Beatmaking in FL Studio: The Music Production Masterclass - Make Beats, Mix Music, and Mastering

1. Course Introduction: You spend hours in FL Studio only to end up with this? Mm hm. It's okay. It's okay. We've all been there. But what if I told you that you can turn that into beats that slap, sell, and stand out? Well, this course is just that. It's your ultimate guide to making beats that sound pro. Even if you're just a beginner, here's how it works. Step by step, I take you through every part of the process. We start by creating drums that bounce. Then we craft melodies and chords that stick in your head and eight oh eights to make speakers shake. We flip samples like a pro, turn loops into full songs, and learn mixing and mastering to make everything sound clean and professional. Think you need fancy gear, you don't. Think you need some kind of magic to make beats that artists actually want to rap on? No. All you need is FL Studio and a plan, and I'll give you both. By the end, you'll have a fully polished, industry ready track and the skills to do it again and again and again. You'll go from a hobbyist to a hit maker and maybe even get paid along the way. So stop struggling with loops, join the course, and start making tracks that hit. 2. Using FL Studio Like a PRO: Let's dive into the essentials of FL Studio. I'll guide you step by step, breaking everything down into digestible practical chunks. So follow along as we explore the core tools and the workflow techniques that will make you a pro. Now, this isn't a course focused on FL Studio, so I'm not going to be going over really in depth things like menus and some of the kind of obscure tools you might use that often. I'm focused on the essentials and the things that you need to create pro beats. So the first thing to do when the software opens is to make sure you've selected the right audio driver under options and audio settings. So options is up here in the top left. Audio settings. I'm going to look here at the driver or device, and I'm going to make sure that it is selected to what I want it to be selected to. So if you're using your external headphones or maybe your laptop speakers or an audio interface or whatever it is you're using, you need to set the FL Studio audio driver to the device that you're using. So for me, it's the JBL quantum stream. Next, just make sure that your sample rate is either 44.1 or 44100 or 48,000. Now, I recommend using 48,000, but 44.1 will work just as well. Sample rate is basically like frame rate in gaming or in film and TV, where the digital converter takes, I suppose, frames or samples, as they're called, of the audio. And the higher the sample rate, the more samples or chops it takes. So as you can imagine, if you compare it to a frame rate, the higher you go, the smoother and more high quality, and the lower you go, the less smooth and the less high quality. However, don't just go setting this up to the highest it goes because first of all, your CPU is going to really struggle. And second of all, none of the sample packs that you buy are going to be at this sample rate. And what that means is the software then has to try and convert the samples that you have to this high sample rate that you have set. So the industry standard at the moment really is 48 kilohertz, but most of the samples that you'll find online and things will be at 44.1. So either of these two is perfect. And lastly, with the buffer length here, just make sure this is set up as high as it goes. When it comes to recording, we'll be setting this a bit lower. But definitely when we're working with plugins and trying to process audio within the software, the buffer length should be set as high as it can go. Now, yours mightn't go as high as this, 4,096 samples. It just depends on what driver or what audio interface you're using up here. And for now, that's all we need to worry about. Next thing you might do is maybe set your project's BPM. Now the problem with beats is that there's a huge, huge range of BPM that you can go for. Most beats fall between about 70 to 140 BPM, so that's a big, big range. So ideally you would look at what kind of subgenre you're looking to produce and then look up what the average tempo is for that genre. So, for example, if we're making trap music, it's probably going to be set around 140. Okay, so now let's examine the interface. So on the left hand side here we have the browser window. This is a panel in FL Studio where you can access your samples, your plugins, automation clips, project files, and more. Think of it as a beat making library. So from here, for example, we can find a sample. Let's just find one, drumshot, maybe a clap. And we can audition the claps that we like by using the arrows. On the keyboard, and we can let's say I like this one, we can drag it into our channel rack. You can also drag from your browser straight into the playlist for things like effects, longer loops and vocals and things like that. Next, we'll look at the channel rack. You can think of this as the control center for your instruments, your drum samples, and your patterns. So at the moment, mine is set to audio. I'm just going to bring that back to all so I can see everything that I have on the project, and I'll just go through it briefly. So on the left hand side here, we have a panning knob. Well, first of all, we have a mute and unmute button, which I don't really use here. I mainly use the mute and unmute and the mixer, but it's there if you want it. Then we have the panning knob, so we can move the instrument from left to right. We also have a volume or a gain knob. The number here indicates which channel the instrument. So in this case, it's the eight oh eight kick. It indicates which channel that instrument is linked to in the mixer. So at the moment, eight oh eight kick is on Insert one, as it's linked to Channel one, as you can see. But this sample that I dragged in there earlier has no mixer channel. So just to demonstrate, if I draw in some kicks, you'll see it registering there on Channel one. But if I draw in some claps, it won't register anywhere except the master. So each row is a channel, and it's a different sound or different sample or different instrument or different audio that you dragged in. So with this, you can click on these little lights here. These are called steps. And each different color, so we've got the gray and the red. They represent one beat in a bar. So as you can see here, there's four. There's gray, red, gray red, which is four, so that's four beats, which means that this channel rack is currently set up to play 1 bar. So if you want to expand that, you can just drag the channel rack out. So now it's 2 bars because I've added in an extra four, so that's eight, and you can do it again if you want 12 or 16 and so on. You can also click on these steps to create drum patterns. So if I want my eight oh eight kick here to play on the first beat of the bar and then maybe halfway through the third beat, I would put it there. And you can draw in a basic and simple beat like this. Then just right click to remove what you've already drawn in. To add synthesizers or VSTs or instruments, you come up here to the left and click Add, and it will come up with a list of what you have installed and all of the stock instruments with FL Studio. So, for example, if I bring in, I don't know, FLKs here, it'll load that up, and as you can see, it's been added here to the bottom of the channel rack. So then with the FLKs, it doesn't really work to just draw in these little steps because it's all going to be playing one note. So to alter the pitch, right click on the instrument, and then open the piano roll. So now we're in a different view. This is where you create and edit melodies, chords and advanced rhythms. So very easily just click to add a note. You can drag it around. And as you can see, if I zoom in here, these lines match up with the colors that we were looking previously. So if I just show both at the same time, we've got these thicker lines which represent a beat, and we've got these smaller lines which represent a step. So we've got four steps in the first beat, and again, here, we've got one, two, three, four steps in the first beat. The bar numbers are shown along here up the top. So if you wanted 4 bars, you'd have to make your pattern this long up to the five. And that's just because the first bar is here, second bar is here, third bar, and then fourth bar, and it would loop back around. So that's your four bar loop. And then, for example, if we draw in, I don't know, a random melody here. Like this. If you hold Command on Mac or Control on Windows, you can kind of lasso all of the notes that you've drawn in, and you can duplicate them by holding the Shift key. I've just duplicated them out, duplicate them out again, duplicate them out again, and then I don't know, you can make little adjustments to make a four bar loop. You can then do further controls like adjusting the velocity, so how hard the notes are being played, something like this. Now, that might be a bit extreme or unmusical, but it's just to demonstrate. And with this kind of control section, you can also control things like pan and pitch. In the chords and melody section, I'll be showing you a few more cool things you can do at the piano roll. But for now, I think that's enough to get a basic handle on how to draw in and edit notes. So once you've made your pattern or your loop here, then we can bring it into the playlist window. Oops. So up here is where you select what pattern you want to kind of paste into the playlist. So pattern one is just the default one that we were using, but we can rename that if we want to to, I don't know, piano. And then we can paste that in to our playlist. And from there, you can draw it across as many times as you like, you know, to make out a full arranged track. So, for example, if we were to leave the piano like that and maybe create a new, so find next empty drum pattern. I'll open up empty, and we can draw in that same pattern that we had before. I think it was something like this. Put in a few extra hats at the end there or something. And now we can make a little arrangement. And if you haven't noticed already, your patterns also appear here on the left hand side, so I can quickly paste in a drum or I can quickly paste in a piano just by flicking between the different patterns that you'll have accumulated here on the left hand side. And then further things you can do in the playlist view is create automation clips. So let's say I wanted this piano to bounce from left to right as the track progressed. I would right click on the panning knob. So you can right click on most things in FL Studio, you can right click on. Some of the third party plugins, you can't, but I'll be showing you how to create automation clips in those as well as the course goes on. But for the moment, if you just right click on any parameter in the FL Studio software or in the stock plugins, it'll open up this menu and you can click Create Automation Clip that'll draw that, and then we can draw some panning to make the piano kind of bounce around from left to right. Then I might slice that because I've made a little loop for myself, slice that up. And again, I can just draw this in across the whole arrangement. And finally, just for quick editing, you can double click on a clip, and it'll open up whatever that clip is comprised of. So it saves you having to, you know, right click up here and try and find what you're looking for anywhere within the playiss view. Say we have our drums over here, we can just double click on that, and it will open it up straightaway and we can edit real quickly. So let's say I don't like these hi hat rolls, and I just want to make it a little bit more simple, we can do it that way, too. As for the kind of draw tools and stuff like that, the only ones I ever actually use are the paint tool and the slice. That's about it. Because with this select tool, you can just hold command or control like you would in the piano roll, and the rest are kind of specialist things that I don't really use. But by all means, if you're looking to do a specific thing that I haven't kind of covered here, just shoot me a message, and I'll be able to explain how to do whatever it is you're looking to do. Now let's say, I think the drums are a bit loud and the piano is a bit quiet. What we can do is we can add them to the mixer and adjust their fader levels. So by default, FL Studio has this eight oh eight kick and clap and high hat and snare, and they're already assigned to different mixer tracks. But what we dragged in, the FLKys has no mixer track. So you can either use this kind of wheel to draw in what number mixer track you want to assign it to, or you can open up the plug in, click on this little settings wheel and then just assign it to whatever the next blank track is. So in this case, it's going to assign it to channel six. And there it is. Similarly, for example, if you have, I don't know, let's see if we have some sort of loop here, atmosphere. Let's say that's playing in the background, a bit loud. If you want to add that to the mixer, you can double click it. And again, this little window will pop up and just select track, and it'll assign it to the next blank mixer track. From here, we can solo things, or we can mute things. And we can also adjust volume. So like I was saying, maybe the drums are a bit loud. I can bring the volume of all them down. Maybe I can bring the volume of the atmosphere down as well and have a listen. And as well with the mixer, we can also add our effects. So what you want to do is you want to click on whatever you want to add an effect to. So in this case, the FLKeys come across here to the different effect slots, open one of them up, and it will come up with all of the effects that you have and all of the stock FL Studio effects. So, for example, maybe we want to add a flanger to this piano, and we can just use a random preset moving distortion and see what that sounds like. For things like reverb, we can right click on any kind of blank mixer track. So for example, I know Insert ten, here is blank, so I can right click that and I can say Doc two left or right, whichever you prefer, prefer mine on the right hand side. So now this is going to stay on the right hand side no matter where I scroll around. And with this one, I can open up something like a reverb or a delay. Maybe let's open up a delay. And from there, for example, if I want multiple instruments to use this same delay, I can just click on what I want to send to the delay, and I'll send it down here with this little arrow, and I can adjust how much of that instrument is sent to the delay. So, for example, maybe the FLKs. I think Insert two is the clap, as far as I remember, we'll put that on and maybe the high hats just a little bit. We'll see what that sounds like. So using this method of Send tracks is way better for things like reverb and delay where you probably will be sending a lot of different instruments to the same plug in effect, you don't want to be opening that reverb on each individual channel because it's going to eat up your CPU. So, for example, if you load a reverb on the FLCs and then load the same one on the clap and the same one on the high hat, that's three instances of the reverb, whereas you could just open it once here on a Sent track and just send the individual instruments to it. And then finally, you can also adjust pan left or right. And you can add effects to your master when it comes to mastering the track. Again, we'll get a little bit more hands on with this throughout the course. But for now, this is just a basic overview of how to use it if you haven't before. Finally, I'll just give you a little pro tip. And that is, if you find that you're using a lot of instruments and a lot of different effects and your software is starting to run into what's called underruns which at a basic level are just crackling and stuttering sounds because your CPU can't keep up with what you're doing. You can come up here to tools. I keep doing that. You can come up here to Tools down to Macros, which is here. And in the middle of this dropdown, there's something called Switch Smart Disable for all plug ins. If you find your CPU is going into the red up here, try doing that. That will basically turn off whatever plug ins you're not using at the time and try and save up a bit of extra CPU. But for now, I think we have a basic handle on how the software kind of works, and you should know enough now that if you're watching me throughout the course, you'll know what I'm doing and you should be able to follow along. 3. The Producers Mindset: This lecture, we're going to be diving into one of the most important but often overlooked aspects of music production, the mindset of a producer. This is all about developing your taste, mastering sound selection, and building a unique identity as a producer, especially in genres like trap, hip hop, drill, and just beatmaking in general. If you've ever wondered what separates good producers from great ones, it's not just the technical skills, it's their mindset and how they approach their craft. So let's go through it. Briefly. Why does your mindset matter? First of all, your taste defines your sound. The type of beats that you gravitate towards and the artists that you admire, you know, the sounds you find inspiring, they all shape your musical identity. Developing your taste is the first step in creating music that feels authentic to you. Sound selection can make or break a track. A well crafted beat with the wrong sounds can fall flat, while even a simple loop with the right sounds can hit hard. Good sound selection is about 80% of the process, and your identity sets you apart. The most successful producers think Metro Boomin Southside, or Boy Wonda they're instantly recognizable. That's not because they follow trends, but because they build their sound around their own identity. Mindset is the foundation for everything else that we'll learn in this course. So now let's dive a little bit deeper on these and explore how you can develop yours. Developing your taste as a producer starts with understanding what resonates with you musically. So here's how you can hone that. Listen widely. Don't just listen to one style or one genre. You might love trap or drill, but exploring ORMB and jazz or even EDM can introduce you to new ideas and new techniques that you can bring into your beats. Study the grates. Break down beats from your favorite producers and ask yourself, what makes their melodies stand out? How do they structure their drums? What role do effects and mixing play in their sound? Keep track of the sounds, instruments, and effects that you love. This could be a gritty eight oh eight or soulful piano or atmospheric pads, but start building a go to library. And then the last point is to train your ear to recognize what works in a mix. This means paying attention to the small details like the tone of a high hat or the tail of a reverb. Now, developing your taste can take time, but every beat that you make will bring you closer to understanding your unique preferences. Next, we have mastering sound selection. Sound selection is one of the most important skills that you'll develop as a producer. It's not about having the most sounds. It's about choosing the right ones. So focus on quality over quantity. Don't get overwhelmed by these massive sound libraries, and instead focus on finding high quality sounds that inspire you. It's better to have a few great drum kits than 1,000 mediocre ones. Next is context. So think about how sounds work together. For example, a distorted eight oh eight will probably clash with a distorted kiktrm. Bright, sparkly high hats might not fit in a dark and atmospheric melody. And furthermore, each genre has, you know, signature sounds. Like, for example, trap often has hard hitting eight oh eights and snappy snares, rolling high hats. Drill has sliding eight oh eights, you know, dark ominous melodies and sparse percussion, and Bomba will have gritty kicks, vinyl textures, and chopped up samples. Learn the staples, the ingredients, and then experiment with them in your own beats. And that brings me on to my last point here is to never stop experimenting, tri layering sounds, adding unexpected effects, or flipping samples in weird and unconventional ways. Some of the coolest beats come from happy accidents. When your sound selection is on point, your beats will stand out even before you start mixing. And then we have what sets you apart as a producer, your identity. Find your signature. Your signature can be anything. You know, a specific chord progression, a unique way that you process your eight oh eights and even a producer tag or a specific vocal chop that you use in every track. Just find some sort of common theme that you can include in all your beats. Next is to stay consistent. Most producers kind of roll their eyes when they hear this one, but honestly, consistency is key to building a recognizable sound. And that doesn't mean that every beat needs to sound the same, but there should just be a thread or like I said, a theme that kind of ties your music together. But if you're actively practicing what we covered in the last two slides, this will happen naturally. Next is to embrace your influences. Don't shy away from your influences trying to be different, but don't copy them either. Use them as a foundation to build something that feels uniquely yours. And this doesn't have to be within the beatmaking world. I mean, your influence could be, I don't know, classical music like Chikovski or maybe a heavy metal band like Megadeth. There's nothing to stop you from getting inspiration from these influences and then trying to incorporate that into your own sound. There's also other influences like cultural influences. You know, for me, that would probably be Irish music and Irish instrumentation and the sort of time signatures that are used in Irish music. I could take a lot of those ideas and techniques and try and incorporate them into my beats to make a unique sound. So another example, I'm currently in Australia, so maybe I could incorporate a digerid as a kind of atmospheric pad underneath the music. And lastly, is to experiment and evolve. Staying consistent doesn't mean staying stagnant, okay? So keep pushing your boundaries, incorporating new techniques, and trying to evolve your sound. It's your identity that will make artists want to work with you, and it's what will keep listeners coming back to your beats. So let's look at some practical exercises to try and sharpen your mindset. So the first one is beat breakdowns. Choose a track that you love and try and recreate it. This is an amazing tool. You'll really learn about sound selection, arrangement, and mixing by doing this. Next is to try limiting yourself. You know, challenge yourself to make a beat with just five sounds. This will force you to focus on quality and creativity. Another exercise that a lot of producers do is making a beat a day, even if it's just 16 bars. This consistency will help you refine your taste in your workflow, and it also makes pretty good content for social media. Next is to ask for feedback. Share your beats with people you know. True and honest feedback can really reveal areas where you need to improve. And finally, one of the most powerful things that I do myself is to create a playlist of tracks that really inspire you. Then when you're feeling unmotivated or you don't really know where your beats supposed to be going, you can use it to guide your sound and measure your progress. For me, personally, my reference playlist is full of random artists, songs, classical pieces, all different genres and sounds mixed together. Sometimes it's not even the song that I like, but the chord progression, or maybe I just like the sound of the synthesizer in it, or I just like the sound of the drums. But anything like that, I just add to the playlist. The more intentional you are with your mindset, the more you'll grow as a producer. So just before we wrap up, I'm going to recap. Your taste defines your unique voice. Your sound selection shows your attention to detail, and your identity is what makes people recognize and remember your music. Keep refining and working on these elements, and you'll not only make better beats, but you'll build a legacy as a great producer. 4. Don't Start with the Drums: So, welcome to the first lecture in the drum programming section. And I wanted to put this lecture here because I thought it carried the most impact. So lecture one in the drum programming section is actually about not starting with the drums. This can be one of the biggest mistakes in beat making and production. Now, I get it. Drums are the heartbeat of most tracks, especially in genres like trap, hip hop, and drill. But the reality is, starting with the drums can really box you in. It's easy to fall into the trap of getting stuck in a predictable rhythm, especially if you're not feeling inspired or you're just kind of copying what you've seen in other people's tutorials. So why shouldn't you start with drums? Well, first of all, you end up in a predictable pattern. When you start with drums, it's easy to fall into that trap of using, you know, the same eight oh eight patterns, a typical high hat role, or other kind of generic loops. Starting with the drums can pigeonhole your creativity into a very specific rhythmic structure, and it limits your creative freedom. You also end up with a lack of musical context. Drums are incredibly important in driving rhythm and energy, but they don't provide harmonic or melodic context. So if you start with the drums, you're essentially putting the cart before the horse. You won't have a clear direction for the rest of the elements in your track, and the drums will end up feeling kind of disconnected from other parts of the song. And finally, it just makes you way less flexible. When you start with a melody, chord progression, or sample, you have a lot more room to experiment with the other elements of the track. You're not locked into that rhythm, and you're free to explore different directions that complement the musical idea that you're working on. So because of that, I recommend starting with an idea. If you start with an idea, you can set the mood instantly. Whatever sample or chord progression or melody that you begin with will immediately set the mood of the track. Whether it's going to be dark or sad or energetic or soulful, your idea will set the tone, and then the drums will follow suit. Without this strong foundation, your drums could end up feeling out of place. It also allows you to create a strong hook. Your starting idea often ends up being the hook of the track. So think of your favorite songs. What sticks out to you. It's often the melody or the sample. It's not the drum by focusing on the idea first, you're ensuring that the core of your track is memorable and impactful. Then the idea can inspire how the drums should sound. So starting with the idea doesn't mean ignoring the drums. It just means that the drums will be inspired by the musical foundation. So once you have your chord progression or your sample or whatever you're using, the drums will follow the natural rhythm and vibe of that idea. So they'll complement the feel of the track rather than kind of dictating it. And it'll help you stand out from the crowd. A lot of tutorials and producers will start with the drums. And even though this approach can work in certain cases, it often leads to generic sounding beats. By flipping the order and starting with something musical, you'll naturally distinguish yourself and your sound from the typical, you know, cookie cutter tracks that you might hear on every other beat store and playlist. So if we're not starting with the drums, what do we start with? So let's go through some of the best options. First of all, we have samples. These are an amazing way to kickstart your creativity, whether it's a vocal chop, a loop from an old song or a random sound that catches your ear. A sample can provide endless possibilities. The beauty of starting with a sample is that it often carries its own rhythm and vibe, giving you a great starting point. So with this, you're looking for emotional resonance. So, you know, like a vintage sole vocal or a snappy guitar riff, something that kind of resonates with you emotionally. Then you could chop it and flip it into something new. So don't just drop it into your project, chop it up, you know, change the pitch, reverse it, add some effects, and really make it your own. And where are the best place to find samples? Well, I really, really recommend Lupermen. This is a free platform with a massive collection of free user uploaded loops and samples. You can find everything from hip hop loops to synth stabs to drum brakes, to classical music to just all sorts of different samples. It really, really is a gold mine for free samples. Other than that, you have things like splice for, you know, premium quality samples, track lib. That's a service that allows you to legally sample music directly from original tracks and noise NOIIZ another subscription based platform that provides high quality samples. Next, for ideas, we have chords. So starting with chords is a great way to give your track a strong harmonic base. Cords define the emotional mood and they give direction to the rest of your elements. So if you are starting with the chords, you know, start simple. Don't overcomplicate things. A simple progression like, you know, CG, A minor F can give a lot of space to experiment. Inversions and voicings, we're going to go through that in the course, but don't just use basic open chords, experiment with different inversions. And then there's also the option of using MIDI packs. So if you don't play piano, midi chord packs can be a great shortcut. However, whenever I'm using these, I always make sure to adjust them to suit the track. And lastly, we have melodies. This is the driving force of your track. It often acts as the main hook or the main theme. When you start with a melody, it provides a direction for the entire track. This could be a simple piano line, you know, a vocal melody, or just an instrument solo. So again with this, you're going to start with a simple idea. You know, complex doesn't always mean better. Start with short, catchy ideas and then build upon them. You could even hum or sing out a melody idea before you touch the keyboard, which allows you to focus on the musicality without getting caught up in the technical aspects and just remember repetition and variation. So melodies that repeat tend to stick in people's heads, but just make sure you add variations so that they don't become monotonous. Basically, all of this means you just start with a hook. And think about it. What's the first thing that grabs your attention in a song? It's not the drums. It's probably the catchy melody, the interesting sample, or the memorable chord progression. It's almost always the hook. In music production, the hook means the most memorable part of the song. So it could be a vocal line, it could be a sample, it could be an instrumental melody. But by starting with the hook, you ensure that you've created something compelling and unique from the G. Starting with a hook will often give your track an identity. It sets the vibe, it sets the mood, and it sets the feel of the song. And once you've established that hook, you can start thinking about how the drums will complement it. The rhythm and energy of the drums will be guided by the feel of the hook. Plus, tracks that have strong hooks are instantly recognizable. Try to make it simple but catchy. Now, I'm just going to reiterate this. I have seen so many tutorials online where producers start with the drums or they recommend for you to start with the drums, but I honestly think you're setting yourself up for failure. Drums never dictate the direction of the track. They always complement the rhythm. If you create the drums first, they can clash with the musical elements. They are a rhythmic tool. They're not the core of the song. They should be supporting the feel of the track, not determining it. So here's how you could apply the start with an idea approach. So first of all, you could build out a musical foundation. So you found a sample or a melody or a chord progression that you like. You've created that core idea. Now use your creativity to expand it and layer it with harmonies, textures, and counter melodies. Then once your idea feels solid, bring in the drums. This is where the magic will happen. Your drums will now be inspired by the musical ideas that you've already laid down. Now that your drums fit, focus on adding bass lines, additional instruments, and vocals. Use your EQ, effects and automation to refine your sounds and ensure everything fits together. When you start with a musical idea, the rest of the production flows naturally, and you have the freedom to explore different rhythms, different fields, and different grooves without being constrained by a predefined drum pattern. Finally, I just want to say don't overthink it. If something sounds good to you, it's working. Even if you did start with the drums first and it sounds good, it's working. Trust your instincts. Also, don't be afraid to try new things. If a chord progression feels too familiar, try reversing it or maybe changing the rhythm. This is your creative space, so explore it. Starting with an idea doesn't mean overcomplicating it. Sometimes less is more. A simple chord progression and a melody can be the perfect starting point. And lastly, I just want to say, don't be afraid to start over. If you're not feeling the idea after a while, don't hesitate to scrap it and start again. The more that you experiment, the better that your instincts will become. 