself. I'm really big on being yourself and not following the trends I'm were talking about. How does it sound? Okay, if someone's song sounds great, right? And then they listen to yours, and that years of Super Quiet or your e que balance Sounds really weird, right? Like that doesn't really, Um I'm not really talking about, like, your how they play their notes or what sounds they've used. I'm talking about how it actually sounds in a sense of when someone has play. Does it sound good? Okay. You know, like, uh, again is an e que balance all weird in your song. So if your track is getting really close to the professionals, you're doing good again. Now you're just gonna have to know what you have to work on, which is awesome. You know, that gives you a goal, a goal to achieve toe work towards so that you can become better and hopefully become the best in this music production kind of world. Okay, so again, this video was more just kind of preparing you before you before you actually become a music producer. The biggest thing to realize is is this is just gonna be a hobby for you. Is it just gonna be for fun? And if it is, that's totally cool. But if you're trying to, you know, establish your brand trying to sell your music, trying to get it on the radio and stuff like that. Your mindset is gonna be totally different than somebody just doing this for fun. And it's really important that you now think of yourself as a professional, even if you're not. But that doesn't mean that you can't treat yourself as a professional. And you know, when you talk to people that the things you say, the things that you may not say, stuff like that Okay, so I hope that kind of gets your mindset prepared going into this career. Being a music producer, it's a really fun industry. Ah, in all honesty, it's a really, really rewarding industry, like if you think about it. So you made this song, and even when you listen to your own music, there's just something that kind of happens, like, even to yourself. You know, it's just it's really impressive to be able to listen to your own music, you know what I mean? And now if you have gotten your music out there for other people to listen to, you know again, music helps people in many different areas of their lifes, like whether it's be like a legal wedding or if they're sad or if they're happy or anything , right? It's like music is such a powerful thing in life. And you, as the music producer, have the opportunity to control these people's emotions, you know, not fully control. And what kind of influence? These emotions. Right. Okay, so let's get into the course. Okay? You guys get a little FL studio how to get up and running on? Let's get into it. 3. 2-1 How Music Production Works: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be talking about how music production actually works in a sense of just like the flow of music production. It doesn't really matter what music production program you use. And we call these Dawes digital audio workstations. You create patterns, you add these patterns into the playlist, and then you can wrote these sounds to the mixer. Um and that's pretty much the flow off music production in general. OK, so I'm gonna be quitting two videos to break down this process. This video we're just gonna be doing, you know, just like some drawing here. And I'm gonna share with you the flow of music production. You know, this is just for more like the beginner if you're kind of brand new. But again, if you're a little bit more seasoned, you can kind of jump into the videos where we start talking about, you know, more of the me of music production. So here's how music production works. So in fl Studio, you have something called the step Sequencer. Okay. And it looks like this, and you have always a little X squares, okay? And they actually kind of change colors So, for example, if we go from here now, each one of these is what you call a step, and then you're able to click in your sounds. I'm just gonna kind of cut of this in here. So imagine. You know, you just kind of put, like a kick drum on, like these ones or something like that. And so what's gonna happen is your pattern is literally just kind of kind of loop over, over and over and over again. Okay, so right now we will call this just pattern one. Okay, so pattern one. And again, this is what you call the step. Ah, sequencer. You could read that. Okay, So Okay, so this is called the step sequencer. You create patterns, and you can add in all your sounds. Okay, if this could be one shot, sounds such as, like kicks collapse, high hats. You know, like your percussion elements to kind of create, like, that drum loop. Or you can actually adding instruments here to like, your piano, your instruments and stuff like that. So imagine this is like a kick. Okay? And then we also have let's say, a piano here when you're dealing with a piano NFO studio. Anyways, it'll be like a little box. Um, and then you'll actually see, like, midi notes being play like this, and you can control it the length of them on stuff like that. Okay, so, again, this is called the step sequencer on. I'll do this. And red. So this is the step sequencer. Okay, Okay. So again, how music production works is you create patterns, thes patterns. You add into what's called the playlist, which I will do right here. So this is the playlist. So these patterns get added into the actual playlist and you will create many patterns. So you, you know, like for convenience. Typically, what you want to do is you want to break apart your patterns into as many different patterns as possible. And the reason for that is so that come arrangement time, you actually have total flexibility on what to add or remove in your song. This is how you make an intro. How you make a chorus averse, right? Typically for the most part, of course, is all your instruments. Is the business part of your song? It goes to the verse, you know, you take away some instruments allow those vocals to kind of cut through, and then you can kind of start building up the song. Okay, So, again, this is the step sequencer. You build your patterns, and we will just add And let's just say this, and I'm just gonna write p one for pattern one. Okay, so this is a P one. Now, let's just say we had another pattern. So let's just say it's our collapse or something like that. Okay, so almost a p two, Okay, Because we know this is like our kicks and our collapse. So, like, kick, clap, kick, clap, just for example. Okay. Now, as the song actually progresses, maybe what you can do is you know, the pattern one will continue. And again, it's a loop. So we played the kick drum here, here and here. Right. So what's gonna happen is you are actually gonna have this little playlist marker. Okay, So goes like this Is this little, like arrow and this arrow actually will play the song. Okay, So when you hit play, this marker will cross over all the patterns and whatever is clicked into these patterns, it will play the patterns which create, you know, which make your actual music eso as this line. Let's say it gets over here now, right? So it's arrow, so it's no longer playing the clap anymore. But it is playing, uh, pattern one, for example, Right? Like this pattern one would would play. Okay, so that's kind of how the flow goes of music production. So we create patterns, we add them into the playlist and you get Teoh, you know, choose where and when these patterns place. You can kind of start building up that song. Now we have what's called the mixer, okay? And I just kind of bring down the window a little bit. So the mixer is where the rial meet happens in your music production. This is where you can adjust volumes where you can add effects such such a Z Q compression and reverb delay. No tons of effects that you have available to you, and I'll just give you this a little drawing of what it looks like. So in fl studio is just a nice big window, so I typically have it so that my step sequencer playlist and mixer actually look like this and if I want to make one bigger, I would simply just click on the city. The mixer I enter it would go it full screen and you enter again to make it go back to the same spot. So this right here, this is the mixer. OK, so how the mixer works is you have what's called like the master. Okay, so I was gonna write em. So it's what's called like the master track. And it's also called, like your ah to bus. And the reason for this is because you actually have a left and right channel. That's why it's called it the to Bus. And that's like your stereo content. Okay, so just let you know what stereo is is. It's the difference between the left and right speaker. So right now I'm talking to you through this microphone, you can't see it, but this is what you call a mono source. Okay? It's just one microphone. It just records my voice, and it comes out of the left and right speaker evenly. That's why if you're listening on headphones or whatever, I sound like I'm coming from dead center. Okay. Whereas if you listen to ah you know, a recording in stereo. It kind of sounds like, you know, kind of like stereo. Like it's around you. And the difference is is that the left and right speaker are you know, they have different information, so, you know, they may have the same information in some frequencies, but in other frequencies, there's a difference. And the reason why I'm saying that, you know, it might be a little bit too early To explain this to you is just because of, you know, this to bus that I mentioned right here from the actual master. Right? So the two buses, your left and right and how it works is so you know, you have insert one was Do this insert to this into three. Do this. Okay, so all of these are going into the master, okay? And inside a fl studio, they make it really, really easy. Because if you if you actually come here at the mouse, and if I would click on an insert, you'll actually see, has a little circle. And it has the cable, and it goes right to the master the same thing with two as a cable, and it would go right to the master. Same with three. Like that scan. And then in addition, you can also turn up or down this, um and this even allows for even further processing. Okay, so if I go back to actually go a different color, Okay, so let's say you know, not to go to advanced yet, but inside the mixer you can be getting what's called like subgroups or sends. And this is more intermediate, advanced level of the mixer. Ah, but you could be routing your audio of round with, you know, a signal flow. And you could be getting really, really advanced things going on. Such as, like, parallel compression, or, like, parallel distortion and all these different things. It's really, really powerful, so I'll just kind of draw just to give you an example. So, for example, if I write for here, Okay. So, again, each one of these is an insert, and each insert would have, like, a little like volume knob. Okay. So you can turn this up and down, okay? You can also add effects. So is that a FL studio? You'll have a little like a side thing here. Let's just do a different color, so each insert. If I click this one or click this one or this one, each one will have all these different effects you can add. It has little arrow. So you just click the little arrow and then you can add in like e que or ah compressor fiscal comp. A compressor is a very, very powerful tool, which you will eventually want to learn. Uh, this is what you can use to kind of balance out your volume or shape and mold. It sound really, really powerful stuff again, like reverb. Okay, Or like delay. You know so again, each insert you can add on effects, and that's what you can do. Each one has a volume knob. It even has, like, a phase flipping and stuff like that. It allows you to remove stereo or add, uh, or just keep like the mono content. Um, it also has, like, a master kind of button here, and it allows you to turn off all these effects all at once. I'll explain to you later on, but it's really important as you're mixing your music that you have a fair of comparison. So, for example, if you turn the effects often on. You typically wanna have the volume at the same level, but you just want to hear it that the effects are on or that they're off. And that way you can always make a fair volume comparison. Okay, so let's just go back to the fore here where it's a different color. Okay, so this is you know, for example, I'm just going to create what's called Ascend. So imagine four. Here. We added some reverb on. Okay, so he added reverb on 24 And so let's say, uh, three here. Let's say this is a piano. Okay, so three is a piano. So what you can do is right now, three is going to the master, so you're able to hear it. Okay, if I Ned, click on three and then I come here and I come down here to look a little like arrow like this. Ah, these two different color begin, there would be, like, a little arrow like this down here. Okay, So if I click on three first and then I come here and click the arrow, what's gonna happen is it's going to give me a little circle right here. Okay, Um and then now you're going to see that three is now going to four. But it's also going to the master. But then now what happens if we click on four? You're going to see that four is going to the master. Now, again, this is getting a little bit over your head because we knew. But what you can do now is you can add a river, and, uh, these effects have what you call dry and wet. Okay, So dry is the original signal. So imagine you know, your piano is going into three here, so three and then it's going right into the master. So let's call like your dry signal. OK? You're what signal is if you are adding like reverb and delay, it's like you're effect. Okay, so that dries the original signal. The wet is the affected signal. And so if we click on three and we wrote it to four, we click on four. When we see that four is going rate to the master. I'm sorry. I will Right this in yellow. Okay. So, again, this is really hard to see without seeing it inside of fl Studio when we get to that is gonna be in our later videos, everything will make sense. And you're really gonna make sense of how this all works again. It's the difference. It allows you to make your music at a really professional level and get the sound you want . But what I'm trying to say is this is called a send. Okay? So you can send the piano to your reverb. Okay, What is right reverb in here. And then you can blend in the amount of effect that you want. Um, and again on the river, you're gonna have a dry and wet. What you do is the dry you put all the way to zero. You're going to keep the wet. And why this is really powerful is because once we start getting into mawr inserts So, for example, that say, you know, we had insert five year let's say we had ah, guitar. Okay, so we can also come here to this guitar. We can click on it. We're gonna come here, we're going to route it to the reverb and then so largely the circle. So it's going to go, So I know there's a lot of lines going on, right? And it is a little confusing when you haven't seen it before. But this guitar, it goes to the master with that dry signal. Okay, so again, dry right, the dries, the original signal, they're not affected. Signal. We can also send the guitar to this reverb, and then we can blend in with this knob how much we want. So let's go back up. And, um, so again, so we have our step sequencer, okay, on a step sequencer. This is where we create patterns. We at her sounds into step sequencer. We add our, you know, we actually click on her inner sounds, whatever. Uh, and as you can see, I have the piano and the kick here. Typically this piano I would put to like you, Let's say pattern to, for example now, So imagine. You know, this kick is powder in one, let's say, and then the piano, let's say that's pattern to OK, so as you can see pianos playing right here. But the piano isn't playing right here. So again you create patterns. You want to break them apart so that you can actually arrange the song you can add sounds and instruments in and you do that within the playlist. And, you know, this is this is how you actually arrange and build up a song. Then what you do is your individual sounds whether it be a kick drum piano or, you know, the guitar, whatever sounded is could be a symbol. You wrote these to the mixer, OK? And I'm going to share that with you and fo studio. There's a certain way how I like to do it because if you color code and label accordingly, all the colors follow you into the mixer. And so what happens is again if you ah, color and label beforehand in the step sequencer that's gonna follow you into like the playlist is gonna follow you into the mixer. And the thing is, you know, if your song is only, um, you know, just like a couple instruments, you know, coloring and labelling is in too big of a night of too big of a concern. But as soon as your your song starts to grow like I'm talking 30 40 50 60 instruments, having things color coded was going to save you time later on because you know that. Say that symbol's a little bit too loud. You look, you're like, Oh, that's symbols yellow. You're gonna come here to the mixer Chaos yellow. Now you can either, you know, on the mixer it here, you can just simply maybe, just like, turn down the volume or something like that. Okay, so again, we created patterns in the step sequencer. We add them to the playlist and then we can wrote our sounds in the step sequencer to the mixer weaken, Totally process. These sounds exactly how we want in a sense of volume e Q. And if you know these various effects to get that overall sound again, all of these sounds are Ricky being routed to the master. And when you we hear the word mastering, this is where it happens. It happens on your two bus. Ah, and you want to be very, very subtle in your effects. So, for example, if you're adding compression and eq you onto this master track again, you wanted to making sure that using that, you know, subtle amounts of ratio or subtle, you know, cuts or boosts within e que. And I'm talking like 0.5 decibels Okay, So, again, in audio, we measure things like decibel. So if we boosted at 2000 hertz under e que, which all you know share with you as we go, you're going to see e que and stuff like that. Um, you know, if you boosted 2000 hertz, if you're mixing, typically you could be more aggressive. You know, you sometimes you can get away with, like, four decibels a boost in a certain area. Um, and it still sounds natural in this song. But when you get into the mastering stage, you got to be more careful because you are now affecting all the instruments you're affecting the overall song. So, you know, if you did a four db for decibel boost around, let's say two or four K or something. Now your music might sound too bright. Okay, again, with a music production, there's all this terminology when it comes to describing frequencies. You know, like the high end. It could be like, you know, it sounds too bright, or if it wasn't bright enough, sometimes people would say it sounds dull. And then when you export your music, this is, you know, on this master This is what your actual music is going to sound like when you exported to you other your MP three or your wave. I will describe these audio formats later on in this course as well. Um, And on this master, you know, what you want to do is you have, like, a limiter and the whole goal, this limiter, is just to prevent distortion. Okay? And then the final last effect that you have is a meter, okay? And this meter tells you exactly what's going on with your audio after all your effects. You know, typically on a master, you know, you might want want to start with maybe a six e que, for example, and then, like some compression and then you'll like, let's say, goes into their limiter. Uh, we typically set this at minus one db At the moment. I will describe that later on. It's just to do when it goes to MP three, there could be a conversion air, and sometimes your export can become a little bit louder than what you exported it at. But I'll break that down for you when we get into, uh, you know, lossless and lost Lee cortex and then yes, your meters is really, really important. There's also a free meter. It's by you. Lean, totally free. Very, very powerful. Ah, there's a new standard out nowadays when it comes Teoh mastering and stuff like that is called L U F s. And that meter is by you lean. Okay, it's called the You lean Loudest meter. There's a free and a paid version At the moment. I'm just using the free version. It does everything I needed to do, but just let you know. You know, you could even download that now to get prepared for later lessons in this course. Okay, so again, that's just a little overview of how music production works. Every single music program is the same when it comes to this stuff. Um, so if you're using able to in our Ethel studio, you know, all this stuff kind of translates. Okay, so let's get into an overview of FL Studio. How FL Studio works. We're gonna go through over the menus. That video will be a little bit long, but I'm gonna go over how fl studio works, and then we're gonna break it down and get into the meat of each kind of area and further describe a lot of the main tools that we use in music production, Okay? 4. 2-2 Walkthrough Of Fl Studio: Okay, so this is FL Studio. Um, So for myself, when I purchased FL Studio, I first started with the demo version. I wanted to see, you know, if I liked it and I eventually chose Ethel Studio for my dog of choice. It is the only doll that I use. The reason why I tell you that is because is just starting up. A lot of people feel that. You know, they need one doll for this on $1 for their mixing and the $1 for their mastering. In my opinion, it's best just to learn one music program. It's more affordable. You only have to buy one product efforts. Did you offers lifetime free updates? Um, and then also, you don't have to be wasting time learning the program. You can actually now focus on creating your music. Okay, So I actually purchased the producer edition of FL Studio just to give you an idea of you know, what version you should purchase. They also like the signature, but in my opinion, I think it's just a little bit of expensive with all the extras they give you. The producer edition, I believe, is a nice kind of in between the middle, but again, lifetime free updates. Okay, So as you can see, this FL studio, so is gonna work my way through the top, work our way through You know what all the buttons do and you know how to kind of maybe just built, like, a little quick beat just again to get you up and running, and then we're going to get into more of the meat of, you know, the specific tools that we use in music production as a whole. Okay, so let's start with the menu. So in file, this is where you can create a new project. You can create your own templates. Templates are awesome. Just, you know, searching toe YouTube. You know how to create NFL studio Temperley? Uh, it's all about speed. As you can see whenever I open up fo studio, I already have these things already made their called sends on. And as I was showing you before, you know, if we had an insert, I can just simply is a click onto, like, let's say some distortion and now I can have some distortion added in. You'll see why that's important. Later on, that's to do with parallel processing. Really, really powerful stuff. So continuing on, you know, you can save you can save a new version of it and stuff like that. Ah, here is how you actually export the song. Okay, So wave is what's called lossless is your high quality. This is what you would upload to the say, a distributor. If you want to get your music on Spotify or iTunes or even like Soundcloud and stuff like that, MP three is more. If you just wanted, wanted to send, like, aversion to a friend and I can email or something. It's what's called lossy. It actually removes data information from the file. I'll explain more about file types later on, and then these are just recent projects. If you are working on other projects, you know, you could just quickly access them like this in the edit. I never use this. I use so for me, I'm really big on the keyboard shortcuts. So when it comes to control Z to undo control X to cut control, see, to copy and control V to paste, just like how we always do in windows. If you want a copy text copy paste all that stuff. That stuff all works in FL Studio here, too. So, for example, if I just take some bungle hits here, okay? And let's say this I click a whole bunch of different things in you can actually highlight multiple. Uh, sounds just holding on shift. You can select d select where you can, right Click them instead. Okay? And if I hold down control X, you can see I can cut. And I can also paste them because now it's all make your clipboard. So there you go. OK, so let's just cut those. Okay? So to continue on here is add. So this is how you can kind of add and instruments for myself. I never really use the menus up here. I only use it for very, very specific things. If I'm gonna add in sounds, I'm personally gonna actually click and drag a sound. And that's how I would do it. In addition, um, if I'm working on instruments, sometimes I'll go into, like, the plug in database here. And as you can see, it gives you all like you're different now that I'm in effects went generators. So effects are your accuse compressors. Reverb delays. The's air effects, which affect the audio generators, is what fl studio describes instruments. Okay, so you know pianos since So, for example, here's my generators. I have it in a folder called Instruments. Now, I've just organized this my own way. You guys can organize it your own way, but anyway, so three times oscillator is like like a synth that comes with FL Studio. So, for example, for this place sound Okay, so there's that way toe Add in instruments or I many times, right. Click one of these sounds and you insert, And as you can see, you know, if we have instruments, drums, creativity, you can see I have instruments, drums and creativity. So ah, lot of things NFL studio are you confined them in different areas. OK, so just to give you an idea like there's multiple ways to achieve the same thing. Ah, this is kind of nice. You have, like your you know, your image. But for the most part, I just find that this is the quickest way by right clicking, going insert And let's say we want to add in, Um, let's say FL keys so this is like a piano, OK? And then if you do go to play these keys and you find it really, really you know, it's like you have to hit the key really hard. You can adjust the sensitivity, and now it's gonna be more consistent. Okay, so now it's too sensitive story with the wrong way. Okay, So, for example Okay, so there you go. Just just to give you an idea how to add instruments in to get you up and running that way . Okay, so for my sounds, uh, FL studio. So this is the browser will cover this in a second. Okay, But just to give you an idea, so you have a thing called packs. And if you don't have sounds yet, you can just click packs. And here's just a bunch of sounds to get you going, Uh, you know, kick drums. You know, you have ah, snares can you could just simply just drag them in. And if I take it kick, Okay, so let's just go kick, snare, kick, snare. And I mean, it's just it play. Okay? You have, like, your temple and stuff to turn it down. Um, but just to give you an idea. Did you just get you up and running? Okay, but to admit instruments in I right click insert. Easiest way. Okay, so that's pretty much the ad. Okay, so I don't really use these top menus, but I'm just gonna walk you through them just so you're aware of them. But I'm gonna show you how I would actually use the stuff for myself now, Patterns, this has kind of changed over the years with Fo studio, so I don't know what version of FL studio you're on. Ah, but again, if you purchased fl Studio, always get the newest version, you know, because it's for it's free updates. So but patterns has kind of changed over the years. A lot of times, you're able to actually access it from the step sequencer. Now they've actually moved it up into here. OK, so you could see this pattern right here. And like I just said, you can find things in efforts to do in many areas. OK, so for example, here's pattern right here. Here's pattern here. So it's the exact same thing, you know, So it's just kind of redundant, right? Anyways, so pattern is right here. I typically would access the pattern from here. If you ever want to, like, clone a pattern or delete a pattern, you can also like, move a pattern up and down. I think you can collect my move up, move down. And so, for example, if I just click right here, and if I click this again, you can see that we can rename. Okay, So I'm gonna be sharing with you all like the keyboard shortcuts that I like to use. So, for example, F two is the keyboard shortcut. OK, so if I have to, I could label the pattern just for example. So if I don't kick, you can see that now we have kick. But now what you can do is you can click like the plus to go to a new pattern, or you can use the shortcuts. So, for example, it finds, like, the next empty pattern for myself. I like to use the number pad. So on your keyboard, You know, if you don't have a number pad, you guys get getting contest, access it through this way and stuff like that. But the number pad I find is just like the fastest way. So I hit the plus and the minus, and it allows me to go up and down and patterns as you can see him on kick pattern to powder three. And you can also hit from 1 to 9. Okay, +8753 So, you know, if you want to access patterns kind of quick, but I like to use the number pads. So right now, on one kick, I'm gonna hit, plus, to go to pattern to. And let's just say now we have our snare, for example. So I have to just say snare. You can even just give it, like, a color and stuff to or a little shortcut is two F two to get a random color. Um, so just to give you an idea, But what I'm trying to say is, so if you click this, I have a kick in a snare. So let's say we want to move this snare up one click snare. You can also just, like, move it up. Now it's gonna happen. Is the snare is above the kick. Okay, just just to fill you in on stuff. Okay, so that's this. The patterns you know, all this stuff for the