5. Foundation Programming: Kicks, Claps, and Basic Bounce: So in this lecture, we're going to cover the fundamental building blocks of a solid rhythm section. The core of any great beat starts with the kick, the hat, and the clap. I'm going to show you how to program them for that perfect bounce every time. This lecture will focus on foundational rhythm programming and help you get comfortable with the tools that you need to craft tight groovy beats in FL Studio. Before jumping into the programming, let's just talk about the basic elements that make up a standard beat in modern hip hop and trap music. So they are the kick. The kick drum is the foundation. It provides the thump that drives the rhythm forward. The clap, which is essential for backbeat emphasis and is often placed on the second and fourth beats in a 44 measure. The hats which kind of play in between these two elements and drive the rhythm and the groove. And then we've got something kind of conceptual, which is the bounce. Now, the bounce is the groove or the rhythm that makes the beat feel energetic or funky or smooth. It's what makes people want to move to your track. So normally at this point, I would tell people to set a BPM and, you know, start programming something. But in the last lecture, I really stressed the importance of starting with an idea. So because this is a master class and we're going to be making a track throughout, that's exactly what I'm going to do. So I went on Luperman and I was searching for different, you know, genres and different types of instruments, different loops that I could use. And I came across this really cool and interesting loop that a girl had put up where it sounds like she's kind of singing into her phone microphone. Kind of low quality, and it's kind of distorted, but I think that really gives it a bit of character. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to drag that in because that is our foundation idea, the idea that starts the track. I'll just play it really quickly so you can have a listen. I can really hear the track starting out with this kind of low quality idea and then just taking that melody and turning it into something a lot more high quality and using that as the foundation of the track. So first of all, when I was on Luperman, the artist who put this up said that it was 100 BPM. So I'm going to set my Da tempo or BPM to 100 just to match. And then also when I hummed this melody in my head, the Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, I hear the first note of it being on the first beat of the first bar. So if I just zoom up here, I can see that the sample seems to start on the second beat of the first bar. But I really wanted to start on the first beat, so I'm going to just adjust that for now. And I'm going to put that bit that we're missing from the start at the end of the sample just to finish it out. Like this, and then I'll slice it. And now we should have a full loop that starts on the first bead of the bar. So I'm gonna turn on a metronome and we listen. So now, with that as our idea, I'm going to start loading in some drum samples that we can use to build our beat. So I'm going to look for a tight and snappy kick drum sample. Let's try this black octopus pack, maybe. And we'll see what's in here. Kicks. No, they're not right. I know I have a trap sample pack somewhere, so I might just use that instead. There it is. One shots. Drums? Kicks. Okay. Let's audition some of these and see what they sound like. That heavy kick actually sounds pretty good, and I think it fits the vibe of our kind of distorted lo fi sample that we dragged in. So let's drag that in and replace the kick. Next, we're going to find a snare or a clap sample. So I'm just going to look in this snare folder for a second. Let's find one. This one is actually pretty nice, so I'm going to drag that in and replace our clap. And then I'm going to look for a high hat. S so we're gonna be looking for a closed high hat or one that's pretty short and snappy. I think I liked the sound of the fi one here. Yeah, it's kind of muffled, and it's sticking with that lo fi vibe that we've got with this sample. So I'm gonna drag that in and replace the high hat. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to paste my blank drum pattern. Oops. Pattern one. I want to be pasting that. I want to paste my blank drum pattern in so that I can build it as the sample is playing, and I can use the sample to inform the rhythm of the drums. So obviously, first of all, we're going to start with a kick on the very first beat. Mm hmm. And what I might do is I might assign this to a mixer track and just turn it down a little bit so that we can hear what we're doing with the drums. Mm hm. So let's add in maybe a snare. Mm hmm gonna extend this out a bit so that I can keep building my pattern. I'm not liking this double, kick here, so I might try something like this. Maybe I'll kind of repeat the pattern and Oops. Now, I do think that it's a little bit fast. So I'm going to bring the tempo down to maybe we'll try 80. And because I've done that, I now need to make sure that I'm fitting this to my tempo. So it was originally 100, and I set my project tempo at 100. But now that I've changed my tempo, I need to stretch this sample and make sure that it fits my tempo. So I'm going to do that now by clicking this little waveform and then selecting fit to tempo and typing in the BPM that it was, which was 100 and that'll stretch it to the BPM of RTrack. Maybe we'll go a little bit faster. And now we'll just try and add in some high hats. So again, I'm just gonna start listening and experimenting. Maybe something like this. And maybe just one more at the end there just to keep the groove going. Now, at this stage, we can experiment with things like swing. So we might use this swing knob here, which adds, you know, subtle timing differences that can make your beat feel a bit more organic. Usually, you want to set this at about 30 to 50%. So let's just see if a 30% groove works with this sample. Now, I think that sounds cool, but when we're building upon it and we're building upon the track, I might change it. And in fact, I might change the whole drum pattern. But right now you can see that I've built the rhythm of my drums around the rhythm of the hook. Later on in this section, we'll be adding things like percussion and extra layers to make the hats and claps sound really thick and full. For now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to paste my drum pattern across the whole sample, and we'll be refining this and changing it and building upon it as the course goes on. 6. Layering Drum Sounds & Adding Percussion: So in this lecture, we're going to deep dive into the art of layering drum sounds. And then we'll also add a little bit of percussion to elevate the beat. Layering and percussion are key techniques for creating fuller and more dynamic rhythms. Whether you're working on trap, hip hop, house, or any other genre, these skills are essential for making your drums stand out and feel more alive. So layering is basically the process of combining multiple sounds to create a richer and more complex drum hit. And the reason we do this would be for extra fatness. You know, combining different samples adds depth and fullness. Maybe we want the drums to have character. Layering allows you to blend tambres and textures, giving your drum sounds a unique character. So for example, in this drumbeat that we've made, I really feel like layering a bigger heavier snare sound with the last snare sound in the pattern could give the beat a bit of impact. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for I'm going to come out of this sample pack, and I'm going to look for a more kind of heavy snare sample. So let's try maybe something down here. They're all percussion. So I'm just going to zip around and try and find some folders where I might have some heavier snare sounds. Snares. Let's try some of these. Maybe we'll use this snare 11. So I'm gonna drag that in, and I'm gonna put it in to our channel rack, and I'm gonna layer it with the snare sound that we already have. B tutto. And I'm also thinking that the general snare sound could have a bit more kind of sparkle or high end to it. It's kind of muffled a small bit, so I'm going to try maybe layering a clap with it. I'm looking for a shorter kind of clap than this. Maybe something from this commercial Deep House folder that I have drumshots claps, let's see. Yeah, this is much better. Yeah. So if we layer this clap seven with this snare that we have, we get the drums to sound like this. Mm hmm. Mm hm. Now, I'll play the pattern, and I'll mute both of these claps just so you can see that both of them are coming together to create a new kind of texture and a fat clap sound. We might even layer in some extra hats. So let's have a look. Oops, can we find some high hats? Maybe this one, this long one could be cool on, like an offbeat, so maybe here. Or maybe even here. A. And again, we could build upon the texture of this hat by just layering another kind of short one on top of it, maybe this one, just to give it a bit more snap. So we'll just draw in the exact same pattern. Just layering this new hat underneath the old one that we had. So now let's hear it in context with our sample. I'm going to switch to song mode so that the playhead is playing in the playlist view. And lastly, we could go ahead and we could add in some percussion. So I'm gonna find a nice kind of snappy percussion sound. Maybe this. I think this kind of fits the vibe of our drum pattern. I'm gonna drag that in and replace the snare we don't need that anymore. And then I'll have a listen, and I'll experiment with some different kind of placements for the percussion. So maybe just something really simple with the percussion like that. Now, again, this will probably change as we build the track, but for now, I think it's a good foundation. Now, something cool you could do is layer your drums with some natural sounds or folly sounds. So I think I have folly sounds somewhere. I think they actually might be in this trap. Maybe we'll try Effex. No, maybe. Yeah, these are kind of realistic sounds. That sounds like a bottle. Keys sounds like keys being put in a bowl. So if you were to layer these interesting kind of textures in, you could create some really interesting drum beats. Oh 7. Hi-Hat Sorcery: In this lecture, we'll uncover the secrets of high hat programming and how to take your high hats from simple to professional. High hats are one of the most essential components of any beat, providing energy, groove, and rhythm. Here we're going to explore some advanced techniques like rules, triplets, velocity manipulation, and pitch shifting to give your beats that extra magic. The hi hat will often set the pace of the track, and it provides a constant rhythm while helping drive the groove. The way hi hats are programmed can add an infectious swing or bounce to your rhythm. And they can also be used to accent certain parts of the beat emphasizing the off beats or creating syncopation. So let's add some hi hat rolls. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm actually going to turn the swing function off. It's much easier to program hi at rolls when the hi hats are kind of static like this. The next thing we need to do is open up our high hats in the piano roll. So I'm just gonna do that now. So as you can see, here are the high hats in the piano roll. Now, yours probably won't look like this. Yours will more than likely look like this, okay? Where each beat only has four steps, but we need to add in more steps if we want to create a proper hi hat roll. If you come up here to the grid snapping dropdown, it's usually set to line by default, but I'm going to set mine to quarter step. And now we can start making a hi hat roll. So let's have a listen to the pattern and see where a Hi Hat roll might sound good. So I'm thinking the first one could maybe be somewhere here, so I'm gonna zoom up on that. And we usually do this in halfs. So if we look at these two hi hat notes, I'm going to add in a new Hi Hat note around halfway through. And then, again, I'm going to split these three new notes that we've just made. So I'm going to add one in halfway there and halfway there. Let's see what that sounds like. And maybe in the second bar over here, we could add in a hi hat roll in the same place. So it's halfway through the second beat of the first bar. So let's go to the second beat of the second bar, and we'll do the same thing. We'll split. We'll split the notes that are already there, and see what that sounds like. And maybe just for good measure, we can put another little hi hat roll here at the end of the pattern. Now, let's look at triplets. So triplets can give your high hat patterns a more swinging or jazzy, kind of groovy vibe. It's an essential rhythm, and it's used across genres like hip hop trap and drum and bass. A triplet divides the beat into three equal parts rather than the usual two. And in four, four time signature, it can create a kind of stuttering or tripping effect. So first of all, I'm gonna listen and find a place where I think a triplet might work. H. Okay, so maybe here at the end of the first bar, a triplet could work pretty nice. So for this, we need to set our grid snap to one third of a step. And I know that this first hi hat note is halfway through the entire beat. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to delete the second one. And we're going to split this second half of the beat into three equal measures, okay? So if I count each individual step, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, okay? And 6/3 is two. So I know that every two I need to put a hat. And this now should create a triplet. So let's have a listen and see if it creates that kind of stuttering or tripping over itself effect. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to solo the hat that we're working on I forgot that we had layered another hat in, so we can't really hear what we're doing properly. But let's just have a listen again. Next, we're going to look at changing the velocities of these notes. In the piano roll, each of these notes has a velocity bar underneath, and they're pretty simple. You basically drag them up to make them louder or drag them down to make them quieter. Basically, all we're going to do is vary the velocities across all these notes to try and make it sound a bit more natural and less static or robotic. What I might do is maybe something like this. And just while I'm doing this, I'm going to talk about bounce for a second. So bounce is essential to creating a kind of rhythmic groove that makes listeners feel like they can move to your track. And bounce comes from slightly offbeat programming. So placing some high hats on the offbeat or using swing like we were earlier. But at the moment, while looking at velocities, let's try and use the velocities to accent the offbeat. And offbeat literally means what it says. So, you know, so the start of every beat here would be on the beat like this. They're all on the beat. And then anything in between that is off the beat. The most common offbeat is exactly halfway through. So this one here, which is why I've kind of accented that in the velocity. So let's now keep going with altering our velocities. I need to unclick him. Something like this, maybe. We'll give this one a bit of a boost. And maybe with the triplet, it should start quiet and get kind of louder. And then these can just be. And then these can be just kind of quiet. Maybe we'll make this next hi hat role increase in velocity. And this guy's on the offbeat, so we might accent him a bit, and then we might accent this one and kind of leave the rest at a semi low volume. Let's see what that sounds like. D. I think that sounds okay. I might just boost this philosophy a bit, and I'm not a huge fan of this, so I'm just going to make it maybe go the opposite way where it gets quieter. D. The last thing we might do is vary the pitch on our kind of accented portions of the hi hat, you know, things like the role or the triplets. So what we can do here is we can zoom up. And let's say this hi hat role pitches down as it's playing. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to highlight this note. And using Shift and the arrow keys, I can change its pitch. So I'm going to pitch it down, and I'm going to do the same for the next one. Pitch that down, maybe there, and the last one maybe there. Let's see what that sounds like. Oops. So let's do the same thing with this hi hat roll. Oh, sorry, wrong one. Like this. And we'll move him down, as well. So now all of our hi At rolls are pitching down as they play. And just for the sake of demonstration, we might make the triplets here pitch up. This is probably a bit overkill, but I'm really just trying to show all the techniques. So let's take the first note here and just make a subtle little pitch ups pitch up for the triplets. Okay, let's have a listen to this now. And what we can do now is we can copy this. So let's highlight that. Command C or Control C if you're on Windows. We'll bring back in our other hat, open up the piano roll. And what I'll do is I'll delete that, edit, delete. And then I'll paste in our new high hat pattern with the pitch shift and the rolls and the velocity variations and all that. Let's have a listen now with both high hat layers playing the same new pattern. And lastly, there is one more thing I want to talk about in this lecture, and that is offbeat high hats. So to really drive home a bit of bounce or, you know, to get that hip hop flare, we're going to add in an open high hat, and it'll play on the offbeat here. So remember, the offbeat is the halfway mark in one beat. So let's just go and look now for a good open high hat sound. So I'm going to try my ultimate warehouse techno folder. We'll try some of these hats. These are a little bit short. You're looking for something a little bit longer than that. Okay, yeah, it's an open hat, about the length of this one of hat 12. So I'm gonna drag that in. And I'm not gonna overuse it. I might just put it once here at the start. Let's have a listen. Maybe here as well. Now, it's not giving the effect I was looking for, so I'm just going to see if I can find a different sample. Maybe this one will just try it. I just want to kind of demonstrate the offbeat high hat for bounce. So let's listen to that. And now, of course, if you like the way it sounds, you can put it on all of the offbeats for a kind of hip hop or house sound. But I'm not a huge fan of that, so I'm just gonna leave it so that there's only one at the start of the pattern. And let's listen to this in context with our original sample that we're using for the hook of our trek. 8. Modern Groove Theory: Kick & Snare Placement: All right let's look at a simple concept really quickly, which is kick and snare placement. This is the cornerstone of beat production, whether it's trap, hip hop, house, experimental beats, mastering these elements is key to creating professional sounding tracks. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to strip it right down to basics, okay? So I'm going to put the kick on one and three, and I'm going to put the clap on two and four. I've already loaded up an eighth note hi hat pattern here just to kind of give some context to the beat. So this is the bare bones of a beat, and it's going to sound very basic and very robotic. So one way to jazz this up would be to double the kick. So you can basically add an extra kick before or after a beat. So for example, let's place a new kick right before the third beat. Or we can place it right before the fourth beat. And again, for demonstration purposes, let's place it maybe after. So let's place the double kick one step after the fourth beat. You can also make some really interesting grooves if you shift the snare around a little bit. So if we brought that second snare forward and put it on the offbeat instead, it would sound like this. So groove is all about expectation and surprise. Breaking away from a rigid pattern can create excitement and movement. So, for example, along with this double kick idea that we have, so let's just add another double kick in here. We can also place kicks on the offbeat. So, for example, let's put a kick maybe here on the first offbeat. And then we can use things like rim shots or percussion or, for example, the snare here to add in some much more subtle ghost notes on off beats. So ghost notes are generally syncopated. They rarely occur on the first beat. So, for example, maybe we could use this snare as a ghost note to kind of double up our clap. So let's double it up here and maybe here. And with ghost notes, they're meant to be pretty subtle. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn down the volume just so that it's kind of subtle. You can even use those velocity bars that we looked at in the last lecture to create some ghost notes within some other samples like the kick. So, for example, if we go into the kick in the piano roll, and we take one of these double kicks, we can make it so that the double kick is a ghost note by just turning the volume down. Let's just add in another one for the sake of demonstration. Oops. So all I really want to highlight with this lecture is just not to fall into a trap of placing your samples rigidly on the beat. Use things like doubling your kicks, placing the kick on the offbeat, doubling up your clap and your snare, and using lower velocity ghost notes. 9. Melodies 101: Now we're going to focus on writing memorable melodies without needing to dive into music theory. So what makes a good melody? Well, first of all, it's catchy, so it sticks in the listener's head. It can be emotional where it sets a vibe, you know, dark, melancholic, uplifting or eerie. But the best beat making melodies are simple. They leave room for the drums and the vocals. A good melody often comes from the right rhythm and the right shape, not just the notes themselves. Melody is as much about when the notes hit as which notes they are. So what we're going to do is we're going to start with a simple rhythm. So I'm going to set up a new pattern called melody. And we'll load in a fun plug in, maybe serum. And I'll try to load up a sort of soft lead sound. Maybe something from this commercial Deep House sound bank. Let's see here. Okay, let's just stick with this universe preset for the moment. So now I'm gonna think rhythmically. I'm going to open the piano roll, and I'm just going to draw in a rhythm. And I might just shift that up an octave with command up or control up. So what you're looking for here is a short, kind of syncopated repetitive rhythm. Now, for those of you who understand music theory, this is a great starting point. You know, if you're in C minor, you can start shifting these notes around to the different notes in C minor, and you can create a nice sort of melody. Something like this. But I do understand that a lot of beat makers aren't coming from a background of music theory. So with FL Studio, I'm going to show you a trick. What I'm going to do is I'm going to come back into my channel rack. I'm going to load in a random sample, and I'm going to mute it. Then I'm going to open that up in the piano roll. I'm going to come up here to this little drop down, and I'm going to come down to stamp. So for melodies, what we're interested in here are the scales. I'm sure you've all heard of minor and major scales, but there's also loads of other scales from different cultures from around the world. And there's also these things called modes. And a mode is basically what happens when you play the shape of one scale in a different key. So, for example, the key of C major. Whoops, I need a melodic instrument. So with the key of C major, It's all the white notes. Okay? So I would just refer to this as the shape. So for example, we've got a tone, a tone, a semitone, a tone, a tone, a tone, a semitone. You don't need to worry about that. Just focus on the fact that the key of C uses all the white notes. If I was to shift this down to A, only playing the white notes. You now get the key of A minor, which is actually also known as the Aeolian mode. Okay? So what we've done is we've taken all the white keys from the key of C, and we've just shifted them down to A. We've played all the white notes going from A. So if we take that same idea where we play only white notes, in D, we're going to get a new scale or mode called Dorian. Dorian can sound kind of melancholic and haunty. If we do the same now for E, we'll get a mode called Phrygian. And so on. There's modes for all of these notes, including Lydian, Mixolydian and Locrian. So anyway, all of that is kind of irrelevant. I just wanted to demonstrate the difference between different modes. But if we go back to that high hat that we were using and come up to the arrow, we can stamp in some of these modes. So, for example, maybe with the Dorian mode, let's stamp that in. I'm going to drag the notes out across my whole bar. And then I'm going to go back into the melody I was working on. Remember, this is muted. And when we come back in here, there's a function in FL Studio where you can see other notes in the pattern, okay? So I think I did it before, but if I didn't, the shortcut is option V or option Victor on a Mac or Alt V Alt Victor on a Windows. Now, it's just an octave too high, so I'm going to go back and move it down. And I'm going to reset our melody. And now I basically have a blueprint for the Dorian mode. So if I want to create a cool, interesting melody in the Dorian mode, all I would do is I would move the notes of the rhythm I created earlier onto one of these notes. So, for example, let's throw this up there, maybe up there. And we'll see what that sounds like. And you can experiment with different note placements. And you can see instantly it's given us this really cool, interesting vibe, and it would be very easy now to go and build upon this. Let's just for the sake of demonstration, do another one. So I'm going to delete them. I'm going to stamp in. Let's go for something random. Let's go for maybe this Hungarian scale. Okay, that's interesting. Let's see what that sounds like when we alter our melody to fit the Hungarian scale. I just need to stretch these notes out. So let's just drag these around. And we'll see what this sounds like. I'm not a huge fan of this note, so I might just shift that up. That's kind of dark and ominous and slightly dissonant and creepy. But very quickly, again, I've created a completely different vibe. Now the next thing I'm going to talk about is contour. Contour is basically the shape of your melody, whether the notes go up, down or stay steady. Basically, with this, if you can imagine drawing a line between the notes of your melody, there shouldn't be any extreme jumps. Okay? It should be kind of smooth, so we're going up, we're going up, we're falling down, back down, up, a little step down, we jump up and then we fall down again. So basically, all you have to do is keep the contour of your melody consistent. So what you don't want is, you know, a big jump like this, a big jump down, another jump. Maybe we keep this and maybe we jump right up here. This is going to sound kind of all over the place and just not together. I mean, it's cool. It's interesting. It's different. And again, music, there's no right way to do things, but melody contour is pretty important. So one way to fix this might be we might keep this jump at the start. But instead of jumping back down, we might just come down a small bit, and then maybe we'll continue falling down to this note here. And then because we have a big jump up here, maybe we'll try and break that up by, you know, adding in this note here. And then this is quite a big jump again. So maybe I'll just place that note there. And you should see now that there's a nice sort of smooth contour between all the notes. Now, ignoring the fact that this scale is quite dissonant and quite eerie and creepy in itself, if you can get over that fact, you might hear that the melody is a little bit more consistent and it has a bit more of a flow to it because the contour is a lot more smooth. And I mean, this is a pretty kind of jumpy melody. All the notes are short. But if you wanted to kind of elongate that, maybe make it 2 bars. What we could do is, I'm just going to change this scale because I'm not a huge fan of it, so I'm going to go back to Dorian. We'll load that in. I'm gonna draw it across for the 2 bars. And very quickly, let's just create a new rhythm. That's a bit slower. Whoops. Maybe something simple like that. And what we can do is we can elongate the notes. Whoops. Something like this. And now we can drag them around to these kind of highlighted notes, okay? So again, keeping the idea of contour. And with this, it brings me to my next point, which is using ghost notes in melodies. So we've looked at ghost notes already, and basically, all we're gonna do is maybe add in small little notes. Like this. Whoops, like this. That might be a little bit more quiet to break up the monotony of these longer notes. So maybe we'll add a little step down here and we'll see how that sounds. So basically, if you don't know music theory, FL Studio is really stacked with its tools when it comes to creating melodies. If you do understand music theory, I'm going to assume that you can kind of hum melodies in your head and, you know, you know what you're looking at, and you know what you're looking for. But for those of you who don't really understand it, this is the way I would go about. 10. Emotion in Harmony: Creating Chords: Okay, so now we're going to focus on how to craft chords that enhance your melody and work rhythmically with your drums. So forget rigid music theory, we're going to focus on practical, feel based techniques using FL Studios tools and creative approaches. So chords in beat making serve as the foundation of the track. It supports the melody and sets the emotional tone. Good chords can complement your melody, add richness and depth and groove with the rhythm of your drums. So I'm back in my project here. And what I did was I tried to copy the melody of this vocal sample. I tried to make that with a synthesizer. And I just added a quick little fade on the end of the sample, so it can fade out as the synth melody fades in, and then it'll sort of build towards this kind of chorus section. So, honestly, without using music theory, the easiest way to find what key a melody is in is to ask ChatBT. So I already have it open. Oops. Can I open both at the same time? I don't know. Maybe if I do this, yes. Okay, so I have Chachi PT open, and I'm just going to ask it. Let's see. What key is this melody in. And now I'm going to tell it what notes we're using. So we've got E, F, it's written on the note, G A F, F, A F. 1 bar is probably enough to give it an idea. So let's put that. So Cha CIBT thinks that this melody is in F major. So I'm going to go back to my project, and I'm just going to play the melody, and I'm gonna play the note of F and C, does that sound right to me? Yeah, that probably sounds about right. However, with most beat making genres, they're usually in a minor key. So Chachi BT has said that we are in major here. It says we're in F major, but the good news is we can use the relative minor of F major, and it will still sound just as good. So for argument's sake, maybe you made a melody yourself and Chachi BT said it was in a minor key. That's perfectly fine. You can just go ahead. But if Chachi BT says your melody is likely in major, then we can use the relative minor. So if you don't know what that is, again, a quick little Google search will tell you exactly what it is. But I don't need to do that because I know that the relative minor of F major is D minor. So now let's check when I hold the node of D. Does that sound just as good as F? Yeah, that sounds just as good to me, but the tone is a little bit darker because now we are in a minor key. So now that we know we're in the key of D minor, let's go ahead and stamp that scale into our background kind of ghost notes. Stamp, one of these either minor melodic or minor natural. I personally prefer the melodic minor sounds, so I'm just going to stamp that one in myself. And let's drag those notes out. Next, we're going to create a new pattern called chords. And maybe we'll just add some kind of piano. Now, because I've moved to a different pattern, I've actually lost my ghost notes, so I'm just going to stamp them in again and stamp minor on D. And then we're going to head back into our piano. And we can start creating our chords. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to paste the chords underneath the melody like we've been doing before, and I'm just going to delete these notes because we actually don't need these. I'm going to solo the melody by right clicking this green light. And then I'm going to also turn on my chords by just clicking this green light. And then if I come up here to the bar numbers, I can right click and drag to create a loop. So now, when I hit play on Song view, it's going to keep looping this section for me so that I can listen to my melody, and I can play around with some different chords. So for now, Oops, I should be in my chords. So for now, all we need to do is maybe try adding in some kind of bass notes that we think might work. So let's just see, we're a bit too high. I'm just going to pitch these down. Maybe we'll go down again. Yeah, now we're in the bass part of the piano. So using our ghost notes, I'm going to put in the root note first, which is D, and we'll see whereabouts in the melody, we want to add another new chord. So maybe we could add another chord kind of here halfway through the first bar. So if I shorten this, and we'll basically just pick one of these ghost notes, maybe we'll try this one. Um, maybe we'll try this one. And this one? And because we're in the scale, because we stamped in our minor scale, we should be able to just place any sort of note that we want, and it should work 90% of the time. Let's try this. And you don't always have to start on the root note. You can start on a different note, maybe this one, but you got to make sure that you always have the root note in there somewhere. Okay? So at the moment, we don't have F, A, E and G, and D is our root node. We have no D. This is going to make the chord sound like they don't have a home. They have nowhere to go. It's always wanting to come back to that root note. And this root note can be anywhere. It can be at the end. Maybe we'll try something like I don't know. So for me now, I'm just going to add in the chords that I actually think sound best with this melody, and they are B flat here or A sharp, as FL Studio says, C, D, and I think G or no, maybe A. And I want these to be kind of stepping up to that root note. Yeah, they're the kind of chords I'm going for with this melody. Now, why I pick these chords is because well, basically, when the melody was playing, I was humming these chords along with the melody. And that's something you can do, too. If you have that ability to hum along with the melody, you can then hum your baseline and then kind of find which notes match up with that baseline that you're humming. And also, just from years of experience, I kind of know what chords work for certain keys and what chords I like and what chords I always end up coming back to. So for you guys, you may be at that stage already where you've been producing for a while and you can also kind of pick out chords that you like based on experience. But some of you may be beginners, and if you are a beginner, I recommend this method with the scale. And now we're going to use FL Studios magic again. We're going to come back up to the stamp function, and we're going to stamp in chords. Now, there's two kind of main types of tonality with chords. There's major tonality and minor tonality. So if you come along and you stamp in a chord here, let's say, we replace that A sharp with an A sharp cord, maybe it doesn't sound too good. I mean, that actually sounds quite bad because it's clashing. But you know from playing around up here with the scale that the A sharp, which is also this note is in the key. So maybe what we picked, which was a minor chord just isn't the right type of tonality. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come back to my stamp. And, okay, so minor doesn't work. The other type of tonality is major. So let's try a major chord there instead. Okay, I'm just going to shift everything up for a second just to really highlight this. So this is what major sounds like. But for example, again, I'll just go back to stamping in that minor tonality. Again, the minor chord is clashing when the major chord wasn't another way to be dead sure is to check whether the notes in the cord that you just stamped also match up with the notes in the scale. Okay? So a sharp here, we can see yet, that matches up. C sharp, on the other hand, is this note, and that is not in the scale, okay? So that is probably where the clashing kind of dissonance is coming from. So I know, okay, this obviously isn't working. So we'll go back to stamping in that major cord instead. And we'll try the same thing with the C. So let's come up here and stamp in, for example, maybe a minor ninth, and we'll put that in with the C. So this is quite a big jazzy cord. But let's check whether we think it might fit. So we've got a C, which yeah is in our scale. We've got a D sharp, which is not in our scale, okay? We've got a G, which is an A sharp, which is, and a D which is This D sharp isn't in our scale. So I don't think this cord is going to sound too good. Let's swap it out for a major chord. So let's go back to our stamp. And we had stamped in a minor ninth. So let's try the major seventh, and we'll put that on the C. Again, that doesn't sound too good because that B note up here isn't in our scale. So maybe this is all just too fancy for that particular chord and we should go back to just good old major. Again, let's try with the D. We'll stamp in maybe a minor seventh. Is it gonna fit? Well, let's check. We've got a D. We've got an F. Yeah. We've got an A. Yeah. And we've got a C. Yeah. Okay, so this cord is probably going to sound good. Yeah, that sounds okay to me. And then for this last ord, why don't we try the same one? We'll try a minor seventh because that sounded quite good on the D. So let's throw in a minor seventh here on our F, and I'm just going to pitch that down so we can have a look. Is there any note here that isn't in our scale? Well, there is. There's two, actually. There's G sharp here. That isn't in our scale, and there's D sharp here, which is not in our scale. So I don't think this cord is going to sound very good. But I know that the node of F does sound good, so I'm going to stick with the node of F. I'm going to stamp in the opposite tonality of a minor, which is a major. So let's go for a major seventh on that F. Let's check. Do we think it'll work? We've got an F, A, a C, and an E. Well, we've got an F, yeah, an A. Yeah, a C. Yeah, that's in our scale and an E. Yeah, that's in our scale, too. So I think this chord is going to sound good. Oh the next thing we're going to look at here are inversions. And inversion is just a fancy way of saying, Let's spread out the notes of this chord. So at the moment, you can see when I highlight one of the notes that they all light up. And this is because they're grouped, they're grouped because we stamped them in. But if we want to ungroup them, we can highlight and come up to this chain link, and we just turn that off. So now we should be able to edit each of these notes individually, which we are. So what I'm going to do to create an inversion is I'm going to maybe take the D, and I'm going to move it up to the D up here. Maybe I'll take the E, and I'll do the same thing. And I suppose we'll keep doing what we're doing, so we'll take the second note of the chord and move it up to its higher counterpart. So let's move that F up to this F, and then we'll move this A, maybe up to that A. And inversions are a great way to get a really, really big and open sound, okay? So before when all the notes were down here, the cords kind of sounded tight and compact. But by moving all of those notes up to their higher counterparts, we can make the chords much more open and full. And the last aspect of building chords involves trying to fit them around the drums. So I'm going to highlight all these chords that we just made, and I'm going to make them all really short so that we can draw out a good rhythm. So if I come back into my playlist view and I mute the melody this time, so that we only have the drums playing with the chords. So what I'll do now is just draw out a rhythm with the chords that I think fits the drums. So let's have a little listen. So because the kick here lands kind of early, I think we should shift the chords to match up with the kick, and I'll just show you what I mean. So in the drum pattern, the kick here is landing before the beat of the bar. And it also happens here. The two kicks are landing before the beat of the bar. Now, these kicks technically should be on the beat, which would sound like this. But remember, from before when we were building drums, we can shift these kicks together to create double kicks. And if we also shift them away from that first beat, we can create a good sense of groove or bounce. But because of that, I think these cords should be shifted forward to also land when those two double kicks are landing. So that's these two guys here. So, now this step becomes the new one for our new chords, the new kind of place where these chords are supposed to start. So let's now try and build a rhythm for them. Maybe something like that, and we'll just copy these other notes over to make full chords like this. And then what we can do is we can kind of fill in the space in between by just dragging the notes out like this. Frank this one out, too. And something that I'm doing here by leaving a little bit of space between some of the shorter notes, I forgot about this chord here. But yeah, leaving a bit of space after these shorter kind of chords will create an extra bit of bounce because you're using that silence as a kind of stutter or tripping effect. Let's have a listen now. And by all means, maybe you don't like the sound of that. So you just want to tighten them all up. That's perfectly fine, too. Whatever sounds good is good. Let's also bring in our melody. O. Just really quickly to highlight some other techniques that you can do is, for example, let's say, your chord sorry, your chord pattern is doubled out like this. There's another duplicate of the chords. What you can do to create a bit of interest is maybe change one of these chords so that it's slightly different from the first half, or you can reorder some of them. So for example, maybe we'll take this F chord and we'll reorder it with this Dcord here. And we'll just have to fix the rhythm Oops. Just want to highlight this. And he's coming in here Ops halfway through. And this one needs to be shortened. So now the rhythm of this matches up with the rhythm of these. But the order, so D and F is swapped around F and D. And again, some further tweaks that you could do is, adjust the velocity here, make the cords feel a bit more natural by, you know, just drawing in different kind of velocities for them. And if you really want to get detailed, you can start adjusting you can start adjusting the velocities of each individual note in the cord like this. Or you can add things like passing chords. So for example, here, where our chord pattern is starting to reset, it's jumping back down from F to A sharp. We could just add in a little one step chord down so we could let's say we want to use that D again, we'll copy this D chord over. And we'll make this a little bit more quiet like the ghost notes. And now you've added a passing ord where the F steps down to D real quickly and then steps back down to the A sharp. That might be a little bit too quick. Just Oops. Just drag it over here. 11. Filling Space with Arps & Pads: So now we're going to dive into arpeggios and pads. These are key tools for filling the space in your beats while maintaining clarity. These elements bring depth, movement, and atmosphere to your tracks without overwhelming the mix. So arps can add rhythm and intricate movement, kind of weaving through the beat, whereas pads can create a lush and atmospheric backdrop that fills the Sonic space. The goal here is to fill gaps intentionally without competing with the main melody or drums. So I'm going to come up here and I'm going to create a new pattern, and we're going to rename that pattern. Rp. And then I'm going to load up a synthesizer, so we'll take serum. And we're looking for short kind of sounds or plugs. Maybe we'll find something in this melodic techno folder. Okay, let's take one of these plugs. Let's try this plug clear. So the first way to make an arp is we'll open the piano roll, and from here, we can stamp in the chords that we had before. Now, if we remember, they were a sharp in a major tonality C in I need to go back and get my major stamp. So we'll stamp in C in a major tonality. Then we had the root note, which was D, and I know that that is a minor tonality because we're in the key of D minor. We'll go at that. And then I believe it was F in a major tonality. Yep, that sounds about right. Now, I'm just going to check the rhythm because I remember from before we kind of changed the rhythm here. And as you can see, with the piano chords, they're actually coming in before our arp chords. So we got to fix that. We got to make sure it all lines up. So let's move the arp chords to match up with the piano chords. And then we'll head back and just have a look. Yeah, that looks right to me. And then, if you remember from before, we also flipped the last two chords around. So, let's just do that again so that our arp matches up with our piano chords. So really quickly, let's just flip these around. And there we go. So now, before we go any further, I just want to talk about what an arp or an arpeggio actually is. So an arpeggio or arp is just a fancy word for a broken cord. So basically, you would take your cord here. And what you would do is you would break it up into individual little notes stepping up and down. This would be an rp. It However, FL Studio is full of magic little surprises. So if we highlight all of these notes, Oops. Let me come up here to tools. You can see that about halfway down this menu, there's a tool called arpeggiate. And that brings up this window here. And with this, there's a few different options, okay? There's pattern here at the top, which basically opens a folder, and it allows you to pick from all different preset preset arpeggios that come with the software. You can use this drop down menu here to flip the notes or alternate them back and forth. Over here with the time multiplication, you can stretch the notes out to create some interesting rhythms or some really rapid arps. You can set a range for how high you want the arps to go. You can use the sync function to change when the arpeggiator loop repeats itself. And then you can play with things like velocity and pan and release and all that kind of thing. But for the moment, let's just see how this sounds. Let's undo that and have a look at a different type of pattern that we could use. So we'll go into the arpeggiator and then maybe we'll look for a fun preset that comes with the software. Let's try one of these three notes maybe. Let's give it more range. Let's say maybe two octaves. Let's see what that sounds like. So with arps, you're probably going to use them sparingly as a kind of background element. They're used to add rhythm without distracting from the main melody. So where I have them here probably isn't going to work because they're playing at the same time as the main idea or the main melody of the track. So if we do play it now, it's probably going to sound a bit messy and a bit disorganized. Mm. So these two elements, the melody and the arp are actually fighting for your attention. But the way I'm envisioning this track going is this here will be a sort of chorus section. So we'll have our little intro with the sample that we're working on. The main melody will sort of fade in. We'll get hit with a really built up chorus for these 4 bars, and then we'll head into some sort of verse section. So I think for me, the arp should probably be somewhere around here. Next, we're going to create a pad for depth and atmosphere. So again, let's come up the top, and we're going to find next empty and create a new pad pattern. So once again, we're going to load up a synthesizer. And with this, we're looking for something kind of soft and ambient. Let's try and find a nice pad sound. So I think there was a lot of pads in this melodic techno folder. So let's have a look in here. Okay, and what we're gonna do with the pads is we're going to draw in the cords of our track. So we've got A sharp up until the last step of the second beat. And then for here, we've got C. Then we've got our root no D, up until the last step of the second beat. And then we've got F. Oops. So with this, maybe I'll draw in some fifths. And if you want a quick way to find the fifth, just count seven notes up. So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So that there would be our fifth. And from here, I might do something a little bit interesting. So I'm thinking I can alternate between these two notes here and then land on this one again at the end of the pattern. So if I just draw that in, it sounds like this. And all the other chords have three notes. So I'm going to copy this and just bring it down an octave to give this cord three notes as well. And then we can bring these pads back to our arrangement here and layer them in and see how it sounds. Now, ideally, in the mix, they'd actually be a lot quieter. So they're just meant to be filling up a little bit of background space. And I forgot I have to draw in the second part of the pattern where we flip these two cords. These are chordal pads, but there's another trick you could do where the pads don't actually follow the cords at all. So for example, with that little alternating node idea I had before, we could delete the cords and just keep that little alternating node idea. See how it's subtly filling space in the background. Or you can do something called a pedal note, where if we come into our pads, and we basically come across delete all of the notes and just hold the root note. So the root note of this track is D because we're in the key of D minor. And then you would just let your pad hold this note solid in the background. But for me, I think I preferred the alternating note idea. 12. Counter Melodies: Okay, let's look at counter melodies. This is a cool technique to make your beats feel fuller, more dynamic and more interesting. A counter melody is a secondary melody that complements and interacts with the main melody. It doesn't overpower the main melody, but enhances it, creating a more complex and engaging musical texture. So some of the key characteristics of a good counter melody include support. So it adds depth, but it doesn't take over the track. It's rhythmically complimentary, so it might fill in some empty spaces or maybe if your melody is quite busy, it just copies the original rhythm. It also must work in harmony with the main melody, often using the same scale or key. But it's different enough from the main melody to create interest, but not so contrasting that it feels out of place. So to make a counter melody, I'm going to open up my original melody, and I'm going to clone that pattern. Then I'm going to open up a new synthesizer. And I might just pick some sort of pluck. Let's see. I'll just pick a random one here. So what I'm going to do, first of all, is I'm going to copy the original melody, and I'm going to bring that into my new synthesizer. Then because it's a counter melody, I'm actually going to pitch it up above the main melody. Now, in this track, my melody's rhythm is pretty busy. There's a lot going on. So I think for my counter melody, I'm just going to mimic the same rhythm. And once again, I'm going to need my scale stamp so that I can see what key I'm in and what notes I should be using. So I'm going to come to my muted instrument so I can stamp in some ghost notes for the scale. So we're in D minor. And I'll stamp those notes in there, and then we can come back to our new counter melody instrument, and we can use these notes of the scale to draw in a counter melody. Let's start doing that. Let's drag these notes around to different positions. However, we still have to remember contour, so the countermlody can't be jumping all over the place. It still has to have a smooth contour. Let's maybe change this note. Let's start to bring the counter melody up now. And then maybe we do something like this. And let's see how this sounds. I might pitch it down just so we can hear it better. And if we bring that in in context, it would probably be kind of in the second half of this chorus when the original melody is played a few times, you know, people have heard it. They've gotten used to it, and then we can bring in something new. 13. Choosing & Layering Sounds: Now we're going to look at one of the most crucial aspects of music production, and that is choosing and layering sounds. So understanding how to select the right sounds and layer them properly is essential to creating a rich, dynamic and professional sounding track. So the reason why you might want to layer is for texture and depth. You know, layering creates a fuller and more complex sound that engages the listener and adds a lot of depth or fatness to your track. It also gives your track a bit of variety and kind of ensures it isn't too repetitive and that it always feels fresh. So when choosing the right sound for your track, you first of all, have to look at the mood and the genre. So every genre and every track is going to have a specific mood or kind of vibe, and your choice of sound should reflect that. So, for example, in a dark and atmospheric trap beat, you might choose deep eerie pads and maybe some soft keys. But then for a more upbeat kind of melodic track, maybe like the one we're working on right now, you might go for brighter sounds and wider scenth. One of the best things you can do is listen to reference tracks in your genre. So this will help you understand what kind of sounds work best in that context. You also have to think about where the layer fits in the frequency spectrum. Does it have mainly low frequencies? Is it mainly a mid based instrument or is it comprised more of high frequencies? You want to avoid having too many sounds in the same frequency range. So for example, when we come to layer our piano chords here, I'm probably going to pick a layer that complements the piano, which would more than likely be a kind of low mid instrument, and then I might pick one that has more high frequencies to kind of round the sound out and give it a much more full feeling. Then a very important aspect is texture and tambre. So the tambre or the tone quality of a sound can play a big role in how it fits into the overall track. So using a kind of warm synthesizer pad as a layer will create a smooth background texture, while using a sharp pluck might create a bit of contrast and make that instrument stand out. Ultimately, just cycle through and see what sounds best. So let's start layering these chords here. At the moment, I'll just play the track first, actually, just to hear what it sounds like beforehand. So at the moment, it's quite sparse. We only have one instrument playing the melody and one instrument playing the chords. The track isn't going to sound that full. So I'm going to get to work now layering these chords. So what I want to do is I want to bring in a new synthesizer, and this will become our first layer. I'm also going to straightaway, just copy these chords and paste them into our new synthesizer because we're not interested in actually building the pattern. We've already done that. Now we get to listen to it. So because the piano pattern that we're using is slightly jazzy, I think I'm going to go with some warm kind of jazzy sounding keys. So I'm going to look for a sound bank that I have that might work. Um, perhaps this Somatics keys pack would be good. So let's just load up the first one, and we're gonna cycle through. We'll have a listen to what it sounds like layered on top of the piano. Okay, so instantly it's a bit too loud. Sobod's gonna turn it down so we can hear both blended together. Now, this would be quite a sharp sound. It's got a bit of transient punch at the start of each note. So it's making the keys stand out a bit more. It's giving them a bit more impact. Let's keep cycling through and just have a listen to some different presets. This particular preset, I don't think it works with the piano at all. I think it's kind of distracting, and it's not adding anything into the original piano texture or piano sound that we have. So let's keep going. Again, not a huge fan of that. I'm looking for something warm to layer underneath. Maybe this. That's quite nice. There. I think that's lovely. So this preset is layering in with the piano. It's not taking away from it, but it's really adding something warm in. It's really adding in an extra texture that we wouldn't get with just the piano on its own. Now, both of these together are quite mellow. There's not a lot of high frequency information coming from the piano that we've designed here. And this particular sound is kind of mainly low mid focused. So I think we should add in another layer that's more focused on high frequencies so that it will complement this layer and also hopefully complement the piano. So let's for a second, let's just clone this. And I'll do the same thing, copy the pattern. But paste it in, and we'll have a listen, we'll have a cycle through and see what third layer we can layer with our piano and our other synthesizer and see which sounds the best. Now, that's nice. It has some high frequencies, but it's a bit too sharp. I'm looking for more mellow kind of warm sounds. Pretty cool for some impact, but again, not what I'm going for. That's too excited. I'm looking for more mellow. So now, I think this particular sound is adding in those high frequencies that were missing, but it's not taking over and it's not making it too excited or impactful. I just want the chords at the moment to be a bit more mellow and kind of chill in the background. Maybe as we come to arrange the track, there'll be a section where I wanted to be really excited, and I might layer in another synthesizer that has more excitement and it maybe like a supersa or something just to give it a bit more impact. But at the moment, this is exactly what I'm looking for with my keys. Let's listen to it in context with the track. And I'll just mute the layers as we play so you can hear the difference. Oops. So I hope you can see that all of these three layers, including the piano, they're all combining to create one instrument that sounds like it has a lot of different textures and is quite interesting and pleasing to listen to. It's also adding a good amount of depth to the piano. It's making it thicker and it sounds more full. So like that, we can do the same thing with our melody. So let's just take that and we'll have a listen to it. And again, I'm just going to clone one of these and I'll copy my melody over into a new synthesizer. And because I'm looking for lead sounds this time, I'm gonna change my sound bank. Maybe we'll stick with the same somatics pack and just go with some lead sounds here. Let's see what they sound like layered in with our original melody sound. Okay, now, I actually think that the first one that we selected was pretty nice. So I'm gonna load that back up. So I might test it at different octaves, so I'm gonna pitch it down and see what it sounds like down here. No, I think I preferred it at the original octave. So, yeah, I think these two sounds are really coming together nicely to create one full and thick lead instrument. So again, let's have a listen in the context of our track. Whoops, need to switch to Song view. Now, just one more quick thing I want to talk about is with your layers. So, for example, with these cord layers. You can pan them left and right to try and create a sort of stereo spread or to try and make the cords sound a bit wider. So, for example, I'm going to press play, and I'll pan the instruments out a bit to the left and to the right, and hopefully it will sound like it gets a bit wider. And the reason it sounds wider is because you have now created a difference between the left side and the right side. So because there's more of this instrument in the left side and more of this instrument in the right, those two different sounds are making your ears perceive the sound as being wider. So let's again have a listen in the context of the track, and then I think we can move on. 14. 808 Science: Let's look at the eight oh eight base. This is the cornerstone of modern music production, especially in genres like Trap, hip hop, and drill. Mastering the eight oh eight means understanding not just how to make them sound good, but how to make them move, sing, and stand out in your track. Now, when I talk about eight oh eight, I'm actually referring to the kick and the bass at the same time. Traditionally, the eight oh eight is actually a kick drum. But in modern music, it's used to refer to that classic trap kick and base. Now, you can download some eight oh eight packs that come with a kick and base kind of mixed together, and you can drag them into your pattern and obviously build your track that way. I think FL Studio even has a few that come free. Let me just double check. They're just kicks. There, that collider slack kick would probably be an eight oh eight. So as you can hear, it's got a kick and a bass kind of mixed together. But if you really want your tracks to sound good, professional and unique, you're going to build your own. So for this, we're going to head into our drum pattern. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to load in another instance of serum. And for this, we're looking for some base sounds. So I'm going to see if any of my sound banks might fit the kind of base that we're looking for here, which is going to have a lot of sub. So let's see. Future bass is probably a pretty good option because the bass sounds in that genre usually match up pretty well with what we're doing here. Oops. I'm always doing that. Okay, let's just start here for a second. So before we do anything, we have to be aware of what the eight oh eight bass actually does. So in this genre of music, the eight oh eight usually follows the kick. So because of that, for me, I'm just going to come in here and I'm going to copy the kick pattern, and I'm going to paste it in to my bass instrument. Then I'm going to elongate out the notes. Like this. And I usually leave a gap between each note just to give the base a bit of bounce, but we can adjust this after. But for now, let's just leave a bit of a gap. I'm then go to reset my velocities back to around zero. And we'll just see what this sounds like now. Whoops. Okay, it might be a bit high, so I'm gonna pitch it down. Mm hmm. Okay, I'm not a huge fan of the bass sound, but there's still some adjustments we need to do with the actual bass melody or bass pattern here. So, if you remember from before, the key of our track is actually in D minor. So I'm going to pitch the notes up to D. And also, because we have chords in our track, the base is going to have to follow those chords. So if we look at what the root notes are for the cords, whoops, we have A sharp, C, D, and F. So let's head back to our base, which is in our drum pattern. I might just rename that now, actually, so we know what we're looking at. Drums. Whoops. Crumbs. Okay. And we'll head into our base. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to pitch the base to the root notes of the chords. So we've got A sharp. We've got C. This D is fine, and then we've got F. So next, we're going to create an eight oh eight slide. So these can add drama and expressiveness to your beats. With a third party plug in like serum. So this is a plug in that's not made by FL Studio itself. You will have to turn on something called portamento. So that's here on serum, so I'm just going to make sure that's turned on. And you also want to make sure with serum that it's set to mono. But with most synthesizers, the Porta function is perfect. So let's just see if we can now create a slide. I'm gonna place another note up the octave here and see what this does. And maybe another one here. So we've got D up the octave. Somewhere there. Hops that's D sharp. Mmmmmm So now we've created two slides in our pattern, and I'm liking the way it sounds and where they're placed. What I want to do now is create a more melodic eight oh eight baseline. Nothing too drastic, just something to create a bit of movement in the bass. So, for example, if we're thinking about our base as being a melody, we can go back to our concept of contour. So we know the bass starts out here and then it slides up to this note here. And then the next note it's playing is way down here again. So I think a better contour would be to jump up. I like the slide, but then to step down. That we can step down to this main root note for our next chord. So for this, I'm going to go back to my cords, and I'm going to see what notes are being used in that cord and can I use them in the base. So we already are using A sharp and we slide up to this A sharp in the base, so I could use D, or I could use F. Okay? Let's try D and F in our base and see what that sounds like. So let's move this note up to D and see how that sounds. Mm. D. And now let's try S. Ed. I like the sound of the F here, and I also think it's a better contour. I think jumping from this A sharp up to this A sharp and then jumping back down to D just to step down to C is a bit extreme for the contour. So I like how we're jumping up, but then we're stepping down to the F and stepping down to the C. So I'm going to do the same thing here. We're in the chord of D. Let's go back. Let's check what notes we might be able to use. So in our D, we could use A or we could use F or we could try a C. So let's go back to our base, and we'll try some of them notes out. Well, we can't use D because we're already on D. We probably can't use F because the next chord is going to be F, so this is just going to kind of stutter on the same note, whereas I wanted to step down. So let's try that C. Mm. And now we can try this with some different bass sounds. So as I said before, I'm not a huge fan of this base sound. Let's see what it sounds like with some other base sounds. Now, this is all fine and well, but if you are using FL Studio as your main dw, then it actually comes with a very useful plug in that has a lot of good eight oh eight bases that come with the plugin. And to be honest, when making beats, this is what I use the most for my eight oh weights. So I'm going to replace the Serum plug in with something called Flex. And here in Flex, there's a pack called mobile tuned eight oh eight base. These are really, really good. Let's have a listen. However, when you're using FL stock plugins like Flex, or if you're using an eight oh eight sample, what you can do to create slides, and it's much better actually, is to replace the note that you want to slide up to with a slide note. So we're going to turn on the slide function. So that's highlighted. And we're going to put in our new note, which is here. And the longer the note, the longer the slide up will be whereas the shorter the note, the quicker it'll slide up. So let's see how this sounds. Okay. Now, that's a bit too slow for me, so I'm just going to shorten it by another half a step. And for me, personally, I think this little section here could do with a little bit more movement just to make the base a bit more interesting. So I think I'm going to get the base to alternate between two different notes and then come back to C. So I can, of course, just use the C above. Like this. Oops, I don't want these to be slide notes. I don't want it to slide up. I just wanted to play the notes. This now adds in a little bit of movement just to break up the monotony of these, you know, really long held notes, especially when the pattern repeats in the second bar. So now from here, I like my baseline melody, my eight oh eight bass melody. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to expand it out because if you remember from before, we actually swapped the last two chords of the pattern around. So I'm going to come over here and I'm going to swap them. So to do that, I basically want to move this D up to an F and this F down to a D. The F should now slide up to another F. So it's currently sliding up to a D. Let's bring this up to another F. And our C note here looks like it could work because we're sliding up and then we're still stepping down. But I'm just going to go and double check and make sure that the C fits the F chord. So I'm going to go into my other chord pattern. It's the second last chord in the pattern, and it's F. So can I use a C? Yes, I can. So let's go back and see how this sounds now. Once my bassline is built, and I've used and I've used the drum pattern to inform the rhythm of the bass, I'm going to take it, I'm going to cut. So it's no longer in my drum pattern, and now I'm going to create a new pattern called base. And I'll just paste that in. And now I can drop it into my arrangement. 