most part, Um, I mostly would just use that clone or split by channel, which I'll share with you later. It's a really, really powerful trick, and that's pretty much it for the patterns. As you start to build your patterns, you will start to see that they're all in here, and then you start adding these into the playlist. Okay? You can also access your patterns from here is Well, okay. So for example, let's say we had a kick drum in here, and then we're gonna add our snare in here. Okay? So now we have, like, a kick in a snare, just like I was sharing with you. Before we create patterns, we add these patterns into the playlist. And then this is what builds our arrangement. So, for example, if I want to get the kick again, you could just simply click it and you can just click and hold to, like, drag many. You can remove it here. And if I click the snare now using click and drag. Okay. So one thing I want to share before we continue is you also have, like, a pattern and a song mode. Now this this can confuse you a lot. Because if you hit space Bar to play the you know the song, what's gonna happen is on in pattern mode. So these are your patterns. So if you build, you know what it's like a little like Lupin here. Like this, right? Ah, what's gonna happen is it's just gonna play in here, so this will loop over and over, but we're not going to hear the whole song. If you want to hear the song, you can either click, Uh, play here, okay? Or you can click the pattern. And as you can see, it changes for you appear OK, so pattern, if I hit space is gonna play this pattern right here. And as you can see, you can follow it right now. If I go to song mode and his hit space bar, you're gonna see that the cursor becomes enabled. Sorry. Now it's gone. Now is enabled. Now, if I hit space bar, you're gonna see that it's going to play the song. Okay, so that's a very, very confusing thing. Sometimes when you're first starting out with FL Studio, you've got to make sure, if you want. Listen to the song here in Psalm mode. So let's go to view. So these are all the keyboard shortcuts? And I used them actually a lot. Okay, so, for example, F nine is that the mixer F six? They call this the channel rack right here. I like to call it like the step sequencer. It just kind of makes sense, You know, it allows you to go program your no steps like your your notes into you here to create a pattern to create a loop, Uh, five is like your playlist, your piano rolls f seven. So if we go back to view, you know, like I'm sharing with you all these keyboard shortcuts thes air, huge, they speed you up a lot. But as you can see, all these things right here, for the most part, are the same as all these. Okay, So, like, you know, one of these is like the playlist. One of them's like the China Iraq ones. The mixer, once the browser, which is on the left Here. Okay, So, for example, if I hover it here, one thing I want to share with you is in the top left. It's called the Hint panel. It's absolutely amazing for you to learn what things are. NFL studio, for example, if I highly on the seven or seven kick and if I turn it down, you can see the actual volume. Okay, so it always gives you information about what you're doing. So, for example, if I help over this, this is view the playlist so I can click this to, you know, get rid of the playlist or bring it back. I can hit a five to do that as well, or you could do that from view. So again, there's lots of different ways of how you can approach things in fo studio. But again, I'm just filling you in on how to do it. You do want to learn these short these. That keyboard shortcuts is pretty much, for the most part, just like the F keys. But as you start to use FL studio, you'll know that like F seven is like the piano role in the FBI's The Mixer. Um, okay, you can also close all your windows and stuff like that. So, for example, if think they're all like this, you have 12 and closes everything but watch. So five to bring back the playlist F nine to bring up the mixer. Ok, um, for myself, I actually Leo fl studio like this and you can see they have sticky windows on what that means is right now I'm dragging like this and you're going to see as I bring it closer to the mixer, it's going to actually lock into place. So right there, locked right right there. So I like it like this. And then, like, I was mentioning to you before, If I want to scream bigger, you just simply enter, okay, You gotta make sure highlighted on it. And it just makes it easy, like for the mixer. For the most part, I always just leave it as it is. But if I do want a full screen, I could enter. Okay, so it just makes it really, really minimal. Um, one thing I do suggest is to have Ethel studio in, like, two or more monitors. It really helps just with screen, real estate and workflow. But as I do these courses and stuff, it just makes it really simple and minimalistic that I'm all on one screen, you know? So just to share with you how I flow, Um, so that's pretty much like the view tab here. Options? We will cover options in a separate video I'll share with you. You know how to get good performances, stuff at a FL studio. Um, and the all these settings right here, These are all just this area. Okay, so, again, I don't know these keyboard shortcuts. I barely ever used them. Um, and even these things like, uh, I use them sometimes I don't explain toe to you what they are. Okay, so that's pretty much just the options. We will cover this in a moment. And if you do select any of these So, for example, like many settings or audio settings, general settings, it's always gonna bring you to the same settings window. And then you can select the different tabs. Okay, So, for example, if you have the committee keyboard, you can enable it here. Ah, you an audio interface or you always want to select an as your driver. I'll explain this in a separate video settings. It is important to go over just more clearly. Ah, you have, like the General just for some other kind of fine tuning of fl studio you can add in folders. For example. As you can see, I have, like, my drum kits folder or I have, like, a music production folder. So I simply just drag this folder in and you can drop it in there. Or you can add it in by clicking the folder here, a window pops up and you can add in the folder. Okay, We'll cover that in another video. Um, so yeah, so you know, in options thes like your settings up here. Um and then here, when it comes like the typing, all this stuff, this is all appear. OK, we'll cover that in a moment. Uh, let's go to tools. So, um, there's nothing to specific in here, which I want to share with you, except one thing. So if you are working with third party v ST's so obvious t is an effect. Okay, So for example, there is like, native plug ins that come with fo studio. So if I go e que you'll see the food and parametric EQ you too. So it's actually comes with fl Studio. It's been integrated, and you know it comes with studio. So, um but where? As you can get third party v ST's Okay, so if I click Q and press, you know, fat filter pro que Okay, So this is by the third party company that creates an e que They do the exact same thing. It's just for workflow. So for example, if I open up like pro que here and I, you know, I could just click to create a band I could make it nice and narrow. I can actually solo out frequent sees like that I want Ah, the reason why I'm sharing this with you is because over the years, V S T has started to change a little bit. So there's different standards. There was V S t two that was around for a very, very long time. Nowadays there's V S t three coming out and V s t three integrates a lot better with FL Studio. But if you are on a V s t to plug in, you'll find that you're not able to right click these knobs and be creative with them. OK, so there's things called automation clips and stuff which will cover when we get like the playlist. So automation clips allow you to do things automatically. So, for example, if I you know, I would highlight this area and are so let's do that again. So I'm holding down control and highlighting the area, okay? And if I come here and this is the frequency, so I just got a right Click it and go create automation clip, OK, And if I increase this So what you'll see is that as the song plays this e que is going to increase, okay? And this is an automation clip, and it just allows your music to be really, really dynamic and creative. But what I'm trying to share with you is this If I click the gear and click this one, you'll see I am actually on a V s t three version of this plug in. Therefore, I'm ableto you know, if I click this, um, it was a right click on these knobs and, you know, creating animation clip. I can also called me the value That's really, really powerful if you want to, For example Uh, let's say I was listening to this week. You and I was like, Oh, I like it right here. Well, how can I bring this setting into the playlist? So you could just simply right click copy the value and right click and paste that same value. So which means that as at the end of you know, this automation clip this this Ah, I guess bell curve will be exactly where it waas when you copied. Okay, So what I'm trying to say is, if you're on a V s t two version, you're not able to right click on these plug ins, which is kind of annoying. So what you have to do is you know, you kind of have to tweak the knob. First, you can go to tools and now they're saying something called Last Tweaked. Okay, so it's your last tweet parameter, and they're able to create an automation clip and treat it as if you're just able to right click on it. But if you have the choice, try the VSC three version. Sometimes they could be a little buggy sometimes, But if they're not used, the VSC three version Uh, just integrate better with Ethel studio. You can be more creative with them. Okay, again, the Nikkei with their fruity, fruity parametric eq you to it comes with fo studios. So it's integrated. It works well, you know, you can right click and you could do stuff like that. Okay, so I just want to fill you in on that because, you know, since you may be using third party v STs, which you know, typically you will find yourself doing because, you know, sometimes these third party tools have different creative touches on them. Or sometimes you know, for workflow or, you know, it's cool. Just adventurer and be creative with different stuff like that. So again, you just go tools last week and you can treat it as such. Okay, um, that's pretty much everything I use in the tools tab in the help. I don't use this that all one thing I will share with you, though, is you can hit f one for anything in fo studio, and it's always gonna help you. So for example, if you are on the step sequencer and you you have a question about any of these things up here, simply hit F one and it's gonna pop up a window distracted over here. So as you can see this is everything to do with the step sequencer Now, In addition, many times these images you can actually click on an area, and it's gonna bring you to more information on it, which is a really, really cool feature. So, for example, let's say we want to learn more about all here, so I click three. And as you can see, it's loading and it's gonna bring us two more information on it can. So here it is. Um, so let's try one more one more of those. So, for example, if they were on the playlist, you have some questions about the playlist or even the for new Parametric EQ key to. If you click on this and F one boom, it pops up. It's all about it, and not all of the images you can click. But if you do want to learn something about, maybe let's go back to the step. Sequencer will screw up to the top. If you want to learn something a little bit more, you know, let's say a volume or something that so I would hit control F. It brings a little pop up to find something on your page and I just start typing like, let's say volume. Okay, so now I just enter until I find, you know, the area of where I'm looking or the key word, right? So those are things to help you learn faster and fo studio because you're gonna have lots of reading on lots of questions. And the best way to answer your questions is honestly, is directly rate from the manual. Um, you know, especially if you're going to get into plug ins like the stereo enhancer or something. This is to do with, like, wide nous to create, to make your music sounded a bit wider. Yet to be very, very careful, these tools could be very, very dangerous when it comes to face cancellation, which will cover a little bit later when we talk about digital audio. But again, you could just simply come here F one. It's gonna explain to you about the plug in super super cool. Okay, okay. So let's continue on. That's just like the menu up there. So again, I explained to you like the pattern and the song mode, um, right here is like the master volume. So this master volume is pretty much the same as this master volume. If you do want to fade a song. So, for example, imagine this is like the end of the song now, right? So if you want to fade it out, you could just highlight here and you come to the master Fader and you're just gonna right click create automation clip And this song will fado. So all that you hear that? And many times I'll also extend one of the patterns which don't have notes afterwards. Um, and this. So when you export this song, this is going to be how long the song is. Um So, for example, if efforts do you come stock like this 801 So what that saying is you're like, the eighth bar and stuff like that. So I don't like that. I like to put a jack full time. You know, if I was gonna export the song I want to see, you know, is that minute three minutes or so? Is that song three minutes or is that song you know? 3.5 minutes. Whatever. So if right now in 14 So at the end of the song were like 18. So the song is going to be a boat and about 20 seconds. OK, so as you can see, I highlighted the area. I came to the Master Fader right here. Reckless created animation clip on the actual fader. Right. And then now we enter. Or so you want Space bar? We're gonna listen. You're gonna hear it fade out. And then this is how long the song actually is. Okay, if aids Oh, and you could actually see that fader go down. Okay. And the reason why I shared that with you is because if you are going to be making many beats, for example, let's say you want to put together like a beat tape or an album. You know, that's how you can get a fatal and get your timing right in between songs. Okay, this is the master pitch. So in the same way, if you want to be creative with that, uh, for example, as the song is fading out, let's say we take the pitch right click, create Imation clip. Let's say we just pitch it up. I'm assuring this just to be kind of creative and share how to use stuff so we'll listen. Okay, So the pitch was going up as the song was fading out. Okay, so that's all those two dogs are the pattern in the song mode. The place stop record if you want to record recording for the most part in FL Studio is just a matter of hit record hit play. And then, you know, if you're on that your keys eso right now See, it's not going to play because the volumes at zero. So if I click here now, the fader went back up. OK, so the fader is back up here on the master if I just play some keys. Okay. So, for example will go, I will just go to a new pattern Artist can hit the plus in my number pad plus in my number pad again cause I'm on kick. I want a new pattern because again, you usually want all your instruments and sounds on their own pattern. That way, when you build the song you can take, you can add and remove what you want or don't want. Okay, So for example, I'm on record. I'm gonna hit play 234 Okay. And then now, as you see it recorded it. We're in the actual. We have a pattern now, and and as you can see right now, this is pattern three. So it makes it kind of tricky. So typically had hit like F two. I usually write in capitals. So piano you didn't have to do to give it a color. And it also come here pushing in my middle scroll wheel piano. And then here's the trick you f three the color stores at NFL studio. So the color that you just used, it's stored into F three. So if they f three f three k, I'll share all this with you later as we proceed, I just, you know, just to kind of share with you. Just if you're you know, if you just want to kind of have fun with this stuff at the moment and then so right now, my notes would kind of be off. So a double click that and you can kind of edit them. Ah, little cool trick is just to Kwan ties, and then and then kind of nudge them. Many people are kind of against that in the industry. Uh, and this is what you call Quanta izing. Many people like that really human flavor of how you played it. I personally find if you Kwan ties, it locks everything to grid, which means everything's in time. And then it's just a matter of, you know, just drag things to where they are actually in time now and again. This is just for an example. So I'm not even gonna play this or anything with you. I'm still walking through how FL studio kind of works like the menu. Okay, So appears at your temple. Okay, If you want, adjust it. Now, we're going to get into the menu stuff here from options. So typing keeper to piano and stuff like that. So this is like your Metrodome. So the Metro Room is just useful. If you're going to, like, record, you know, your notes, whatever. And you want to have, like, kind of a click track to follow against. It just allows you to keep your music and sink a little bit better, and then you always go, and you can edit it afterwards. Okay, so that's just the Metrodome right there. Um, this is that the wait for input to start playing so this is like if you're gonna record, I typically leave that off. However, I do like this countdown before recording. So, for example, if you hit record and take off the Metrodome and if I hit space bar, you know, now I can just record, But it doesn't give you enough time because if I hit, you know, if I hit my space bar, it doesn't give me enough time to get to my piano. So is too rushed, Right? So typically, I like to leave the countdown on. And if I were to hit space Bar to count me in 1234 Now eso however, however you want to play, and now it will actually record those notes. So the countdown is kind of nice that way. Uh, this is to do like, if you want, like, notes to kind of overlap. So, for example, if I just recorded those notes and then now I go to record again, uh, it can either, you know, kind of add more instruments to it, or you can kind of just overwrite what you originally did on this is also to do it like that. Looping as well. I believe that will just kind of keep going over and over again. So you can kind of keep adding notes into your loop. So this feature right here is again. It took a look in the top left there, says typing keyboard to piano keyboard. Okay, so this is your typing keyboard. Your quality. Keep word the one you use to, you know, write emails or whatever. Right? So I actually used this keyboard when I first started up using FL Studio as, like my piano a little bit, you know, just, you know, for the most part, for example, many times all used like you. Uh, if I'm wanting to kind of test the sound out in the actual step sequence or here, You know, for example, let's say we had the sound and I was trying to find it on like the mixer. So, for example, we just wrote this to seven for, except for a second. You can see you know it now it's on seven. So sometimes you know, it might click a sound or from trying to apply effects onto a sound. I might just q a couple times. But if we go to like the piano roll. And if I just hit some notes on my taping keyboard case. So this is like my taping keyboard. Okay, so, you know, like when you're starting up, if you don't want to buying the committee keyword right away, you could be using your actual typing keyboard just to kind of get you going to kind of, you know, learn the program creates a melodies and stuff like that. So if you want to be able to use as a piano, just have that enabled, you can use it. If it's not enabled, then you can start using, like, the shortcuts, as you can see right here. So you know, we have, like T and D and B and stuff like that. Um, I'll share with you the piano or sort of the playlist later. It's also the piano roll to You can also use it, called the Shortcuts if it's disabled. But I typically leave that enabled, Um, this is pretty cool. So if I enable this, what's gonna happen? I'll make it full screen, okay? And we're going to zoom in a bit. And if we hit play here on the playlist, you're going to see that the I guess they call it the time marker is going to It's gonna follow what you have, so let's just listen. Records on and see. Right now, I'm in pattern mode. So for me, the easiest way to know that I want to play the playlist right now, I would simply just hit the speaker it here. Okay. So as you can see what's gonna happen So it's following us, right? This is really, really nice. You can also right click and go and disable continuous scrolling. And as it gets to the end, it's gonna shift over. Okay, so it'll keep shifting over like that. And our master pitch is going up and you can actually see the knob right here do that too. Okay. Our next option here is called step editing mode. I never use this, but I'll share with you what it is. But again, if you ever want to learn about it, you could just simply click here, Hef. One is going to take you to you know, your manual. I wasn't able to get directly to it, so I'll share with you what I did. I actually clicked. Introduction to fo studio okay, And I just click the user interface. And then I clicked the toolbar because that's where all these options are. And then I knew it was called step editing. So by hovering over it again, look at the top left. So step editing mode as control and F And I just typed step and then has to start. I just started typing head. OK, so I was gonna write editing, but it brings it up for you. And, um, you know, it said, see the link for details. So ended up clicking this and it explained to me what it was again. I I don't use this option ever NFL studio, but it's one explain to you what it does so if you enable it. What happens is if you go to the piano roll and if I actually just play a note, 5. 2-3 Best Performance Settings in FL Studio: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be checking out the best settings for FL studio. Okay, so you guys can compare to tools and our story options. And here's your options. I always like to use the keyboard shortcuts, so I'm gonna f 10. Okay, so here on MIDI, this is where if I were to turn on my midi keyboard, you will see it. But you're also here, like the desktop noise. Okay, so this is my my midi keyboard. It's a bit of an older midi keyboard, but it works great. Okay. All you have to do is click on your actual midi keyboard, enable it now, for your type, you do want to select a template that they've created. So, for example, they have created tons of templates for a lot of different products out there that you can use. Ah, in my case, even though mine is an axiom, it's by the same company, m audio. And if we come down here to the oxygen so m audio oxygen. So it works the same way. So you may have to find one that works for your hardware if you can't find yours in here, okay? and what it does is it just allows you to automatically use at the stop the play, the record and stuff like that. It just makes it really, really easy for you. Okay. Ah, and that's everything I have set up on this page. We goto audio. So what you can do, It's kind of a little cool trick before we get into. This stuff is down here at the mixer. So let's go play kick drum and you could see that my preview mixer track is on 12. And if I put 2 13 so I play again. So now it's on 13. Okay, so this is kind of useful if you don't want your sounds to be as loud or if you want to put you know, let's say on 13 you want to put some effects on, you can do that. And then as you go through your sounds, you can run it through those effects Always. It's kind of a cool thing. Okay, a lot of people don't know about that now. The most important thing that you can do in FL Studio is using as Eo driver. This is going to give you significant performance increase over pretty much anything you can possibly do for your computer in general. OK? And as your driver, So if I show you show you my the ones I have. So fl Studio has recently come out with FL Studio ASIO. Before that, I was always always using, like the ASIO for all driver. Ah, but again, I have a focus, right? Scarlett to I two is the second generation. That's my audio interface. If you don't have an audio interface, you're gonna be using either that force to do as you or the ASIO for all V two. Okay? So always try your actual audio interfaces drivers first. And if you're not able to get good performance than try another one, okay. And as a driver just gives you significant performance, it's actually amazing. Okay, so now since you have selected as your driver in this case, I'm just using the FL studio as you. The reason why I'm using that is because it allows you to actually hear Ah, the desktop audio. Like if I'm gonna play sounds the stuff for you. Okay. Ah, If I were to use the focus, right. Ah, it's just the way how the actual hardware and you know, the driver and everything that Fosco isn't able. Think I'm not able to record the desktop. Audio is kind of more flex these courses. Okay, so if I had a choice, I would actually do the focus, right? Okay, But since I'm doing this course, I'm on the efforts to do as you so you can hear actual my desktop audio. Now, depending on the performance of your computer, like how powerful it is, you may have to adjust this depending on where you are in your production stage. Okay? I'm not talking about how good you are producing. I mean that when you go to make a beat. So there's different stages. You know, there's at the actual beat creation, there's the mixing. And then there's a kind of the mastering as well as you know, when you're making the beat, your you know, playing your midi keyboard or you are actually recording vocals. Okay, all this comes into play because, uh, depending on your buffer setting, you can actually get late and see. And this is a huge problem within the industry. Even still, uh, audio interfaces have become better, but So let me just kind of break this down for you. Okay? So in the very, very beginning of a song, you know, you don't have many instruments, Therefore your computer isn't running as hard. Okay? If so, in other words, you know there's not much happening, so you can set this at a lower buffer size. For example, I probably wouldn't go lower than 5 12 Now you'll notice when you play at 5 12 your midi keyboard. Or if you were to record your voice into, you know, when you're making a song, it's very, very responsive. Okay, so there's not much latent. See going on now, for example, let's say you had about 20 instruments going on and your computer isn't ableto handle it. OK, so and how you'll know is your computer will start doing glitches and pops in the musical sound all weird. Okay, so what you have to do is open up the buffer, you know, window here and just increase your buffer size. Now what's gonna happen is when you go to, you know, record with your meeting keyboard or try to record vocals. You're gonna get this audio late NC, and it's just the delay. So, for example, if I talk into the microphone, it delays, you know, depending on your studying here. So depending on the power of your computer, you're gonna have to play around with this in the very early stages of the beat, you're gonna, you know, put like, 5 12 you'll be able to have a really responsive midi keyboard when you press your keys as the beat starts to grow in order for your computer to handle it again, depending on how powerful your computer is, computers nowadays are becoming a lot more powerful. Ah, but you always want to making sure that you have, like, an I seven. That's the CPU and stuff like that. Um, but yeah. So, depending on the stage in the very, very early stages, you'll be on 5 12 As the song starts to get more intense, more instruments, you know you're gonna have to increase your buffer size. Okay, now, if your computer can't even handle that, so, for example, imagine he had tons of instruments going on. You may want to try tripled off buffer, and that's just gonna help get some more juice out of your computer. But if you constantly keep getting these under runs, even with, you know, fully maxed out buffer size and the triple buffer on you know is really time for you to get a new computer, you're kind of capping out. Uh, your skills, like you know, you will not be able to progress. You will not be able to be creative because you keep getting capped because of the power of your computer. Okay, All the settings you see on here this is how I have it set up on the mixer. I just have it at six point you can go more. Ah, this is just to do when you actually, like having a sound on. If I go right, click piano roll. I noticed moves over here. This re sampling, I believe, is just like if I which played the sound and it goes up in pitch it just kind of the example quality, I believe, is this better? So having it at No. Six is not a big deal. When I actually export the song, I have it at 5 12 Okay. And again to export, you just go file export, and then just select it. Okay? So let's keep moving on. Also, you can adjust your sample right here in FL Studio. So, for example, if you want like that 48 k you'll notice that when we get later on into this course, when we talk about digital audio stuff like that I mentioned to you about 24 bit 48 killer . It's OK, so let's go to the general tab. So on here, I really don't do much. If you want to kind of zoom in a little bit, you can adjust your main gooey scaling So graphical user interface you can adjust like this if you've actually adjusted your window settings to be a little bit more zoomed up. Uh, if you just go system, it will just reflect what you've done in the window settings, everything you see here. This is this pretty much how I have it set up. Um, one thing I want to talk about is the undue history. So I have this set to 100. It's really important to enable the undue knobbed weeks if we come here so you'll see in history if I move the knob Boom, boom. Okay, so you can see that it's recognizing the volume changes. If this was disabled, it does not recognize these types of changes, which is I find is really, really important. Because you know what? Let's say you increase the volume like, Oh, I want to go back with control Z or whatever. Um, so 100 under knob tweaks. Okay. Ah, well, keep going down here. So, um, have it the forest high performance power plan. In addition, they have now recently come out with, like, the theme here. So you sound startup, but yes, you can see I'm using, like, a template. So again, check on YouTube to learn how to create a template. The biggest suggestion I could give you about a template is you want it simple. You do not wanna have tons of plug ins opening and every single project. Because let's say you don't end up using all those plug ins, But you are. You know, every time you open up that project, you're gonna have to keep loading. Those plug ins is kind of annoying. OK, so you kind of got to think ahead. You want it really, really minimal. Ah, here in the file tab. So on the back up on the auto save. I have this for five minutes and then they've recently added this to this allows, like the maximum amount of backups. As you can see when I'm on here, this is everything to do with the browser. There's a backup tablet here, and as you see, it saves up every five minutes. One important thing to know about this one case, so you have different options, but the frequently backs up. Even even with when the music's playing, I believe. Okay, you can. You can hit F one and read more about that. That's just how I have it set up. And then here is like your browser extra extra search folders. If you've added a folder in and you don't know how to delete it, all you have to do is just double click here, press backspace and just click on. You actually click away, Um, and it will actually remove it from the browser. Okay, Um and then yes. So here's what the project you can actually assign, um, a folder for this project. It will look through this and the project may load a little bit faster. Ah, you can also put some info here. And as you can see, you go show info on opening. So if you ever open up one of like, the demo projects that come with FL Studio or if you've update fl studio another like the little window pops up and it explains who that producer is and etcetera, etcetera. This is how they do it. It's but their title author name, you know, whatever they want to say a link and that. Okay, and that's pretty much it for the settings. Okay, so the biggest thing really is just an as your driver, Um, you know, this isn't like something like like, let's say, if you doing video editing, you know, let's say you purchase like a better video card, you know that's gonna help you. Whatever. Ah, this is more of like music production, in a sense of your CPU is the most important with music production to get a nice, high quality computer to run fast, Um, and then you want as your driver. Okay. And then again, you know, depending on where you are in that project in the early stages, you're gonna be like a smaller buffer size. It's going to be what much more responsive as your tracks for us to grow, start getting delay. Ah, you're gonna have to bump it up again, depending on the power of your computer. Um, one thing to mention is I've had the first version of the focus, right? Que So focused. Right? I would recommend it for an audio interface. I say that just from over my years of having different audio interfaces. They're a great company. Um, you know. So the first generation, it was decent. I wasn't able to handle large projects. That was because of my computer as well as the actual audio interface at the time. And then he upgraded to the second generation. And what they said was they promised lower latency times. And it was, you know, it really did. I was able to Right now, that's what I'm using. And I'm able to handle pretty large projects even at like, you know, I usually leave my around 10. 