15. Advanced Bass Design: Alright, so we've built our base. Now let's talk about some advanced techniques to make it sound even more professional. So we're going to use things like distortion and top layers. So firstly, a very simple thing we can do is we can take the base that we've designed. We can assign it to a mixer track. And now we can use some heavy saturation or distortion to try and make it pop. So if I use something called a wave shaper, I can add a bit of grit into the sound by drawing a kind of saw shape. So this is it before. And after. Might be a bit too much. And as you can see, you can play around with these different shapes on the waveshaper and create some interesting sounds. However, if you want it to sound much cleaner, what we can do is we can create a top layer. So this is a kind of simple concept. We're just going back to our layering techniques where we layer another bass sound on top of this one. So at the moment, it sounds like this. It's pretty clean, but because this genre is heavily focused on the eight oh eight base, designing your own sort of signature bass sound with layering or effects can really make you stand out. So let's load in serum. I'm going to copy our base melody. I'm going to paste it into our serum plug in. And I just need to make sure slide notes don't work on third party plug ins, so I'm going to have to change this to being a normal note. And the same goes for this one. And the same goes for this one. Oh, and this one as well. Okay. So now let's find a nice bass sound. I'm going to scroll right down and see if I have anything down here that might work. Ooh, maybe something in this base quake. I like the sound of that. Maybe there's something interesting here we can layer on top of our other bass. Whoa, okay. This is not the genre we're looking for. Earth shattering dub step. No, thank you. We're just looking for a gritty layer that we can put on top of our other clean bass sound. Let's try something in this the stranger sounds Volume one. So this is obviously a pack based on the sounds from stranger things. Let's layer that in and see how it sounds with our original bay sound. So that could be a pretty cool layer for our base. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to affect it. At the moment, it's a bit too clean, but I think it has potential to sound quite gritty. So what I want to do, and this first step is quite important is I'm going to use an EQ and I'm going to create a low cut. So with our first band here, we're going to change the type to high pass. Or low cut filter. High pass and low cut just mean the same thing. And also, we're going to be going through EQ a little bit in the mixing section of this course, so you don't need to worry about anything else right now. Just know that you can right click on the first band and you can change it to a high pass, and that's going to cut out the base frequencies that we don't need in the second base sound. And I'm just going to roll them off up to maybe about 150. And the reason for this is you don't want two different base sounds occupying the same frequency range. So remember before when we were layering the cords, I talked about how you want to make decisions based on the frequency range. So, for example, our eight oh eight here, it's quite deep. It's quite basi. It's taking up those base frequencies. This layer that we added in is also quite basi, and it also has a lot of base information that we don't want to be fighting with our original base sound that we liked. So that's why I've used the EQ here to cut the base frequencies out of our layer. So hopefully, it sounds a bit cleaner now Here's what it sounds like now on its own. Before? And after. Now, with this layer, we can really try doing some fun stuff to create an interesting sound. So maybe we'll use that waveshaper that we looked at before to create a bit of grit. Maybe we'll use a small bit of distortion. So perhaps we'll use something like, I don't know, maybe fruity hardcore, which is an amp effect. But before we do, this is probably going to be quite loud because an amplifier literally amplifies the sound. So I'm going to turn this down just in case I damage my ears and yours. I'm not a huge fan of that sound. Let's swap it out for maybe blood overdrive. And then maybe for a bit of stereo whiteness, we can put a chorus effect on it. Let's have a listen in the context of our track. You also don't have to use a bass sound. So you can use a lead instrument as well for something interesting. So let's add a lead, and we might have to pitch this down. Oops. I just want to solo this. It. And let's try that with some of the effects we had. Maybe not the chorus. 16. Signal Chain: One more thing that I didn't mention was the order of these plug ins. So originally, these plug ins were like this. We had the waveshaper, the blood overdrive, and the frucorus. I've also changed the preset that we're using to this. Sorry, originally, it would have sounded like this. The way the audio comes through these effects is from top to bottom. So it's passing through the E Q, and then that signal is being sent to the waveshaper, and then that signal is being sent to the overdrive, and then that is being sent to the chorus. So that means I'm distorting the sound and then I'm adding a chorus. But I think it'll be cool to distort the chorus. So I'm going to move the chorus up to the top and see how that sounds. And if we swap the two distortions, that can change the sound, too. So really make sure you play around with the different layer sounds, and that you play around with the different effects and the different order of the effects. Cause you can really create some cool sounds. 17. Basics of Sound Design & Tweaking Presets: So let's now look at the fundamentals of sound design with a focus on customizing the presets. Using presets can really save time, but knowing how to tweak them can allow you to craft unique sounds tailored to your track. Adjusting your sounds to match your track's vibe makes sure that they fit in the mix. So although we won't be learning about sound design and creating synthesizer presets, we are going to learn how to manipulate them to fit our track. So to do that, I might just look at our base preset that we were working with in the last lecture. So I'm going to turn off all of the effects that we used. I'm going to turn it back up, and I'm going to mute the original base sound. So this is what the preset looks and sounds like on its own. Mm But if we want to tweak it, there's a few general areas we should be looking at. And those are the oscillators. So in this case, there's two. There's oscillator A and oscillator B. This is the source of the sound. These generate the raw waveforms like sine, square, saw, triangle, et cetera. So, for example, for this particular sound, there's two oscillators being used at the same time. So let's play the sound and have a listen to what they sound like each on their own, and then maybe I'll turn them both off, and all that should be left is just a noise layer. Now, to tweak this, we can change the oscillator shape by maybe grabbing something else, a different shape. And as you can see, it's changed the shape of the waveform. So this will have changed the fundamental sound. And we can also do other things here like detuning and using the unison. So Unison duplicates the signal, and then the detune knob will use what's called micro shifting to sort of tune those duplicates slightly differently and make the sound a little bit thicker and a little bit fatter. Mm. Mmm. Another aspect of a synthesizer that can be adjusted is this filter section. So with serum, you can change the shape of the filter. So, for example, let's go for low pass 12. And this is essentially like an EQ. So the low pass is literally a low pass. It's only letting the low frequencies be heard and it's cutting off all the high frequencies. Mm. Mmm. Oops, I didn't realize the cut off knob was actually linked to one of the envelopes, so just ignore this for 2 seconds. Okay, so now we should only hear low frequencies. And if we increase the resonance, you can see it's adding a little kind of notch. And this is going to make it kind of squeaky. Now, not all presets are going to be linked. So, for example, if I pick another one, This one's cut off is just naturally set to a low pass filter. So for example, with a low pass filter and the cut off wheel, you can do that classic kind of electronic music buildup. Or you can change the shape for some really interesting sounds. W And the next thing I want to talk about are the ADS envelopes. Or, in this case, we have ADS, H, and or. So A refers to attack, and it's just how quickly the sound can reach its full volume. A lot of pads will often use that attack time to create a sort of swell effect. Then we have the decay and the sustain. Now, these are kind of linked together. So the sustain is basically the volume level that's held when the note is sustained. And then the decay is the time taken for the sound to drop to the sustain level. So at the moment, you're not going to really see the decay because the sustain is set so high. But if I bring it down, you can see the decay here now. So if I adjust the decay time now, you can see that it's stretching out how long it's gonna take for the note to reach the sustain level. So let's hit play and see what these two knobs actually do in action. I'm just gonna bring the attack down. And then I'm just going to turn this sustain back up. The release is how long it takes the sound to fade after you take your finger off the note or literally the note is released. So looking at this envelope, we can see that the release is pretty fast. You know, the note comes up to full volume very quickly. It stays at that volume, and then when you let go of the note, it drops back down really quickly. But if we elongate the release, you'll hear that the notes start to kind of overlap each other. So I'm not sure if you can fully hear that. I'm just going to grab a different preset that might be easier to hear. Maybe not that one. And in fact, just to further demonstrate the point, this would be much easier to hear in an arp where the notes are short. H And finally, the other kind of basic element that I'm often tweaking is here in the effect section. So most presets will come with their own effects. They'll often come with things like delay and reverb. And usually most will have an EQ and some sort of compressor. But, for example, maybe you find a plug and you really love the sound of it, but it's got too much reverb. You can just turn that off. And So typically with presets, I won't really be touching the oscillators, maybe very rarely. It's mostly some filter stuff that I'll be doing and also the ADSR down here. But don't be afraid to play with any of these knobs that you have on your synthesizer because they all do something and you might discover something cool as a kind of happy accident. Now, if anyone would like a full kind of sound design course, where we go through maybe serum or other different synthesizers, I can absolutely do that. Just let me know. And just in case you think that, you know, only this applies to serum, I'm going to load in a different synthesizer. Maybe we'll try vital. So now this synthesizer looks completely different. So let's grab a quick preset, maybe some kind of maybe some kind of keys sound super pluck. And what I'll do is really quickly, I'll just take this and bring it into vital instead. And it didn't paste it to the start. I don't know why. Okay. And if I go back to our kind of general view, we can see here that we have the oscillator. Okay, oscillator one. We've got our attack, our decay is over here, our sustain, and our release. So, for example, let's tweak a few of these. And we can also change things in the oscillator, as well to make the whole sound kind of fundamentally different. Now, I don't think we have any of the filters turned on here, but if we want to, we can, so we can turn on a filter. And now we've got our classic high pass filter. And we can change the shape. So with these three things, with the oscillator, the ADSR envelope, and the filter, you can really, really tweak the overall sound of the preset. And the main reasons I would do this is, you know, if the preset is a bit too bright or a bit too dark, or if it kind of sounds perfect, but, you know, some of the notes are a bit too long or they're not getting cut off as quick as I want. I can adjust the ADSR, and I can change it and tweak it to be the way that I want. 18. Digital Crate Digging: What is Sampling?: Sampling is the process of taking a piece of existing audio and then incorporating it into your music. This could be a melody from an old jazz record or maybe a vocal snippet from a TikTok video or even sounds from the environment around you. Sampling is everywhere in modern beat making, especially in genres like trap, drill, and hip hop. The goal of sampling isn't just to copy and paste, it's about transforming sounds into something new and personal. From iconic beats by Ja Dilla and Kanye West to modern trap classics by Metro Boman, sampling has always been about creativity and innovation. So why is sampling essential for beat makers? Well, first of all, it can give you instant inspiration. One sample can spark an idea or set the mood for your beat, especially when you're starting with a blank canvas. You can also use samples for unique textures. So whether it's a soulful vocal chop or an eerie synth loop, samples let you introduce unique textures into your track. Sampling can also give you complex harmonies, rhythms, and tambres instantly. No need to create everything from scratch. And finally, sampling lets you connect your beats to the larger history of music. It's a way to pay respect to the past while crafting something fresh and new. So where are the best places to find samples? Digital crate digging is all about finding the perfect samples. And thanks to the Internet, you don't need a stack of vinyl records to dig for gold. So, Luperman, I've already mentioned this like two or three times during the course, and it's a massive library of royalty free loops and samples. You can filter by genre, by key, by BPM and find exactly what you need. In fact, the four audio examples in the previous slide all came from Luperman. Then we have social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. TikTok has loads of quirky audio clips that can be used for sampling. You can download or even screen record the audio and then transform it with effects, pitch shifting, or chopping. The same goes for YouTube, where you could maybe search for some weird live performances, bold forgotten songs, or even just random things like forest ambience or waterfall sounds. Uses hive. May. Half. PoidePshalp. Yeah, that's done. Next, you have paid platforms and sample packs. Platforms like splice, sounds.com, and Somatics offer curated high quality samples for professional use. Or you can purchase samples from companies like Ghost Hack or what about. These can be great for trap and drill producers looking for some modern sounds. And then we have the public domain. So sites like archive.org or the Public Domain Review offer access to audio recordings, classical compositions, and more. Anything in the public domain is free to use without copyright. So look for older recordings or classical pieces to add a vintage vibe to your beats. The public domain includes any work created before a certain date, which is currently 1928, or any track that's been released into the public domain. By the sea, by the sea. By the beautiful sea, you and me, you and me. Here are some best practices for turning your samples into professional quality beats. Be original. Don't just loop the sample as it is, flip it, stretch it, or chop it until it feels like your own creation. Blend the samples into your beat. So use EQ, reverb, compression, make the sample fit naturally into the beat. Stay organized, and this one's important. Label your samples by key and by BPM to save time during your workflow. If you spend a day maybe downloading lots of different samples and you curate them into one folder, you're not going to remember in ten weeks time what BPM and which key those samples were in. So spend the time when you download them to mark them by key and by BPM. Make sure you experiment. The best beats often come from unexpected combinations or happy accidents. But always make sure to respect copyright. Always double check the licensing of your samples. Public domain and royalty free sources are the safest bets if you're planning to release commercially. 19. Flipping Samples: In this lecture, we're going to explore flipping samples, where we take existing audio and transform it into something entirely unique. So I know we already have a sort of vocal sample here in our track. But I think I'm going to drag in a different sample, just to demonstrate the techniques. And then afterwards, we might take one or two of them techniques and apply it to the vocal sample that we already have in our track. Plus, I think something like a piano loop is a little easier to listen to on its own, as opposed to just a vocal sample. So I'm going to bring the piano, sample into a blank part of the track and I'll just show you what it sounds like. So once it's in the playlist, we have to match the sample's tempo to our tempo. Now, I don't need to worry about this because when you download a sample from Luperman, it tells you what tempo it is. So on Luperman, the person who uploaded this said the sample was 140. So I'm going to type in 140 and see how that affects the sound. Now, to me, it looks like it's after stretching it out quite a bit. That sounds fine to me. But if you wanted to kind of shorten that, you can use this stretch function, and you can either, I suppose, stretch the audio halfway. Or another way to do that would be when you are fitting the sample to your tempo, instead of typing in 140, we would go with 70 instead. So now, the first technique we're going to look at is chopping the sample up. And I think the best way to do that in FL Studio is to use a plugin called SliceX. So I'm going to add that to a new pattern. And what you want to do with this is drag in the original sound. And basically, what it does is it splits your sample into different markers that are then mapped to different keys on the keyboard. And you can use your piano roll in here, if I just delete these. You can use your piano roll to play different parts of the sample. So what you could go about doing then is maybe use these sample slices to make something new. Maybe something quick like this. Or you could do some fun stuff like where we use the stamp tool from before, we might stamp in a random scale here just so it highlights some specific notes. And then maybe we drag these around something like this. And then we can take them, use the arpeggiator tool and see can we create something new and interesting? And then, obviously, you can take that and paste it back into your arrangement, maybe add in your drums or whatever, and you've got a cool, kind of sampled beat. Now, SlicX also works really well with vocals where you can create some really cool vocal chops. Another simple technique we can try is reversing the sample. So in FL Studio, that's pretty easy. We just open the audio clip and we can click on this reverse. But to tweak it further and to keep that original cord progression, what we could do is we could just easily slice this audio clip into its individual cords. And then we'll rearrange them in our arrangement. So because it's backwards, I'm just going to rearrange them like this starting from back to front. And now we're keeping the original ord progression, but all of the cords are actually reversed. Or we can make it more creative and maybe we flip some of these around, changing the order and making something completely new out of what we already had. Also, I'll just show you really quickly a very cool technique. So I'm just undoing what we did there until the sample is back to its reverse state where we have kept the original chord progression. And then what I can do is I can duplicate it. So to do that, you need to use this little waveform symbol on the top left of the clip. Then click Make Unique. This will make it a totally new clip. So then I can undo the reversing. Oops, I didn't mean to stretch it. So then I can undo the reversing. And then I can layer the original kind of piano clip on top of the reversed version. And because the reversed version is playing the same chords as the original version, we'll get a cool kind of haunty reversed chord sound. This would probably be easier to hear if I was to stretch it out. I'll just do that really quickly just to give an example. I'll stretch maybe just the first two chords. Or, maybe I'll be able to build it as it plays. Then we can also chop it up here in the playlist. So you've seen me chop it manually, but FL Studio can actually chop sounds automatically. If we go down here to chop. You can get it to auto slice based on peaks and transients in the audio, or you can use some preset chop patterns. So, for example, let's go down to this complex section and we'll put in something like, I don't know, stutter three. And then what you can do is you can take these individual slices yourself and rearrange them into something new. So you can take completely random parts of this. And this works really well for vocals. So if you chop up a vocal sample like this and just take some random parts from it, you can make some really cool rhythmic vocal chops. Let's just try something really quickly. So maybe you can make a little loop like this. H Then there are some other simple things we can do like shifting the pitch all the way up. L L Or shifting all the way down. And maybe we could even try reversing what we have while keeping the pitch shift while keeping the samples chopped. A A so I'm just going to set the sample back to its original state. And I'm just gonna stretch it to about halfway to speed it up. So now we shoaul be back to the original piano sound. Oh, no, it's still being reversed. So now let's add it to a mixer trek. In FL Studio, there's a really cool time based manipulation plugin called Gross Beat. Let's open that now for a second on our piano sample. Basically, Gross Beat will use a preset pattern to chop up and manipulate your sample. Oh. And then you can also layer that. I'll just set this to Complex two for a second. You can layer it with some volume based manipulation. So let's leave it with Transcate four. We might use maybe Complex five here, and then we'll reverse the original sample and pitch it down. Now, this is going to sound completely different to that original piano sound that we had before. And then, of course, you can layer that with other effects, maybe a fruity flangus and we'll throw in some overdrive, as well. I'll just turn it down in case it's very loud. Flipping samples is all about blending creativity and technical skill. From slicX chops to advanced techniques like, you know, gross beat and then using fun effects. You can really take a sample of anything and turn it into something different. 20. Legalities of Sampling: In this lecture, we're going to look at sampling legally. What's safe versus what's risky. So why should you make sure to sample legally? Sampling is one of the most creative tools in a producer's arsenal. But with great power comes great responsibility, legal responsibility. And here's why sampling legally is critical. Number one, you can avoid lawsuits. Using copyright material without permission can get you in some legal trouble. Two, you can also protect your reputation. So legal disputes can damage your credibility and your relationship in the music industry. By sampling legally, you can avoid number one, which is lawsuits, which in turn avoids number two, which is damaging your reputation. Finally, the first two are pretty rare unless you're a top 100 billboard artist. But number three definitely does apply to everyone, and that's the freedom to monetize your work. So either clearing your samples for use or just using royalty free kind of public domain material ensures you can monetize your music without restriction. So let's look at this in a bit more detail. What's safe and what is risky? Well, firstly, in the safe category, we have royalty free samples. Samples labeled as royalty free can be used in your music without paying ongoing royalties. You'll find these on websites like Luperman or Splice or in paid royalty free sample packs. Then we have public domain. Material in the public domain is free to use without any legal permission or royalties. Works created before 1928 to 1930 are generally in the public domain. Some more recent songs have been released into the public domain for use. But if you are using these, just be careful with recordings. So some modern recordings of old public domain compositions may actually still be copyrighted. It's not the song they've copyrighted, but the recording. Then I've put in things like Tik Tok and YouTube videos, but I've really stressed the word original here. So, for example, TikToks and viral videos can be exciting and kind of unique sources for sampling. But to stay safe, you need to sample user generated viral content. So that would be those, you know, vine like videos on TikTok if the creator made it entirely original. So an example would be a funny spoken phrase or a unique sound effect created by the video's uploader. You can take sounds from their environment, maybe like a train horn or clapping, as long as they captured it themselves. The risk with this comes with derived content. So videos containing copyrighted background music or clips from movies and TV or maybe remixes of other works, they can't be legally sampled without permission. The best case scenario would be to reach out to the creator for their permission. Now for what's risky. So first of all, what is copyright? Well, copyright protects the creator's right to their work, and this includes songs, recordings, and even sound effects. In music, both the composition, so the melody and the lyrics and the recording are usually copyrighted separately. So an example of this would be sampling a famous artist's track without their permission, using music from movies, TV shows, or maybe advertisements without clearance. And some common misconceptions with sampling include, you know, if I only use 5 seconds, it's fine. There's no minimum length for copyright infringement. Even one single recognizable note can lead to issues. And secondly, I chopped it up beyond recognition, so I'm safe. Well, if the original work can still be identified, it could still be considered infringement. So let's say you're dead set on using a particular sample and you want to clear it. First of all, you'll need permission from both the owner of the composition. So usually the publishers, and you'll also need permission from the owner of the recording, which is usually the label. Once you have their permission, you can start negotiating terms. Sample agreements usually involve an upfront payment or royalties on the sale of your track. And lastly, if you are going down this route, just know that because it involves the law, you need to document everything. So make sure you get written agreements outlining the terms of use. So what's the best practice for sampling safely? Stick to royalty free sources. Start with platforms like Lupermin or Splice for hassle free sampling. Transform your samples, so manipulate the sample significantly. Chop it, pitch shift, reverse, and layer, create something completely unrecognizable from the original. Clear your samples when necessary. If you absolutely need a copyrighted sample, follow the proper steps to clear it. Know the law. Familiarize yourself with copyright rules in your region. Terms like fair use have different interpretations depending on where you live. Keep records. Save documentation for every sample, including where you found it and its licensing terms. And to be ultra ultra safe, create your own content, record or design your own sounds, and then incorporate them into your tracks for the ultimate creative and legal freedom. So just lastly, here are some useful resources. So for clearing samples, I would recommend using tracklib. The actual process of going about clearing a sample is really long winded and it can be quite expensive. So I would just recommend using tracklib for pre cleared music for sampling. For free and royalty free samples, use lubrien, splice, somatics. What about Ghost tack, vandalism, any of those sample packs that you can pay for, and they come with a royalty free license. And then for public domain, use websites like archive.org, usuPen and PD info or public Domain info. 21. Arrangement Structure: Before we dive into finally arranging the beat, it's important to know what each part of a track is. Every track is made up of different sections that help tell a story and keep the listener engaged. So let's break them down. So first up, we have the intro. The intro is at the very beginning of your track, and it's like the first impression. The intro introduces the mood, the vibe, and it gives the listener a taste of what's to come. So the intro is usually pretty short. It's around four to 16 bars. It might have a simple melody, atmosphere or maybe just a rhythm to set the tone, and very often, it won't have any drums or any sort of full arrangement here. It just builds anticipation. The purpose of the intro is to grab attention and prepare the listener for what's coming. So often intros don't feature the main elements of the song, but they hint at them or introduce a key part of the sound like maybe a main melody or a main chord progression. So as we go through song structure, I've included a case study example. This is a track I made years ago with a small Indie rapper who wanted to hear his lyrics on a beat. It's nothing fancy, but it gives an idea of song structure. Some sil on right here. The power of the dream, ladies and gentlemen. He tag Dream Chaser. G. Next, we have the verse. So the verse is where the main ideas or themes of your track are introduced. In songs with lyrics, this is where the artist starts to sing or rap about the story or the message. So with the verse, it can be short or long, often eight to 32 bars. Usually, it comes after the intro. It has a bit more musical development compared to the intro with maybe drums and bass and more instruments involved, and the melody here often develops the theme of the track. Its purpose is to give context to the song, laying the foundation before the catchy part comes in, the chorus or the hook. In an instrumental beat, this is where you're going to establish the rhythm, the texture, and the vibe. Black Morrow. Crystal clean, dove out, sit in on that lean. Imagine worry, just like Charlie Sheep. That's the power of the dream in thy mansion, Scarface. Like the torch, you want the place. My bag Wi no distress. I thank the father for his grave on the might. It's some Sya Northwest Mayo. Trying fast in that polo. Screaming out. Yolo on the bench smoking rolling. Thinking you were boss with that hoodie. Screaming out was someone love me? No, they no mercy and see you next, we have the chorus, the hook or the catchy part. The chorus or what is sometimes called the hook is a part of the track that is repeated multiple times and is usually the most memorable. It's the part that listeners can easily sing along with or get stuck in their heads. So this is usually the same length or shorter than the verses, so about eight to 16 bars. It's usually louder, more energetic and features a memorable melody or kind of lyrical phrase. It's often the part of the song that's repeated, either verbatim or with minor variations. If you hear a part of the song that feels like it's the main point of the track, then it's probably the chorus. The chorus makes your song or beat memorable and it brings energy. It's often used to kind of sum up the message of the song so it's catchy and impactful. P. O. TD. P O. TD. PO. TD. Power. Of the dream. G to have the power of the dream. Whoo. Well filling, baby. What? So Verse two is the second iteration of your verse. Its role is to continue the story, the theme, or the rhythm that was introduced in verse one, but with some variation. This keeps the track moving forward and prevents it from feeling static. So lengthwise, it's usually the same length or shorter than the first, about eight to 32 bars. It usually has the same musical idea as the first verse, but more elements to keep it interesting. So maybe you add some melodic variation. You might change up the melody or the rhythm in the second verse to keep things more interesting. There's almost always lyrical changes. So if your track has lyrics, verse two often brings new lyrics to advance the narrative or add depth. Sometimes there's instrumental changes. You can vary the instrumentation by introducing new elements, maybe changing the main instrument, changing the arrangement, or altering the effects. The idea is that Verse two should feel familiar, but it should also offer something fresh and evolved from verse one. Smoking dough, like you whisker like on them beaches in Navita In the pool. Girl, I want to see. Cruising wider in that Roy. It's Phantom, ya. Gold clothes. Gooch. You a girl. Smoogy SmookJmimagine your life. Like it's a movie. Film Director, Malcolm Dee. Flies and Jess. Vegas. Music getting famous that lifestyle. Getting dangerous. These dreams, though are contagious. Follow dreams, ambition. Chase them down. Mission. Hit them hard. Collision. Hate them. Determination. You see you. Next, we have chorus, too. So the second chorus is the second iteration of your first chorus or the Hook. Again, this is the most catchy part of the track. The purpose of having a second chorus is to reinforce the central message or mood of your song. So 90% of the time, it's usually the same length or longer than the first. So eight to 32 bars. And that's just because sometimes chorus two is what the entire track is building towards, as it's usually the final chorus in the track. Sometimes chorus two is a literal copy and paste of chorus one, or it can be the same kind of musical idea but more excited and more full. You want the second chorus to hit just as hard as the first. So make sure that the melody and the rhythm stay recognizable. Add some variation. So consider slight variations in the second chorus, such as adding more layers, bringing in new instruments or using harmonies to make the second chorus feel much more big and much more powerful. The first chorus is subtle or kind of subdued, then chorus two can often be a chance to bring more energy, either through production choices or vocal delivery. Chorus two is important for emphasizing the main theme of your track and making it more memorable for the listener. BO T D. BOT, D. BOT D. BOT D. BOT D. BOT D. BOT D. W we have the bridge. The bridge is a short section that provides contrast to the rest of the track. It typically happens after a few verses and choruses to give the listener something different before returning to the familiar