24 that way. Don't always have to kind of open it up and move it around. But I'm able to handle pretty large projects and you know so there is also the third generation out now okay, just let you know The reason why I say that is because a lot of these companies over the years they've talked about, you know, zero late Insee or near zero Leyton C. And the thing is, computers are not powerful enough to reach the zero late INSEE yet, like, I do believe that eventually computers will be able to because, you know, computers are becoming more powerful all the time. But I've been producing for about 10 years now, and audio articulated C is still a problem. So if any of these companies are telling you, you know, zero late in C, I wouldn't believe it. Okay, There's always gonna be some late NC. But nowadays, like I'm saying, the second generation has definitely given a lot better performance compared to the first generation. So that's kind of proof that the industry is continuing to grow advance even now, with, like, USB 3.0, audio interfaces coming out. You know, it's pretty cool to see that stuff so hopeful that hopes you guys and you don't healthy as enjoy making beats with some better performance 6. 3-1 Counting Beats Drawing: All right. So in these section of videos, we're gonna be learning, you know, some basics of music theory, and we're gonna first start with learning how to count beats. Now, you may think, you know, Old County beats isn't that hard. Well, it isn't, but it is important that you know how to do it so that you can keep your music and rhythm, you know, in time and in sync and everything as well as you also know how to be creative when it comes to programming your drum loops or programming or many notes where you can place your sounds for them to sound good no matter what. Okay, so let's first start with, you know, just some basics of music theory. So, for example, you know, in our Western culture thing is what you call a time signature, okay? And we are in 44 time. It's actually written like this. So 4/4. Ah, and it's, um the 1st 1 tells us how many of these beats are in a bar. Okay, so So how many beats scare, and then we have this tells us what type of beat it is. Okay, so in this case is actually 1/4 beat. So in other words, we need four quarter beats to make one bar. Okay, do that, kid. So in other words, there's actually four beats in one bar, and we will cover that later on in fl Studio. Okay, so this is what you call common time. And it's so common of again in our western culture this 44 time right here. Okay, This music theory, it's important to know, to an extent, as a producer, but at the same time, like Okay, you know, 44 time, you know? So you know, there's four beats in one bar, and each beat is actually a 1/4 note. Okay? And it's like, Okay, well, cool, but is a beat maker. You just need to know where you can place your notes where you can stay in time. And that's pretty much really all you need to know is a beat maker. I'm just kind of showing you some basics. Okay, So for example, let's just go and pretend that we're in FL Studio, okay? So f else do you has its step sequencer. OK, it's like this, and I'm just going to draw in. Ah, just stick the squares, just like they have here, can so only draw for in here. And then we're gonna change color because they're full studios changes color. Okay, so now this whole thing here is a bar. Okay, so just continue this to here and here. Okay? So how this works is to go one we go to, we go three, and then we go four. Okay, So in other words, we need 1/4 beat for for a beat. Okay, so we need 1234 to make 1/4 beat. So all this stuff is kind of do it like fractions and stuff, but to keep it really simple, each one of these squares is what you call it. A step is actually 1/16 note. Okay, so for you do fractions. So 1/16 plus the 16th is 1/8 and eighth plus an eighth is 1/4. Okay, so that's kind of how this works. Okay, so each one of these is 1/16. Um, and I'll explain to you later on, but I have a term which I call safe spots. Okay. I've actually written a book on this on Amazon. And it's just a term that I have coined over the years that just describes, uh, you know where we can place her sounds within a drum loop for them to sound good, no matter what ended time. Okay. Just kind of understanding where you can place your sounds and the impact that each of these places have within your beat. So, for example, um, you know, if you place a kick drum right here, okay? And then a kick German here, You know, this is really, really standard, right? So this is this would be like your of 12341234 Okay, super super simple. So I'll just write that right here. So we have one to three for super basic right now, you can get a little bit more creative. Okay. So, for example, is just change up the color. I will put it read. So now we have one and two and three and for end, Okay. And where this comes in handy is you can start, you know, placing a sound right here. Typically, it's really, really powerful to put, like an open high hat here. Very, very common in like dance music. It really creates like that groove. And so if I were to write that so one and to and 34 and I'll fix that. And OK, so that is this kind of one way to do it now, just to spice it up, it's a little bit more, you know. So now we have, like, one and two and three and four. You know, you've may have heard people talk and, you know, count like this over the years. So just for example, you know, just for clarity. So if I put this in here, you know, it's kind of like the one and ah, two and three and four. So again, one and oh, to And, uh, okay, I'm not gonna continue, but you guys got to get the point. So one and a two and a three and four end up and it just repeats over and over and again. As we start to program our notes, this is where we can kind of start placing our sounds. Now, you may be looking at, you know, uh, the green here. So, you know, right here and right here and right here and right here right. So if you look at these is that well, we haven't colored those in yet. So what's going on there? So to keep this simple, uh, the blue. Okay, this is what you call on being okay, sir. Still trying to learn how to write with this tablet here. Okay, so this is what you call on B. Okay, Now, the red is what you call huff. Be okay. These are the terms that I use to describe safe spots. K. So we have the blue, which is on beat. I'm so we don't need to ask for off beats we deceit off beat and then Ah, the orange. Um, I actually call this a so this is a and this is B A and B and then a and B and as you can see, it repeats for every single beat. Right? So this these are what I call ah, the in betweens. Okay. And you could still see here. Okay, So a is tricky and then be it is easier. Okay, So you're a I I have finished found over the years to be a little bit trickier as I start to program my drum loop and then the B It's a little bit easier. And to give your music just a little bit of a different sound the B Over the years I've found it gives my drum loops a little bit of like a late and loose and rocky feeling. Especially once you start adding in, Ah, swing. So swing. What it does is it nudges over your eighth notes. Okay, so again, each one of these is 1/16. Right? So 16th 16th 16th 16th. And we need 4/16 to create 1/4 which is one beat. Okay, so, you know, let's just give this a different color. So this is one beat. Okay? From here to here, this is to this is another beat. Okay, three and then four. OK, so these are all a beat. So 1234 But inside of that beat, we can get a little bit more creative when we could start placing sounds within our 16th notes to be more creative. Right? So, with swing, swing automatically nudges notes to give your music a little bit of a more organic feel, okay? And it actually nudges Ah, your eighth notes. Okay. So let's just give us a nice pink K. So your eighth notes would be like this one. And this one, OK, because each one's 1/16. So its 16th pluses. 16th is an eighth. This is in 8th 1/16 16th 8th Okay, so swing, uh, effects your eighth notes. Okay. And the reason why I'm saying that is because thes air you're in betweens. OK, so it was right that I get up here in betweens. Uh, sorry. One second. Undo and undo. So betweens, which is a and B case. Okay. And be again A, B, A, B a, b, A and B. Okay, so when we are programming or drum loops, which will share with you later on, we have a section about our drum loop about programming. Him. Uh, I explain to you about swing and swing. Just an automatic way to ***. Eighth notes. And it gives your musical loose and rocky feeling. And as you can see, you're in betweens, thes air, the notes, that swing effects. Okay, so I think that's a little good overview for you with, like, some music theory. Once we get into fo studio, I really think it's gonna be a little more clear now, but to keep it simple. Common music. Our music is in common time. Call the time signature for four. The top one tells you how many quarter notes you need. Okay, so let's just go back up here, okay? So the top number tells us how many beats are in that bar. The bottom one tells us what type of note it is. Okay. In our cases, 1/4 note eso, Which means we need 1/16 on each of these Now again. You know, it's like, does this stuff really help you? Oh, do you really need to know it as a beat maker? No, you don't. All you need to know is this. This is all you need to know. You need to know how to count beats. 12341 end to entry and four. And one attitude and a three just to give you an idea. So when we go to program our drum loops, this is where you can get more creative, make your drum loops sound fuller, have mawr, you know, rhythm going on and just, you know, making music again. Some fuller. Ah, that's pretty much all you need to know. But it's just nice to know, just kind of a little bit of the background story, so to speak. You know, like the music theory of what's going on with this Western culture for four common time on That's pretty much as basic as it is. Okay, a zoo. We get further on. You know, you're gonna learn about bars and stuff like that when rappers say, Oh, you know, I rapper I spit 15 Earth's or 16 bars. It's really, really common for, you know, a lot of rap songs toe have, like a 16 bar verse scored like an ape. Our core 16 bar verse mean like a four bar course and stuff like that. But as we get into FL studio, I'm gonna break it down. It's gonna make it really, really easy for you to understand. OK, 7. 3-2 Counting Beats Fl Studio Walkthrough: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be talking about how to count beats. So since I already went over, you know, counting beats by drawing. Now, I'm going to share that with you with inside FL Studio and kind of join those two ideas together. It's gonna make it really easy for you to understand. OK, so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm just going to get, you know, a kick drum, a snare and a high hat, and that's gonna share with you. You know how we can kind of place are sounds and how to count beats with the sounds. OK, so let's just get a couple kick drums. I typically like toe have, you know, two or three kick drums every tracks, a little bit different, but I just find that more kick drums gives my drum loops a little bit more variation. Um, you know, not to say that some tracks are super simple. That might only have one, but when you have to, sometimes you could have good layering or you could even have certain drums is like a filler kind of drum hitting every once in a while to okay, so Let's just listen to a couple of drums here. I'll take this one. I'll go with this one. Sometimes I just use my arrow keys on fl Studio. So, um, actual keyboard. So, actually, to click on the sound first, then I can use the arrow keys. I'm kind of looking for more like a really nice low end to kick drum. That sounds pretty cool. Kind of like that. Okay, so we'll go with this one. So so far are kick drums like this. So, as you can hear, they give us a lot of flexibility. So what is a really low end kick? One is just kind of a nice kick in general. And then one sounds a little bit light on the low end, and that could be used for a good layer. Okay, this one right here is kind of light. Okay, this one hits a little harder, and then we have a race low ed. Okay, so let's get a snare snare slash clap. This typically goes on like the two and the four. Now, the thing is, when you go to actually make, like, your drum loop like I'm just talking to you in terms of basic terms just to get you up and running, but want to get more advanced than understand how things work. You can always break the rules. Okay, but for the most part, your snare is gonna be on the two and the four. Okay, so I'm gonna get the stair here. Okay? Um, and the reason I get multiple stairs again is just for layering purposes. It just makes your sounds sound fuller, As you know, being played me to get like that. And I'm also just gonna get a high hat here. Okay? So, case, let's just get too high hats. Kind of like these. Okay, so now the first thing I think about before actually go to program a drum loop is I First of all, think about you know what style of beat him I wanted to create. And I wanted to create a dance track or kind of more of a hip hop ish track. A dance track is gonna have a faster tempo. Hip hop fish typically is gonna be a little bit of a slower tempo, so I'm going to start with the temple here. Let's just dial this down. Just go to like God, 97. And now I'm going to actually place, um, sounds in the step sequencer. Now, in our western culture, as I already mentioned, we typically work in 44 time. So that means that we have four beats in one bar and then to even break it down further. So there's 1/4 beat, which is like, your beat in 44 time, and then you need 4/16 to create that 1/4 beat. Okay, So again, it can kind of sound really confusing and everything, but the thing is, being a beat maker, this is as technical is you really need to get with music theory. You really don't need to go any deeper than what I'm going to share with you right here. Because to make a beat, you know, this is pretty much all it is. Okay, so let's just click some sounds in here. I'm gonna break it down for you. OK, so I'm gonna click in just the 123 and four. So it's 123 and four. Okay. So, again, in 44 time, this is our quarter beat. So we need 4/4 beats to make one bar can. And now we have these which are 16th. So 4 16 is 1/4. Okay, It's all to do just with, like, fractions and stuff like that. So each of these is 1/16. We need four of these to make one B, which is 1/4 beat. And we have no need four beats to make one bar, and that's honestly as it intense is, it gets. And the thing is, you really don't even need to know or understand it at this level. You just need to know where you can place your sounds for them to sound good in your beats , you know? And I teach you that in the next section of this course, and it's called safe spots. Okay, So safe spots is a term that I coined over the years, and it teaches you where you can place your sounds within your drum loop for them to sound good, no matter what. And in all honesty, it's just that simple. Okay, so let me explain to you what safe spots are. I'm gonna explain to you even further in the next section. Ah, but so we have her on B. Okay? says there. 123 and four and that's on B. Okay, then we have her off. Be okay. So the off B is typically really popular for, like, an open high hat or something. Let's say we're talking about dance music and it's just a really good filler. Okay, so let's take your off B. And now you have what's called like the in betweens and I call this the A and the B I find the A is trickier to work with. The B is a little bit easier to work with. And these are the sounds that get affected by swing case. This is swing right here again. Swing just nudges over your eighth notes, K because if each of these is 1/16 right, that means that two of whom, equal and eighth. So this is your 8th 8th 8th 8th And the thing is, this stuff just repeats over and over. Okay, so if you understand how these 4/16 work again, it just repeats for the second beat. It repeats for the third beat it repeats for the fourth beat, and that's really how simple it is. Okay, so we have our on B we have off B, we have in betweens. This is there A and this is their be a B A b and A and B. Okay, So if I press control of X, it cuts what's on this sound right here in this one. So again, swing is nudging over these ones, and you can even manually note nudge notes to, for example, if you want to nudge this. And the reason for that is because computer music is a perfect time. So in other words, if we've clicked, are sounds in here, it's always gonna play like this over and over and over. And if you haven't chosen like the right sounds or whatever, sometimes it can sound really robotic, really rigid, right? Doesn't sound musical. So that's where things like swing or no nudging come into play to add some more. I guess you know a term is called organic into your drum loops or into your music to make it kind of flow. OK, so again, let's just talk about how to count beats just kind of quickly, and then we'll move on. So we have 1234 or we have one and two and three and four. Or like one and a two. And a three and a four. And when you go, the more advanced wrote, For example, the one and two and a on the end and the Ah, this is where you could be placing even additional sounds, form or fullness within your melodies or in your drum loops and stuff like that. Okay, so again, 1234 This is just what it sounds like. 1234 Okay, so, again, I'm not gonna programs too much of a drum loop in this video. But these 1st 3 RR kick drums. Okay, lets just place a snare on here for that two and four. So 1234 Okay, um, this kick drum kind of sounds annoying to be played like that, You know, it would be more of kind of like a layer or something. And now we have, like, our high hat. Okay, so this high hat, this one are here. I'm gonna play this moral like the off beat, So I'm gonna hold on Ault and the up arrow key. I'm just gonna move it up one. And now I completely on, like the off beat. Okay, so I'll just click them in here. So again, this is one and two and three and for and and if I just move it up, make a little bit easier for you guys to see. Okay. Okay. So this is one and two and three and four end, and that's it. So let's listen to that. Okay? So again, it's just kind of a little filler, and our temple is a little bit slower, but in dance music, now that you listen, you know, if you go to listen to one of your favorite dance tracks, especially trance music and stuff like that, this open hat is very, very popular in this section. Now, for our high hat, Uh, this one. So I'll bring it up here just with Ault. So again, now this high hat is It's kind like a filler sound. It's all about rhythm. Ah, high is actually a really, really powerful sound, even though it's such a short sound. Okay, this is it adds tons of emotion and fullness and energy to your music. Um, just a little side note. If you do at a high hat into your arrangement many times it's hard to remove that high hat without, you know, kind of removing the energy and emotion in your music. Okay, So always keep that in mind that when you add a high hat in, you kind of got to be strategic with it, because again, if you want to kind of start slowing down the song, whatever. When you take away that high hat, it can actually make your music kind of kind of feel weird. So, for example, let's just put it on like the 123 and four will just to this case or just using it as like a layer. Okay, we can also play on the off beat just like this. Okay, so I'm not really hearing a difference. And the reason for that is just because we're just layering over top of other sounds. So now we can play all that the in betweens. Okay, so I'm just gonna literally just click and holding drag like that, OK, but what I was trying to get across to you in this video is just know the counting beats. So we have 1234 We also have the one and two and three and four, and and then to get more advanced English one and two and a three and four end. Uh, and then this, uh, guess, eighth note right here. Like I'm saying that you can kind of start adding sounds in here as well, But like I'm saying so it's your A is trickier than your be when it comes to these in betweens like I mentioned to you. Okay, you'll find that, as you know, further on, as we go into this course as well as when your programming your drum loops again, you'll discover that this a This is the tricky one. Okay, so it really is that simple, You know, um, I don't want to spend tons of time on it because it is just that simple. Now, some people do have troubles, you know, accounting in time and kind of staying in rhythm. So this is something that you do want to learn and be able to count. For example, even if you are gonna listen to, like, when your favorite tracks, you want to be able to, you know, kind of listen and be like, OK, 1234 And just try to find a spot within that song that you can count in rhythm and kind of follow with this song. Like I'm saying, many people do struggle with, you know, staying and rhythm. But as a beat maker, it's crucial you have to know how to stay in rhythm, how to count beats and what I showed you here again. The 12341 and two and three and four or one and a two and a three and a four. By understanding just that kind of concept, you'll be able to make your music sound folder again. This works for both melodies as well as within the step sequencer when your programming your drum loops okay? 8. 4-1 Safe Spots In The Step Sequencer: Okay, So in this video, I'm gonna be talking to you about a term that I've coined over the years called safe spots . I've even written a book on this concept on Amazon. If you'd like to check it. Oh, it's called safe spots creating amazing drum loops. Um, and by my author named Riley Weller. You know, if you just like to check that out, but pretty much all the concepts are going to be covered here. You? No, but if you like a nice little light read, you know that's available to you. Okay, so this is just like the step sequencer inside of fl Studio. So again, like I said, if we're in 44 time, which, you know, for the most part, you're always gonna be okay, So your first step here, this one right here. This is actually your on B. Okay, so I'll do this, and I'll click this down here too. Okay, So this is our on be pretty much everything is always going to sound good, because on beat now, this doesn't mean that you should always place a sound here, but I'm just letting you know when you go to places sound. It's on beat, and it's always gonna flow. Okay. And so now you have your off be okay, And I will do this. And your offbeat is just really, really powerful for fullness. Okay, So, like, already mentioned to you, if you want to put, like, an open hat here or something like that, So this is your off beat. And again, you know, it doesn't have to be an open hat. You can put like a symbol here. Bongos, high hat. You know, whatever. I'm just letting you be aware that you know this right here. These are your on beats. So 12 Okay, so be one and two. Okay, so if we actually count, beats would be 12 okay? And then if you you know, this one would pretty much be like, and and this one here too. Okay, so this is also gonna be and okay, so again, it's just really, really powerful for fullness. OK, so we're going to get a different color here, go with a red, and now we're gonna talk about the in betweens. OK, so these are your eighth notes, so come down here. Okay. So all these are your is what I call your in betweens K thes air. The trickier was to work with, and I risked her right here. So in, uh, betweens. Okay, so now you have a and let's just get to different colors for this. So we have a okay, and this is gonna be a story here. A and then a and then we have Ah, well, green. OK, that we have be okay, so b and B and B. Okay, so be is easy. I like to work with be super, super easy to work with. Um, you know, there's no, you know, everything's just you kind of flows with it now. It could be easily overdone. But many times, if you put like a kick drum here, it could just have a nice, loose and kind of late kind of feeling to that drum loop, especially would start playing with swing on the A r. Straight down here is I'd say it's tricky. Okay, cancel. That's trickier. Here. Okay, so let's just, you know, for you to be aware of when you're actually programming your sounds within your drum loop. Uh, well, for them to kind of sound good, just to be aware off, and that's really the biggest thing. Being a beat maker is just knowing where you place your sounds for them to sound good and that's it. Then it's up to you to be creative. So again you have your on beat, you have your offbeat. Then you have your in between. So in between in between, uh, a and be okay. And so actually programming your sounds Is this one part of making an awesome drum loop? Okay, so in addition to the safe spots theory, like I'm saying so programming, your drum loop is just one part of making awesome drum loop. Then you also have these additional tools, and I actually called them organic tools. The reason why I call them organic is because they're free instead of any music program. These are things that just like velocity layering, panning, note nudging on these types of tools. Because this is what is going to give your drone loops that that real sound that you're going for and the really awesome thing is they're free, right? You don't need no V s t know plug in. No, not to pay extra money for it. And It's really awesome. And the thing is, many people overlook it. They overlook these organic tools and really there, like the most powerful tools, like the thing is with pretty much everything in life. But since we're talking about music, production is as soon as you understand the basics and the fundamentals, this is going to make you a better producer because, as you know, when you want to get creative, you can always fall back to the basics to the fundamentals. And then you can advance from there. Okay, So when you understand that, you know, playing with velocity is going to give you, you