parts. It may sound different from the verses and choruses in terms of rhythm, melody or instrumentation. It's usually short around eight to 16 bars. It may sound different to the verses and choruses in terms of rhythm, melody, and instrumentation. It usually comes after a couple of choruses and gives a sense of change or buildup. The idea with a bridge is to keep things fresh and interesting and prevent the track from feeling repetitive. You can add emotion or tension before bringing back the main parts of the song. Sometimes the bridge can be replaced with a third verse, like in this example. Warm weather. You want a black. Thinking big. You want. These dreams give you a shot. A dran rush. Woo. It's a light. In LA Boga. Second s. Mahony My dreams complete. A tire Shop of flies bare in the cloth. Beef. Let's see on. Good big dreams. Let's go. Be me. But of dreams. In there. And then we have the outro. This is the end of the track. It wraps up everything and gives the listener a sense of closure. Is usually pretty short, eight to 16 bars. But in some other genres like maybe drum and bass and trap, it can be longer around 32 bars. But this is usually just to allow dejas to have time to mix that track into a different track. It's often a slow fade out or a reduction in the instruments. The outro might repeat some of the earlier parts like the hook or a simplified version of the verse, and it's the ending section that leaves the listener with a sense of finality. It might feel like the song is coming to a gentle stop or fading away into the background. In the track I'm about to play, the original lyrics from verse one are re used to give a sense of familiarity and closure. Black Marvel, crystal clean. Job Jar sipping on a leaf. Imagine roaring like Charlie Sheep. That's the power of the dream. Who So before we jump back into the Daw, I just wanted to give a few little examples of some structure templates. So this basic structure is one that works for most songs and most beats, including trap, hip hop, drill, and many other genres. It begins with an intro, which starts the track, setting the mood. Then we get a verse developing the musical theme and giving some space for the rhythm and the melody, a chorus or a hook, the most memorable and catchy part of the track, another verse keeping the development going, then another chorus or hook to reinforce the core of the track and an outtro which ends the track fading out or bringing things to a close. Then we've got double structure, which is good for a song that needs more verses like a rap song or a beat with lots of lyrical content. This begins with an intro. It will have two iterations of a verse, then a chorus, then two iterations of a verse, another chorus, and the outtro. But structure really isn't that complicated. If you just follow these three simple rules, you can kind of do anything you want. Rule one is to always use some sort of intro. Even if that's only one to 2 bars of a kind of reverse symbol or something, just make sure that something is introducing the track. Always have at least one chorus. So you don't need to have two choruses or three choruses, but you do need to have something that the track is building towards. You can have a track that's 10 minutes long where 9 minutes of that is a buildup just to one big chorus at the end. And lastly, try not to repeat sections more than twice. So for example, don't have something like intro, verse, verse, verse, verse, chorus, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, verse, verse, chorus outtro. Keep it to a max of two. So intro, verse, chorus chorus, first verse, chorus chorus Outro. You don't always have to end on an outtro either. Some songs end after the final chorus, and your intro doesn't always have to go into a verse. Some intros go straight into the chorus. And sometimes the intro is the chorus, just a very stripped back version of it. 22. Main Character Syndrome (The Main Element Trick): Let's look at one of the most effective techniques for making beats that sticks in your listeners minds, the main element trick. This approach is about identifying and building your entire track around a single standout sound or idea. Whether that's a sample, a melody, or even a rhythmic groove, this main element becomes the anchor that holds everything together. By the end of the lecture, you'll not only understand how to find and emphasize your main element, but also how to structure your entire beat around it for maximum impact. So what is the main element trick? Well, it's simple but incredibly powerful, and it's the idea of focusing your track around one defining sound or one musical idea. This doesn't mean that other parts of your beat aren't important. They are, but the main element is the star of the show. For example, your main element could be a vocal chop that catches the ear, haunting melody, maybe that sets the mood or a driving rhythm that keeps the beat going. This concept is key to making your beats memorable, cohesive, and easy for listeners to connect with. It's what gives your track identity. So let's talk about why this works so well. In a world where listeners are flooded with music, simplicity stands out. A single strong element makes your beat instantly recognizable. Think about the most iconic tracks you know. Chances are they have a defining feature. For example, the Daft Punk vocal sample in Kanye West's stronger or the piano melody and bassline in doctor Dre's Stildre. Plus, by focusing on one central idea, you can create a full track faster and with less risk of overcomplicating things. Having a standout element gives you something to evolve and manipulate over the course of a track, keeping it fresh without having to reinvent the wheel every few bars. This is what we've been doing all along. We started with the sample, and that sample became our main element. Then we built the drums around it, we built a melody around it, and that melody took the spotlight and then drove the beat. And because we used the melody to build the chords, we also ended up building the chords around that sample, as well. All I'm trying to do now is put a name to the process and refine it so that you can consciously use it in every beat that you make. Mastering this concept will make your tracks more intentional, more cohesive, and more impactful. So to identify your main element, start with what stands out. When you're experimenting, which sound grabs your attention? That's often your main element. Also, trust your instincts. If something feels exciting or feels kind of memorable, maybe that could be the main element. For example, if you had to describe your beat to someone, what's the first thing you'd mention? Whatever you mention is probably your main element. It could be a melody you play, a sound you tweak in a synth, or even something unexpected like a random sample from YouTube. Once you've identified the main element, the next step is to build the beat around it. Add elements that complement the main element without overshadowing it. For example, if your main element is a vocal sample, use some light percussion or maybe some soft chords to support it. Then use sections like a stripped back verse or a breakdown to give the main element a bit more impact when it finally returns. Use reverb or delay or even some creative filters to make your main elements stand out even more, and always make sure to bring your main element back in key moments, but, you know, add small variations to keep it fresh. Even with such a simple trick, there are mistakes to look out for. So the first one there, don't let other sounds overshadow your main element. It should always be the focus. But with that, you want to vary the repetition. So if your main element stays the same throughout the track, it can get boring. Add subtle changes to evolve it over time. Simplicity is key here, so let your main element shine without too much clutter around it. And make sure to build tension and release by varying the presence of the main element in different sections. So let's just look at a quick example from another track I did with that rapper I was talking about before, where the main element is a piano. It's repeated with some slight variations throughout, and the other elements are built around it rather than fighting for attention. I almost freaking in f. Riding in that ossoyceGld Crone. You mentioned looking like you in Rome down to the docks, good chains glowing on the boats, feeling like your money flowing to follow dreams. Go to a loss. That's a mats, the biggest boss. You wearing that Diamond Gold cross feeling like Irish version Rick Rose. Shall not O that rolls voice. Crowl screaming. Wait to hear your voice. You feeling you make the right choice. Full of excitement. Thanks to the joys With dedication, you will never fall. Block A hate us like Trump builder Ball follow goals. Stand tall. Chase them dreams. Win more. Gold teat at the scene in that tower, all cream. That's the power of the dream. That's what you call Millionaire dream. On the of say if you fill. Now you make them like a n in the cloth with the honest, feel like a fseek not the home. Step out that car in that black suit. 23. Basic Arrangement Using Markers: Now that we know how a track should be structured, we're going to actually structure this beat using markers in FL Studio. Markers are great for organizing your ideas, building transitions, and making your track flow seamlessly. So at the moment, this is just a basic idea of where I think I want the track to go. It's mainly just to visualize the structure of the beat so that we can plan transitions and build around the arrangement. So let's just have a quick listen to what we have so far, and then after that, we'll put down some markers to give a general idea for the arrangement of the beat. So I like the general arrangement so far. I like that we're using the sample in the intro, and I do want it to kind of fade out as the main melody comes in. And then I want to go into this either instrumental or maybe chorus section. And then I know that I want the verse to come in after this. So let's add those three markers first. So on a Mac, if you hit Command and T, first of all, you have to move your playhead to where you want to put the marker. So I want a marker at the start of the playlist. On a Mac, I'm going to hit Command and T or on a Windows, it might be ldT or Control I'm not sure. But one of those will probably do it. And if we double click on this, it'll highlight the whole section for you to loop. Now, at the moment, I don't have any other sections in, so it's thinking I want to loop the whole song. But I'll show you that again when we have more markers. So for now, let's just rename this by right clicking on it, and we can rename this as Intro. Then we'll add another marker. So here, and we'll call this Hook. And then the other marker I want to add right now is a verse here. Verse one. So again, just for example, if I double click on Hook here, it will highlight the Hook for me so that I can loop it and edit it easily. So now I'm going to go and plan out a basic structure for the track. So I know I want this to be a verse. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to expand this out. By maybe 16 bars. A bar in FL Studio is just these two thick lines here. But you'll usually know a bar because of these two different colors. So we have light gray and a dark gray. And within each of these colors, there's going to be 4 bars. So we've got 1 bar, 2 bars, 3 bars, 4 bars, 1 bar, two bar, 3 bars, 4 bars, and four by four is 16. So four of these different colors, we'll give you 16 bars. So if we just listen to this verse for a second, I just want to talk about something as it's playing. So usually every 8 bars, something different will happen. So at the moment, it's the exact same thing. And it gets really, really repetitive. If this pattern was just repeating for 16 bars, it would get really, really stagnant. So basically, I'm looking to do something different from about here onwards. I'm looking to either add something in or make it just a little bit more interesting. And what I'm thinking of doing is because we're going to be heading back into a hook section after our verse, I know that the main melody is coming back in, and I know that the main melody is based on this sample. So I'm thinking if I just copy and paste this sample over, it will kind of hint at the main melody before bringing us back into it. So for this part, I don't really want it to fade out. So I'm gonna get rid of the fade. And then this section will be another hook. So I'll just copy and paste this over. Let's see how that sounds. So then after this second hook, we can add in another verse. So let's add in Oops. Let's add in first. To. And what we can do again is maybe copy and paste what we have for first one. But usually with Verse two, we will be adding something in or making something or changing something to make it a bit different. We don't want a true copy and paste, but right now we're not worried about that. We're just worried about getting an initial kind of structure on the track. And then once we know how the track is supposed to be arranged, that's when we can start really looking at, you know, things like transitions and maybe adding in things, taking things away, making this second hook a bit more full than the first one, and then, you know, varying Verse two. So for the sake of argument, in Verse two, we might bring in that arp that we were making before. Um, I just deleted it because I wasn't a huge fan, but we can add it in just to show that we want something different in verse two. And then, of course, it's probably going to go into another Hook section, so I'll just add one really quickly. You can also right click on the Marker timeline to add another marker. And maybe because this is the third hook, this app might continue. Now, to be honest, I actually think the arp is clashing with the melody. You know, that one element trick we were looking at before. I think the arp is kind of taking away from our main element here, which is the melody. So I'm not going to have an arp in the final version. I know that. And I actually probably will end up changing the arp in verse two. I might not even use it at all. I might just use something different. But I just want to highlight to myself and to you guys, I suppose, that something different should be happening in Verse two, and then this third hook is meant to be a bit more full than the other two hooks. Bridge section. So, for example, let's add in a bridge. And here we might just use the drums for now, and we'll only make it 8 bars long, just something short. But this section will be something totally different to, you know, the melody and the idea that's been running this whole time, just to give us a break because we have been repeating it quite a bit. And then once we do have our little eight bar break here in our bridge, we'll go back into another hook. And this hook will serve as the final hook of the track. So I'm going to bring in all my elements to show that it's a hook, but I also want to use this arp or something just to make it a bit more full. And I'm also thinking because it's the last hook, maybe we might layer in this vocal sample on top of everything else because that kind of feels like what the track is building towards this final hook where the sample comes back in. And then after that, we'll have an outtro. And again, this could be something simple, maybe drums and bass. And then we end. So let's see how that sounds. From from maybe here. And you know what? I'm actually not a huge fan of having an Outro. I think it might be a bit too repetitive. You know, we've kind of got the drums and bass running through for the whole song. So I'm actually just going to delete that, and we'll use this final hook as our Outro. So I'll just extend this out a bit to give us a little blank clip for the Otro just so that FL Studio doesn't loop it straight back around, and it gives us a bit of a reverb tale as the Outro. So now we very clearly have a basic arrangement. We've got our intro which just the sample. The melody comes in as the samples fading out. Then we're hit with the first hook. Then we drop into a verse section where it's just, you know, drums and bass and some pads. The sample comes back in as the kind of buildup towards another hook, which comes here. After this hook, we have verse two, and in verse two, something different is going to happen. But it follows the same sort of structure where the sample comes in, to hint at the hook, the hook comes in again. But this time, it's a bit more built up. It sounds a bit more fuller. It has more elements added. Then we have a bridge which is supposed to be different to break us out of the repetition that's been happening before, and then we go into our final hook to kind of reinforce the main idea of the track, and then the track ends. Obviously, as I said before, we're going to be developing this. We're gonna be adding transitions and effects, filler elements, and just, you know, other things that can really build this track up. But for the moment, I think this is a good basic arrangement. What I'll do now is for anyone who's interested, I'll just play the whole thing. So you can hear what a very basic and raw arrangement might sound like. But there's nothing else in the rest of this lecture, only a play through. So if you're not interested, you can skip ahead. Okay Mm. 24. Loop Variations: So in this lecture, we're going to focus on creating dynamic variations of a loop to keep your tracks engaging. We're going to make three separate versions, less, medium, and more. And we'll adjust the complexity and the energy to fit different parts of the arrangement. The reason why you should create different variations is because well, a static loop can become boring quickly. It also allows the energy in the track to build and break down naturally. And at the very least, you can fit the arrangements needs. So different sections, you know, intro verse Hook. They require different levels of energy. So, okay, let's have a look at creating some different variations of the drums. So at the moment, our drums sound like this. They're pretty built up and they're pretty high energy. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take them and clone them, and I'm going to rename this as drums Less. So for this, I'm definitely going to delete the clap layer. I think having a smaller clap will make this pattern sound like it has less energy. So that means deleting these two layers as well. I'm also going to get rid of our high hat layer. I don't think we need that for the stripped back version. Let's see what this sounds like. And I might also delete these open hats as well at the start of the pattern. So now we're left with the bare basics, the kick drum, a simple clap or snare, one simple high hat pattern, and just some percussion. So, for example, I think this could work well in the verse sections. So let's go ahead and just substitute them. And then to create a medium version. And the reason I'm creating a medium is I think this pattern is kind of our full drum pattern. This kind of has everything in it that we need. It's got all the layers and all the extra percussion and the open hats and all that. So I think this is our full or more version. So I'm going to clone it again and I'm going to rename this one drums. Medium. So for this, we're adding in extra elements. So maybe I'll get rid of the main clap layer, but I'll keep the keys, the foley sound, the natural sound that we had layered in with the first clap and the last clap. And maybe I'll get rid of this high hat layer as well. So now this could be our medium drum pattern. So this could work in, you know, kind of buildup sections like this and maybe here. So to do the same with maybe the cords, let's have a look at these. I think these ords would be the medium version. So, whoops, I never renamed the drums. So this is actually drums more. But going back to the cords, I'm going to rename the cords now as Cords medium. And then I'm going to clone them. And these can be cords less. And what I'll do is I'll just get rid of these two layers. So now we're left with just the original piano. And that might work somewhere maybe in the second buildup so that it's hinting at the cords or the cord pattern that occurs in the hook. But you'll notice it's not as full as the cords that we are using in the hook, which are the cords medium. And then, to create a more version, I would I'll clone our medium cords again, and I'll rename these as cords more. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy our cord pattern. I'm going to add a new synthesizer, and I'm going to paste them in to make a new layer. And this layer will be something like a super sau, something really, you know, high energy and full. No. No, I'm not a huge fan of any of these. Maybe we'll try something from maybe melodic Techno. Let's see what we have in here. So this would be the perfect kind of idea that I'm going for, but there's an LFO being automated, so it's a bit too busy for what I'm looking for. So I'm gonna keep going. Alright. So maybe something like this to add in a bit more excitement and a bit more high end, and maybe I'll put this in our second hook and our third hook. And then as a last example, what we can do with the melody to create a less version, let me just clone that and we rename it if it'll let me. Rename Melody Less. What we can do is, first of all, we can delete our layer. But we can also come in and maybe we can edit the melody a little bit. So we could take something like all the long notes and get rid of all the short notes to see what that sounds like. Maybe something like this, just to give a kind of hint at the main melody. And, you know, again, you can kind of use this in, like, a build up section, maybe somewhere in the bridge leading into the final hook. Now, personally, there's a few sounds within the track that I'm not happy with. And one of them is the chord layer we just added there in this lecture. So I'm just conscious of spending too much time looking for different presets, so I tend to pick one, but I will be going back and changing some of the presets, I can imagine. And I'll probably change some of the drum sounds as well. But the core of the track is still there. All I'll be changing is presets. So as you can see, creating different variations of your original loops is a great way to allow the energy in the track to flow naturally. 25. Subtracting & Fills (Transitions Part 1): In this lecture, we'll focus on how to create smooth and impactful transitions. So a pretty core and basic transition technique would be to add silence before the drop. And basically, this means take something away before you add something in. So for example, here, before we add in our sample and the chord layer, we can take away some of the drums, and maybe we take away some of the arp. And this in itself is a simple transition. Or we could vary the drums here to create a drum fill. So if I make this pattern unique, it will clone it. And now we can go into this. This is now a different pattern to these three drums, and we can make some sort of fill at the end. Maybe we'll make a t bar fill. Maybe something like this. To. Or we can do something really cool, which is to replace the high hat roll with a kick roll. So I'll just delete the claps for a second, and I'll draw in some extra kicks. We'll open it up in our piano roll. And maybe just for the last section here, we'll create a bit of a kick roll. I'll adjust my grid snapping to a half a step. And I've also noticed that some of the velocities are kind of different, so I'm going to just highlight all of these kicks, and this should be a kick roll. We could even go a bit further here at the end and maybe duplicate these out again going even smaller. So I'll set it to quarter step, and we'll duplicate these out. So that sounds like this. But this really works well if you do the same thing in the base. Okay? So let's open up our kitum again. It's over here. We're going to copy these last few kick rolls, bring them into the base. And at the end here, where it's on the note of D, I'm going to paste in my kick rolls. We're going to bring them across down here. I'll delete the D, and we'll replace that with our kick roll. And I have to do the same in the layer, which is here. And I'll just delete the pads so you can really hear it. But you can also use things like dedicated drum fills. So some sample packs come with dedicated drum fills, or you can make your own. Let's just try make our own here with a drum loop. So even if we just took the first part of this, we might have to fit it to our tempo. And we'll see what this sounds like. It looks like it might be a bit fast. No, that's fine. So you can use something simple like this as a fill. And let's just try a different one for the sake of demonstration. And with this, for example, you can open it in your mixer and manipulate it to make it sound more like a transition. So to do that, we might remove some of these low frequencies to make it sound a bit further away or like it has less energy. Maybe we can get rid of some of the highs as well to try and create a radio effect. Something like this. And then maybe we put, I don't know, a chorus or a flanger or maybe a phaser or something on it. Let's just try a flanger. And I'll pick something I don't know, the mover. Let's see. Maybe something more than that. No, I'm not a huge fan of that. I might just replace this really quickly with the chorus effect. Yeah, maybe something like that, and we could throw on just a little bit of reverb. Now, it doesn't sound great. It sounds a little bit out of place, but the idea is that you can create a drum fill using drum loops or dedicated sample packs that have drum fills in them, and then you can take that and manipulate it in some kind of way to make an interesting and different kind of transition. We'll be coming back to transitions in the next lecture and the lecture after that. So this is technically transitions Part one, making some basic transitions. But with some more techniques and some more knowledge, we can really create some cool sounding transitions. 26. Compositional Effects (Transitions Part 2): This lecture, we're going to look at downlifters, impacts and risers. You can use these creatively to craft seamless transitions, add tension, and create memorable payoffs. So, for example, we're at the end of Verse two here. Yes, coming into the hook. And I've just created quite a big transition by taking most of the elements away before they come in. And I've also added in a drum fill here, a proper drum fill that I had in a sample pack. So I'll just play that for a second. So what we're looking to do is build a bit more tension building up to this transition, and then relieve that tension when we come into the drop. So two ways to relieve tension coming into a drop are using impacts and downlifters. So let's just have a look at some of these. So maybe we'll just take one, for example, and I'll make it kind of quiet, so it's a subtle effect. But the I want it to fade out a bit quicker. And then maybe we could layer this with an impact or a sub boom. So maybe this impact quake for a big impact. And now let's add a riser to build up towards that transition. So we'll first use one of these risers. Maybe something like this. And when you're using risers, the best place for them to finish or sort of rise too is the start of your transition, not the start of the drop. And I'll just show you why in a second. But first, I'm going to fit this to our tempo and let's drag it over, and we'll see how this sounds. So by ending the riser at the transition, you're actually adding in an extra level of tension. So it feels like everything's kind of holding its breath, waiting for this drop to come in. If you were to continue the riser through the transition, you lose that effect of holding your breath. So it's always a good idea to leave some sort of gap between the riser and the drop. I mean, you could even have the riser rising to this drum fill and use the drum fill as the kind of, you know, holding your breath section. But for me personally, I think I prefer it somewhere around here where this whole transition where all the elements drops out, creates a bit more tension. And then to build on this riser, we can use there's something here called tonal reverses, and these are like reverse sort of reverb effects. They have a key, as you can see, so we're in the key of D minor. So we have one that says D, but I don't know if that's D major or D minor. So I'm going to go with this one and see what it sounds like. So you can use these to create an extra level of tension. Or what we could do is we could create our own. So if you notice this sounds pretty cool, but the actual texture of it, it sounds a bit symphonic. It's not really fitting the overall sound of track. So what we can do is we can create one of them ourselves, which is called a reverse reverb. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take everything leading up to the transition. So maybe just these elements, and I'm going to bring them out into the middle of nowhere where there's lots of space behind them. Then I just want to make sure that it cuts off right where the transition is supposed to begin. And I also want to make sure that FL Studio, when it's playing, it's going to cut here and loop back around, but I want to create a big long reverb tail. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take one of these elements, maybe the pads, and I'm just going to put them there. So now FL Studio won't loop back around when this finish is playing. So we can create a nice reverb tail. So let's go ahead and go into our master and load up a mad big reverb. So I'm going to turn the wet or the affected signal all the way up, and I'm going to turn the dry, which is the initial kind of signal without reverb. I'm going to turn that down because I want a really over exaggerated wet sort of reverb sound. Then I might increase the size of this sort of space that we're working in. So instead of having a small room, it sounds much bigger and wider. And the real magic comes from this decay time. So this is basically saying to the reverb. At the moment it's set to up here, you can see 1.5 seconds. So after 1.5 seconds, the reverb will be completely quiet again. So I want this to be quite long and exaggerated. And I might just get rid of the drums. I think I only want melodic elements. Maybe the bass, as well. And we'll turn this right up. And now what we'll do is highlight from maybe around here, just enough to kind of build into that transition. I'll give a big long 8 bars to let the reverb kind of die out. And then what I can do is I can come up and I can export a wave file. And I'll just call this, for example, reverse reverb. So now I can delete these again because I don't need them. I can get rid of this reverb, and we can import that audio that we just exported. Okay, so I now have this imported. It's pretty simple to import. You just open your finder window or your documents or wherever you rendered this to and just drag it in. But I couldn't find it for a few minutes, so I just cut to here where we have it dragged in. So anyway, this is our reverbs well. But the real magic comes from cutting it too. So if we remember, our instruments were playing here, and then about here is where they cut off and the reverb tale starts. So we want to cut out where the instruments are playing, and then we want to take the reverb tale and reverse it. Whoops, that's after adding back in our melody. So let's just delete some of them. And now we have a nice reverse reverb swell. So that's pretty cool. But another thing I've done before is put it here and make it shorter, maybe not that short, maybe about this. We're going to fade it up. So we still get kind of holding our breath section, but this is just leading us in to the drop. And what I did before is I put distortion on this. So let's just distort it for a second. And hopefully, this doesn't sound too bad. Definitely too much. And one final thing to talk about are uplifters. So we have downlifters. Now, this pack doesn't seem to have any unless they're in here. Mm. Kind of. This actually might work better as an impact sound. So I'm gonna replace our impact with this maybe But yeah, there also exists something called uplifters. So we have downlifters, which are like white noise sweeps kind of sweeping down to reduce the tension. But if we take one of these and reverse it, we should be able to create an uplifter, which is basically just a downlifter but backwards. So let's try adding that into. And now that's not synced up with my bar line. I'm just going to fit to tempo really quickly. So now we've layered a riser with an uplifter. Now we're coming into a transition section where we've taken some elements away and then used the drum fill to bring us into the hook. Along with this reverb swell, we've got an impact and a downlifter. Okay, so this lecture was covering, you know, downlifters, uplifters, risers, all them kind of transition type effects. So this was basically transitions part two. In the next lecture, we're going to have a look at automation. And with automation, we can make this transition even better. 27. Automation (Transitions Part 3): Automation is a secret ingredient that makes your tracks feel dynamic and alive. We're going to focus on creating movement, evolving effects, and smooth transitions using automation to elevate your music to the next level. So what is automation? Well, automation controls how a parameter, like, for example, your volume or your panning, how that parameter changes over time or throughout the track. So we can use it to add dynamics and variation. We can create some smooth and professional sounding transitions, and we can use it to automate effects to turn on and off on different instruments or to kind of increase or decrease over time. So for example, at the very start here, where I fade out the main sample and I have the melody coming in, The melody is just starting straight away, but I'd like it to fade in. So if I open up my melody track and if I come across to the volume knob, right click Create automation clip. Now it's added an automation clip into the playlist. So if we zoom up, you can see there's a keynote here. And if you want to add more keynotes, you just right click. So a keynote is basically that little circle on the automation clip above the mouse there. And there are the parts that you can drag up and down. So at the moment, if we look up the top left here, it'll tell us what it's set to, so it's set to 41%. So we're going to set this one to about 41 as well. And then if we drag the left hand side down, it'll make the volume of that instrument increase over time. Now, because there's two layers in this melody, I also have to automate the second instrument. So let's do that now. Right click Create automation clip. What's it set to? It's set to 24, 23, 25, 24. And now our melody should fade in as the sample is fading out. And I think it fades in just a little bit too quickly, so I'm going to adjust the curve. So you can see here that if I kind of turn the curve up, it will fade in more quickly, but I want it to fade in more slowly, so I'm gonna turn the curve down. And same with this one here. You can also automate things like effects. So, for example, this is set to track six. So let's just load up a quick effect here. Maybe I'm going to stick with the FL Studio stock effects for now. So if we load up a fruity love filter, which is basically just a high pass filter, I'm going to turn the cut off up full and automate this so now in our little buildup section here where the sample is going into the hook, we can add one keynote, add another one here to make all of the high frequencies kind of disappear, and we'll filter it in coming up to the hook. Here how it's kind of muffled. It's going to get clearer as time goes on. So where automation for transitions comes in really handy is, let's say, we'll take our transition that we've been working on. We've got a piano leading up to it, so I'm going to assign the piano to a mixer track. I don't need to know any of that. In here, so now it's Track 13. So I can load, for example, maybe, that gross beat plug in we were looking at before to create some sort of stutter. Let me just solo it. A. Maybe something like this. And what we can do is because this is always on, it's going to be always affecting the keys. But we don't want that. We want it to only come on for this little transition section so we can automate the on off. So fully up means it's on. So we want it off and only to come on here and to turn off again when we come into the hook. Or, for example, we can replace that with something weird, like, I don't know, destructor. So as you can see, you can use automation, automating the on off or even the volume of different effects to create some really cool and interesting transitions. And then, for example, you can also go a bit further. So let's say I was to add a phaser effect. If I want this particular parameter to do the same thing as another one I've already automated, I don't have to create another automation clip. I can just right click and select Link to Controller. And in here in this internal Controller panel, I want to select the gross beat because that's what I had automated the mute, the on off switch for before. Then I want to click. Oh, yeah, I want to click Remove Conflicts. So this might be on automatically for you guys. If you do this, it will turn off this original automation that you had, but you want to basically link this automation to the original automation. So we got to make sure that remove conflicts is turned off, and then we hit Accept. So now both of these are going to follow the same automation. So you can see both are automated to be off at the moment because that's our automation clip. And here, they're both turned on again. Now, I also want to talk about automating parameters within the synthesizers themselves. So if we take this Rp, for example, and open up the synth, we can automate any sort of parameter in here that we like. So for example, not the decay, maybe the sustain. We could automate this to kind of open the sound out over time. However, you can't just right click and then select Create Automation clip because you're not working with the FL Studio stock plug ins anymore. Now we're working with third party. Vital is a third party plug in. So what you can do is just wiggle it a little bit, wiggle the parameter you want to effect. Come up here to tools down to last tweaked. And here you'll see a very similar looking menu, and we're going to create automation clip. So now we can automate the sustain to maybe open over time, and then maybe cut again. So with our transition here, I'm going to get rid of that for a second because I don't like that. I might just delete the structor and we'll just keep it with the phaser. So now we have an uplifter, a riser, some automation to make the piano sound different in just this section before going back to normal here. We have a little reverse reverb and we have a downlifter and an impact. And maybe it might be easier to hear just without that arp. So you can basically automate any parameter you like. You can automate the on off mute, you can automate the volume, you can automate this. Anything that you can touch and control, you can automate. And that makes it a very creative tool to introduce kind of dynamic changes over the course of the track. H, 28. Background Elements for Filler and Texture: Here, we're going to dive into the concept of filler elements. These are just extra little touches that enhance the core of the track. Filler elements act like overdubs in traditional music to give your track that professional and polished edge. So, for example, for me, when we were creating the less variation of the main melody, so that's this guy here. I was actually thinking that the two note idea there could be an overdub. So, for example, if I get rid of this note and this note, and we kept this alternating kind of E and F two note idea. And we took this alternating two note idea and brought it into maybe a different instrument to create an overdub or a filler element. So let's do that now. We're going to copy and paste this into a new instrument called maybe OD for overdub melody. And I'm going to bring in a new synthesizer. And for this, I think I'm looking for a kind of thick and fat lead sound. Oh, I want to get rid of the longer notes and just keep the two note alternating idea. So let's see if we can find something that might work for this. Maybe something in future disco. Let's look for a lead sound in here that might work. LD, meaning lead. I'm looking for it to be a bit deeper, so I think I'm going to pitch it down. We Maybe something cool like this. This could be an interesting texture to add in. So, for example, we could layer this in maybe in the last hook. And if I just solo this and the original melody, you'll be able to hear what the overdubs are adding into the original melody. Maybe you could even turn these into chords by taking the placement of the notes and layering them with the chord progression that we're using. So for example, the chords are A sharp, C, D, and F. So if we maybe layer these in, like this. I think it switches to C here. This would be D, and this would be F. Now, I can't hear them because the plugin is set to mono. So I just have to make sure that I turn that off. And now that I've done that, I really like the way it sounds. So I could even come along and manipulate the chords into fitting the same rhythm so that this becomes the main kind of chordal idea. But I'm not going to do that just because for now, we're looking at overdubs. So this is just an example of an overdub that you could do. It's a kind of simple melodic idea taken from the original idea, but it's adding extra flavor. It's adding some thickness, it's making it more full and more interesting. Another technique for filler and one that's actually quite important is using atmospheres or effects in the background of the track. So, for example, I think in here, there's some nice atmospheres. Yeah, they're already open. So we're in the key of D. So, yeah, that's perfect. Whoops. That's a really simple kind of vocal chop with reverb that we can layer into the background really, really subtly, okay? So let's just fit this to tempo in case it's not at our tempo. And we'll see what it sounds like. Yeah, that's fine. Now, it's a bit too loud, but the idea is it would be really, really subtle. You barely notice it unless you're listening for it, which you guys, of course, are. But, for example, I'm going to play it without the effect at first, and then it'll come in here and hopefully you'll be able to hear the difference. So it's basically just taking see all these gaps between the drum samples and the gaps between the bass here. And I know there's no gaps really between the pad. So the pad is technically adding to this, this kind of background element. But you'll see that this just fills up space really subtly. Let's let's go from the start. So, ideally, you would have this in maybe the whole verse section just layered into the background. It's probably not needed in the hooks and chorus because there's so much going on. I think all of that space is pretty much filled. But if you have areas of your track where there is a bit of empty space, this is an amazing way to fill that space up. And it doesn't even have to be anything tonal like this. Let's see if I have something atonal. So for this, I'm probably going to be looking in my kind techno samples, sound effects maybe. No. Just looking for some background elements. Noise loops, maybe? Yeah, that's perfect. So this kind of thing, let's drag one of them in. Fit to tempo. So it was set to 150, 75 is half of 150, so I'll just see what FL Studio does. Whoops. Yeah, that's fine. Maybe it's a bit too fast. We'll just stretch it out. This is probably a bit too rhythmic for what we're looking for, but a good example would be things like rain noises or maybe even voices talking really quietly with reverb and stuff to give the track a kind of sad and empty feel. But I definitely do recommend using something like those atmosphere effects we were looking at before. These. And you don't need a sample pack. I mean, you can make your own of these little atmosphere effects in the background. So I'm going to drag back in the one we were using And then another kind of filler element is to introduce something short and new just in areas where the beat kind of feels like it's getting a bit repetitive. So, for example, maybe here or maybe even over here just to break it up or to kind of end the loop. So I'll show you an example of that. I'll just name this as overdub break. And we'll bring in. Let's bring in flex this time because we've only used this for base sounds. So let's try it with a synthesizer and we'll add in something maybe just really simple a root note up to another root note and down to another root note. Something similar to what the base is doing. And let's find a nice preset. Yeah, maybe this fractal tail. And we'll just plop that in there. And it's probably a bit loud. We can turn it down just to give an idea that it should be kind of in the background just to add in a little bit of texture or fill up a little bit of space. 29. Strategic Muting: Know When to Pull Back: Strategic muting is a powerful yet often overlooked technique in music production. Knowing when to pull back can create space, tension, and focus within your track, making the moments when, you know, all the elements come back in feel a lot more impactful. This lecture will teach you how and when to strategically mute elements, helping you enhance dynamics, rhythm, and emotional payoff. So an instant example of this is what we were doing here when we were working on the transition. So by muting the drums and the bass and the pads, we created a lovely transition. If we hadn't done that, this is what it would sound like. So by muting elements before the drop or what's called a pre drop silence, you can really build the tension. And at the very least, you want to be muting the drums and the bass. The rest is kind of ambiguous. It's up to you, but I would definitely mute at least the drums and at least the bass. But I think we also had muted the pads. Then, for example, we can mute within the tracks to create some interest and dynamic variations. So, for example, maybe here in this drum pattern, I'm just going to clone it to make it unique, so I'm not affecting all the other ones. We could maybe mute the kicks at the start, maybe some of the hats. And maybe these two hats. So all we're left with for two beats is just a clap. And then you can do things like muting for emotional impact where maybe we take out the drums and the bass for one or 2 bars. Whoops, that's the pads. I meant to be muting the bass. So this could create a sort of, you know, more emotional and false drop. We could also do something called call and response with muting or antiphony if you're coming from a classical perspective. But call and response is basically where one element calls and another one responds. So, for example, let's mute the arp until about here. And then what we'll do is we'll mute the melody when the arp is playing. And then we'll let the melody play again, and then we'll mute it here. And then they can all come back in together for this section here. And because of the nature of our melody, the way the second and fourth chord are a little bit ahead of the beat, we can adjust the melody and the arp to suit that. So this would actually sound a bit more coherent. And of course, if you wanted to get really creative, you know, you could alternate the instrument. So maybe this one's the normal instrument, and then maybe the second time, it's a completely different instrument, and this arp is totally different to this arp. And maybe, you know, maybe you throw gross beat and a phaser on this and you put really heavy distortion on this to just create something really sonically interesting. Then, as I think we were looking at before, we've got subtractive transitions where you might just mute one or two elements for a beat, and that can signal that a change is coming in the track. So, for example, we'll take out the drums on the bass there at the end of the hook. And then we have things like sudden mutes for emphasis. So maybe in the middle of this hook section, we could mute the first beat of bar 63 here. So let's try and mute so let's try and mute that. I didn't mean to extend this one. And then I'm going to need my slice tool. So we could mute, for example, all the instruments and leave just the drums playing for just one beat to kind of take a breath. Or we can mute everything for sudden emphasis. And I just noticed there, I'm not sure if I explained it, but when using the slice tool, a normal click will just slice the instrument. And if you right click and slice, it will slice and then delete the smallest section. So in this case, it will be everything that's to the right of the red line. So strategic muting is one of the most effective ways to create dynamics and focus in your track. You can guide the listener's attention. You can emphasize key elements, and you can keep your arrangement engaging. You know, small switch ups like this really break the repetition of the track. 30. WATCH ALONG: Editing the Beat in Real Time: This is going to be a long video where I'm going to make some changes to the track. I'm not happy with a few of the synthesizer sounds or the drum sounds that we're using, and I want to add more to the arrangement or maybe even change some of the patterns. Because I was making the track as we went along, I was kind of aware of trying not to take up too much time while also demonstrating the techniques. So because of that, there's a few things that I'm not actually fully happy. I didn't want to just come back all of a sudden with loads of random changes, although I will have a shorter lecture after this one, just going through the main changes that I made. So if you're interested in watching me mess around with different things and try to refine the track, keep watching. But if not, skip this lecture, and I'll show you in the next one what the main changes I made were. There won't be any more talking in this lecture. It's just kind of a walk through but all of the techniques you're going to see me use are ones that we just covered. So yeah, I'm going to start messing around with the track now. But if you're not interested in seeing that, you can skip. I. A Okay. H. Mm. Mm. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. M. M. B. 31. UPDATE: Changes Made to the Beat: This lecture is just going to be a quick look at some of the changes that I've made. If you didn't watch the last lecture where you could see what I was changing in real time, then I'll just run through it here quickly. If you did watch the last lecture, you probably don't need to watch this one. And if you didn't don't really need to watch it either. There's no new information or anything being taught here. It's just that I've changed some of the sounds, and I've added in a lot more transitions and micro switch ups. I'll just quickly talk through what I did. I'll let it play, and then we can move on and learn some more stuff. So I think the first thing I did was I changed the main melody just to match the sample a bit more. I just had to move one or two notes. I've taken the uplifters and downlifters that we used before, and I've kind of scattered them around the track in places where I felt they were needed. And I also added in this crash symbol effect, which I think I put reverb on. Yeah. Then there's a few places where there's a bit of strategic muting going on. There's new fill samples. I've added in a different impact sound because I wasn't a huge fan of the first one. I changed the sound of the arp to this. The first one was a bit too sharp for me. I didn't really like it. And then towards the end here, I just made this I just made this hook more full by layering in another melody sound in with the overdub melody. So that sounds like this. And then the main thing for me was just changing the drum sounds. I didn't really like them at all, so I think I've changed most of them. So here's what it sounds like now. And that's about it. So I'm gonna let the track play now, and when it's finished, we'll move on to the next lecture. 32. Less is More (Leaving Space for the Artist): Producers often aim to make their beats sound full. But when working with vocalists or rappers or any other artist, creating space for that artist is just as important as making a great instrumental. This lecture focuses on how to apply the less is more philosophy to your production, ensuring that your beat supports rather than overshadows the artist. The beat that you make is more like a canvas. It's not the final painting. Artists, singers, rappers, they add the top layer of creativity, the lyrics, the emotion, and the performance. If you overcrowd the beat, it can end up competing with the artist, making the final track feel overwhelming or even muddy. So, for example, in our track, we have quite a busy melody going on in the hook. This will probably only work if the artist or whoever's singing or rapping on this track sings the same melody, much like the sample that we used. So, for example, if we can imagine this sample is lyrics and the artist is singing the same melody, that would work. But if the artist was singing any other melody, I would probably remove our melody. So this now would be our hook. So you always have to ask yourself, is this element necessary or is it just filling up space? Because sometimes when you're designing an instrumental track, you're trying to design it so that it does have space, and then you end up accidentally filling that space with elements that aren't needed. So there's a few ways we can check if we've left enough space. Ideally, your track will just focus on the core groove. So these are the core elements like the kick, the snare, the high hat, bass, and then maybe one melodic idea. During the verses, you need to strip it right back. Mute all the non essential layers and remove complex melodies or extra percussion. So, for example, maybe your verse is just drums, bass, and a simple pad. So for us here, I think our verses are fine. They're pretty sparse. And even this verse is probably fine because this arp is only a background element. But when it comes to our hook, maybe this melody is just too much. But ultimately, it depends on the artist. So if you're making beats to, you know, put up on YouTube and sell, I would recommend going this route with it where less is more and you're trying to avoid busy melodies that may make the track hard to rap on. But if you're collaborating with an artist or maybe you're writing a song yourself, you could probably keep that melody in there because then you could use it and try to sing the same melody in the hook. But all I wanted to highlight in this lecture is that less is more. Leave space in your productions. If you can master this approach, then your beats will feel like true collaborations, not just instrumental showcases. O. 33. Simple Recording in FL Studio: All right, let's look at two simple ways to record audio into FL Studio. This is for anyone who's looking to record their own song into their beat. So firstly, we're going to set up our audio interface, so into audio settings, and you can see your input output here. Mine is set to my microphone, so that's all good. Yours might have to be set to whatever microphone you're using or your audio interface. Secondly, and most important is to reduce your buffer length. So we're going to bring this down all the way down to about 25, six, If you don't do this, your voice will be playing back in your ears, a little bit slower than you're actually singing, and it's really hard to sing when this is happening. So make sure you set your buffer length to about 512 or below. 256 is generally the most recommended, though. Now, also, when you do this, you might find that your software starts to lag or skip, and that's pretty normal. So what I usually do is I will highlight the whole track and I will export it as a wave file. And then I'll drag that wave file back in, which I already did as a new track. And I will make sure that it's soloed. If you right click on the green light, it'll bring up this menu, and you can solo and unsolo. So I soloed the rendered beat, and it sounds like this. Fun. And I can delete things here because this has nothing to do with what's happening down here in the rendered track. So basically, all of this is redundant at the moment, and we're just working off this rendered track. Next, we're going to open the mixer and we're going to use a blank channel and assign it to your microphone input. So I'm going to choose channel 18 here and I'm going to rename that to vocal. I might just give it a color just so it kind of stands out. And then if you come up here to your input section, you can choose which input on your audio interface. So your interface should be listed here, and you might have one input or two or four or eight or whatever number of inputs you have on your interface. Mine only has one at the moment. And once you do this, you should be able to see your voice coming into the software. So next, you need to speak or play your instrument or sing or whatever it is you're trying to record and watch the levels on the mixer track here. You're aiming for the signal to be coming in around -12 to minus six. So at the moment, minus much too high, it's coming in around minus six to zero, but I can't actually adjust that because it's also linked to OBS, which is recording the audio for the course. And I don't really want to affect that. But what you would do in theory is with the gain knob on your audio interface, you would turn it down until your audio levels are kind of between the minus six and the -12. You should also be using headphones for this. Otherwise, you'll run into a problem called feedback, where basically, if you're using a speaker or your laptop speaker or something like that, the sound that's coming out of the speaker is going back into the microphone, into the software, and then the software is sending that back out to the speakers, which are playing it into the room, and then the microphone picks that up again, sends it back into the software, back to the speakers, back to the microphone, and you create a feedback loop. Plus using headphones is much quieter, so it allows you to record an isolated sound like a vocal or an instrument. If you don't want to hear yourself, we can mute this channel. And this is the way I normally do it. I'm not a huge fan of hearing myself when I'm singing, so I make sure to mute the channel. So the first method is to use Edison. So I'm going to bring in the Edison plugin, which is down here. And here, it's very simple. I normally set it up to record now and for maybe five to 10 minutes. My song is 3.5 minutes long, so 5 minutes is perfect. Then basically, as soon as you press the red button, it's going to start recording. But, of course, you're gonna need the track playing in the background, and I forgot about that because I'm not actually intending to sing. So I'm gonna reset Edison to default. Record. Now for 5 minutes is fine. We'll hit play. So maybe, for example, you're recording something in the hook here and we'll hit record. And now I'm recording my vocal. La lala la la, la, la. Perfect. Once the audio is recorded, you can then just drag and drop straight into your playlist. And you can listen back. I don't know if I really want to, but for the sake of demonstration, now I'm recording my vocal. L L. Perf. And like any other sample or track you drag in, you can then assign it to a mixer track and start mixing. The other way we can record audio into FL Studio is not using Edison, but rather to record it straight into one of these playlist tracks like you would with any other software. So the first thing you need to do is make sure that the channel that your microphone is assigned to is armed to record, which is this red button down the bottom here. Or in the case of another track, it would be this white button. So now this track is also armed to record. Then we'll come back to our arrangement, maybe somewhere here in the hook and we'll use the record button up here. It's going to ask us if we want to record it into Edison or into the playlist as an audio clip, and we want to record into the playlist as an audio clip. So let's select that. Okay, so we obviously need to assign one of these arrangement tracks to the vocal channel. We'll right click here on track 13, and then we can choose our vocal. And now we can hit record into the playlist. We'll get a little count in. And now we're recording our vocal here, and you can see the waveform coming in. L, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Then we can unarm FL Studio and we can hit play. Sorry, I forgot we had muted Channel 18. Let me just go ahead and unmute that. And now we're recording our vocal here, and you can see the waveform coming in. No, no, no, no, no, no. So up here on the metronome, if you right click it, you can change the sound. And then over here we have the count in or the pre roll. So you can set that to one or 2 bars. You can turn it on or off. And you can also turn on or off the metronome if you want the metronome to play the whole time as you're recording. But we didn't need it that time because we have the drumbeat. So as you can see, recording audio in FL Studio is actually pretty simple. 34. Tuning Drum Samples to Reduce Muddiness: Drum tuning is one of the most overlooked yet critical aspects of creating a cohesive and professional sounding beat. Properly tuned drums prevent muddiness when it comes to mixing. So let's open up our drum pattern. And we know what it sounds like, but I'll play it again just to refresh our memories. Okay, so the most important samples that you want to be tuning is your kick and your clap. Ideally, you will be tuning all of them, but at the very least, you should definitely be tuning your kick and your clap. So to tune drums in FL Studio, we're going to use Edison again, the same plugin we were using for our vocal recording. I'm just going to open up an instance of it on the master. And with this, we're going to drag our individual samples into Edison. Right click, come down here to regions and then select detect pitch regions. So our kick is tuned to F, right? And F is not the key of our track. D is the key of our track. So we want to be tuning the kick sample down from F to D. So we want to be coming one semitone, two semitones, three semitones down. Okay? So to do that, we open back up the kick sample, and we come here to the pitch knob. And you'll see up in the top left corner a value called sense, right? And sense just translates to semitone. So 100 cents is one semitone, and we want to be bringing this down by three, we said. So 300 semitones should pitch our drum sample from F to D. So now our drum sample is pitched to the root note of the track, and I know it's pitched to D. But in FL Studio, C five is whatever the default sample is set to. So because we've set the sample to be tuned to D in the piano roll, C five is what's playing our default sample. So in this case, C five is actually D. If you wanted your piano roll to match up, you could very easily grab your kick drum notes, pitch them up by one, two semitones, and then come back in here and do the opposite. Pitch this down by one, two semitones. And now the note of D is the note of D. So now we're 90% of the way there. Our drum sample is tuned to the root note of the track, and this means that it's probably going to sound in tune with everything else that's going on. However, because our bass and kick are linked quite closely. So I'll just solo the kick drum for a second. And what instrument is our bass playing on? I'll solo that too. This one here and this one. Whoops. I didn't mean to totally solo them. I just meant to turn them on, as well. So let's just turn both of them on, and we'll also turn on the kick So our bass pattern is playing the same rhythm as the kick. So every time the kick hits, the bass is also hitting two. And because these two instruments are in the same frequency range, another thing to do to really clean up that muddiness would be to pitch the drums to the same notes that the bass is playing. So in our bass, we're playing A sharp, C, D, and F. So let's remember that. Come into our kitrum in the piano roll. And if we remember, these first two notes are playing A sharp. Mm hmm. These two notes are playing C. These are playing D, and these two at the end here are playing F. Now this is what it sounds like on its own. When we layer that with the bass, it's like this. I'll just unsolo everything and we'll hear it in context. So I would go as far as to say that this is mandatory in trap music or hip hop or drill or whatever you're making. Absolutely, definitely tune the kick drum to the notes of the bass. Not only is it reducing muddiness, but it's not that noticeable. And also, you may notice that some of the kick drums sound slightly different to the other ones, and that adds an extra layer of humanization or kind of dynamic difference so that the beat doesn't sound as robotic and the kick drums sound more like they were played live than programmed in FL Studio. Next, we'll just tune something that doesn't need to be pitched. So, for example, the clap here. The clap is just playing on every second and fourth beat. So this doesn't need to be pitched to any instrument. It just needs to be pitched to the key of the track. So let's have a look at what key this clap is playing in by default. It's playing in the key of regions, detect pitch regions, F sharp. So what we can do with this is if you know if you know the basic triad chord of the root note that your track is in. So for example, we're in the key of D minor, okay? So if I go up here to my cord stamps and I stamp in a simple minor chord, I'm going to stamp that on D. This is going to show me the three notes that I can pitch to. Okay? So I can pitch to D, the root note, I can pitch to F, or I can pitch to A. So, ideally, with your samples, you're going to want to be pitching to whatever is closest. So for us with our clap, because it's on F sharp, which is here and because we can pitch to F or A, let's pitch that clap to F. And that way, it'll be in the key of the track without kind of distorting the original sound because the original sound is like this. If we pitch it down too much, it changes it, and if we pitch it up too much, it changes it also. But if we pitch it only one semitone it's barely noticeable. So let's just pitch that down by 100 cents or one semitone, and now our kick and our clap have been pitched to the track. And maybe we'll tune one more here. We'll tune the snare sample we're using as a percussion. So let's open up Edison. Here's our snare sample, drag it in, detect pitch regions. And again, we're on F sharp four. So what I'm going to do is, as the pattern is playing, I'm going to adjust the pitch just so you can see that drum samples that are out of tune don't sound as cohesive as samples that are in tune, okay? So I'm going to hit Play, and I'm going to start pitch shifting that sample. I'll just turn it up so you can hear it. Now, to my ear, that's completely out of tune. It sounds really dissonant. And if you remember, it originally was set youu F sharp. So by tuning it down by 100 cents, we're putting it in the key of the track. So this should sound good. So hopefully you were able to hear how some other pitches can actually be kind of dissonant until you pitch the sample correctly into the key of the track. 