know, a little bit more of a human flavor. Or you can kind of get different sounds out of that drum loop like, for example, if we're here and that say, You know, we actually program our, you know, our drum here and then we program like a drum. Here's and like that. And the thing is, if we keep playing our drums like this and they're the same volume, it can sound really, really may be kind of weird. So if you start playing with, like, things like velocity, you can really start making your drum loop have more bounce or Maura groove and stuff like that. Now, if you're working with a good dance track, well, you always want that kick drum hitting nice and hard on the 1234 Right. But I'm talking more. Let's say percussion elements. If you're working with bongos or hi hats, you don't always want that high hat playing the same volume. You wanna have some bounce and you could do this through. You know, like I'm going to explain to you in a second here in this video with these organic tools. Or you can be you can even be a little more creative by using things such as excited chain compression. So, for example, whenever the kick drum plays, it reduces the volume of the high hats, and you can kind of approach it like that. Okay, so I'm going to talk to you about ah, these organic tools quickly, okay? And we'll cover them or in depth as we actually program are drum loops kit. So I call them organic tools. So the 1st 1 like I already told you, is Velocity Velocity is just to do with, like, kind of your volume, but velocity is a little bit different than volume. Okay, so velocity inside of music production can actually be used to trigger different sounds. So, for example, if you have, let's say ah v S t, which is like a drum set. Many times these developers inside the V S t the whole allow you to play a different drum sound, depending on how fast you press that key. Okay, so when you press A, you know, a key on a midi keyboard philosophy isn't how hard you push it, it's how fast you push it. So, for example, in midi, anyways, it goes from 0 to 1 27 So this is gonna be a number that you see a lot 1 27 Okay, this is the maximum value you can get out of mini. And so, for example, the stipulate, the fastest you can hit it. This would be like the slowest. So let's say from like, zero to like, let's say 47. That's if the developer gave you, like, you know, drum one. And then let's just say, like from like 48 to let's say like no one of five. You get like a drum to just to give you an idea and you know you can carry on so not to get to advance. But what I'm trying to say is certain via sties allow you to adjust, you know, different sounds or different Tambor's Tambor's kind of a different sound, um, to that hit, depending on how fast you press a key. So the reason why I explained that to you is because velocity is different than volume. Okay, so volume is simply just turning down the volume. But you're not changing that the sound except for just how loud it is velocity. You can actually get creative with it. But inside of FL Studio, for example, if you just have let's say you bought a drum, you know a sample pack, a sound kit from ah, a website. You load it in and you have, like your drum sample, right? So if that's a recorded wave file, then you don't get the benefits of being ableto have different Tambor's and stuff like your velocity. So you know, essentially your velocity is your volume. If you're working with just like an individual wave sample, this is Mauritz you're dealing with think of E s t Such as? Like, let's say, a piano V S t or guitar V S t. Or even like a drum kit and stuff like that again, it's just something for you to be aware of. Uh, as you are, you know, progressing in the music industry. Okay, so the next one is panning. Okay, so panning is just adjusting. Do you want a sound to b'more left or more, Right. Okay, but panning is just a really powerful tool for drum loops, K so it can kind of create, you know, difference in your drum loop, for example. Let's say you had your kick and a snare, but then you had a little bongo hits going on. So these bongo hits every once in a while. Maybe you can pad a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, and it just gives a little bit of sense of space in your drum loop, Just kind of mixes it up and just gives your music a little bit more dynamic to work with. And I don't mean dynamic as in, like, compression of stuff like that. I just mean, you know, just kind of freshen up the listener's ears, so that's to do with panning. Okay. Ah, the next one was We're gonna talk about layering, so layering is amazing. Okay, so layering is when you take one sound and you take another sound and you play him at the same time, and that's as simple as it is. And you could do this with, like, a guitar and a piano at the same time. Or you can you do it with, like, a kick drum and a high hat. That's very, very common. The reason for that is because if you're kick, drum is played in a song and let's just say you can't hear that kick drum very well. Many times the low end on your kick drum is actually there, and it's hitting hard. But what's happening is he may not have the high end on your kick drum. So sometimes what people will do is the layer, the kick drum with a high hat and the obviously, you know, turn down the volume of that high hat. Just so it's just not so aggressive. But whenever that kick drum plays, it plays with the high hat, and it's a layer and many times that click is what you're missing. And many times they call it like a click or like the beater sound. For example, if you look at like a real kick drum. So, for example, it see if I can draw So you know, you have, like, your kick drum here and that it has, like the little like little beat her head. And as that hits, you know, like the drum that actually that's like your high end is right So many times that could be lacking in some of these kick drums. So you can layer high hat, reduce the volume a little bit. And you could just give that kick drum a little bit more presence because many times that low end is there. You're just missing the high end just for an example. But, for example, if we talk about like, stairs and claps many times, you can use panning. Okay, so you can use panning in addition with Larry. So, for example, let's say we had, um you know, I'm just gonna draw these just like the fl studio step sequencer. Okay, so let's say we had five different stairs and collapse. So this one, let's say that we pan it left. Or maybe these two will pan them them left Kim. And then these two week, unlike pan. Right? Um and then this one will keep dead center. And the benefit of this is now if you're getting a really, really wide sound. So what is Stereo? Stereo was just like the difference between the left and right channels. So if we have, you know, imagine these air all different sounds, OK? So because they're different, if we pan one to the left and one to the right, that means that, you know, there's gonna be some similarity in the middle on that again. That's like, that's what makes it sound like in the middle. But this is where you're going to get a nice, natural wide sound to that snare hit. Really, really powerful stuff. Okay, um, the other thing I'm gonna talk to you. A boat is just no nudging, and this goes hand in hand with swing case. So there's no nudging, and I'm just gonna go plus swing. Okay, so swing is automatic, but note nudging is manual. Okay? And like I already mentioned to you so no nudging allows you to get um, or organic flavor into your drum loop. Um, for example, let's say you had some kick drums or even like the snares. Even if we go back up to like these ones, I you know, I just talked to you about what you can pan some left pants and right, and also keep some dead center that's going to make it sound wide, but you can also note nudge. So, for example, you can kind of nudge it a little bit early or even late either or And this is going to make it sound really loose and really organic feeling. And that's it has to do with a note nudging. Now The last thing I'm going to talk to you a boat is your sound placement and already talked to you about that, right? So that's just it was like, say, spots. So sound placement. And again, that's like you're on, Be it your offbeat you're in betweens. That's that's where you actually placing your sounds. This is a huge part to understand where you can place your sounds. But as I already talked to you now, about all these different organic tools. Uh, you know, they all have a part in this. Now, you also have sounds selection. Okay, so sound selection is your selecting different sounds that relate to your actual song. Some sounds may not suit your song. And some sounds may actually help further push the emotion that you're wanting to achieve. For example, that's just talk about, like, an eighties kind of retro song. It's just a really good example because, you know, they're kind of known for, like that kind of cheesy since and stuff like that. So if you program those melodies, you know, that melody might sound kind of cheesy already, but by selecting, you know, certain sounds is going to give your music, you know, either a different feel, a different vibe. And, you know, So what I'm trying to tell you is, um OK, so let's just cover what we've already talked to boat. So we had safe spots. This is where you could actually you know, um, this is like your sound placement right on. And then, you know, to go further, we have these organic tools, things like velocity panning, layering, note nudging, your sound placement, which is like the safe spots and then you're sounds selection. And by using these altogether and again, they're free, right? So that's the biggest kind of kicker behind this kind of stuff. But by using them all together, you're going to create really, really awesome drum loops, which I'm going to reveal to you in our next video as we program a little drum loop and I share with you how you can actually use these types of tools with NFL studio to get, you know, a better drum loop, OK? 9. 4-2 Programming Notes In The Step Sequencer: Okay, So in this video, we're going to be building a little drum loop and will be covering safe spots as well is focusing on the step sequence here. Okay, so with FL Studio, you know, like I already covered, we have the step sequencer. We have the playlist, we have the mixer, and then you have you have seven. That's the shortcut for the piano roll again. Everything is up here as well. So the step sequencer is really, really important to understand how it works. And you could literally just click sounds and just like this, or if you right click, you go to the piano roll and you can actually, you know, change pitch, go lower, go higher. And I do suggest you guys have headphones on that way. You guys can actually hear, like, the low end of the kick drums. And, you know, once we get into further on this course headphones or earbuds, they're really gonna help you out. So before we get into actually programming the drum loop, I just want to talk a little bit about my set up here. So, as you could see, my layout is just like this. It makes it really, really easy that way. Nothing's overlapping. Nothing's kind of annoying. And what I mean by that is like the steps Secret Service right here. The playlist is right here. If I want a bigger again and enter and on the step sequence of what I do is I hit the arrow up here. I go down to auto resize and actually turn it off, and then I'll just adjust this to you know where I want. You know, your screen might look a little bit different and, you know, do whatever you want, but I've just found that this is a nice, minimal way toe work in FL Studio to make it really, really simple. So now let's get into actually little programming a little drum loop and explaining the safe spots concept a little further, where we will actually place sounds in, and then even to take it further. Talk about those organic tools such as, like velocity panning, layering and stuff like that. Okay, so if you do want more information on programming drum loops, I do actually have a specific course. It's called safe spots create amazing drum loops. You guys can just Google it. Check it out if you want more information, you know mawr in depth information on each of these points. Okay, so let's add in just a few percussion elements that way, once you actually build a drug loop, we already have the sounds ready, and we can kind of just keep progressing. Okay, so it's got a percussion here. And one thing just to mention is about sounds. I don't want to go too much into it, but the whole goal that I have found over my years of purchasing sounds is you want variety , so you don't need tons and tons of sounds. You don't need to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars. You know, each kits around 20 to 40 maybe $50 kind of thing. But the whole goal is yes. You want high quality, you know, high quality sounds is gonna make making beats way easier, but you won't variety. So, for example, you want, like short tailed kicks. You want long tailed kicks. You want eight awaits in terms of like snares. You want snares, claps, percussion elements for percussion like, you know, sky's the limit that you could have like like the actual triangle little sound bungles. Just, for example, exclusive audio is one of my favorite. Some vendors often go to organic drum kit. You'll see him percussion like you have hand drums like Cajun box metallic shakers. Wouldn't. As you can see, it's like the variety. So as a producer, it's that I am able to have such versatility in my sounds case. That's actually at a time reading here. But two different variations of those tampering you add this into now this doesn't mean I'm gonna use all these sounds. It just means that I'm just kind of set up. OK, so let's start with our kick drum. Let's see what we want as the kind of prominent drum can. So I kind of like this Trump. You know, it's a little dirty, but it is still a pretty clean hit. And what I mean by that is see this sound right here? It just I don't like. I like the tail, but I don't think I like it so consistent. For example, if it was a 1234 like, I just kind of find that tail a little bit of knowing. But if we were to just play it like once in a while. I think it might sound fine. OK, And then we have this drummer here just nice and nice and low, right? So there's just add in our drums here, so maybe I'll just kind of click it around like this. And I usually just click this drum in just kind of randomly and then I'm gonna add the clapping here. So we have right here. So it's a snare and world use the whole of control and see And I know that these three are my collapse just to confirms clap snare ish in another club. Okay, so I you set it up like this. So I have my kick drum and my clap So have my clap on the two in the four and that I have a kick drum which kind of bounces around that clap. It's not very often where I play the kick drum on the two in the four. So in other words, I don't really play the drum with the clap at the same time, but you can issues something that I just really never do in its sense of like hip hop. But in dance music. Obvious seed all your kick drums like the 123 and four. So that's a little different. But again, the sky's the limit. I'm just kind of sharing what I would do. So let's just listen to this. Our temples. 97 beats per minute. What is this? Into the kick and a clap that we have so far. Okay, Sounds all right. Maybe we'll add some Blair in here. Okay, so we'll let it right here and then maybe at the end. Okay. So introduce you to something called Cut itself. So cut itself allows U s. So when a sound plays and then it plays again, it immediately cuts off the original sound. And then the new version of that sound will continue to play. Okay, uh, this is a really, really popular technique with sampling. For example, if you have, like, one sample that plays and then you have another sample that plays immediately, it cuts off the other sound, and it just gives a nice, clean sound. Nothing's overlapping and just typically makes your mix is really clean sounding so especially with, like, low end eight awaits and stuff like that, you want to make sure you have cut itself on. Otherwise, the tail overlaps and you can kind of get like, a wobble sound. And what's happening is they're getting, like, cancellation on that sounds absolutely horrible. You always want your low end seven nice and tight. Um, this tale is more bolt like that. Kind of, uh, for example, for Listen to the detail on this drum again. It is not so much low end on it. It's just kind of like that kind of reverb ish kind of tale that I don't like. So I enabled. Cut itself so that when it plays here and then it comes back around that it just has a nice , clean hit. Okay, let's add in this drummer here, okay? Just a nice little low end. Maybe we'll just kind of added in a little filler. Here. Let's turn on this temple just a little bit. Maybe 94 remove this drum. We will put it here. Okay, so, you know, pretty nice group. Okay, so we have our kicks and her collapse pretty basic. So far. Right? So now I work my way into, like, the high hat, so, for example, Okay, So It's as, um hi hats in here. Um, now I'm just kind of clicking these in just randomly high hats. It's all about just kind of finding the rhythm for that loop at the moment and I'll click them in will hit play. I'll listen and, like, who? I don't really like it there. And it's just really easy to adjust when sounds are kind of already clicked in. So let's just listen, Okay? So I don't really don't like the flow. So maybe we will ah, put it like her. Me Like this. Okay, so the first, uh, I guess organic tool I want to introduce you to is velocity. Okay, So to adjust velocity, you can either come up here and you can adjust it this way. I typically avoid this in the step sequencer on. The reason is because it's not really as versatile, like don't get me wrong. You could do pretty much everything in the piano role as you can right here. But I kind of forget if I do stuff this way. So I like to always just bring stuff to the piano roll. It's the easiest way. So I'm gonna right click Go to piano roll and the benefits with the piano roll is again. You can adjust pitch. So, for example, if you want to move on up or down, you can do that. Depending on the type of sound, you can extend the length. But if you do extend the length, you have to make sure to enable the envelope. Otherwise, the whole sound would is played by itself. So velocity and various other tools are down here. Okay, so, you know, velocity panning you can even a just like the pitch and stuff like that as well. Instead of changing the note, you can actually just change the pitch through this as well. Um, so right now we have velocity. Okay, so I'm gonna hold on control and right click and hold, and there will zoom in the whole area, making it just easier to see. And to just velocity. You literally just could just left, click and just kind of give some bounce to some of these sounds. Um, now, if I was actually building this drum loop on my own, you know, I'd would be actually having this playing the whole time, and then I come in here and, you know, I'm kind of listening for just what can I do for creativity? What can I do for groove and stuff like that when I'm doing this course with you? I kind of have to keep stopping and starting a little bit. But again, in real world practice, this would be something where I'm actually listening as I'm doing so to adjust this type of stuff is you can see you can just simply left click. You know, like wherever you want, you can left, click and hold. Ah, cool trick is actually you can, like, right click and you can, like, drag and hold. So this is pretty cool sometimes if you want to create, like, a little bit riser sound or something. Uh, and another way is to actually hold on fault and the scroll wheel. So holding ultimate school well, on a sound, you could do that. And this is really beneficial. So imagine we had, like, a piano, so lots of different notes, chords and everything. So imagine that they're all over the place like this, right? So you can actually highlight You know, certain sounds if you want, and I'm gonna hold down control and shift, and you could just individually click individual ones or de select them just by clicking on them to. And if you hover over any of them now and hold on Ault in the scroll wheel, you can reduce or increase certain notes velocity. And again, this is with panning and stuff, too. So, for example, hold on Olt scroll wheel. As you can see the three go up or they go down. Guess so. It's just all about knowing how to flow so that you can be creative. Let's just listen to this as it is. I don't know how it's gonna sound, but this is listless into the drum. Yeah, so we're going to leave those and as you can see Ah, the velocity was a little too low. I just wanted just a little bit. It's a little bit of bounce. Um, but, you know, again, I'm just kind of sharing with you what you can do. OK, so that's just one high hat. Let's add in another high hat here, middle play only the off beat something like this. Okay, so let's try some panning case. We're gonna right click come into here right click go pan. So to pan, it's just a matter of 21 on the left speaker or the right speaker. You could be aggressive with it. And the biggest thing with FL Studio is you always want to look in the top left. This is always gonna be your indicators. The hint panel. Okay, so I'm gonna hold my left click, drag down, so as you can see and bring it to the left So this sounds gonna be all the way to the left and all the way to the right. It might be a little bit aggressive. Maybe we'll go like, 50%. But let's just listen to what it sounds like an estimated 50%. Okay, maybe even this hat right here on a couple of the notes maybe will, like, put this one up a little bit. This went down. So again, this is right. And this is left. Let's listen. Listen. Yes, that one kind of got lost and manual. Adjust it this way. Okay. So the reason why I ended up choosing this sound over here was the one over here was getting lost. In other words, it was kind of being hit at the same time is another sound. And therefore, we weren't really hearing the effect of, like, that left and right. Same thing here, you know, it was kind of being masked, and this one it was clear. So in other words, no other sounds were being layered at that time. And if we listen more time, you can audibly here, uh, this sound on the left and the sound on the right for certain other way around. But you get what I'm saying We can actually hear the panning going on. So again, this is just this just adds more variety and flavor into, um, you know, like your drum loop for your listeners sake and this for, you know, just for creativity. Um, now, so there's velocity panning. Let's talk a little bit about swing. Okay? This is no nudging. So to do the note nudging, we can actually come up here. Okay? And let's just take this one right here and now how you can note not just by holding on shift and the scroll wheel. Okay, so either up or down. So when you note nudge, you can either go late so late would be, um this way. Okay, Because you know, if the beats here now, it's playing late or you can make it play early, Um, and what you could do So let's say Okay, this is on beat now. We're playing early, so let's just make it two notches. Now you'll discover that you can only push note nudging so far until that actually sounds off. Be in this, like in a bad way. Um, but, you know, when you adjust it, you'll notice that you can You would make your your hit some. It's a little bit looser, a little bit more organic feeling. OK, so we'll make this one early. Then we'll make this one is a little bit late. Okay? And again, you can only push it so far until it kind of sounds weird and all, you know, let's just push it a little far just so you can hear it. So it sounds weird, right care. So this brings back Okay, so let's let's leave it, that one right there. Now, another thing for you to be aware of when you are working, you know, with different sounds. Instead of closing the piano roll going to the other sound opening up the piano roll. You can actually come here and you can select your different sounds. So as you can see, I want to go, Let's say to ah, snare uh, one. Okay, so right now it's on beat and on beat, so let's just make it a little bit late and will make its a little bit early. Okay, so we'll try that. Okay, so I'll cover the piano roll later. But right now I have something going called Ghost. Don't. Her ghost channels, I think, is what we call him. It's in helpers, as goes channels. It just allows you to see other sounds and other notes from other sounds inside that same pattern. So since from the same pattern and these sounds are still being played, we can still see, like where they're being played. So, for example, if we were playing with different notes, chords and melodies, it makes it really nice, because you know what note you can kind of play with if you're gonna layer and stuff. Um, but as you can see this sound right here, it's it's a little too late. So if I double right click on it now, we can come back to it. I'm just gonna hold on shifting. Let's bring this one back. We'll keep like this. So Okay, we'll keep those on, and I just quickly want to cover just panning a little bit more. And this is just a cool trick when it comes to your actual snare hit. Uh, you know, I already showed you that if you had, like, uh, you know, let's say three stairs, you pan one left and one right, and keep one dead center that you're going to be able to achieve a nice wide sound, and I just want to cover that with you. So what is go snares here. Okay, so I'll put this in between. You gotta be careful. If I were to actually drop this on a sound, it overwrites it, and you can't undo it. So right now, if I drop it in or good and we'll get another one. So I'm looking for another similar sound. That's kind of similar, but the reason why I didn't choose this sound actually, this is this is a good one here. But So for example, we have this sound right here and now we have this. Um Okay, so what I'm trying to say is the other snare had way more low end to it, so it would kind of make it feel unbalanced. Now, in terms of mixing, like, you know, I might just if I like this if electable snares, I wouldn't then just fix that by, you know, adjusting the e que and kind of cutting out the low end. That way I can cut it a nice balance in between them. But I'm just gonna keep this simple for right now. And I'm just looking for two snares which have a kind of similar frequency response in a sense of, you know, yes, they sound different, but ones not super low and Bumi And because again, that's just gonna make kind of your balance kind of skewed. So right now, if I have a snare here, um, and here we will just copy and paste it into here. Now, this there were gonna pan it left, and this there were gonna pan it. Right? Okay. So, again, this is you with, like, layering. So what we're doing, we're here. We're doing panning to get like a nice you know, just a little bit more variety. So in terms of the hi hats, that's more of a creative thing. Now, in terms of the stairs, this is more for wide nous, so Well, listen to this again. Okay? With seldom kisses, you can hear just I was dead center. Right? Okay. So just turn down the volume a little bit on those. And a cool thing. I just turned that down by this much. If you right click, go copy, you can right click and paste the value. Now you've turned it down by the same amount. So listen again, kids. So we turn off and on case of dead center now why? Okay, so again, these air just those little subtle things And they helped so much in terms of you know, when you listen to your be versus someone else's thes the cool little tricks that you can add into your drum loops to make himself Fuller make himself bigger. Okay, so we will carry on just a little bit more here on the drum loop. I'm probably not gonna add in all of these sounds. I'll just add in this a little bit more for percussion just to share with, You know, maybe how I would approach that, But I do want to cover swing a little bit more, and we'll cover layering just a little bit more here, too. Because the thing with you know, your drum loop is the more sounds you're adding in, the more layering you're getting them or, you know, fullness you're getting you do going to be a little bit careful with drums. So, for example, when you layer drums, you can get what's called phase cancellation, and this is just to do with audio. Near the end of this course, I'm gonna break down digital audio for you. We'll do a little drawing and to share with you like the sine wave and stuff. And if you have one sine wave and then you have another sign way but it's flipped you, you know, you will actually cancel out frequencies. And this is what can happen depending on how microphones recorded sounds and stuff like that. So what I'm trying to say is, if you have a kick drum, So in this case, we have three kick drums and and if you're layering them, you want to make sure that you reverse the polarity just to kind of test to see what sounds better. And obviously, you're gonna choose the one that sounds better. And by better, I mean what one hits you harder. Because again, the low end, if it's weak, you know that's not gonna make your music sound good. So you want to make sure that you're testing the polarity of the drums, and I'll just let you listen to this. I'm just gonna hit space bar a couple of times, so, you know, if it sounds annoying story, But just listen to this, okay? Now with the clarity. So my headphones I hear that this hits just a little bit harder. Okay, So I just added in this drum here to it just in my opinion, it gave that drum live just a little bit of a folder sound When the drum this drummer here just played by itself. It just sounded a little bit like it was lacking. Um, then they get I didn't want to overplay this sound. I like the tales. Fine. But again, I don't want to play over and over and over. Okay, so let's get into some layering here, and then we'll also play with swing. Now, swing is something that you have to train your ear to hear. In my opinion, is just kind of compression. If you haven't learned a boat compression or tried compression yet, Ah, compression takes a long time to train your ear to what you're really doing toe a sound and a sense of your threshold ratio, attack and release and just kind of dialing them in. Um, but I also found swing to kind of be similar to that. It kind of took me a while to learn, You know, what is the difference between, you know, swing and no having swing and stuff like that? So let's style in some percussion here. Let's just listen to what we have. Okay, so we just have this tambourines. So we will play on offer something like that, the off beat. Okay, We'll play it there. You play this will layer it with have to clap way. Would you like this? And, um, now, in terms of mixing and stuff like that, when I'm actually building my drum loop, I may actually just kind of adjust the volumes and here just a little bit just to kind of get like that. Nice little balance. But at the end of the day, I always bring my sounds into the mixer because this is going to give you the most flexibility in a sense of adjusting your volumes, adjusting your panning If you want to add effects on fir e que and stuff like that, this is just more of like a quick and dirty kind of approach. Okay, so let's just add some more sounds in here, Okay? So we'll put this on, like, the in between solicit the B and the B, and we'll play that there. And, uh, Steven, So this sound you hear, it would be a little bit aggressive, which are down. Trim this down too. Okay, so it sounds a little bit a little rushed, so I'm gonna go to my piano roll, and we're going to nudge this a little bit late. Let's see, for one or two more sounds in Well, maybe do something like this. Okay, so this sound right here to be creative weaken right click or the piano roll. And another cool thing is, if you hold on, you highlight a sound you hold on Control. Left, click And if you hold on shift and the up arrow key, you can change the note district from the keyboard. Sometimes it's nice rather than just dragging the sound or you can actually hold on control and up and down and it actually goes up the whole octave. So I'm just gonna right click Sorry, Hold on Control and right click and it zooms everything into screen. SoGen Controlling down is a conductive, so I don't want to do that. I'm just one of maybe do something like this may bring it down and no so can we leave like that? So now let's play with swing, Okay, so swing is something again. You have to train your ear to I am going to dial in quite drastic effects, you know. So again, swing is just right here, typically on a track kind of have it may be from like, let's say, sixties to around like, 10 ish something like that. You know, you typically find that all my tracks do benefit from swing. Ah, but each track is a little bit different. So, you know, sometimes you want to live it more groove, and sometimes you want a little bit less. Every track is different. But I do find that just a little bit of swing typically helps that. You know, I thought that all the instruments that sounds kind of as a whole just kind of gel a little bit better. Now again, swing, adjust your eighth notes. So any note that is an eighth note. So again, I call these the in betweens. So this is the A B a b and e gonna just repeats, right? So swing Onley adjust these notes. So if we're on the on B or the off beat swing does not adjust these notes, Okay, So if you want to adjust these notes, you'll have to manually adjust them with no nudging like I showed you. Okay, so let's just play around with some swing, hear how it sounds. I'll dial and really, really intense effects, you know, to the point where it's like, OK, it's way too much on that will dial back. So here we go. Okay. So I'm gonna copy that value. We're gonna reset it, pace it in just feeling how it kind of has a more group. It's kind of like a late, but it kind of rocks. Okay on to increase it. Tons, kids, you know, So this is really honorable, but it sounds kind of weird, right? So, like saying each track, it's usually around 60 to 10. So I was back a little bit. So this is zero will increase it and well, paced in the value I had it so and this sound right here just a little bit loud. Well, dollars back to Okay, so that's just a little walk through of the step sequencer had a program. Your notes, you know, kind of still with that counting beats, you guys learnt about safe spots again. That's my own term. I've coined, so you won't hear about that anywhere else. But I just find it's really easy to understand where you can place your sounds again. We have the on beat, we have the off beat and we have the in between. So the A and the B and again that just repeats for every single beat. So since we're in 44 time, uh, you know, each of these is 1/16. We need four of them to create 1/4 beat, which is a beat in 44 time And then we need 4/4 beats to make one bar. Okay? And you can see these air. These are bars. So each one of these is one. So, actually, if I zoom in here and I'll explain this later on. Ah, but you could see 1234 And now it just repeats. Okay, Now, this is the same thing. So one right here is one literally right here. Uh, this be right here is literally this beer here. Uh, no. This one. Or here is this one. And then we have the four, which is right here. Okay? And then it will go to the second bar. So whenever you hear rappers say, Oh, if they spent 16 bars, that's pretty much what it is again. I'll cover that a little bit more once we get into actually arranging the track a little bit further on into this course. Okay, so that's programming notes in the step sequencer. Again. If you want to access the piano roll, you just right click on piano roll and stuff like that. But we'll be covering that in our following videos. 10. 5-1 Piano Roll How Chords And Scales Work: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be talking about the piano role as well as how cords work. Okay, Now, if you want more information on how to play the piano as a beat maker have actually created a course has been my best seller over all the years of doing these courses. And it's called Learn Piano for beat makers and producers. And by the end of that course, you guys will learn how to improvise on the piano from a beat makers perspective, you guys will learn to put both the right and left hand. Okay, Now, in these section of videos, I'm gonna break down how cords work notes, chords, scales to get you up and running. So at least you'll kind of have an idea of where to look and how to get started. Programming melodies. And you know how the piano roll kind of works. Okay, so this right here is just like the piano roll, you know? So NFL studio here, you just gonna have all these all your different notes. Okay, On a piano is just a B c d e f g. And then it just repeats over and over again. now you also have sharps in between. So, for example, would be like a h r b c c sharp d d sharp e f f sharp g t shirt A. And again it just repeats over and over again. Okay, so how a piano works is you have 12 notes and those 12 notes repeat over and over, and every time they repeat, it's called an octave. So, for example, you can have in a four and then you can have in a five. And the only difference between those notes is that it's literally double infrequency. Okay, so, for example, a four is actually 440 hertz, a 5 880 hertz and the same thing. If you want a three, it would be 220 hurts. So it's just half of 440 hertz. Okay, at a basic level, that's just kind of how it works. Now, when you want to make a beat and you want to program your you know, your notes, your melodies and all that kind of stuff, you have to know what notes are allowed to play. You can't just go and pick any no on the piano to make a beat and by you understanding that that's going to differentiate your knowledge and how you can actually start flowing and improvising with your productions. And again with that piano. Of course. That's what I teach you. I actually teach you. You know, when you're looking at a piano, what are you looking at? You know your keys and then what notes were locked to play. Okay, so the first step is you actually have to choose. Ah kee. Okay. You also have to choose a scale que eso a scale. There's actually seven notes that you're allowed to play and each no is different. So each scale is different and the best place to start is actually ah, the C major Kate's usually written like that, but I local major scale calf. So the C major scale is the best scale toe learn. And I say that because it's only white notes. So if you go to try and hit your notes on the piano and you know you're always just like, why can't I play these other notes? For example, the black notes. The reason is because you're playing in the scale of C major or a minor. So every single major scale actually has an opposite minor. A little confusing, but pretty cool to understand once that's been revealed to you. So, for example, if you go to see Major, you'll see it's only white notes. And if you go to a minor, you'll see that it's also white notes to So you can kind of ask the question is, Are you actually playing in C Major or you're playing in a minor? Okay, so kind of confusing, but it's good again. Good to know. So that's the biggest thing to understand when it comes to playing the piano. OK, is first of all, you can you have to pick a key and you have to pick a scale. Okay, this is gonna dictate what notes you want to play. It's also going to dictate what chords you're allowed to play because accord depends on the scale. Okay, because so, uh, accord has three or more notes. So in the piano roll, you know, So right here, you know how it would work is you know, you have your different chords. So, for example, you could might play the sub notes longer shorter, you could extend the length you could do whatever right? Um and so Accord is typically so little Court is out of three or more notes or more? No, it's OK, so 1/4 is three or more notes. So if I were to play a chord, it's three or more notes and you know, that's the cords are nice and full sounding. You know, I typically play really basic chords, even in my own productions. Some people get into what's called, like seven since stuff like that, and you know you can once you start advancing. But it's important for you to understand the basics. Okay, now, accord can also have a major. Actually, let's just do a different color for that so a court can have a major or a minor now the same thing So a court can have a major or a minor or, um, a scale can have a major or a minor. Okay, so, you know, again, So, ah, court can have a major minor chord, or you can have a major a minor scale. Now, again, you know, this is getting a little bit confusing because I haven't really showed you how music theory works in a sense of picking a key in a scale. You know, Aiken, say that to you. But what does that really mean? Right, So let's go into, ah, little tool that I like to use to teach this. It's really, really powerful. So here we go. This is what it looks like. Okay, so right now you can see that we have a court, right? So accord is three or more notes, typically. Okay, that's seriously common within the industry. Now, if we go to a scale, so a c major scale. Okay, so see, Major and we're under scale, so you can see it's on Lee White notes. There's no black notes. For example, if we want to see minor, you can see that the black no is being added in and the E is not being played. Okay, so let's just talk about the notes here again one more time. So we have C c sharp, d d sharp, e f f sharp G G shirt, a a shirt, be And then, as you can see, this a c and this c So this is now one octave up. So, for example, if this was C five. This is now C six. One thing to talk about just kind of quickly. Some people call these flats instead of sharps, but just to keep it simple. I'm just gonna call them sharp skate not to confuse you or anything like that. So let's cover the C major scale. It's gonna kind of open your eyes to what notes you're allowed to play and what chords were allowed to play. Okay, so when we hear about a major or a minor chord, so right now we're in C major scale. This is telling us all the notes we were allowed to play, which means that our cords have toe have these notes in. Okay, so if we talked about a major or a minor chord, it doesn't matter if its major a minor, it has to have only white notes in it. In order for that court to be in C major. Pretty simple, right? So we'll repeat that one more time in order to play chords and see Major. They have toe have only white notes. And so if you were to actually play on the piano and you know you actually start playing all the white notes. And typically, you know, if you play three or more notes at a time, just up and down many times it sounds pretty good and you're like, Oh, I can play chords But again, a senior sister adding, in those black notes, that's where the confusion comes in because nobody really reveals the stuff to you. And this is where you have to pick a key and a scale. So right now, the KIIS C and the scale is major. So now let's talk about again on Lee White notes. So we're going to start at sea. Okay, So with in the scale of C Major, do we have a major C? You know, see major court or a C minor chord? And it's going to be a major court because we're in the scale of C major presidency. See, Major on Lee has white notes, so C, e and G really, really simple, right? So we'll go back to the scale. Let's go to D now if I go to D major chord now, the difference between a major and a minor chord is between your third. So if I just hold up my hand here So how it works is your thumb is your one. Your index is your to your middle fingers or three. Your ring finger is your four and then your pinky is your five. And that is how uh, numbering works on a piano. OK, so like on your hands So 1234 and five and that's it. Super, Super simple, right? So the difference between a major and a minor chord is between your first and your third. Okay, if we look at this court here, OK, so it's a C major chord. Now again, our thumb is there. One sore thumb is playing. See? No. In between our first and our third, we actually have three notes 12 and three. This means it's a major chord, so three notes in between your first and your third is a major court. Now, if it's a minor chord, all we do is to bring the third back one case and others actually, two notes between our first, which is a thumb and middle finger, which is our three. Okay, so to to repeat that one more time, so a major court has three notes in between. The first and the Third Miner Court only has two. Okay, So, for example, here's a major court. So 12 and three were going a minor one and two. So is it a C C one to this T shirt? So that is a C minor chord. Okay, so now that you know that the difference doing a major and a minor chord is how many notes are in between the first and the third. Okay, again, your first, your thumb, your third, your middle finger. I don't want to keep repeating that, but in the beginning, it's really important for you to kind of understand that concept. Okay, so we're in C Major. We have three notes between the first in the third. It's a major chord has only white notes. Then we're good to go. It's in the scale of C major. So let's move on to D. Okay, So before we actually check out the d chord, let's cover that theory again. Okay, so the difference between a major and a minor chord is just how many notes are in between the first and 1/3 a majors. Three notes in between. A minor is two notes, so Let's count. So from D, we have 12 and three. So that means if we play this f sharp, okay, cause there's gonna be 12 and three notes in between For this to be a major d OK, and we don't have any black notes, so we have to have a d minor chord. So again, that's 12 That means that our third is playing the F. Okay, so watch this. If we go to, uh D Major, you can see that replaying the D, the f sharp and the A well, we can't have a deem major court in the scale of C Major. And the reason is because there's no black notes. Okay, again, it's that simple. So that's why I like to always teach c major at the very, very beginning because, you know, drawing a lot of white notes. So if you've a black note in there, you know that cord cannot be in the scale of C major. So which means that we actually have a D minor chord. Okay, so one to self. So for our first, our thumb is playing there on the d. We have one to our middle finger. Our third is playing on the F. We have a minor or a D minor chord on a scale of C major. Okay, so we will do Ah, one or two more, Uh, just to kind of, you know, break this in for you. But again, my piano course breaks, You know, more chords, more scales down even further. I also teach you a song that I've created of commercially released. I share with you how to play that with both your left and right hand, you know, kind of really teaching you how to play the piano from a beat makers perspective. Okay, so let's break down E here now. Okay. So again, to go back to the theory who are only allowed white notes in a C major scale. So let's count. So from e 123 notes in between. So that means that our major will be playing on the G sharp, which means that we actually have an e minor chord. So if you go to E minor, you're going to see that we have our thumb are one is playing on E 12 which means that our third is playing on the G here. So which means there's only two notes in between. It's a e minor chord, only white notes. We're good to go. It's in the scale of C major. So let's do one more just to help really solidify this. Okay, so now we're going toe f Let's just count again. So 123 There's three notes of between. That means that our middle finger is playing on the A. This is telling us that F major is in the scale of C major. Okay, so again, F 123 are our third are middle fingers playing on the A. So we're going to go to F. We're going to go to minor. So our thumb is playing on the f R one. So 12 Okay, so our third is playing here. So again, we want a major f chord. So in f major chord. So f 123 is playing on the A. Good to go. Okay, um, now your pinky is you know, it always plays in the same spot. Okay, It's just, uh, the third, which is going to change in these major and minor courts. And that's really how simple it is to understand what notes you're allowed to play in what scale. So just to confirm, OK, so you always have to pick a key. So it is gonna get just get a different color here, so you always have to pick a key. Okay, so you know, whether that b, c a. F whatever the reason why there's these different keys and scales of many times. If someone's going to sing, Ah, lot of times they will choose a key and a scale that kind of goes with that person's voice . That way they can stay in two and a little bit better. Another cool production tip. This is kind of a pro tip. Certain keys and scales allow you to hit nice baselines. Okay, so some keys and scales, the low end is a little bit too low. I but some keys and scales allow you to hit a really, really nice tight baseline without it sounding too low. But it's not too high. It's just right in the sweet spot. So that's a really, really cool thing to know about. I think it might be like a um a scale may be either the major or the minor or something like that. I forget. I remember doing some research on this before. It was just like, Oh, that's kind of a cool little protest. Okay, so you want to make sure you choose a key and a scale, and again there's seven notes we go to see major scale. Um, sorry, C major scale. So let's discount. So we're not gonna count this. See? Okay, because this is an octave higher. We're just gonna count the other notes. So 123456 and seven and that's it. So really, really powerful. Right? Um so again, you want to pick a key, a scale that's gonna tell you what notes were allowed to play. Now again, if you were to pick like a c minor or a major and a minor again, this is gonna tell you what notes are allowed to play. And then you have to figure out what chord what chords are in that scale. Okay, because again, you have to only choose the notes which are in that scale. And if we talk about C major again, this is why I like teaching. This scale is because it's so simple. It's only white notes, which means that your cores can only have white notes. But for myself, when I actually played the piano for improvisation purposes, I typically like to have some black notes in there, and the reason for that is because it's really easy to feel where your hands are on the keys, whereas if you only pay the white notes, you know, for example, if you have a mini keep, we're trying only play in the white notes. It's just, you know, it's kind of like I don't know where I am on the piano. You always have to look down, whereas when you have some black notes and it's really easy to feel where you are, you can improvise. You can look away. You can, you know, really, really powerful stuff. Okay, so in this video we talked about, you know, just like, you know, like your little piano roll. This is kind of what it looks like you have, like, you know, it's on the side. Then you have your notes, which you can click and on program. Our next video is going to be about the piano roll. It's gonna be a boat clicking course in how to edit the notes, how to, uh, you know, record and kind of get up and running with the piano roll. But now that you know the key, a scale and what notes you like to play now it's gonna make this melody process way easier instead of just kind of guessing and hitting notes. Now, you know that the notes were allowed to play, and now it's just a matter of finding a rhythm and a melody which actually suits what you're going for. And in all honesty, that's probably the hardest part. But now that this is, you know, this has been revealed to you. This is also is also a huge game changer for you to. OK, so let's get into the piano roll inside of FL Studio, gonna break it down for you and get you up and running 11. 5-2 Piano Roll FL Studio Walkthrough Recording: Okay, So in this video, we're actually going to program so many notes, understand? A record, A little loop. I'm gonna show you how to edit them. How to, you know, pretty much how to use the piano roll. Okay, again, I just wanted to let you know that that piano course is there, you know, not to, you know, keep trying to sell you, But, you know, I'm gonna play some piano here for you. I'm gonna share with you. You know how far I've come with learning the piano. I never knew the piano really well until I really started making beats. Probably about 4 to 5 years in. And I just kind of realized it was like, If I want to make beautiful melodies in my beats, I need to learn the piano. I need to learn to improvise. I need to learn, you know, just really how to sit here, how to play the piano and then also learned from a beat makers perspective. Because what I have discovered over the years is that as a beat maker, we're really focused on catchy loops, you know, repetition on knowing how to improvise. That's you know, that's what we're trying to learn as a beat maker, right? If you're trying to learn as a classical piano player, you'll find that you can only come so far with beat making learning the piano, uh, begin as a beat maker. All about loops and stuff like that again that courses cold learned piano for beat makers and producers by me. Gratuitous. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to do to keep this simple, I'm gonna put the drum loop in the actual playlist. Okay? This is probably the best way to actually record. Because if I were to record this guitar and now let's say my guitar went longer than what this loop is. The sleep is only four beats and typically my Qatar loops or at least 1 to 2 bars, so that would be eight beats. Okay, 8 to 16 beats. Um, So what I'm gonna do is I use my number pad a lot to switch in between. Step the step sequence there. Okay, So in between my patterns, So, uh, in order to go to a new pattern, you can simply just click here. You can, you know, have four, or you can hit the only shift f four, or you could just simply click the plus right here. In addition, on the playlists, you can also hit the asterisk. So the multiplier button and that allows you to go a full bar ahead. And this is just really nice ones. Your project starts to grow. You can just quickly kind of go forward and back a little bit. So that's, uh, multiply and the divide sign. And that's mainly mostly what I use on the number pad. But it's just good to know, because a lot of people don't really talk about that much. If you don't have a number pad, like on your laptop or something, you know, it kind of sucks. You can always buy the USB number pad, but that's typically what I use. But if you don't have the number pad again to access your patterns, you can come here or you could just hit a for stuff like that. So I'm just going to hit the plus in my number pad to go to a new pattern, and now we can simply, you know, play this guitar. Okay, so, behind the scenes, I added this guitar in I wrote it to the mixer. As you can see, it's on insert seven. In the night. It's routed it to some sends, which we will cover later. Okay, don't worry if it feels over your head or whatever, this has allowed me to get effects on really, really quickly. And then it also applied some EQ compression just to get the sound standing high. Want So this, for example, this is what a guitar sounds like. So So that is our guitar sound. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hit play. We're going to kind of listen to the drum loop, listen to like the groove on. Then eventually I will record a loop. We will open it up in the piano roll. We'll edit it up and let's walk you through some kind of, you know, kind of shortcuts keyboard shortcuts that I like to use in the piano roll to speed up my editing so that you guys could get up and running and you know you'll know how to edit. So I'm just walking you through a natural process of how I make a beat were just kind of covering them just more in depth a little bit, so here we go. Right now, we are in song mode. Okay, So there's pattern mode. If I were to hit space bar right now, it's only gonna play in this pattern. And there's nothing in the pattern, so we won't hear anything. If I were to play in this pattern, we'd only hear the drum loop. Um, and you can either click up here and then hit play, or you can always hit like the player it here. I typically always hit these. I just find it easier, because just one click instead of, like, two clicks. You know, that's just messes my own flow. Okay? I'm always just gonna kind of fill you in what I do, but you do whatever you want, so I'm gonna hit the speaker on the playlist. We're gonna listen to the drum loop, go over and over now. Pattern one is, uh, this pattern right here. Eventually, I would break it apart. Okay, so, for myself, when I'm actually, you know, making my beats and stuff many times I build my drill, move all in one pattern, and then I break it apart later. Because as you break apart, the patterns, then you can actually arrange a song. Right? So you have your drums or clap. You can remove sounds whenever you want. This just gives you the ultimate flexibility. Come arrangement time. Okay, but for creative purposes, when I'm actually making the beat because that takes time. That's more like the editing stage my drum loops made. It's time to actually know figure out some melodies, so I just quickly added into the playlist I go to a new pattern. I would hit play here. We're gonna listen to the drum loop, and I'm just gonna try to improvise a little bit, you know, See what we can kind of come up with so again. So here we go. OK, Now, if you know, if you have been making beats for a little bit and also Oh, I really like that, you know, I wish I could Could go back and save that or something like that. So I did this on purpose without recording or anything like that. So I will share with you how I would actually record. For example. Let's say I played something. It was like that. I'm gonna hit record. But let's say you played something and you didn't know you didn't record it. So what you can do is right now I'm making sure I'm on a new pattern. Because sometimes if you played lots of different sounds, it's gonna bring them all back. So I go to a new pattern just to be safe, and I'm going to go tools we are going to go. Ah, Dump score, log to selected pattern for the last two minutes, K. So I'll do that. And as you can see, you know, I was playing behind the scenes a little bit, just as I was actually kind of configuring this guitar a little bit. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on that hold down control and right click is gonna zoom everything in. And now I can see kind of where I was playing, and I think I'm going to be playing from around here. Okay, so let's just kind of listen. So I clicked right here and hit playing in the pattern. So this is that this will only play the pattern, not the drum loop. So not the actual playlist. Okay, so let's come to around here and I'm just kind of looking just for kind of a starting point of where I played. Okay, so I first started on. See? Okay. So you could see that this is a guy like the beginning of where I played. I know that. Um so let's take this. Okay? So since I have this highlighted, I see that Caesar it here. And I'm going to say that maybe I started around here. I'm not sure, but since I have all that highlighted, I'm gonna hold on control and shift. Now, you can add more to the selection. I'm gonna press control and exits to cut that we're going to press delete, and it's just gonna delete everything. Okay, So since nothing was highlighted, it deletes the whole thing. I'm gonna hit control and right click. And that brings it all the way back to the very beginning. I'm gonna press control and v k. And then now I'm just gonna bring this all the way here. Okay, so this may be what I'm wanting. I'm not sure. Now I'm gonna talk to you about kwon ties ng OK, so quanta izing is when you snap everything to grid. Okay, so if you come up here into the playlist, you have all these different grid sizes. Okay, so resume in here. You can see that we can get really, really fine, right? If we even go more fine. Okay. So you can zoom in and you so just the greatest health. Fine it is. Now when it's super fine, Sometimes it's hard to program. It's hard to edit. So if you go like to step, you can see that I was only four places to place your sound. So sometimes you know doesn't give you as much flexibility. But in terms of editing, you know, for example, if I already played my notes, I kind of have a general idea of what notes I want to play going to something like a step, or even like 1/2 step on. Then what I'll do is a Kwan ties and its control and Q. So if you come up here to the arrow, you can see that there is the seat tools so quick, Kwan ties okay and its control and cute. So that is the short cut. So you're going to see that I first adjusted my grid. So if I made it really, really fine. And if a quant ties, it's not gonna, you know the quantities isn't going to snap it to crazily. If I were to go to, like, let's say, like half a beat, you can see that there's only like, you know, there's not much for me to click a sound difficult beat. You can see that if I were to Kwan ties, everything's going really, really weird. Okay, so it's like, Well, that's not what we really played. So what I'm trying to say is, You know, let's say we go to, like, let's say a step just to keep it simple. Okay? I'm gonna press control, Thank you. And it quantifies it. So for the most part, it sinks things up. There's gonna be some notes which are off B, and that's fine. I'll just simply just click and drag them over once a hit play and listen. I'll typically listen to this with the drum loop. Um, and so the argument behind Kwan ties ing in the industry is there's some people who hate quanta izing. They're like, No, you You can't Kwan ties because it's not gonna sound like humanistic because you know that was like me playing. So I want to know belong. People want to capture that for myself. I find that if I Kwan ties and then you know, if I want to note nudge, I find that's way easier and faster for editing. So again, you know, like my grid isn't like super wide right? So you know it's not super intense. Mike want izing, but again, just let you know. That's kind of like one of the arguments out there. I find if you Kwan ties and edit, it's way easier. So let's just listen to what we have. I know it's going to be weird. Um, so let's just hit escape. We're gonna add this guitar into the actual playlist here. Um and I'm pretty sure you know. So for the time being, I am going to highlight this press control. B is involved. It's a little short cut. It's just gonna duplicate it. Uhm, I'm pretty sure I have notes, which I didn't play like in a sense of like for like that loop that I wanted. But we'll hit play. We'll listen to the notes and that I could always delete and stuff like that. So I'm just gonna click here. Should open up the piano roll hit play. Let's listen to what we got. Okay, so I know that knows they're gonna be off time and everything, so that's okay. That's good. And the reason is because I can actually show you how I would do this. So let's Let's go. Okay, so this is actually workable with I think I like it the way it is. Obviously, you know, we're gonna just note So So maybe I'll do something. This so right now is you can see the so velocity, it gets brighter. So if you look at D sharp six year so as you see the brighter by turning down, you could see his darker. Okay, so that's also a little indicator. So I I just heard that that note was too quiet. So right now this notes off and move this over keeping all these over. Same here. Um and I'm just looking right now to see Is there multiple notes that are off? And if there are, which I see, I'm gonna hold on Control left, click and hold. And I'm just gonna highlight. So as you can see all these knows air off. So you know, this is just a short cut, but we have to do is just drag him all over one. And I think, for the most part, that fixed it. So that was a really, you know, fast way. So case I want a little space in between here. We're also going to turn up the velocity of this a little bit. And if some notes are too loud, So, for example, if I were to play a chord, OK, so as you can see, uh, no, these notes were here. Sometimes the cords. It sounds fine, but there might just make that one note that is too loud in the cord. And it's just a matter of holding out Ault school just like I showed you before. So let's continue. Came into play from the very beginning way. OK, so as you can see in the first part of the loop, a sharp is playing. So this is actually, uh So if we go like 123 K so it's not playing on the three, it's actually play just a little bit early, and this is actually playing on the three, so we're gonna put this a little early as well. On I'm also just gonna hold on, Ault. Okay, so if you hold on, Ault, you can kind of break free from the snap. So, for example, if I, um, I want to move this note to the right, I have to follow the snap. Okay, But if you want to be a little bit creative and get today that note nudging, you can either hold on shift and the scroll wheel. Um, or you could hold on all the left, click and drag us. Well, okay, um so what I was trying to say there is right here, so I just want to just kind of give it a little bit of space that way. It's just gonna make thes notes, articulate a little bit better. Whereas sometimes if it's like this, you don't really hear this new sound play eso holding on all just getting a little bit of space on again. Let's listen again. Okay. So, again, this is kind of weird in here, but this over and over. So if you click right here, it actually puts the curses, So I'm gonna enter, make the piano roll smaller. So as you can see, if I click anywhere in here, it's actually gonna move it in the playlist because I'm in psalm mode. So, for example, if I click here, you can see that this this is moving the cursor or here. Okay. So as I'm actually editing my notes, you know, I know that up to this point. So everything before and highlight you just hold on control and left, click and hold, or you can actually just right click and right clicking actually adds on to the loop, which is kind of a cool thing to know. So I'm just right clicking. Or you could just hold down left, click and highly like that. Okay, so right. Click is, honestly, probably the easiest way to approach it. And then to get rid of it, you just double left. Click. Ok, so I know everything beforehand was good. So I'm gonna continue from boat here, I think. Let's just listen to the beginning since I've been talking about for so in here is a little bit weird. So again, I'm gonna play from here. Kiss So we'll do something like this. Something sounds it's a little bit weird here. Um, I may have to add a note in So again, again. What? I'm doing this. I listen, you know, I repeat over and over and over and over again, and you know, whether I'm adding a note in or moving a no extending its length, increasing its velocity or anything like that. Okay, so I just hear something that we someone's gonna be added in here. So So? So I played here. He was shot at Norden noted here, and maybe we will go way will continue on way this and maybe we will go. Okay. So, as you can see, I want this a sharp to play the same way. Okay, So let's actually just remove this just to keep this simple. And I'll just say this is gonna be our loop, OK? In our playlists hunger to remove this double click here and listen to this one more time and we're just kind of fine tune a little bit more and then I'll share with you just in things that I do inside the playlist are sorry. The piano roll just to make it a little bit easier for myself. Okay, So he Rio, let's make this a little bit shorter. Maybe concern on the volume of liquor. Okay, so we'll go with that. Okay, So now to bring our theory back into this in a sense of, you know, key scale what notes were allowed to play. Okay, so if I were to want to add, let's say a new melody on So I'm going to share with you later. You know, if you want to add in like, let's say V s teas and stuff like that. So, for example, if you do want to add in a V S t, you just right, click and instruments and, um, image line comes with their own stock wins and stuff like that. But eventually you probably will want to purchase some third party ones. Silence One is a really popular one. Serum is a really popular one would bring out Silence one. Now, I created this little melody with a guitar note that I actually recorded. I took a guitar. No, I recorded it. Actually created a course on this is called creating organic beats. In that course, I record a single guitar note with you, and then we create a whole composition of that single guitar? No, it's a pretty cool course, but right here, this is just a single guitar note, right? And I credibility out of it. Now, in order for me to create more melodies, I would actually have to right click clone this and then I can actually, you know, work on melodies. Now, if I were to try to add, like, let's say a V s t in. Um, it's not gonna be in pitch because this guitar No, I have no idea. If it was in tune, I just recorded. Okay, Uh, that's one thing to talk about quickly. Okay. Sylvia's teas, the really, really awesome because they're perfect pitch. So what that means is all computerized, You know, for example, if you're playing in a four, it's like you're playing in a four. And if you were to open up a different V s t from a different vendor or whatever, everything works in a sense of, you know, being in tune, it's really, really simple right by me taking this approach, it actually makes music production a lot harder when you actually take a guitar, no recorded and then try to make more melodies out of it. And the reason why I duplicated the same sound is because I want to keep that same sound. It's the same pitch and everything. And now I could just kind of play up higher or lower, and it's gonna still be in tune right now. For example, let's say I do want to add a melody onto this guitar sound, so if I right click, go to the piano roll, you can see that I have all my ghost notes on. Okay, so again you can appear to the arrow, you go helpers and we have ghost channels. This is a super super powerful one. There's also one other one I want to share with you. If you go to edit, there's also allow re sizing from left. Make sure you enable this and what the benefit of it is. If I just click a sound in here, it allows you to edit a note from the left or the right by default. I don't think FL Studio comes with that. They may now, but I do recall when I've first start with Devil Studio, it wasn't so. That's just an option you want enable. Okay, now let's just talk about, like, the music theory a little bit in a sense of again key scale cores of stuff like that. So right here I played in this scale of C minor, okay. And so, you know, if I want to look plate the baseline, for the most part, I could just play, like, you know, the the root note of, like, the court, okay, And it's going to sound fine. Like, you know, this is really, really simple. I can just extend these notes, but in terms of being created with your music, you know, this kind of, ah, you know, hinders you a little bit because, you know, being a musician and producer and stuff like that, it's all about being creative and, you know, kind of adding notes in to find what suits the song. But again, to go back to the theory, you know, the notes that you're lots of play are in that key and scale. Okay, that dictate what know what you want to play. But when you have these ghost dotes on, you know, for example, let's say we're creating a different melody. All you have to do is to kind of like reference what you've already played. And if you want to, like, lay or something or if you want to play something different. So, for example, you can see that up hires. I played here. Ah, but I start to play a little bit lower here on you know, the other sound. Now, maybe I want to continue this melody maybe up here or something like that, You know? So from here to here, I have kind of space where I can kind of play up higher. Okay, Um, right here. You know, we started play higher again like that may be here again. We can kind of fill in some notes, whatever. Or again, you could just layer if you want to Kind of do stuff like that for the baseline again. So this is a pretty cool trick if you hold on shift, Okay. And left click, You can actually duplicate duplicated. No, it was gonna put it here. I'm going Teoh. In this case, I want a highly all the notes, some good press control in a how it's everything. And I'm just going to extend them. Um, I'm going to remove this sound now. Um, and That's it. I'm gonna keep extending. And then as soon as it starts getting or sorry, I could have stopped this one as well. Um, I'm going to stop this one. And it just the reason why I'm doing this is just because it allows me to save myself from editing the other notes to, you know, just less clicks. So do that. Okay, Now, I will just kind of go manually and do this and this and then this sounder here, I will turn it back. Okay, So what's really, really cool about this is right now, if I play, you can hear that this this sounder here, it's up pretty high, But let's say we got a little lower. Okay, Low, lower. So that's pretty low. So let's just bring it down an octave. So I'm just gonna hold down control and the down arrow. And now if we listen to our melody, we have a baseline. Uh, okay. So in this case, if I was, you wanted to start kind of mixing the track. Whatever. I would actually preach like a new mixture insert. I would hate control l for that. I'll break this down for you. as we proceed. But you know, you can also right click coach our roading and stuff like that too. And if you listen to this, let's try one word. Lower case leads to low. Okay, So again, this is the problem. When you're using a single guitar note, I just find sometimes it gives you really, really cool melody. But there's a lot that goes into taking this approach, so I don't really suggest it. If you're new, you know, I would stick to something like Silence one. So, for example, if I just kind of cut this put into silence one and we will just choose bank here, I have a lot of free banks online. Just so you're aware, just search gratuitous silence. One break free banks. These are all the free ones, like endeavor and, er momentum to totally free. Just search into Google and you can download them. Um so just like momentum and we will just select like some like a lead sound. So, for example, that's the school. Let him know you're coming. So it sounds like this. So I'll turn it down a little bit little loud and well, since, like the melody so that this way, with way. So I'm gonna right click. I'm just gonna close Silence one. And this is a really cool, you know, a little fast way that I You know, if I want to keep working with science one, I'll just clone it, and then I'll just, you know, if I want to change a preset the civic face and I'm just gonna cut this and paces in here, so let's just listen to this, okay? We're gonna go lower with the drum loop. It's a little out, so, you know, quite a difference from the V S. T to the guitar sound. So again, in order for me to make that guitar sound sound better, I would have to know quite heavy processing in a sense of e que compression and Maurin the mixing stage. Where's thes V is teas. They're extremely high quality, as you can hear. Just the difference. It sounds way fuller way bigger and just wait Cleaner. Right. Um, so now I just want to share with you how to actually record. So for example, if you want to, you know, let's say you're playing Melody and you want to record into like step sequence there into a pattern and stuff like that. Okay, so again, how I approach it is I always just go to a new pattern. Now you can hit at four. It's really nice if you just want to organize and label and stuff like that. As of actually making that be, I'm not really concerned with that stuff, because again, when you're beat making mode, urine beat, making mode, you want to actually just you don't make the beat. When you kind of go off track with, like, make organizing and colorizing stuff like that, I find that distracts the flow of making the beat. However, once that you know what's the beat, making is done or like the most part of the meat beat making is done. Then once I start to actually kind of arranged the track building out, then I'm going to get into some organization. You're labeling coloring, and then I bring all that stuff to the mixer and walk you through all this. I have a very fast workflow with that full studio, very clean workflow, and the benefit of it is that as your track starts to grow, let's say you had, you know, 10 15 instruments and stuff going on tons of different sounds. As you can see already. It just makes it really easy to see on the playlists. Because imagine you imagine this thing is like this what it's like, bring this down and we'll bring this down like this. So imagine it's like this, and then I'm just gonna going Teoh do is a bunch of times. So imagine like your projects like this. Like, you know, you have a bunch of things going on. Um, if everything is just this color, it's like you don't know where anything is, and it's just it was very, very distracting. So I'm gonna come here, we're gonna go history. Um, let's just find where duplicate clip and stuff like that. So we'll go back a little bit more. And there were you. Ok, so all I'm saying is right now in making the beep. This is You know, I don't worry about color or anything that Okay, so now I have a melody and make a baseline? No. So, for example, pushing the metal scroll wheel, Let's just say melody and then hit a to to give it a color. And the reason why I'm doing this is just so that you can see this. Okay. So base and then have to Okay, make it easy to kind of follow. So I'm gonna right click and clone, okay? And I'm going to hit the plus because I want to record. Sometimes when you record in a pattern that already has notes, it can kind of get cut off. If you know, imagine like you found a melody. That sounds really good. You want to keep kind of going with it? Um, it can kind of get cut off. So I always just kind of go through a new pattern. In this case, even worse is based to we can change it to whatever we want. So let's say cleaner than can be. So let's just hit play. So it sounds OK now, this is to do with the sound selection stuff I was talking to you about when we're talking about safe spots, right? You know, there's no nudging sound placement sounds selections very, very important here. Like that sound. It sounded fine, but it kind of sounded pretty similar to the sound we already had. So being a producer. He's that things you kind of gotta think about. It's like I think I would rather just choose a different sound. That sounds different. Therefore, when it comes to mixing and stuff like that, it's like I've already chosen pretty good sounds in a sense of like, they all sound good. They're already kind of standing out and now in the mixing stage with e que compression of stuff like that, I'm or just kind of enhancing the song. I'm not really fixing the song, OK, it's kind of a different mindset. So it's just kind of go through some different sounds. Kind of some Sylar gets my some cool. So okay, so again, although I didn't record, but that's OK, so I'm going to hit record here. Okay, so in fl Studio, many times when you hit record for the first time, many times little pop up will appear. You guys can also right click in. That same menu is also available, but I typically will hit everything. Okay, So when it says you know what do you want? A record hit everything. Um And now, um, I make sure I had a 3 to 1 in case So when I hit play, it's gonna go. One, 23 actually. Really? And then you know that you're able to record. I like I like it to count in. So right now I'm on a new pattern. I am making sure I'm highlighted on this sound, even though its base, it's actually, um called protected by the blood. Okay, so this is the sound of on, um, as you can see when I play it. Okay. So, again, before hit record, I'm just kind of double checking all these things, because now when I hit play, it's gonna count me in, and I can play it. Okay, so here we go. Okay. So let's just say I like that, right? So that's the way it is about to turn off record. I'm going to go to the piano roll, and I'm gonna hit control and right click again. Just brings everything into screen. Now the first thing I do is again Kwan ties. It's the simplest way to edit. Okay, now it's like what notes are kind of already. I can kind of see which are off, like, for example, right here. I didn't play two notes that once I know that. So I'm gonna measured over. I just kind of look at this kind of quickly, and this will be over here, so let's just listen, soldier hit. Stop making sure that everything goes to the front. Okay, so by that, I mean, sometimes, like this cursor. As you can see, it's not all the way here and again if I make it small if I'm over here, you know, if I hit play, it's always gonna be weird, right? So just, ah, thing I always do is always hit. Stop. Okay? Always hit a couple of times, and I know that one hit play. Now I'm starting from the beginning and I'm just gonna watch my cursor. I'm gonna listen. Is anything sound? Weird? Case? Okay, so this is late. Okay, so it sounds a little bit weird, you know what I mean? Like, I think I'd want to change up notes and everything like that, but that's my process. That's why I use the piano roll. That's high flow with it. Um, if you have any questions, always feel free to reach out. But I think that covers the piano roll pretty good. You guys learned about chords, scales, keys, You know what notes allowed to play and then even broke down some kind of sound selection and mindset when it comes to editing again. You know, the biggest thing is, you know, if you highlight sounds and stuff like that, you can kind of hold on Ault and adjust your velocity. Um, some v is teas don't allow you to do panning and stuff like that. Some do. And, uh, yeah, if you want to take note, nudge, you can hold on, shift in the scroll wheel or hold on all to go up and down to highlight multiple sounds. You hold on shift and control. You could highlight multiple or de selected and stuff like that. Um, so, yeah, hopefully helps you out, will move forward, okay? 12. 6-1 Playlist Walkthrough Color Coding: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be talking about the playlist, which is right here. Now, again, I like to set it up like this. And then if I want a bigger I will just hit, enter on the screen, you can hold on control, right Click. And it makes everything bigger. Okay. Uh, now, if you want to focus into certain areas, you can again hold down control, right click and kind of zoom to certain areas if you want to kind of focus in and stuff like that. Ah, but so, like, I'm saying we're gonna be covering the playlist. Uh, this is a beat where it stopped. Finished. But as you can see, you know, the track is kind of being start. It's started to being built, but it's not Color quoted. We don't You know, it's hard to kind of see everything. So, in a sense of we look here again, you know, so appear with pattern six who have had a pattern. Nine. Uh, we have all these sounds down here now, in terms of arrangement, it's really hard to build a song when you don't have colors when you don't have labels. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to color code, how to label how to organize everything. Will also wrote that stuff to the mixer quickly will cover the mixer in another section of this course. And then we just kind of talk about some things about the playlist here. Workflow kind of shortcuts and stuff like that. Okay, so the first thing is, the playlist is where we actually build our song. Okay, so, you know, we have our patterns. And as you can see, you know, this song has 10 patterns. This is different from the one in the previous video has a different melody. Only listen to it is kind of quickly just to kind of hear what we're working with. Okay? So just for me, hearing once we add that you know, all these sounds to the mixer will be able to kind of balance out the sounds a little bit better and kind of get a better flow. Ah, but for the time being, that's what we're working with. I'll also walk through the arrangement a little bit with you in a separate video, sharing with you just kind of mindset just to kind of get you going with arrangement. So the first thing I want to do is color code, okay? And I have a certain process on how I do this NFL studio. Um, it's just a matter of using the keyboard shortcuts, hitting F two to bring up like the label. So, for example, if we click the arrow up here, you can see that the shortcut is rename and color. You just have to. Okay, So I make sure to color and label before I add this stuff into the mixer. Because if you do, all the colors will follow. For example, if I just give cords here, and if you have to, you can get a random color, or you can actually just select, um, you know, something like this. So, for example, for this individual sound, uh, let's just give it just this random color. And the reason why I'm doing this is I just want to show you that the color and label follows. So the shortcut is controlling l just for an individual sound. If you want to wrote multiple sounds, you could just push in like you're middle scroll wheel, or like you can right Click all these right click and hold. Now, if I were to right click good channel roading and wrote selected channels starting from this track it's gonna add the sounds starting from cords and then it's gonna work its way, like so melody would be next. Space would be next kick. SFX would be next. And I'm just following the list here. Okay, you'll see that as we go on. Ah, but I just wanted to share that with you so that you can see that as we label and as we color coat and get you pretty much get this track prepared that everything is just easy. You don't be able to see it here on the mixer. Be able to see it here on my step sequencer, and there will also be able to see in the playlist. And like I'm saying, once the track starts to grow starts to build, You know, this process probably takes about 10 minutes. Every track it is a little bit of, you know, a tedious task, but in the long run, it really does help you. Okay? And again, I do this after my beats kind of built after my arrangement. You know, it kind of built it or a little bit too. And then once I'm ready to get into, like, more than mixing stage, I will. Then, actually, you know, do all this editing, okay. And then same thing in the mixer. Now, if you want this same color to be on eight, a little shortcut is first of all, you go to an insert of the color that you want. Click on it F two, then just to enter. And what happens is FL Studio saves that color. And so what I have to now you can f three F three stores that color state or if you just click the drop down here. FL Studio always saved the color that you just saved as the very, very 1st 1 But the shortcut again is F three. OK, It's just a nice little work. Full thing. So what I'm gonna do is this one or here. I originally had it called cords. We're also gonna put it so that right now is being routed to insert number eight. We're not gonna wrote anything right now. Okay? So let's just keep this simple. I always write in capitals when I'm label into it makes it really, really nice and easy to read in FL Studio. So I'm just gonna write chords. We're gonna have to just kind of give it around in color. That's good. So now I've labeled the sound, but we have to label the actual pattern. Okay? And I guess I should start on the very, very first sound right now on pattern six. So let's go to the first sound and we will work our way down right here. These are the drums. As you can hear, you now have three drums going on again. This is a really common technique. I do just for variety and variation within my songs. So this is drums will have to type. And here it is, right here. It's just gonna type in capitals of drums f to a couple of times. Give it that color. So now how you concolor multiple sounds as I'm gonna right click and hold So no of how it all these Click the arrow You're gonna go color selected and you go, Grady. And now what you have to do here is you just have to select the same color twice So we will select this color and just like that same color. Okay, so these sounds as you can see right here. Zoom into this. So we have drums, which I've labeled Okay. Just by hitting f two, we labeled the pattern drums we gave it this color we also colored are sounds and everything is simple. Now, right now, we are gonna add them into the mixer. But I do that all at once. So I just organized all my labels and colors first. And then we added to the mixer after you'll see that when you wrote it all at once is just all just super simple. All your colors and labels follow. So I said, the plus in my number pad goes, meat takes me to the next pattern. You can also click up here and go to the next pattern. But again, the number of patterns just really, really good for workflow. So hit the plus, uh, these these are snares. And just to confirm so so again, I did the same thing I panned one left Penn one, right. Just to get that nice little wide sound, make that snare hit a little bit bigger I don't do this on every track. And sometimes I may even take these. Okay, I might cut them and put them into a different pattern. And I may only bring those wide snares in intellect, the chorus or only into certain spots of the song That way, you know, in the versus stuff it allows me but the chorus to sound bigger with those wide snares. You know, these are all just things just to think about for arrangement. So as you see right here, that's the label. So my so snares have two. That's a good color. We will just left click and hold or you can right click and hold I'm gonna come here, Go Color selected Radiant like that Purple and the purple. Now, you know, I'm just explaining to as I'm doing it, but as I'm actually doing this myself, the process is pretty fast. So these air high hats care So high hats I have to, uh, and I just held on shift and left click or you There's multiple ways to do things in FL studio. Okay, So to highlight this stuff, if you could left click. So if you left click, you could see he don't do once at a time. If you left, click and hold, you can highlight down, and I typically will just right click and hold or ah, hold on shift and the left click. It's the same thing as the right click. Or you can also use your middle scroll wheel as well. So I just want to highlight these two computer ago color selected, radiant and select that brown color Go down. Let's see what this is. It's all those symbols symbols, and we'll have to give it just a different color. You know, if sometimes if I can't find, like, the color that I always look for colors that are really different from each other makes it , you know, kind of pleasing to look and really easy to find. So in this case, let's give us like an orange hair, and then I will highly these and we will do the same thing. So color selected ingredient and one more time, okay, And then our last sound must be some high has to something again. Okay, so sometimes I do have different heights. Now I'm just going to go high hat to have to give it a color that's gonna get red Now, I don't have to go to the arrow and color selected Grady int for an individual sound for an individual sound. You could just pushing your middle school wheel and then now f three. Because it saved that red when I entered the last time. Or again, it's re Here is the first color. Okay, so list of three enter. Um, this is put a hold on control and right click. So as you can see, we're really, really close Now. We're just on two. Are our instruments here? Uh, this is cords. I like this color. I'm gonna push from a middle scroll wheel. I'm gonna save that color just by hitting. Enter. Have to type chords again on half three. Okay, come down here. So this is kick SFX. So here's a cool little shortcut. I'm gonna push it in the middle. Scroll wheel. I'm gonna press control and see toe. Highlight the text this way. I don't have to paste it into the pattern, uh, have to just to give it around the color. That's pretty different from everything else. Have to again because this is going to label it. Okay, so when I have to Before it changed the color f to now I'm going to relabel this. So I already copied the text. So just control v Super simple f three. Because it saved that yellow color. Okay, now, as you can see, it just colored it right there. So I had the plus in my number pad. We have the melody. So pushing the middle scroll wheel hit control C to copy it half to just to give it a different color. Uh, let's just give it, like a light blue or something. Go with this. Now I enter. I'm gonna have to now, because now we want to label the actual pattern. So as you can see, we're on pattern eight. Here's pattern eight right here. Right. So right now we want a label pattern. Eight. So it's just a matter of clicking list up sequence er Hef to control V to paste that text f three. Because that's the blue and we're done. So it plus again the base metal scroll wheel control C f to just looking for just just for a different color. That's fine. Have to again in F three. Okay, maybe we'll I think we'll just leave it for now. But, you know, I usually does it have, like, this different colors that, you know, just a lot of kind of different contrast. I guess you know, from the colors Makes it easy to see, so hit the plus one more time. So here's the kick buildup Have to Are you guys gonna also give these, like icons? I don't. I just find it takes way too much time. But if you go to the right of a sound, you can select an icon on the you know, anywhere else. It's gonna pop up the label menu where you can select an icon just from the left here. Or you can select your color hit control C on. Let's just give this Ah, purple enough to paste it at three. And we're done. Okay, so we have now color coded our song. Super, Super simple. Okay, so now on the playlist. Here's how I flow with it. Okay, so right now I already have this some kind of built I'm going to use, uh, hold on control and scroll down. Gonna highlighted all Holy no control left, click And I'm highlighting everything. I'm going to just drag this out is just for now. We'll bring it back later. But here is how I would work with Fo Studio. Okay, so hold on. Control and right click. This is just gonna zoom everything into screen. Now I hit one on my number pad, okay? Or it's just a matter of going to the first pattern, Um, of her patterns. Okay, because now we're going to do is go to start adding in my patterns, into my playlist, actually start building this song. Okay, So imagine you've you know, you've created the always patterns. You're ready to add it into your song to build your arrangement again. When you break apart, I'll make this small again. When you break apart your patterns into individual sounds. For example, this is just drums case. This is just stares. Scroll down one more time. You know, this is like the hi hats, K, this is are the symbols. Okay, So what I'm trying to say is when everything's broken apart into its own pattern, it gives you a lot more flexibility. Come arrangement time. So for the drums here, I typically like to have my melodies at the top and my percussion elements down below. So I know I only have, like, three or four instruments in this track. Eso I'm just going to start my drums kind of just down here. Okay, So I'm just going to literally just click some drums and here, like this thing, this looks kind of small, so I'm just gonna zoom in here, okay? So I'm just going to put eight bars again. There's four beats in one bar in 44 time. So that's one, 234 I'm just following their like the lines, right? So, for example, like these lines right here, I'm just counting the line. So 1234 That is one bar 1234 as two bars. Okay, so if you again, if you hear a rapper stay like 16 bars, it's literally just 16 of these. So from here, this would be 16 bars, okay? Many times in, like a verse 16 bars. And then a course would be like either four or eight bars. Sometimes you can be creative and kind of tease the listener with only four bars in your course later on in the song you let them enjoy more of the course with eight bars? Um, every song is different, but these are just different things you can do. So now what I do is I hit the plus in a number pad. I will just paste all these and again hit the plus in a number pad, paste him in. Okay, you guys can also put your most over this. You guys can use a scroll wheel to go down instead of, like, the number path again. I'm just showing you different ways of how you can approach things. I've just found the number pad to be really awesome over the years. Um, warmer time s. So now I'm in court, someone of the melody, so I'm gonna pay set up here. Okay, So I am going to actually delete thes because I just wanted to be the same length as my chords, and I'll share with you. Why do that? Here to second. And I'm really don't control it. Right? Clicking just a zoom in the area. Uh, plus my number pad. So how usually do this is? My left hand will go into the number pad and then my right hand is actually clicking this in. Okay, so here's the kick. SFX. So, um, I'll share these sounds with you in a moment just to kind of hear them individually hears the melody. Okay, so in this case, you can see that actually did have, um, a four bar loop. And this is only a two bar loop. Eso had the plus basis also afford bar, loop, kick buildup. Um, so I probably used these later with him morning to build up and took a chorus. We'll explain that later and then. So pattern 11 enter a C C. We have no more patterns. Okay, so that's it for our patterns. So what I'm gonna do is highlight this holding down control and shift highlighting these and I get press control and be as involved. Okay, as you can see now, we have our patterns just like this. Uh, these sounds right here. I'm going to just put them near the end. Um, and so the reason why I did this is because what I like to do when I'm actually building the arrangement of my song is it like to have all my patterns all being, you know, a place like this so we can even bring them up just a little bit. So for example, we'll bring this one up and then we'll highlight these. And I usually just like to have one space in between my melodies to my drum loops, percussion elements. So what I'm trying to say is I usually like to do it like this because now if I highlight all the sounds and then you press control and B B as in Bob K so impressing control and be And as you can see, it's duplicating this and why I find this beneficial is because I find it a lot easier to remove sounds. And it is to add the sounds back in. Okay, So, for example, if I'm warning Teoh, you know, think of an intro. So, for example, food is hit play here. So we're in song mode now. If I hit, play is gonna start playing. OK, so that's our chorus. It's like That's a little bit too full. So let's say we're looking for an intro. So let's remove the melody. Maybe we will remove the base. Maybe we're gonna remove some like these high hats to OK, so let's say this is our intro. You will remove like the hi hats. Okay, So for example, you know what? I was actually building this song. I probably did something like this. So we listen from here. Okay, So I'm pulling on control, right clicking. I'm just going to delete this, okay? And we're gonna bring back our my previous arrangement, and I'll walk you through this arrangement just again in another video. Um, you know, just seeking kind of getting understanding of arrangement. And I'll talk to you a little bit about what I call audio painting. Audio painting, just like safe spots, is another term of coined, and the whole goal behind audio painting is just preparing the listener for what's next in your song. So in other words, when you're building your arrangement many times, you don't just want to add a sound in It can sound rushed. Many times you have to have some type of transition and communicate with that listener beforehand before you add the instrument in before you add those high hats in or if you take them away, high hats are very, very powerful. I'll break that down for you in a separate video. Okay, so let's just talk about some things here on the playlist. Okay? So many times, if I want to work in a certain area Ah, highlight soul just to hold on right click and just highlight an area. And if hit play, it's just gonna loop over and over again. So many times, if I'm mixing the song sometimes we'll just go right to the chorus all trying to balance all the instruments and then all kind of listen to, you know, like the verse and stuff and just see is something lacking and then I'll kind of, you know, kind of tweak it from there. So that's a really, really popular thing. Another thing I do in this playlist is it has now come with, like, this little panel picker, so you might have your place may look like this. I personally found that the panel picker was a little bit redundant. It's more of a new feature and the FL Studio 20 plus I believe so. You know, in other words, it's like use your drums, but at the same time, it's like, Well, here's your drums. So, um, in my opinion, when you only have a single screen. I believe it's more important to have, you know, to be able to see more on your screen because this takes up quite a bit of space, right? So if I click, the arrow will panel picker disable it. You know, I just feel that I get more space and I'm still and I'm still able to access all my patterns. If you do want to move a pattern upper down, it's just a matter of going move up or move down. Okay, that's it. Now, when it comes to actually building your song again if we come up here to the grid So when I build a song on the playlist, I many times use beat or bar. Okay, Anything finer is if I show you that as an example. So it's going quarter step here, okay? And if I take let's say, Ah, this kick SFX and is bringing over one. OK, so as you can see like, Yes, this is not lined up, which is bad, because in music it's you need your patterns tow line up. If you want a note nudge, that's fine, but you want to do it within the actual patterns. So, for example, you know, if you want to know tonight, she would go into the piano roll. You can. You can? No, no individual notes. But in terms of your actual pattern, you always wanted to be, you know, perfectly on time. And then again, if you want to be creative, you will, you know, just the notes, but not the pattern. And so what I'm trying to say is, when you're on such a fine grid on, like, 1/4 step, for example, and if I hold on control and right click. So if you're this far zoomed out, you know, I cannot tell that this is off. Beat me? No, what I'm saying. So it's really important that when I'm zoomed out and let's just say, you know, we start building our song and it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Right. Um, I want to know that when I drag something like this, for example, that is perfectly on beat. Case will go to history, and we will go, uh, don't here and we will do this one. Okay, so let's go back to here. And as you can see it, Z not on time, right? So I find that really, really annoying. And that's the reason why I have it on, like, a beat or bar. So before actually select that, let's zoom in here and you guys can look at the actual grid. So as you can see all of the different lines, right? So I'm going to click the magnet. We're gonna go beat Kay. And as you can see, it's this. Made it so that things have to lock in. You know, if you do want to break free from the lock in, like many times on these symbols or something, if I want to be creative like yeah, sometimes I might hold on. Ault and Aiken break free. Okay, But on the actual patterns, I don't again. If I left click and hold, you'll see that I actually have to follow the grid. Okay. If you want to break free from it, you can just hold on ALTs and do that. Um, And to undo, I just press control Z and then control all NZ. So, for example, if I did this on, then we went down and then over something. So I press control Z and controls you can see. It just keeps going back and forth. So to keep going back even further, you have to hold on. Control is old and see now the reason why I was explaining that to use Because again, if I'm zoomed out like this, I know that if I click and drag a sound that it has to be on grid. And if it's not, I can literally no see that it's off. Okay, So again, it's just a work, full thing, something I've discovered over the years that you know, in order to make sure everything's on in sync and in order to arrange really, really easily. Um, you know, I always have it on like that beat or bar again. I could hold on all to remove the snap. If you want to remove this snap, you can also go like none. But again, that takes a while because they got a computer click, go to none, and then you can move freely. But if you hold on Ault, it already goes to none and then letting go of all won't go back to the staff you have now at the end of a song. Imagine you want it to be like an outro or something. How you would approach like a tale. A longer tail is how I approach it is. I will actually have, you know, a pattern like this. And then what I'll do is I'll just extend it. OK? So as you can see No, no, no sounds air playing. So, for example, if we listen to the end of the song, you'll see that it counts us out. Okay? Okay, So we're able to hear, like, the delay on, you know, that's the tail. So whether you want to be this a little bit longer or whatever, Um, now I'll introduce you to automation clips here quickly in fl studio. So automation clips allow you to, uh, you know, was set a parameter to automatically move depending on how you set it up beforehand. Ok, so for example, to fate Oh, a song. You want to use the mixer, Master Fader. Okay, so let's say we want a fatal this song, so I'm gonna right click and hold. Just highlight to here, OK? And here's the Master Fader. I'm gonna right click it. I'm gonna create automation clip. OK, so automation clips again you can adjust this point however you want. You can right click. You can adjust like the tension in between. You can even right, click on the point and you can select different points. For example, if we go like stairs on our zoom in on it I mean, do you like this? You could say the stairs kind of start to happen. I'm just going to delete this, though, and we'll keep it on just like a single. Um, let's just kind of focus in there again. So if I want to fade out the song, it's literally just a matter of going like this, Okay? And as you can see, when I actually move my cursor to the end, if you actually follow the slider right here, it moves. OK, so if you could see it actually fades all the song. And that's an automation clip. OK, so for example, let's say we had, um listen, like this kick sound effect, just for example, we're just gonna write it to eight by holding on control and l uh for example, if I had, like, a, uh, any Q here we highlight this area. Actually, maybe we'll just highlight it right here. K causes the kick sound effect. So right now for this it plays. Okay. So you could be created with us all. Make the queue of those tighter Moelis. Okay, So if you want to do something like that, how you would approach it is I'm just going to right Click, go create automation clip. And then I'm gonna right click the Frequency Band and also create automation clip. Now, I'm just gonna put this down here and this one down here. Now, if I want to get creative with this eq you, for example, I typically think about where do I want this band to end up? And what I mean by that is, you know, let's say we added over here. Okay, So what I'll do is all right. Click copy the value, and this is the game. Okay, so I'm gonna pace it into the game. You'll see that it moves up just a little bit. And then all I also copied the frequency. And if you wanted to adjust the Q, you can also do that too. It would just be a matter off. Um, you know, creating another automation clip. Okay, so we'll do it like this now. In between, you could do anything you want. Like you're here. Here's what the stairs, you know, So we don't have to have the stairs. I'll zoom in on this little a little bit better so we can see it, kid, I will make a big screen. Okay, So for example, you know you can adjust it like like this. I don't want the stairs anymore. So right. Click and go, like, single curve. Do stuff like this view just that over. Now, again, when it comes to Ah, you know, kind of being creative on the playlist right now because I am on 1/4 be earth or I'm on beat. It doesn't give you much flexibility on where I can place my point. So this is where I may come mentally 1/4 beat, and now I can, you know, just more points, stuff like that. Okay. So, again, sometimes it's just a little bit finicky. But once you kind of learned the process of the flow, um, you know it eventually, you kind of find what works for you. Okay, so let's make it small screen. Um, and under playlist, we hold on Control and scroll wheel a horizontal zoom and holding on Ault is vertical zoom . Okay, so now we're gonna listen, Teoh, you know this kick sound effect, and we're gonna watch the actually que here. Okay, so you know, if that's even what you want. But I just want to share that that that's how you kind of do stuff with automation clips with FL Studio. Okay, so I'm just gonna walk through a few more things inside of the playlist just to get you up and running in a sense of, you know, the tools up here and kind of like the sounds you over here so many times If I am working on some of the same song and there's a certain instrument where I want to kind of solo it out, you can simply just right click on the track. And as you can see, you know, now I can only listen to the courts. For example, if you just want to add some more sounds in and you just left click And then if you want to bring all the sounds back instead of left clicking everything just right click again. It's gonna solo with sound right, Click One more time And it brings everything back now in terms of you know, the brush. So I simply just use this paintbrush here just to add my sounds in, Um, I really don't even don't even know the difference between draw and pain. You guys can again Hef one. It's gonna bring into the help manual, and it will explain it to you. I've always just used the brush K. There's also slice here, so I'm just gonna go full screen again. Eso slicing just allows you to slice up a pattern. So, for example, if we come here and we just slice right here, you can do this and then you come back here and you can delete. But the shortcut to slice is actually using the right shift. So the ship that's right underneath, enter no more like the middle of your keyboard. So if you hold on right shift, you can see that you can slice, but it locks you in, you know, to the grid. So right now, again, I'm on just on beat. So it kind of restricts where I can slice if you hold on the altar rate. Besides shift. You can see that now you can slice anywhere in between. But if I let go vault, you can see that I have to slice on on grid planned on all angle wherever. So, you know, many times I slice, you know, Let's say if it was, say, a vocal in here and there is kind of like a little click or a pop many times, you know, I may come here called on Ault and shifted the same time I'm a kind of slice and slice. And again, if this was kind of like the area, I was just kind of deleted or something. Now, one other thing I'll share with you is no controlling your patterns a little bit more. So as you could see right here, I've kind of chopped up my patterns and it was literally just a matter of, you know, just bringing over the pattern and to duplicate you. Hold on the left, shift and click. And as you can see, I just know I duplicated this base. So what I did there is these notes. I can see that they're right here. So I'm just gonna bring this back and I'll bring this forward. And as you can see, you know, I just kind of duplicated chopped up the sound, and I just kind of duplicated a couple times, So sometimes this is a kind of a little cool technique. So if we listen to this, sounds like this one more time. Okay? So, um, you know, that's just kind of a creative thing you can do many times. I do stuff like that. So, for example, if you just bring, like, the cords, um, right here and we're gonna solo it out because if it placed it over here, I'd have silence because the master volume goes to zero. Right? So many times that say, we have a car drums here to, um you know, if we take this and then we take this and if I had, like this and hide this press control, be control, be control, be we listen to them, and then now I'm a play it regular. Okay, so we will know. Extend it full again. Okay, so that's it right there. And then we will add, just like these time being, and then we'll add it back in. So you know, sometimes this is cool like the beginning of a song or something. And then it goes right into normal. So just to kind of share just these different techniques that I often do. OK, Okay, so that's just kind of the playlist. This is where we add our patterns, and it's really important to color code, you know, make it look easy to find and everything like that. Um, I talked to you about kind of automation clips, um, and just kind of like, you know how to actually build a song a little bit in our next video. I'm gonna talk to you a little bit more about arrangement will cover it kind of quickly. We'll also wrote our sounds to the mixer quickly. And then at the video. After that, we're going to start getting into the mixer, understanding what is the mixer signal flow and everything like that. Okay, 13. 6-2 Light Walkthrough Of Arrangement: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be doing just a light overview of arrangement. Now, I just want, you know, I do have a course on this. Specifically for arrangement is called Song Structure. An arrangement music course. And I go way more in depth in terms of like, your intro, your verse, your chorus, pre chorus or bridge outro, all that kind of stuff, different approaches you can take. And as well as I explain to you, the concept of audio painting again audio painting is just communicating with the listener and preparing them for what's next in your song. Again, I've also written a book on this on Amazon. It's called audio painting, communicating with your listener and preparing them for what's next in your song by me, my author named Riley. Well, you know, again, if you would like a little read for more information. So again, the whole idea behind arrangement, in my opinion, is just always preparing that listener. And you know, when they hit play, when they listen to your song that it's just a nice fluid motion, K. So from the intro to the outro of your song that you know when sounds are added in or, you know, if if, like there's a change in the song and a sense of new instruments or different notes of being played or anything like that, it should always still be like a fluid motion. In a sense that, you know, it's actually building onto the emotion of the song. Okay, if it sounds rushed or if it sounds kind out of place, um, you may just need to add some type of transition and a transition is something like a symbol or like reverse symbol or ah, riser sounds. For example, I'll share with you. Ah, the reverse symbol technique Just right here. Okay. So as you can see these air symbols right here and, you know, they could be allowed so sorry. Okay, so you kind of hear how it's kind of build up. This is the reverse symbol. So remove this Celeste, the reverse symbol, and then we always see have our Ford symbols can. So I'll let you listen to that just from right here from right here. Okay, Now all that you listen to it with the reverse simple. And then without the reverse symbol, okay. Without the reversal Okay, so you'll just find that this reverse symbol is a really, really popular technique. But again, I'm just talking to, in a sense of preparing that listener, building them up, even this kick buildup, you know, it's building them up. It's letting them know that. Okay. You know, uh, something's gonna change in the song. It's gonna, you know, starting to build up. And then in this case, it actually was the course, right? So we just added in all our melodies and stuff. Now, let's just wrote our sounds. Sorry, I closed it. So I'm gonna have five to bring that back off. Enter. So let's just throw all their sounds into the mixer. We can kind of, you know, be able to control our sounds. And just in terms of, like, putting effects on itself like that, I want to share with you a little cool trick with this clap here. Um, because right now it's dry sounding dry, meaning that there's no effects on. When I was building this before, I had some reverb on it and I had a really nice tale. A tale. Is this really awesome? Because it overlaps so as you can see this? Collaborate here. It's this one here. So I want that to have a big tale of reverb on. Okay? And what that's gonna do is the tale is gonna overlap into ah, the course here. Okay, so this clap when it plays a place on the four of bar four. So we're in bar four. It goes 123 on the four. This clap plays and the tail is gonna overlap into the chorus. Okay, So in order to do that, I'm going to go all, and I'm just going to literally just highlight and drag all the way down, and we'll drag all of it to here. Now, as you could see, these are are are automation clips. And we can see that because of this little icon as well as this volume, gain and frequency. So that was just the automation clips with the e que and the master volume fate. Okay, I'm just gonna right click and go reset. Okay. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click here, and if you right click, you go Channel roading, okay? And yes, you can see this wrote selected channel starting from this track and So what that means is , if we look here so from cores Rick here. Okay, so if you right click again. So it says starting from this track. So roots like the channel starting from this track. So if we select this one, what's gonna happen is all of these sounds are going to go to insert number eight, and that's not what we want. Just like breaking apart are patterns into their individual sounds for more flexibility in arrangement. We want all their individual sounds to have their own mixer inserts that we have full flexibility if we want to add e que compression, other effects and just have more control over the sound in general. OK, so I'm going to select this one. So wrote such a channel starting for this track. The shortcut is shift control and l okay, but in this case, I'm just going to actually click it. As you can see, all the actual colors followed. So this is why it's really, really important to color and label beforehand, because now courts is here. Cords is right here, right? And then courses right here. Same thing of melody, melody, melody and one cool thing you could do in the mixer. Now, is it a right click melody or Sharia courts? And I'm going to go. Ah, separator. Okay, so now we just put a little separator. These are what are called sends. Uh, I will explain these and another video once we get to the mixer. Okay, So what I want to do now is we're going to click on the clap here. It's gonna bring it up on the step sequencer, or you guys can also going to come up here and go toe audio, and there it is as well. But these are just kind of the shortcuts. Like, for example, if you want to work accords, you can literally just click cords once or like the clap. The clap will be right down here. You guys can also click like unsorted. So unsorted, just like your patterns on. Then they get If I click like clap, it will also appear there. Okay, so let's just play it says like what it sounds like. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to wrote that clap. So right now it's still highlighted. I'm just scrolling to go over. Ah, and I'm just going to run to some river case without the river Really dry with the river and then again on to here Cable. Bring that down. Now. I'm also gonna apply some reverb just on to the actual sound itself. I want this this clap to be really, really big sounding with a nice tail. Okay, so we'll cut some low end, make it bigger, increase it a little more tail. Okay, so let's listen from right here. Let's have a little bit longer tail. Okay? Okay. So if you listen to this clap, you hear how that clap just sounds really big. Really long tail to something really good. Like, it actually suits the song. Play it from right here. So without that river and with these two river herbs. Okay. So Okay, so they're clap. But we when we have that actual tail, Okay, so one more time, we'll enable it one time. Okay, So let's just talk a little bit of our arrangement here. We're gonna walk through again just lightly. But again, if you want more information on really how to arrange a song from, you know, beat makers perspective on how to really pull the full emotion out of your song again. Just check out the course. It's called song structure An arrangement music course. Okay, so let's hit. Enter here. Press control and right click. So let's start with our intro. You guys can also zoom in and stuff from up here, or you can, uh, hold on control and your scroll wheel. Um, okay. So very, very intro. I just have, you know, the one pattern and I played this a snare hi hat and the other high hat. It just kind of has a really light feel to the actual intro. And then, as you can see, I've start to build up this, you know, to the chorus, quite aggressively, in a sense of having the reverse symbol having this kick sound effect will listen to that. And if we double click on it at the piano roll, hold on controlling right click. And all I did for this was literally just play the kick like this. And that's all I did. And the reason why it kind of has, like, that dude instead of do, do, do do do do so. For example, I have swing. Okay, So, like I told you swing adjusts your eighth notes, which is what I call the in between. So right now, this is the A and this is the B. So imagine if this is a step sequencer. We have the on B, We have the offbeat We have the A, We have the b and it just repeats over and over again. OK, so swing is adjusting these notes, and that's how we're going like that. Do do, do, do do it kind of sounds like late and loose kind of feeling right for this one more time If I have zero swing, lots of swing Okay, so it's just like instead of like do, do, do do do its duty Oh, it is gonna sounds cool. Okay, so I'm gonna go to history, and I'm gonna put that swing back to the way it waas care. So, uh, we'll go right there, okay? And then we also have this kick buildup right here. It just sounds like this. I don't think it's anything special going on with it. It was just a matter of just playing the kick drum. And, you know, the later we got into the song, just the faster it started going and again that swing just kind of gives it that do do do do you just kind of sound, right? So I used to kick drums, um, on the actual step sequencer and many times where when I want to access these additional windows instead of, like, you know, making the playlist smaller, I will use the keyboard shortcuts. So f six is the step sequencer, which is this one right here. Okay, so if we go to, ah, the kick build up, it's like this one and I go to the kick sound effect, so I actually, you know, right clicked the kick drum, and I went clone. And then I just made two different versions of it. So I can, you know, again bring it to the mixer and affected differently. So that's that's kind of how the intro sounds. So let's listen to the intro, and then it will go into the course. Okay. So again, it's just nice and light sounding. This song is not mixed yet. Okay? And then we're gonna get into the verse, and this is our transition. Okay? This is a transition to bring in more sounds and then we're gonna use all these transitions again to build up into our chorus. Okay. And then what I did was I played the chorus twice. So previously. I mentioned to you that, you know, if a rapper's gonna wrap many times, you know the rap, like 16 bars or whatever this was on the eight bars, it was a quick verse. Uh, and the way how we designed this was just wanted it to be quick, so I can kind of break down kind of the theory, just kind of light for you. So the intro was just four bars. 1234 OK, And then the course here was only four bars. So one, 234 appear great. And then, you know, we played on an eight bar verse many times. Every every track is different sometimes at 16 bars or whatever the song is like. Ah, And then, in this case, I actually played eight bars for the chorus. This, you know, many times, is like what the listeners waiting for in the song, like the whole time, you know, like they're waiting for that chorus to play like twice us. They get like the most emotion out of the song. So right here it was kind of like we just teased them. So we kind of teased them right here and then right here. Uh, this is like kind of like you know what the listeners been waiting for, and then we kind of changed up our verse to If you want to call it, that s So here's the 1st 1 Now, instead of playing the courts, we now broke into a different part of the song is you can see I kind of slowed it down. Don't have, like, the high after symbols. We just kind of, you know, changed our melodies. So we're not playing the chords here When again, we just kind of slowed down. We also use the reverse symbol and forward symbol and the kick SFX This kick sound effect is played pretty much throw the whole song. But this reverse symbol eyes just again transitioning into this next part of the song. Okay, so I'll play with and without it. Hey, here, Transition. Right? Like it was just a nice, smooth transition. It kind of flowed. Now if I remove those, okay, so it didn't sound bad, but it didn't flow like it didn't prepare. The listener didn't communicate so well. It's a more more time with it. Get listen to that reverse and Ford symbol. Just kind of like it just lets the listener no. And then it just that continuation. Okay? And then right here. This is where it shared with you chopping up that pattern that clap again used here with that reverb tail. Okay, Pattern. Okay. The movie played. The chorus is gonna break out kind of into it. A little bit of an outro here, So I just removed the baseline for the outro. That's all. I did use the master volume again. If you watch the master volume right here, and it just fades Oh, okay. So you that's pretty much just like a little quick arrangement of You know, how I approach this song? Um, you know, we did our intro. We did like a chorus with Diverse with Universe Are did a longer course for mawr emotion out of your song many times for myself. What I find is, if you have Mawr instruments being played in your track, uh, it just gives you more options to mix and match So, for example, imagine it had seven instruments. Okay, so what you'll find out of those seven instruments is some instruments can hold their own in your song. And what I mean by that is you can just simply play like the cords, you know, with you know, your percussion elements. And typically, you know that instrument is gonna be able to hold its own. Okay. But you're also noticed that there's some instruments where they can't hold their own. They sound too weak. They sound thin. Their actual progression or melody just isn't strong enough to be by itself. So many times, you always need some type of supporting layer. So in other words, in order to play, you know that one melody you need to play it with always with a different pattern. So in other words, you always need to have two or three patterns going on with those certain sounds. And what I'm trying to say is, when you create a song with many melodies, you know many patterns, it gives you the flexibility to mix and match, and you'll create verse one a little different from verse to in hip hop. Many times, you know 1st 1 is the same as Verse two is the same as Verse three, but many times that she's because that's just the way the genre goes sometimes. But for myself, when I make my music, I really like to always have variation in my music. You know, from Verse one. Divers to I Was Just Want to kind of mix up a little bit. Now every track is different. Don't get me wrong. Some songs, you know I might do it the rinse and repeat for first under first, too. But what I'm trying to say is when you have many instruments, you can mix and match, creating awesome arrangement and just have a lot of variety for yours and your listeners. Ears. OK, so that's arrangement again, if you want way More information about arrange a song intro chorus verse, Gautreaux Pre Course Bridge. A swell as learn herbal audio painting. Just check out the course. Okay, it's called song structure, an arrangement music course by gratuitous K. So let's move forward 14. 7-1 Analog Vs Digital Mixer Debate: Okay, So in this video, we're gonna be talking about the mixer. So, uh, this mixer might look a little bit weird. And the reason is because there's green on the mixer and I'm also using a green screen, so it's going to take out the green on the mixer. So in case that kind of looks weird, for example, a great here, you kind of see it looks weird. So just saying don't worry about that. So I just want to share. This is a riel analog mixer. OK, the reason why I have one of these is because it allows you to avoid audio late insee. So when you use like an audio interface, you'll notice that as your project starts to grow, your project starts to get under runs. So what that means is, you know, as your project starts to grow, it requires more CPU power, you know, and it needs to calculate all this data faster. And in other words, it can't keep up. So you start to get these glitches and pops and and how to avoid that is you have to go into your settings. You go to your audio settings. You want you always want to make sure you're on an as your driver. Ah, and then you just want to increase the buffer size. So, for example, if you're just starting out in that beat, you may want to prove like, 512. But as the song starts to grow, you might put it to like 10 24 or 2056 for example. Okay, so anyway, so this audio mixer is honestly, pretty much the same as, ah, mixer inside of fo studio case. So if we just look here, for example So you know what you call one of these and insert or like, a channel. Okay, so you could just simply just like the volume. Uh, you know, you commute a sound, you can pan it to the right or to the left, depending on this setting of the mixer. So as you can see that there's a wide and stuff up here, some of them don't give all the features. So in other words, if you see it on here again, always look in the top left of FL Studio. It's always gonna tell you what everything is. You can see. You can swap the left and right channels. That's just literally putting the left to the right and the right to left. Um, you know, this is Mawr. Maybe if you're actually recording riel audio with microphones, for example, like a drum, a drum set or something, you can kind of play around with that stuff. You see stereo separation. So when it's merged all way to the right, this means that now you're making this signal mono. Uh, testing a mixed in mono is nice. It's really important, because again when I told you was mono is only a single source or it's kind of like the the similarities between the two channels. Selector left and right. It's It's the content that's the same. That's like your model content. Stereo is the difference between the left and right channel. So many times, if you are going to, you know, if your music's gonna play back on like, let's say, a cell phone speaker that only has one speaker or if it goes to, let's say, a club, you know, they say many times that these clubs, many times their music, is like mono s o. What I'm saying is, it's just really important that you test your mix in mono. We'll cover that mawr in a later video here. Once we go over, this makes her about FL studio. But so you can just adjust other mono or your cereal content. So in other words, wanna go so left, you're removing the middle pretty much like the motto content. And you're keeping more of like the difference is in between the left and right channels is gonna make your sound a little bit wider. You want to be careful with this stuff? I don't play around with it much on many times. If I'm gonna play with, it's more just to make a sound mono or on the master track is just to actually, uh, make the whole Mexico mono. And then you can always reference back and forth just to kind of test. Okay, continuing down, you can actually record right here. And then you can actually wrote audio around which I'll explain to you later on. Okay, so all I'm trying to say is this analog mixer right here. Uh, the reason why I have one is just to prevent audio late NC. I can just send my audio out of my audio interface into here. I can record if I was recording a song or something like that. Because once a project starts to grow again, you're gonna experience under runs and stuff, and it just a knowing this is a way to avoid it. Okay, but what I'm trying to say is so back in the day, this was like an analog mixer. You know, this is what people used to actually mix their music. But mixing and having an actual mixer actually has a lot of downfalls. So for example, back in the day, if they were going to actually mix their music on an analog console like this, you know, if they did just on, like, their knobs to always different levels, more advanced mixers have more features, for example, like each channel. So, for example, one of these would be like a channel, for example, right? And then again, if we go to fo studio, you can see right here on the far right. So you know, each one of these is called a channel and you know, a real mixing board would have, like, an e que section a compressor section Ah gate section has all these different sections on each channel. Okay, but the thing is, in the analog world, in order to row audio around. So, for example, you can see here on 31 right? So you have the reference back and forth between two screens, but you can see on 31 here like we can wrote 31 to go to 32 that quick. So in the real world, like, imagine it was like, you know what, Consul like this You would actually have to get audio cables stand up or if you're in chairs, kind of slide over and you have to roll all the stuff. So you know, it's expensive. You have to buy all these ideal cables. Audio cables can kind of fail. Over the years here, it was just a matter of one click. It's nice and easy now. I just want to also talk about recalling projects. So again, when people would mix their music, you know, they had they would have many channels, for example, that vocals kick drums collapse, you know, high hats, pianos, guitars so each one of these would go on its own, makes her insert on like the mixing board right now, they would actually adjust the knobs. You know, the volumes. Que all that kind of stuff until they get the mix where they're happy. You know, everyone imagine in this studio was like, Yeah, you know, we like this. We like this mix. Let's keep it. So what they would do is they'd print it to a disk and, you know, that would be, you know, the mix. So now what happens is let's say tomorrow, you know, another crew comes in and now they're working on another track. So they all go on and they actually change all the knobs, right? They change the volumes and everything. But now let's say you know, there, listening to that mix again and you know, someone just like you know what? I really don't like all this sounds. So what they would have to do is that have to go back to that mixing board and imagine, you know, imagine there was, like, 30 tracks. So you know, what they have to do is they have to write down all the nol placements on every single insert on that huge mixing console, and then they'd have to do you don't bring someone in and dial all the knobs back to where it was to get that mix pretty close to where it originally Woz, like, you know, you're never going to get it exactly the way it was because, you know, maybe someone wrote down something wrong or something. So I know it was kind of little long winded to explain that. But it's just really important to know that, you know, as cool is a mixture like this is, in all honesty, this right here using a digital audio workstation. Your daw is the future. It's super simple. You know, if I would bring this volume slider down like this and if I would save it and then let's say I come back in a month, I opened it up. It's exactly like that. So it's really, really awesome. Okay, so that was just a little introduction to a mixer. You know, the differences between, like, an analog mixer to like, you know, your nice digital one here, your digital one is awesome. Super simple. Um, now, in our next video, I'm gonna actually break down signal flow of your mixer in terms of Siri's and parallel processing we're gonna talk about subgroups and sends, and I just want to draw it for you and just kind of share with you. This signal flow just kind of kind of Open up your eyes. I'll break all this stuff down for you is gonna make it super simple. It's just really important to understand how it works and it's gonna make, you know, understanding the mixer a lot easier. 15. 7-2 Signal Flow Subgroups Sends: Okay, So in this video, I'm gonna break down the theory of a mixer in a sense of signal flow series and parallel processing subgroups and sends. Okay, So subgroups and sends is where you can get really advanced with your mixer. OK, so when you're first starting up, you know, you're just learning about the mixer at a basic level. Like for example, you're just trying to learn, like you know, what is it? Insert? You know, how does EQ you work with the compressor? You know, that's just kind of the basic stuff, but the more advanced stuff is being able to write your audio around. Ah, you're able Teoh, you know group inserts so that you can just have control over them, you know, so one insert can control like, let's say, four or five mixer inserts. Why you want to do that? Is this for speed or for convenience? Or, for example, let's say you had, like, three drums. Instead of mixing all three drums individually, you can just send it to one insert, apply like an e que and that e que effects all of them. OK, so as you can see, it's just a speed thing sends are pretty cool. I'll break that down for you. It's just a wave to wrote. Multiple insert tracks toe one insert to take advantage of like a river. Okay, so back in the day, more so. So nowadays, computers are becoming quite powerful. It's not so much of a concern, but back in the day Ah, river is pretty CPU hungry. OK, so in other words, it takes a lot of power to run a river. So instead of opening up like with, say, 10 re verbs, you can actually just use like one reverb wrote all your audio to that send. And you know, so all of these tracks are taking advantage. Advantage of this one reverb, and you can dial in the amount that you want for each, um, sound Okay, so you know it's just allows for more advanced, uh, techniques, and it's just convenience as well. Okay, so I first want to start this drawing here with explaining to about Siri's and parallel processing. Okay, so when we hear the word Siri's, it's also called like cereal. Being an electrician's. I'm an electrician's here in Canada, like fully certified Ah, but the reason why I'm telling you That is because a lot of the concepts to, like, really electricity to, like, audio. They all kind of translate. Okay, um, you know, there's a little few differences, but, uh, you know, when you hear the word Siri's or serial serial processing, you want to think of only one path. Okay, so one path for audio to flow okay, and that's that's it. So when you hear the word, Siri's just think there's only one path the audio to flow. So, for example, if we had Aneke you and so I guess we'll for first start with our actual audio coming in. So we have a vocal and it's coming in here. Okay, so we have our e que And now let's say we had a compressor. That was cool company. Okay. And then let's sound this week, you know, we boosted 300 hertz by Let's say, you know, to Devi, so two decibels kept. So what's happening is this Audio that's boosted is actually being sent into the compressor . So as you can see, there's only one path for that audio to flow, and the mawr it goes through each plug in the more it gets affected and affected. Okay, So for example, you know this compressor? Let's say you know, we had some gain reduction going on. Now let's say we come here and open up another e que So what's happening is your actual end result is the net some of all of your effects case? So, you know, your vocal up here just sounds the way it is. You know, it's just the recording, but at the end of all these effects, So 123 You know, this is the output of that processed audio. And as the audio goes through, it gets affected more and more and more again. There's only one path for your order to flow. So one path and this is called Siri's or serial processing. Now, one thing to always remember is this is just like, ah, mixer insert. So each mixer insert always has to go back to the master. Okay, so I'm just gonna right master here. So the master is what you call like your two bus. Okay? And your audio always has to go back to this to bus. Otherwise, you're not gonna be able to hear it. They call it your two bus because it's like your left and right channel. Okay, so let your left speaker right speaker kind of thing. So again, each insert has to go back to the master. So this is what you call Siri's one pathway all your to flow. Now we're gonna talk about parallel case. So when we hear the word parallel, you have to think abo multiple pass for audio to flow. OK, so All right. Parallel. And if we rate what parallel is so many pass. Okay, so many pass for audio to flow. I don't want to get that out. You know, it would be simpler just like this. Okay, So how this can work is let's go back up here just a little bit, and we will use this example. So again, this is Siri's. As your audio goes through, it gets affected more and more and more, depending on how many plug ins you have. And again, this is the net result of all these effects. And then it goes to the masters so you can actually hear it. Okay, so now when we talk about parallel, so what you can do is you can actually t tap so you can actually come off of here. And I'm just going to come up here. I'm gonna sneak in here, okay? And so now let's say we open up. Ah, goal. Dis dissed. But this is distortion. Okay, So imagine we put a distortion plug in on here, and then let's say, you know, be Wait, come here. And we put an e que as well. Okay, So what's happening is this is actually now its own mixer insert. So this is where you can get really, really creative with your music. And this is what the pros use. This is how they approach certain sounds and you don't make the music sound a certain way. Um, and the really cool thing with a parallel track is you can actually just kind of dial in, You know the amount you want on this. So again, each of these has its own, like volume fader. So to turn up and down the volume. So if I've tapped off of this and came to my own insert So what's happening is the affected audio. Okay, so we have our e que compressor and eq you. So this is the affected audio. Okay, so we've actually tapped, and this is what you call either pre or post fader. So pre fader is before the actual effects. Okay, so certain Dawes allow you to send your audio either pre or post fader. So if its pre fader, that means that it's actually being sent before the effects. If it's post fader, it means it's being sent after the effects. And that's it. That's so simple. It is okay now are affected. Audio right here. We're tapping off of it. We're going to another insert. And what we've essentially done is we have duplicated our audio, okay? Because again, every insert has to go to the master for us to hear it. So we'll come the comer here, and I'll drag this. So this is going to the master. You should. It's just your affected audio. So again are vocal comes in, we've acute, compressed it. This is what's called Siri's. There's only one path for your order to flow, and the net result is you know, all the effects. Okay, now what we've done is we've tapped off of it, went to a new insert, and now you can apply whatever affects you want. And the huge benefit of this is no matter what we do in this insert, it does not affect this insert. Okay, so we can tap off of here, do what ever we want. We could put a reverb here. We can put delay here and it's not going to affect this and the benefit off that is weakened again. Simply just dial in the volume of what we want. If we want to be more aggressive, less aggressive, really like the sky is the limit here It's super super powerful stuff. Now, in fl studio, you also have like a little like mixed knob and you can kind of dial in. You know where you want it. You could be like, let's say ah, you know, 30% just for example. Okay, so in other words, we're gonna send 30% of this signal over it Here. I'll explain that more once we get into FL Studio. But just to break this down simple. So we have serious. I mean, it's only one path we're already to flow. You know, we ever vocal the effects. This is the outcome of all those effects. Super simple. Now you can tap off of here and NFL Studio, it's literally just a matter of clicking on this. So you click on this insert, it highlights. And if you look at the very bottom in FL Studio, you'll see that there's a bunch of cables and stuff like that, right? And all you have to do is just click to one of the inserts that you want, and it's just a matter of clicking the arrow. And again. The biggest thing in FL Studio is just following the audio cables at the end of the day. Just remember what I told you. Every insert has to go to the master in order for you to hear it. If it doesn't go to the master, you're not gonna be able to hear it. And that's a simple as it is. For example, Distortion is a really powerful tool to add fullness toe a sound. But the thing is, if you put lots of distortion on this sound here, so imagine, you know, let's just say here instead of it, just be like this. Imagine we come here and we actually just put um, just in between here. Let's say we actually put a distortion in here. Cancel. This is dissed. So imagine this is distortion. So we've actually added in 1/4 plug in. So sometimes when you add a plug in in Siris, sometimes it could be too aggressive, and sometimes you don't have total control over it. So instead of actually putting it here and was going across the dope, so now we can actually be a little bit more aggressive on our settings. But if we dial down the volume, we can kind of get that little blend. And the benefit of this is we can kind of get like a folder vocal, for example. So you know, one of the problems of vocal is sometimes we hear certain words, but we don't hear other words. And when you use like parallel processing, you can be very aggressive. For example, you can put a compressor on here. This is what you call parallel processing. It's also known as like a New York compression and use different terminology for it. Um, also like, it's kind of like upwards compression as well. Um, so that's really, really powerful stuff. Okay, so that's this kind of the basics of Siri's and parallel. Now, one thing just to be aware of whatever you do on this is going to affect the parallel tracks. So, for example, in the EQ, you imagine you boosted some highs Well, again, since you're tapping off right here, right, The audio is going into the parallel tracks. So whatever you do on this track is gonna, you know, affect the parallel tracks. But once you've capped off, this is totally independent. You can treat it however you'd like. And it's not gonna effect this. You know, the original signal, like your Siris are serial of, you know, insert. Okay, so let's talk a boat subgroups and sends. So now imagine you had, you know, let's say piano and you had, ah, guitar. And let's just say we have also had a base care. So now, like I was already telling you, each one of these has, like a you know, a man insert. So just imagine this is like the slider. You know, we're just in a car value, right? So the baseless, their bases really loud. So have a piano guitar and our base case. So each one is on its own individual mixer insert now every track is different. Um, but for me, many times, let's say I'm working like with my clap. OK, so I shared with you that many times I like to use many collapse right for, like, that layer sound. But sometimes I find, you know, mixing all of these individual collapse can be a little bit tedious It in, you know, take a little bit extra long in that mix as well as you know, let's say I had five collapse. That means I need five accuse five compressors. I have to dow each one. So as you can see, it's a little bit meticulous. Now, um, the way I'm going to show you, You know, you have the option to still work on individual sounds for flexibility. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna wrote them to one insert, and that one insert can control all of them. OK, so if you want to put one e que, you can affect all five of those sounds. In our case, let's just say we have a piano guitar bass. Now, many times you would not send these to one subgroup, you know, because these instruments are so different. Many times. It's similar sounds. So, for example, let's say it was a vocal. But then we have, like, background vocals. And let's say we had, you know, three or four background vocals going on at the same time, I would probably put those background vocals into a subgroup. Therefore, I only need to adjust one volume slider. Ever want to apply compression? You know, I I'm actually compressing all four of those background vocals. That's probably good example. Okay, so now, like I shared with you. So each one of these has to go to the master, so I'm just going to write here. So right here is gonna say, Master. Yes. It wasn't a I guess that's the master desert. So again, each one of these has to go to the master in order for you to hear it. It doesn't go to the master. You can't hear it. So now what you can do is you can actually remove these. Okay, So, NFL studio, it's just a matter of clicking on this insert. You can see that there's a little arrow down here and you know, if all of the cable you can literally come to the Master So again, that's just a vehicle like this. NFL studios see a little circles, like a little arrow on it. All you have to do is click that arrow and it's going to remove the cable, you know, j