35. Vocals: Autotune and Vocoders: Okay, so for those of you who are working with artists or maybe you're singing or rapping yourself, in this lecture, we're going to look at auto tune and another vocal effect called vocoder. If you're not an artist and you're not working with an artist, you can find a capellas in, you know, sample packs. There's plenty of Acapella sample packs, or you can use a few of the resources we talked about before, like Lupermen, splice, somatics, YouTube and TikTok. There's quite a few people who put up their own lyrics and their own Acapellas on TikTok. And then other things like producer forums on maybe, you know, Red It or slash we are the music makers, often have free vocal resources that are shared by members. So firstly, I'm going to pretend that I'm working with an artist, and it's a girl. She's singing on this track, and I'm going to drag in. Let's maybe try one of these A capellas. C major. We're not looking for a major. We're in a minor key. E minor. That could do us. Let's drag that in. And it's set to 135. So I'm going to fit to tempo But because we're at 87, I think that's gonna make it a little bit slow. Yeah, probably. Holy. Yeah, so I'm just going to readjust that to what's half of 13,567.5. So now this should be in time with our track. Oh, he had his car. Yes, the thing is gone. We have so much time. Let's not stay alone. Okay, and I think I wanted to start on the first beat of the Bar. Alright, so now we have a pretend vocalist who we recorded, and now they're singing on this track. Let's clean up the pitch issues. So we're going to assign it to a mixer track, which it already is. And we're going to first look at the most natural form of auto tune that we can do in FL Studio, which is using a plugin called Newton. And Newton is basically the same thing as Melodynee or waves tune. It analyzes the waveform and then places it on visible notes. But you'll see what I mean in a second. So let's drag our vocal sample into Newton. Oh, we have this ball. Yes. Into Newton. And we can close this again. I'll just make this bigger so we can see what we're doing. So here you can see that this is our vocal. The orange line represents the contour and the pitch. So, for example, here, she's singing the note of E, a little bit wobbly, but it's fine because the orange line looks to me like it never really leaves the range of this note of E. However, up here, we have what looks like vibrato. So she's kind of wobbling between two different pitches. Then, for example, here, you can see the line is on the note of E, but then she goes a little bit flat towards the end, and the line is somewhere in between these two notes. So she's not actually singing a note here. She's singing somewhere in between, just slightly flat of G and slightly sharp of F Sharp. So if we listen to that, we should hear some vibrato here, and we should hear her maybe go a bit flat here. Oh, we have this now. Oh. Yes, it doc Okay, so by the sounds of it, this is actually a different note. But what has happened is she hasn't actually hit the separate note. She hasn't sang deep enough to hit that note. So Newton doesn't recognize it as being a new note. So what we can do is we can slice it to separate it out. And now we have two separate notes, which we can drag and manipulate separately. So with Newton, there's two main kind of parameters that we'll be using, and these are the center knob and the variation knob. So the center knob will just drag these notes that are either flat or sharp, like for example, this one here, you can see that the center of the white waveform. So this whole waveform here, the center of that is here. It's not on the node of A, and it's not on the node of A flat either. It's somewhere in between. Um so the center knob here will just drag this to the center of one of these two notes, whichever one this particular section is closest to. So let's just do that now for the whole vocal. You'll see all of the waveforms moving to be centered on one note. Oh, we have this now. Yes, this go. So for me, this note is wrong. It's a bit too high. I think it was supposed to be this note, and I probably have to drag this down, too. Wow. Yes, this go. And then, again, I think she was supposed to be stepping down. Here. Like this. Yes, to TG. And then from here, we can adjust how much variation occurs on these lines. So now we're looking at the orange line. Okay? So for example, the vibrato here, we can kind of squash that down and make the vibrato less extreme. Or, for example, let's find somewhere else where she might have gone a bit flat. Maybe the likes of this here. So where the orange line is kind of a curve, by adjusting the variation, we can make it a little bit more straight, so it sounds like she's holding that note. Maybe something like that. Just very subtle to keep her within the pitch. Oh, we have his snow. Yes, the day C we have so much to. So with these two knobs and the fact that you can drag each note individually and you can separate them out. So, for example, another area you might separate is here because I think these look like two separate notes that the software hasn't recognized. So we could slice that, and now we can pitch them separately. You have a lot more control over the pitch of the vocal. This method also takes a lot of work to get it right and to get it sounding natural. So, for example, at the start here, this doesn't sound very natural. Oh. It sounds quite auto tuned. Oh have. So this would probably need a bit of adjustment to try and get it to sound a bit more natural. Oh. Oh. Oh. Personally, I don't think Newton is amazing. It's great for this kind of thing, but it does take a lot more work to get it to sound natural than a plug in like Melodynee or waves tune. And I think I'm not 100% sure. Don't quote me on this, but I think the two of them have some sort of free version or a light version where you can do a few things to your vocals. You can't go really in depth, but there are cheaper and free alternatives available. So now let's say we spent, I don't know, 3 hours working on this vocal. We're finished with it. We're ready to import it back in so we can use this tool to drag it back into our sample. It's going to put it back in its original timing, so we've got to adjust that again. I think it was 67.5. And now because the vocal sample is in E minor, we can use the pitch knob to pitch it down to two semitones to D. And now it should be in key. It should sound a little less flat, and it should be in time as well. Oh, we have his now. Yesterday is gone. We had so much time. Let's not stay alone. Now, of course, I didn't actually go through the vocals, so there are areas where Newton is setting it to the wrong note. But I'm going to replace this with the original version that hasn't been affected. It's still pitched. I just have to stretch it again. And we're going to look at a different plugin in FL Studio called Pitcher. And pitcher is great for making that classic kind of auto tuned sound. So this one is really simple to use. Once your vocal sample has been pitched to the key of your song, or, for example, if you recorded it yourself, you won't need to adjust the overall pitch. But either way, you're going to run it through a mixer track and you're going to load up the plugin called pitcher. And with this, it's pretty simple to use. You've got your tonality minor major. Pentatonic is just a five note scale. We don't really need to worry about that or all the notes or just one single note. And then we can adjust what key we're in. So for us, we're in D minor. The minimum Hertz adjustment tells the plug in how much you're willing to let the note wobble when she holds it. So, for example, if she's holding the note of F, she might be kind of wobbly on her pitch, and she could wobble a lot or wobble a little. And this is basically your variation knob. So you're telling the plug in how much you're going to allow those little wobbles. 25 Hertz is a small value. So you're saying, I don't want many wobbles. I want you to kind of squish the note down and hold it. And then with 220, it would be much more natural. It's going to allow a lot more vibrato and a lot more kind of wobbles between pitches in a note. So let's leave it set to 110 for a minute, and then we'll look at the speed. The speed is literally the speed that the pitcher kicks in. So, the faster the speed is, the faster the auto tune will kick in, and it'll sound more robotic, maybe like TPNe or Cane West. And then the slower it kicks in, the more natural it will sound, and the more you can kind of preserve that natural performance. So let's now hear it in action. Let's try and auto tune this vocal sample. Oh, we have his car. Yes, it's gone. We have so much time. Let's not stay alone. Alone. No, Shop be on the bone Alone. There's light after eavy store. L go You better moble Not to wait find someone. No bees not to wait. No be So maybe something like this sounds natural enough for this vocal. We're allowing very little variation, but we're setting the speed to medium. So the first part of the note is kind of preserved. And then it's only the last part of the note where maybe she's holding it. That's the only part that's getting auto tuned. So let's solo the vocal and we'll listen to it with the pitcher on and the pitcher off. Oh, we have his now. Yes, the Ts go. We have so much time. Let's not stay alone. Alone. No she'll be on the phone. Al. There's lights out of every store. Let it go. You've got to move forward. But you're alive. No time to pay. Fine on you someone. Love not to pay. And, for example, if you were trying to go for that Tepin kind of vocal effect, you would just crank this up and crank the minimum down. Oh, have his now. Yes it than Sc. We have so much time. Let's now stay alone So I also mentioned that with Newtone, the more advanced and paid for plug ins of those would be Melodynee and Waves Tune. With the picture plug in, the more advanced and kind of industry standard version would be Antares auto tune or the nectar plugin from Itu. These two are great. They're wonderful plug ins that come with the software for free. However, if you are vocal processing, I would recommend grabbing one of the other two, as well. For me, the best combination is Melodynee instead of Newton and then Antares autotune instead of the pitcher. Okay, we're going to look at vocoders now. So we have our vocal here and we're going to load up a plugin called Voca Dex. I just want to make sure these are muted there. So with this, this is going to make the vocal sound kind of robotic. So I'll just play that. Let's go. And there's a few different presets you can use as well. Hello. Hello. No shopping. That's a movie show. Now, that's cool and interesting. But where it gets really interesting is when we add a carrier synth to this. So I already have a pattern set up for this. It's just a blank pattern at the moment. I'm going to add in I'm going to add in a synthesizer, trusty old serum. And then we're going to maybe draw in the cords of the track. So I'm just going to stamp them in really quickly. So I remember we had a sharp major for almost two whole beats, except it cuts right beforehand, and then it changes to C major, stamp major C. Then we have D minor. And then we have F major. So now, this sounds like this. I'm gonna pitch it up I think it's too low. And then we're going to assign this synthesizer to a mixer track. So it's assigned there to track 21. We're going to paste the vocoder carrier synthesizer underneath our vocal and maybe here as well just to catch the breath. And coming into the mixer track with that channel highlighted, so I'll just rename it so we know what we're looking at, carrier Foca Dex. And then we're going to right click on this little arrow here and say side chain to this track only. Then in our vocoder, we're going to change the mod number to zero and the carrier number to one. Now, you might have more numbers here depending on how many channels you have sent to this vocal channel. But for us, it's just one at the moment. So in our vocoder, we just have one option. And now our vocal should sound like a robot, but also be playing these chords. Oh, happi is now. Yes and days go. And we can play around with different presets and see what happens. No. Am. No shopping on the phone. Am this light out a heavy stone. Leg Yes, it is. Oh, is now. Yes, it go. We have ch down. Let's now stand now. Slide down to every stone. L. And this can be really cool if you layer it with your original vocal. So, for example, let's assign this to a different track. So now this one has no vocoder, and this one does. And now we can play around with a blend of both. Oh, we have his now. Oh. Yesterday C. I just made a very simple mistake where I actually ended up changing both vocal samples. So I'm just going to drag this back to channel 18. So now it's back on our Vocoder channel. And with this one, I have to make it unique so that it's separate from this one. So let's now assign this one to a new mixer track, and we can get a blend of both. Oh, we have his now. Yesterday's gone. We have so much to. Let's not stay alone. Aloe. Now shopping on the go. Al this light out of heavy storm. Let he go. Now, that sounds pretty cool. But because you're using a carrier synth, by changing the preset, you will change the sound of the vocoder. So there's also more options we can play around with by changing the sound of the synthesizer. So, for example, we'll come in here. We'll just take maybe some keys, maybe these element keys. And now if I press play in the playlist, and I'll cycle through some presets on the synthesizer and you'll hear the sound of the vocoder change. Yes. Scared. Let's not. In. Let it go. And, of course, like everything else, you can add further processing where maybe we add a bit of grit using the wave shaper. Oh, have it now. Yes it they go. We had so much time. Let's not stay in A lo. Now shopping on the phone. A load this light up to Emmy stone. Let me go. You Oh, have no. Yes it day, gone. We had so much time. Let's not stay in. 36. Creative Effects Overview: Creative effects are essential for transforming plain sounds into dynamic rich and textured audio. These might include things like bit crushers, cabinet amps, chorus, filters, flangers, granular processors, phasers, rotary effects, and maybe LFO modulation. So what I'll do here is I'll give a demonstration of some of the cool and creative effects that I have. I'll explain what they are and what they do. We'll go through a few presets so you can hear what the plug in does. And hopefully, you might know a few creative plugins that you like the sound of and that you might want to get in the future. This isn't, oh, look at all the cool plugins I have kind of thing. I just want to make some of you aware of the names of certain plug ins and what they do so that in the future, if you're looking for a particular type of plug in or a particular kind of effect, you know what to search for. If you're already an intermediate or advanced at music production, then these plugins are more than likely something you've come across before. But if you're a beginner, you may not have heard of any of these, and it might be beneficial to see what they are and what they do. So for this, I'm just going to loop a section here at the end with the vocal. And we'll solo that, and we'll just cycle through some of these effects on our vocal here. So, here's how our vocal sounds without any creative effects. Mm. And the first one we'll add is a bit crusher. So I have that summer over here. Now, this particular plug in Bt fun is actually free. It's part of the melderPduction free effects Bundle. So if you're interested, maybe take a look at that. You get things like an analyzer, autopan, autotune, this bit crusher plug in, some reverb, a compressor, a delay, all that kind of stuff. Also, there's a really good website called KV OR and they have a massive database of plugins. But more importantly, they have a massive database of free plug ins. You can get some really cool and really interesting plugins on the KVR audio website. But for now, back to this bit crusher. So a bitcrusher basically adds a low fi digital kind of gritty quality by reducing the bit depth or the sample rate. So let's hear how it sounds, and we'll run through a few presets. Next, we have a cabinet amp. These emulate the sound of guitar amps or speaker cabinets for warmth and resonance. So let's try some of these out. Mm hmm. Then we have chorus effects, and these usually come free with most softwares, but I'm going to show you one that I have here from Melda. These can create width and depth by duplicating a sound and then slightly detuning or delaying the copies, the duplicated sound. Next, we're going to take a look at a filter plug in. A filter plug in shapes the frequency content of a sound by emphasizing or cutting specific frequency ranges. It's basically like an automated EQ. Let's have a listen. There there is there You can actually see what's happening with the EQ there on the screen. Next, we'll take a look at a flanger. Now, again, this particular flanger is also part of the M free effects bundle. Right. A flanger can add a metallic and swirling kind of movement by delaying and then modulating the sound. Next, we have a really fun one called a granulizer. A granulizer breaks sound into tiny little pieces which are called grains, and then it reassembles them in creative ways. So with this, you can get some really atmospheric and weird textures, or you can get kind of glitch effects. Next, we have a phaser. So let's just open up a phaser plugin. And once again, I just want to point out that M phaser is part of the free effects bundle with melda. A phaser adds a kind of sweeping movement by modulating the phase of different frequencies. Then we have rotary plugins. These emulate the sound of a spinning speaker. It's most often used with electric keyboards or organs, but it's a really, really cool effect to put on vocals or synthesizers, or even basses. Mm hmm. Oh Then we have Unison plug ins. And we looked at Unison before very quickly when we were editing the synth parameters. But here, it does the same thing. So it basically splits one sound into multiple kind of voices of the same sound and then adds a D tune to thicken and widen it. I love this plug in. This is amazing for making kind of fat, full sounds. And the next thing to look at would be LFO modulation, or in this case, it's something called a wobbler. Now, this also has a filter built in, and I think it has some other effects like phasers and flangers and things. But there's nothing to stop you from building your own by getting something like LFO tool and then maybe using a filter and then maybe a bit of distortion, and you can create your own kind of wobbler effect. And by the sounds of it, the wobbler also has an auto pan built in, which is just an effect that kind of automates the panning from left to right. So this was just a demonstration of some of the fun kind of creative plugins that are out there that maybe you might want to download or purchase in the future. 37. Effect Chains: In this lecture, we're going to look at effect chains, and this is just where you stack different effects on top of each other in these individual slots. So firstly, we have to understand the order of a signal chain here, and it's pretty simple. The audio comes in at the start and then it works its way down. So whatever order you stack the plugins in is the order that the sound will be processed. So here, our audio is coming into newton, then it's being sent to picture. And these are two auto tune plug ins. So then from there, we're sending our auto tuned signal into the love filter, and then we're sending the auto tuned and filtered signal into the wobbler. So that's a simple overview of the signal chain here in FL Studio. But what I want to do is maybe try and use the FL Studio stock plug ins and we layer them to try and create some sort of interesting effect that is similar to this wobbler. So it sounds to me like the wobbler is adding some auto pen. So the sound is bouncing from left to right, like this. Like this. And it sounds like there's a kind of filter on there, maybe a bit of distortion and I don't know, maybe a chorus effect to add in some stereo witness. So let's have a look at trying to make something very similar to the wobbler by using stock plug ins. So first of all, I'm going to start off with the fruity love filter. And let's play it while we're listening to some of the presets. Okay, that's a pretty cool effect. So now let's go ahead and distort that effect. So we're taking that process signal, and now we're adding distortion to it. Here. And then to make it bounce from left to right, we're going to add an auto pan, which is fruity panomatic. And then maybe we could add something like a chorus to give it a bit of thickness and a bit of wideness. So those four effects that are layered together have created something really cool, and it does sound like something the wobbler would usually make. Let's really quickly see what happens when we flip the order of these plugins. So at the moment, we're filtering the sound. Then we're distorting the filtered sound. Then we're adding some panning, some autopan to the distorted filtered sound, and then we're adding chorus to all of that. But, for example, instead of maybe distorting the filtered sound, we could filter the distorted sound. Or instead of adding chorus to the whole thing, we could maybe auto pan the chorus, as well. Or we could filter the chorus. Or we could distort the chorus. So as you can see, you can layer effects for some really cool sound design. And if you understand the signal flow, you can put these effects in the order that you want them to process the sound. But 38. Gain Staging and Headroom: Gain staging and headroom are fundamental concepts in mixing and in mastering. Proper gain staging ensures a clean and dynamic mix. In this lecture, we'll break down how to gain stage in FL Studio. The reason why we gain stage is mainly to prevent clipping during mixing. Clipping is a type of digital distortion that occurs when your signals exceed zero DB. For example, if we didn't gain stage, you know, whatever's on Insert 90, for example, let's take the vocal. If we didn't gain stage the vocal properly, and maybe it was peaking at about minus two dB. And then we come in and we add things like EQ, we boost five DB in the kind of mid range, and then we add some compression and saturation and a little bit of distortion. The audio signal then is going to be way past zero dB. And that's because you had no headroom. So headroom is the difference between the kind of audio signals peak level, which in this case, we were saying was -2.5 and zero. So the headroom, in that case, is only 2.5 decibels, but we should be gainsging to minus six. Now, what we're interested in is the audio signal coming in to the track. So this fader level is controlling the audio coming out. So the audio comes in, it gets processed over here with all the effects. It passes through the panning and the phase inversion and stereo separation and all these buttons here, and then it reaches the fader. And this fader controls the volume level for all of those above. So if we were to maybe gain stage the melody, we would be using the individual channel volume, because this controls the input gain. This controls the level of audio that's being sent to the mixer. So if I just play this pattern for a second. So here's our two melody instruments. What we need to do is make sure that the master fader is set to zero and that the fader levels of what you're gain staging is also set to zero. Turn off any effects that you have on And also, reset any panning or channel volume changes that you've made already. So we have made some channel volume changes here, so I'm just going to reset them. And this one also. And let's solo the first one. And what we're looking for when we hit play is that the signal does not exceed minus six. And ideally, it doesn't go below -18, either. So this is the kind of range that we're looking for. Now, that to me is perfect. Let's have a look at the other instrument. Okay, so this instrument is exceeding minus six by about two or three DV. So let's turn that down. And now we have gains staged the instrument on Channel 16 to not exceed minus six. So if you haven't figured it out already, this is the stage where you need to make sure that every instrument and every element that you're using in your arrangement. So all of these chords, the three chord layers we're using, the two melody layers, all the drums, the bass, all these effects and these extra sounds we added in, and the vocals, they all need to be assigned to a mixer track so that we can monitor the audio levels coming in to that mixer track, and we can successfully gainsge. So again, maybe let's gainsge the base here. So we've got two instruments. We're on Channel eight and Channel nine. I also have to reset their channel volumes. And I'm going to make sure that these fader levels are reset. They look reset, but maybe they're not. And then we'll hit Play. And we'll have a look at the audio levels coming in. So for our eight oh eight base, the audio level is a little bit high. Let's bring that down. And the same goes for the other instrument, the top bass layer. This is coming in a bit too hot, as well. So now, both of these seem to be somewhere within the range of minus six to -18, and none of them are exceeding minus six. Let's look at one more pattern now maybe. The drums will just take this drums less pattern. So by the looks of it, our kick is actually okay. The snare is also okay. The hats are also okay. And this instrument needs to be reset. This one is it's close to being okay. It's just slightly above Proper gain staging and headroom is critical to a professional and clean mix. Master these concepts and your track will be ready to shine in any setting. 39. EQ Without Killing the Vibe: EQ is one of the most powerful tools in music production. It shapes your mix, balances frequencies, and ensures clarity. However, aggressive or poorly planned EQ can suck the life out of your track. So in this lecture, we'll explore how to use EQ effectively to enhance your mix without killing the vibe. So, firstly, what is EQ? Well, EQ or equalization is the process of adjusting the balance of different frequencies in your audio. So we can clean the mix by removing unwanted or harsh frequencies that we don't like, and then we can boost. We can highlight important elements to fit the Sonic space. You can also use it to kind of add polish to enhance the track's character. So I'm just going to open up an EQ plugin for a second here on our vocal sample that we brought in at the start of the course. And I'm opening fruity parametric EQ two. I'm trying to keep most of the effects that I'm using to stick with the fruity stock plug ins, just so that everyone can kind of follow along. So, anyway, with EQ, we're going to be focusing on two kind of main rules, and those are cut to fix and boost to add character. So cutting can solve problems like muddiness or boxiness. We'll look at that in just a second. And then boosting, can emphasize key elements or frequencies that add a bit of clarity or maybe warmth to the sound. So while we're here, we're just going to have a quick look at the different frequencies and what is associated with each frequency range. So from the very bottom here, 20 up to about 60 hertz, we have the sub base region. And this you feel more than you hear, but it's crucial for low end energy. So what you're looking to cut out of this range is maybe remove, well, I suppose, remove this whole kind of frequency range from anything that isn't a base element, meaning kick base or any kind of pad that you have maybe that's taking up these low frequencies. But on the opposite, you're going to keep these frequencies in things like your base or your kick. Next, we have from about 60 hertz up to 250 hertz. This range is just known as base. It defines the kind of weight and the punch of the track. So in this range, you can cut things like muddiness and muddiness is generally found between about 1:50 to 250, but I generally find that it's somewhere around 170. So you would just grab your parameter to about 170 and pull it out to kind of reduce muddiness. But if your sound isn't actually muddy, this range is great for kind of adding punch, especially to drums and bass. Then we have the low mids. So these are from 250 all the way up to about 500. This range can add warmth, but it can be a bit muddy or a bit boxy. So the term boxiness is generally associated with around 400 to 500 hertz. So that's kind of right here. And if I hit play, I might be able to show you an example of what boxiness sounds like. So if I just take my parameter and I boost around 400 to 500? You can hear that the vocal sounds like she's kind of singing in a box. It's a bit muffled. And just not very clear. Mm. Then we have the MDs from about 500 all the way up to two K or 2 kilohertz. This range is generally associated with a term known as honky. So if I just grab the parameter and boost in this range, hopefully you'll be able to hear the kind of onomatopea of that description. It's kind of similar to a honking horn or if you can imagine a clown's nose. If you were to try and sing that shape yourself, you'd be making a lot of kind of or sounds. Pretty honky. However, within this range, you could find a bit of presence in things like vocals and leads. So it really just depends on the sound and what you have in your mix. Then we have the upper mids from about two K, all the way up to six K, which is probably somewhere here. This is where clarity and definition live. But also, in this range, you might find kind of harsh frequencies in high hats or maybe some synth sounds. But quite often it's associated with kind of clarity and presence in the vocals. So for example, I'll just boost the kind of clarity zone or the present zone, which is about five K in this vocal sample that we have, and you'll be able to hear hopefully that the vocal sample gets a bit clearer. It's adding a bit of cut or a bit of presents. It's not straight up like airiness or clarity that we'd get up here. But just a bit of cut through and a bit of presents. Now, also in this range at about 2.5, so maybe somewhere here is a kind of nasal quality. So if I just play that and boost it You can hear the sound now is getting quite nasally. And this is especially through in vocals. Mm hm. So usually a cut around 2.5 K in a vocal sounds pretty nice. But again, not always. It just depends on your vocal and your mix. Then we have the highs from six K all the way up to 20 K here at the top. This is your air, brilliance, sparkle, sizzle, and kind of open feeling. So with this, you can use it to cut a bit of harshness maybe out of symbols or effects, but it can also add in a nice bit of sparkle into symbols or effects as well. It just depends on what you're looking to do. But in things like vocals or pads or maybe melodies, it can add in a bit of air or brilliance. So in our vocal here, if I just boost this frequency range from about six K upwards, we should get a nice bit of kind of airiness or sparkle to the vocal. Mm hmm. And then if we were to EQ this vocal, we would be looking at those two principles that I talked about before the cut and boost. Or in other words, we're looking at subtractive and additive EQ. So with something like this that doesn't have a lot of kind of base information going on, I'm going to cut most of that out because we don't need it. So I'm going to roll off the lows at about maybe 150. And this will get rid of that kind of weight. It's empty weight, really. It's not weight we need, and it's only going to clash with the kick and the bass. So I'm going to get rid of it in the vocals and, indeed, anything else, you know, chords, melodies, anything else that isn't kind of bass heavy, which in this track would probably just be the kick and the bass. So for now, we're going to roll off the lows. And sorry, I just did that by right clicking on the parameter. Changing the shape. So you can change the shape of these individual bands. So I picked a high pass, which literally lets all the high frequencies pass. But the other kind of term for this would be a low cut. We have other shapes as well, obviously, like, you know, a peaking, which is your kind of bell or notch curve and a shelf, which is what this seven band is set to where you can see the kind of where the shape of the EQ kind of ramps up into what looks like a hill or a shelf. So that would be a shelf shape. But we're looking for a low cut or a high pass to roll off the low frequencies at the end here. So I'm going to set this back to 150 ish. And you should hear that the kind of empty weight has been cleaned out of this vocal. Next, we're going to take another band, and we're going to adjust the Q or the bandwidth. So we know now that these are called bands, and bandwidth is exactly what it sounds like. It's the width of this kind of curve. So we can adjust that with the little knob here underneath our frequency knob. So if I just tighten it up, we're looking to be kind of surgical with this. We're looking to kind of find frequencies that we don't like, and then pull them out. This is our subtractive or cutting stage of the EQ. So let's sweep through this vocal. And find some frequencies we don't like and pull them out. So straightaway, I have a bit of kind of boxiness, muddiness. It's a bit muffled, not a huge fan of this, so I'm gonna pull this out. Hopefully, the vocal gets a little bit lighter sounding. And then, again, we can take another band, adjust the cue to be a bit tighter, and we're gonna go and sweep through again. Now, there's some sort of resonance in here I'm not a huge fan of. So I'm gonna pull that out, too. We're not looking to shape the sound just yet. That comes next. So I know there was something here that kind of didn't sound very nice, but that was more of a general kind of honky boxy feeling. I didn't really like it. But specifically, there was a kind of resonance around this range here. And then down here was a little bit muffled. So I'm going to keep going with maybe Band three, adjust that and we'll sweep through. Oh. So maybe something here it's a little bit whistly I don't know, it's harsh. It's kind of painful, I suppose, in my ears. So I'm gonna pull that out, too. And if we A B now, we should have a much cleaner sounding vocal. So we've gotten rid of that kind of muffled feeling. And we've made it a bit clearer and a bit lighter. Then we're going to do some additive EQ. So we're going to open up another EQ. And this time, we're using a broad bandwidth or a broad cue. So we're not being surgical, now we're being kind of general, and we're looking to just kind of shape the sound. So we're going to boost frequencies that sound nice and we're going to kind of cut some that we don't think is adding anything pleasurable to the sound. So this isn't about being surgical and removing specific frequencies that are causing problems. This is just about shaping the sound. So here is a little bit honky. Not a huge fan of it. So I'm gonna pull that out a touch. But you can see, it's a much broader cue or bandwidth that we're using. So let's keep going. Now, something up here, it's a little bit harsh. It doesn't sound like real kind of airiness. It's kind of Because I suppose the sample is low fidelity or low fi, it sounds like we're just kind of boosting that low sample rate or the low bit depth. So I might just cut a little bit of the upper highs here. So if we remember the high frequencies from six K to 20 k, I'll cut them out a small bit. But then I might boost our presence zone of this vocal. And we might sweep through again and just cut some of this nasalness out. Maybe around here. And now let's A B it. We'll A B both. So I'll turn both off, and we'll turn both on as the vocal is playing. So first is our subtractive EQ So we're just adding in a bit of presents or a bit of air and kind of shaping the sound with that second EQ. Now, for a second, if we pull up something maybe like the base Oops. So I'm only looking for this one for the moment. So let's EQ this. We're going to open up our parametric EQ. And because this is a base element, these frequencies are good. We want these to stay in the sound. We want those frequencies because they add weight, they add punch, and they just kind of warm up the track. This frequency range is where the base is generally supposed to be. It's literally called base. So we're not focused on cutting any of these out. However, there might be some useless kind of information up here. So as you can see, I'm boosting. The highs and nothing is really happening. It's actually adding in a bit of click, which isn't nice to hear at all. So I'm going to change the shape to the opposite of a high pass, which is a low pass, or it would be a high cut sometimes. But we don't need any of this up here. Gonna roll off the highs. We don't want to kill all the highs, but just the kind of useless clicking that I'm not a huge fan of. And then, again, we're going to do the same process. So let's narrow our queue. So instantly, this area is actually quite muddy. I'm going to cut some of that out. Let's go again with Band three. There's nothing else kind of surgically that's causing problems, so I'm going to move on now to my additive EQ. So we'll load up another EQ. And in this case, we're just looking now to shape the sound with a broad. M So this is a little bit honky. Might just narrow it slightly and pull some of these out. And maybe because it's a base, we could give it a little bit of a push in this kind of low frequency area. So let's AB that. Then because this is my sub base, it could potentially clash with my kick drum. So I'm going to now EQ my base against my kick drum. So I'm going to solo the kick, and I'm going to solo the base. And again, we'll go through the same process. So with your kick drum, you'll open up a parametric EQ. You'll do some surgical EQing, pulling out a few frequencies you don't like with a kind of narrow bandwidth. But I'm just going to skip that stage for a second, so we'll pretend that I did that. But we're going to look at trying to fit the bass and the kick together now. So we're going to play both at the same time, and we're going to sweep through and find areas where the kick might be clashing with the bass and then try and use the EQ to make the two bass heavy sounds complement each other. So let's have a listen. Oops, I need to be in song view. So I think somewhere here is where they start to clash. They're kind of occupying the same frequency range now. So if I narrow this a touch and pull a little of that out of the kick, and then I might boost the real low end energy here in the Kitrm. Give it a nice bit of thump. And if I remember what I've done here, so I've boosted what's that about 75 Hertz, and I've cut 135 coming back to my base. I can see, well, first of all, I'm not boosting anything below 75, really, except for this, but I can maybe pull some of that out of the base so that we're making room for the kitrum. And then I could maybe take another band and pull out a bit of 135 somewhere around here. I'll just narrow the queue a bit. So now we've shaped the base against the kick drum and both should kind of fit together nicely and complement each other. And then you would use this same kind of idea across the rest of your track. So we've already qued here our vocal sample that we brought in at the start of the course. Oops, I want to loop that. Maybe loop it there. So we've already Equed this. So now what you would want to do is EQ other elements. So let's take, for example, the piano. We would want to eq the piano against the vocal to make it fit. And then we could eq the lead against the piano and the vocal and make them all fit together. And then we deque the lead layer. So when working with layers, would treat each layer as kind of a part of one instrument. So ideally like this, we would solo our lead and the lead layer, and we'll do this in just a second, and we'll eq them together. And then after that, we would eq them against the other elements in the rest of the track, like your vocal or your piano. So let's quickly first, we'll look at the lead instruments here. Oops, that's the bass. Where is my lead? Here. Okay, so I have two lead instruments on 15 and 16. So we'll just solo them for a second. And again, I'm going to solo just one. And very quickly now, I'm going to do our kind of subtractive EQ. So again, this is not a basi sound. I don't want it to have too much information going on down here, so I'm going to roll off the low end. We'll do a bit of surgery. Something a little bit whisty in there or resonance. I'll pull that out a bit, and we go again with Band five. Maybe something there. And I think there was another one up here somewhere. Kind of whisty. Yeah, maybe there. So now we've used subtractive EQ, and we've pulled out some of those nasty frequencies. Next, you know what we do. We open another one, and now we're adding to the sound. So I think this kind of nasal area is actually pretty fundamental to the sound, so I'm actually going to boost that a small bit. You see, I think that's adding character. Here it is flat. And now we've just added in that kind of fundamental nasalness of the sound. I don't think there's anything else really up here. I'm adding a bit of clarity in. Not sure if I need that because I know I have another layer. So I'm going to leave this for now, and I'm going to take my layer. I'm going to solo it first so we can hear it on its own, you know, kind of out of context without anything else in the track, just so we can do our surgical EQ. So again, I'm cutting some of the unnecessary lows, and then I'm going to look through very quickly, and I'll just kind of find some frequencies that are nasty. A bit whistly. That's quite harsh. That's probably about it. So now let's load our second EQ. And here, we're going to turn back on the other one, and we're going to find where is masking and where we can kind of complement the other layer. So I know I boosted this in the other sound, and you can hear here straightaway when I boost it in this layer as well, they're clashing. There's a bit of frequency masking going on. And that basically means that you can't really discern the two different sounds coming together. It just kind of sounds like a mess or a blur. So I'm going to pull this frequency masking out to make room for this layer. And then maybe because we know this is where the frequency masking is occurring, we could boost some other frequencies. Maybe somewhere here. And maybe just a touch more in the high frequencies there. And if we now try to hear this in context, so we've got our vocal hook. We'll solo our melody, and we'll just hopefully my laptop won't lag. Again, we might come back into our vocal and adjust it. But I don't think we need to. We're kind of cutting those lead frequencies out of our vocal anyway, which is somewhere around here. So I don't think it's necessary. And we might just add in Oops, the piano, as well, and I'm just going to mute these layers because I think they're causing my laptop to slow down. So I'm just going to open the piano and we'll EQ that against the leads and against the EQ. Now, there is a bit of warmth in the bottom of the piano here. I don't want to cut it by too much because you can hear it gets a bit thin. So I'm gonna keep some of that weight in. Maybe somewhere there. And now we do our surgery. That's a little bit resonant. Let's grab band four. Most of these are actually overtones, so they're probably fine. But maybe just a little cut like this. And now we're gonna turn back on our other instruments and we're gonna EQ the piano against them. So let's find areas where the piano complements everything else. So here is clashing with the melody and here is kind of clashing with the vocal. So I might just pull a little bit of this out. Maybe boost here and maybe boost. Something here just to give it a bit of cut or bite. And that's the process you'd take with your whole track. So I know with our piano, we have two layers. For example, let's say it's these two, we would solo the piano. Well, we'd first of all, solo one of the layers and do our surgical EQ, solo, do some surgical EQ. And then we would do our additive or shaping against the two layers, and then we do some additive shaping with the piano turned on, as well. And then we'd do, again, some additive shaping with all the other elements turned on, and so on. You want to make sure you're cutting low frequencies from elements that don't need it, things like sinth or your vocals, or even your clap, your hat, your snare. They don't escape it either. There's not much low frequency information in a clap. So you would be applying a high pass or low cut to your drum samples as well. And then with things like your kick or your bass, you're doing the opposite where you might roll off some of the high frequencies instead, keeping those low frequencies in there. So EQ, as you can see, is really kind of a balancing act between clarity and character. You can craft mixes that are clean, dynamic, and full of life. Always remember that EQ is a tool to enhance the vibe. It's not there to kind of overpower it. So keep it subtle. So keep it subtle, keep it purposeful, and your tracks will always shine. 40. Compression for Beats: So now we're going to look at compression. Compression is an essential tool in any music production for controlling dynamics. So firstly, let's open up a compressor and have a look at some of its parameters. So we're going to open up a compressor here on the piano, which is on Channel 13, and I'm going to load up the compressor. So now with this, we'll have a look at the parameters. First up, we have the input gain, and this is how much volume is coming into the compressor. The output gain or what's called the makeup gain is how much volume is coming out of the compressor. The attack time is how quickly the compressor turns on. The release is the opposite. It's how quickly the compressor turns off. The threshold is the audio level at which the compression starts, and the ratio is how much compression is actually being applied. I know we have an RMS knob here as well, but that actually has nothing to do with compression. That's just to do with the visual graph down here. So we don't need to worry about that. And then we have the knee. This controls the smoothness of the compression curve. So at the moment, it's a hard knee. So when the audio level hits this threshold, the compressor just pretty much starts compressing. But we can adjust the knee to be soft to make it maybe smoother or linear, for example, to try and smoothen out the sound as well. Okay, just a quick cut here. I did compress the piano, but my laptop couldn't handle it. I don't know why. So I'm going to do it again here. I've got my M compressor open. I'm on my piano channel. So we're now going to use the parameters we just looked at to compress the piano. So first of all, because the piano is an acoustic instrument, and it's quite smooth, I'm going to set my ratio at maybe three. I don't want to be too aggressive with this. I'm going to bring my threshold down to meet where that volume level is coming in. Now, you can hear the compression there. It's starting to kind of squash the piano. If I just bring this threshold fully down, you'll be able to hear what heavy compression really does sound like. It'll sound like the piano is kind of squashed, or you'll get a kind of pumping effect. That is extreme overcompression. The piano is pumping. So we just want to be a bit more subtle with this. And again, I'm going to adjust the knee, and you'll see instantly that a soft knee will actually help to get rid of some of this pumping effect. It just makes it a little bit less obvious, and the word we like to use is more transparent. So I think it's a bit too much. I'm just gonna adjust the threshold again. In terms of attack time, because the piano is quite a stabby sound or it would be described as being hard, it's got kind of sharp transience at the start of each note. So I'm going to let some of them transient through using the attack. And then I'm going to make it sound a bit smoother by turning up the release to about maybe 100 and an attack of 50. So hopefully now we have a nicely compressed piano, but it's also kind of transparent and it makes it sound a little bit smoother. Let me just A B that. This is a more subtle difference. And then we can look at our gain reduction meter. So it's reading maybe minus three to minus four. So that basically means that we're reducing the gain of the piano by that amount of decibels. So I want to use my output or makeup gain to make up for that gain reduction. So whoops. That's too much. Maybe about -3.5. And now we have successfully compressed the piano. So now, while we're still in this cutaway, I'm going to walk you through glue compression and multiband compression just before we cut back to the other video. So for glue compression, we're going to take, for example, two of the layers. So these are the two melody layers. But with glue compression, it's basically a group. You're going to compress a group at the same time to kind of glue them or blend them together. You might do this on things like layers. So, for example, our melody layer here. We could also do it with the chords. We could have glue compression on all the chords. So we use our piano and maybe our two piano layers. You can use glue compression on your drums, on all the vocals, on the vocals and chords together. You can do it on the whole track on the master channel. But for now, we're just going to do it with these two melody layers. So let me just open my melody pattern. So for this, we're looking to create a bus, and a bus is basically using one of these channels as a group. So we're going to send the audio signal from Pg two and from serum number six. We're going to send the audio signal out and down to whatever channel we want. So let's take channel 50 and we'll rename this as Melody Bus so I'm going to take Prague two. And what I want to do is I want to root it to this track only. Because I don't want prog two being sent to my bus and the master at the same time because that's going to double the signal up. I don't want to double the signal. I just want to root the signal down here, down to my bus. And then from the bus, that combines signal of my two melody layers, then that will be sent to the master. So let's take our other layer, and we're going to root again to this track only. And you'll see that it stops being sent to the master. And starts being sent here instead. So now, both of these layers are coming through this bus. And I can check that when I hit Play and I mute this bus, I should hear nothing. So now I know both of these signals down here are being rooted only through this channel 50, this melody bus. To do a bit of glue compression, we're going to compress both of the signals, both layers at the same time. So let's open our compressor. And what we're looking for here is subtle compression to glue the elements together, hence it being called glue compression. So what we're going to do is we're going to set our threshold in adjust below where our volume level is coming in. Nothing extreme. We're trying to be very subtle. We're going to use quite a low ratio. 1.8 is actually fine, but I might set mine at two. We're going to change the attack to about 30 just to let some of the transients through. Then we're going to set our release at about 1:50. We're looking for this to be quite smooth and kind of create a blur or a blend. And then we would just set the makeup gain to match whatever the gain reduction is. So here, it's probably about minus one or minus two, so I'm going to plus two. Now, this will be a very subtle effect. But it's just to kind of glue those two separate elements together and make them feel like one element or one instrument. Now let's quickly look at multiband compression. This does work great on bus channels, but it mainly works better for sounds that have a wide frequency range. Our melody here, it's pretty thin. It's not if I just open an EQ for a second, you can see that the range is mainly the main fundamental frequencies of this sound or of these two layers is between, I suppose, 500 and maybe six K. That's quite a thin range, whereas if we took, for example, maybe the piano, which is here. I just mute them for a second. We can see that the range is a lot bigger. It's maybe from 50 up to five K. We've thinned it out a little bit with our EQ. But if we were to maybe take one or two of these layers. So I'll just take this one because I know that this one is actually causing my CPU to panic. But if we take this layer and we pretend that these are the only layers in our cords, we're going to root these to a new bus, maybe down beside the melody bus here, we'll rename this one really quickly to cords and we're going to take our piano and root to this track only. And we're going to take our chord layer and root to this track only as well. And then we're going to open up a multiband compressor. So I do have, you know, different versions of these, but FL Studio does come with one. So let's open Maximus. And here, if you haven't guessed a multiband compressor is like compression and EQ kind of mixed together. So you can compress the low frequencies and you can set them where you need them to be. You can compress the lows, the mids, and the highs separately to each other. And that is why it works better on, um sounds that kind of have a wide frequency range. So there's no point in multiband compressing a sound that is only taking up this portion of the frequency range. But, for example, if we use our piano and chord layer here, if I just open again, an EQ just to have a look at the frequency range. We're going from about 50, even higher now, we're probably going up to about six K. So we have quite a big range there. So using multiband compression as our glue compression is probably going to work quite nicely. Now, you don't have to use multiband compression on bus channels. I like to, but you can absolutely just insert it on the piano on its own or on the chords on their own. It can be used to really kind of thicken up a sound. But for example, we're just going to use it as glue compression here. And it's going to allow us to get kind of a bit more focused on each of the individual frequencies. Now, I also want to say that with Maximus, we have three. We have the low, the mid, and the high frequency bands. But with some other multiband compressors, you do get more or some of them let you put in as many as you like. I'll just see how many. If I take this multiband dynamics large, for a second, I'll open a preset. With this, we have one, two, three, or five different bands. And I don't know. Can we add We have six. We have six bands that we can use in this multiband compressor. But I'm not focused on that for now. I'm looking at using the FL Studio stock plugins, so we're just going to look at Maximus. And Maximus is actually a really, really powerful plug in. So let's just use it now. We're going to solo our low frequencies to get to set our kind of range for the low frequencies. So we're kind of going into the mids there. Maybe somewhere here. Let's set our mid frequencies. I think when I click, it's gonna change to the highs. Let's just set the highs. Maybe somewhere there, and that's our mids set as well by default. So now, with your pre here, this is your input gain. Or with Maximus, you can also drag the actual kind of frequency block, I suppose, up and down. But I'm going to leave that reset for now. We're just going to draw in our compression here. So, you can't really see that. So let's go for the MDs for a second. So you can see the signal coming in there. We set our threshold by where we right click on this line. So if I right click up here, that's quite a high threshold. The signal isn't even reaching that. But if I if I bring the threshold down, now we're catching that signal, and we can drag this up or down to change our ratio. So let's just drag it down. It's a real kind of visual representation of what's actually happening to the signal. So you can see the signal volumes coming in like this, and then the compressor is taking some of that volume away once it hits this threshold. So that would be a very high ratio, maybe of 100 to one kind of limiting. So we're just looking to compress it a little bit. And then if we change to our monitor view, the purple is what the signal used to be. So if I just demonstrate that too, that's what the signal used to be, and the white is what it is now. So let's compress this lightly. Maybe something like this. With the purple, we're probably losing not that much, maybe just one or 2 decibels. So you adjust our makeup gain to be about one maybe 1.3. We'll do the same with the lows. And if you can't see the signal coming in, you probably need to adjust your input gain. So I can see it a small bit there now. Monitor, we're probably losing maybe again, something like two or 3 decibels. So let's just adjust that. Maybe two, and we'll go for the highs. Again, not getting much of a signal here. Now, you don't want to push this too much. There probably isn't enough information up there anyway. I just want to kind of see a little bit of the signal. So now we have used this multiband compressor, and we can also compress the overall. So we did each band separately. Let's just compress really quickly, very lightly. This overall, and we should have a compressed signal now using multiband compression on the bus channel. Now, my input gain was definitely a bit extreme. I just wanted to show the process of using Maximus. But this input gain is probably a bit too much, and the reason we didn't have that much signal coming in was because there isn't that much information down there anyway in these low frequencies. So I would still kind of boost it a small bit, but what I did was way too much. And you can kind of hear that in the overall sound that it was getting a bit too basi. But for now, that's just a demonstration of glue compression and how to use multiband compression. You want to really be treating each band as its own compressor. So obviously, you're not kind of thinking about the sound as a whole, but you're thinking about the low frequencies as their own sound. You're thinking about the mids as their own sound and the highs as their own sound. You can think of it as you can think of them as being like layers. So you've got a low layer, a mid layer, a high layer, and then on your master here, you've got your bus, where you send all the individual layers and they come together here, and you can compress them all together. For now, I think we cut back to the other video, and we take a look at drum compression and base compression. So to demonstrate maybe the use of attack time, let's have a look at the snare in this track. So that's on Channel two or mixer Track two. So it's quite a snappy snare. Let's load up our compressor. And we're going to bring the threshold down to kind of just below where the volume level is reading. So maybe just below this white line. And if I go very heavy with this for a second, so we can really hear what it's doing. If I bring the attack time down, it's going to catch that transient at the start of the sound. So you can see here that the volume level at the very start of the snare is quite high. But then the rest of the snare, the volume level is a little bit lower. So if we set the attack time too fast, the compressor is going to think that this is the level that we want to be compressing and it's going to use that to squash the whole snare. So this snare sound is now squashed. But we can still keep this heavy compression, but just tell the compressor, I don't want you to turn on here at the start. I want you to turn on maybe here by adjusting the attack time. And you can hear the snap of that snare is starting to come back through. The release time is pretty good here. It's not too long and it's not too quick. So I think a 50 millisecond release time is perfect. And now we can go ahead and adjust the makeup gain. So I'll just adjust the threshold again because we've changed the sound. So now we're reducing by about minus four. Let's bring this up to four. And using this, we have created a snappy but compressed snare sound. Then maybe, for example, with the kick drum, we're probably going to be compressing this for punch rather than snap. So what we're looking for here is, well, first of all, we have to make sure that our threshold is set correctly. A ratio may be of about four or higher, depending. Let's just set ours at four for now. The attack, again, because the start of the kikrum has a bit of a transient, we don't want to be compressing that the beater sound of the kiktrum. So we're gonna allow some of that through. Release time again, 50 milliseconds is perfect. And we can bring up our makeup gain by, again, about 3.5. And now we should have a punchy kiktrm. Then for things like an eight oh eight. So let's open up our eight oh eight base. Mm. I'll just delete whatever compression I had on there already. We're going to open up our compressor again fresh. So with this, because there's a lot of energy going on in the sub base range or with those low frequencies, we really want to control them so that they don't get out of control and they don't kind of overpower the mix. So generally, with a subbase like this, I would set the ratio at about seven or eight to really control that base. M I would also set the release time to be a bit longer so it sounds a little bit smoother. And then we can adjust our output to match. And now we have a smoother sounding eight oh eight base that's controlled. For the likes of the eight oh eight base layer. So this guy here. There isn't as much low frequency information in this. So we probably don't need to compress by, you know, a ratio of seven to one and eight to one. A standard ratio of maybe four to one will be fine. Next, if we look at some vocal compression really quickly. So here is our vocal. I'll just loop that. We'll open it up on Channel six. Sorry. I need to be in Song view. I'm gonna mute the love filter for a minute. And again delete whatever compression I had on there. So vocals are quite dynamic. They have a lot of dynamic range. You know, depending on the expression of the artist who's performing. When you're singing or rapping or whatever, the artist is going to have a lot of different inflections and dynamic range in their voice. And you can see that there in the waveform. There's very quiet parts, like, you know, breath sounds and things like that. And you can see here she's loud, and then she sort of trails off in volume. There's a few transients in there, like this transient here is huge compared to the actual volume of the waveform. So vocals are quite dynamic, and because of that, they need a little bit of extra control. So that means setting the compressor to maybe a ratio of four. The attack time isn't as important. There aren't many stabby transient sounds in a vocal performance. So an attack time of ten milliseconds is actually perfect. We want the compressor to kick in pretty quick, but not so quick that it's obvious what it's doing to the sound. Release time can vary whether you want it to sound a bit smoother. 50 milliseconds would be quite natural. And then a quick release time can sometimes sound a bit obvious, as well. So I would usually set vocals at around 50 milliseconds, what it was set to by default. And then we'll adjust the threshold. Which actually might be fine. And we'll adjust our output gain. Now, we're reducing by maybe minus three. So I'll just add a little bit of makeup gain. And now our vocal has been compressed. It's really subtle. But it's just controlling those dynamics in the vocal. Two mistakes to look out for is over compression. This can just kill your dynamics or kill the energy in your track. So you want to make sure that you're using not too high of a ratio. So let's open up this compressor. Your ratio isn't set too high. It's, you know, maybe an average of four is to one or below kind of only going above that when you really need to control the sound. You also want to make sure your threshold isn't set mad low. So wherever the audio volume is coming in, and usually you set the threshold just a little bit below that. Also, make sure to just pay attention to your attack and your release times. The longer the release, the more smooth the sound, you know, the shorter, the more kind of quickly the compressor turns off, and your attack sound is quite important for sharp or stabby transient sounds like snares, kicks, high hats, or, you know, kind of pluck sounds like maybe a piano or a plucky synth. And lastly, and most importantly, you don't need compression on every track. This is something that I see a lot of tutorials talk about when not just making beats, but anything really any sort of mixing. They say, Oh, you need compression on every channel, and you have to be compressing this and that and compressed like this. It's not a compressor isn't something you need to slap on every channel. And in fact, in electronic music, a lot of the synthesizer sounds, they don't have that much dynamic range anyway. So there's no need for a compressor. Compressor is a tool to control dynamic range. It can add or take away punch, I can add or take away snap. It can kind of smoothen sounds out or, you know, control the differences in volumes in a vocal performance between the loud and the soft parts. You can use it to make the vocals sound more intimate, where you can hear every little kind of lip smack and breath sound. Or if you don't like that, you can do the opposite. It's not really essential to adding fatness to the track. Or warmth or anything like that. You see a lot of these tutorials say, Oh, if you want your tract to be real fat and you want your kick and base to hit really hard, use compression. You need to use compression. Compressors aren't really used for that. And in fact, if you wanted that effect, you would have to do some pretty heavy compression, maybe heavy parallel compression or something like that. To get a truly fat sound, you need to use something called saturation and harmonic distortion, but we will be looking at that in a few lectures time. For now, we're just using compressors as a dynamic control. So to add punch, to add a bit of snap, as I said, to kind of smoothing out vocal performances, it's a tool used for sculpting the sound, not overusing it to try and make the sound fatter. And that's generally where producers go wrong and they end up really overcompressing and causing the sound to be squashed. They're looking to make the track sound fatter, and to do that, they must compress really heavily, and then they end up just squashing dynamics. So the takeaway is a compressor is a tool and you don't need to use it on every channel. Just use it where it's needed to control the dynamic range. 41. 808s: Make Them Knock: Creating eight oh eights that knock without overwhelming the mix is critical in modern production. And what I mean by eight oh eight here is the kick and the base together. We can do this with a technique called side chain compression. Side chain compression temporarily reduces the volume of one sound when another sound plays. So with this, we can allow the kick to shine through the eight oh eight base and create a clear and impactful low end. So this is really simple. I'm going to solo our drums, and I'm going to solo our base, and I'm going to loop them. And in our mixer track, I'll just unsolo everything so we can hear them. Sorry, I should be in song view. And we're only interested in the kick here and the bass. Now, at the moment, both of these are playing at the same time, and they're probably clashing because they're both taking up frequencies in the low frequency kind of sub base range. But we can use the kick to make the base dip every time the kick plays. So we're going to link our kick to our base, but this time, we're going to side chain to this track. Then on our base channel, we're going to bring in the fruity limiter. Because we can use that as a compressor to create some side chain compression. So we're interested in the compression side of things, not the limiting. In our side chain menu, we're going to set this to one, and this works like your vocoder where you could have multiple different channels linked to your eight oh eight base, and this could say one, two, three, four, five, but for us, we only have one channel linked. So for us, we only have to set this side chain menu to one. So with this, the threshold is going to tell the compressor when to duck the base. The ratio is going to tell the compressor how much to duct the base by. Your attack is how quickly the base should duck. So generally, this should be set as low as possible. You want that base to duck straightaway when the kick comes in. And then generally, we would adjust the release to try and match the shape of that kick drum. So let's set our ratio at about four to one. You can see it in the top left corner there of the screen. And we'll hit play and we'll adjust the threshold as it's playing. So if you wanted to duck more, we can turn the ratio up. But I think four is to one was actually pretty good. You can have a quick release so that the compressor turns back off again really quickly. Or we can set it and what I recommend is to try and capture the entire kick. So maybe somewhere there. We can also use the threshold to make it duck down further. So now you can always be sure that your kick drum is going to cut through the base and create that knock effect that everyone is looking for. Let's apply it to our base layer. So we're going to take our kick, side chain it to our base layer, come into the base layer, load up fruity limiter, come into the compression section, set that to one. And again, maybe a similar ratio of four is to one. And we'll see how this sounds. Oh. And it's not just the bass I recommend side chaining with. I would actually side chain pretty much everything to the kick drum. Some things lighter than others, like I would side chain the kick to the hats, but I would do it a lot more subtle. And I would also side chain the kick to well, nearly every element. So the melody, the keys, the pads, anything else that might get in the way of the kick. For example, if we take our melody, We'll take the melody on channel 15. So we've got our kick. We're going to side chain that to Channel 15. And again, we'll load up our limiter into the compression section, side chain one, a ratio to start of about four, and we'll adjust the threshold. So you can see the kick is now causing the lead to duck underneath. Then we can add back in our base. And you can see the kick is really cutting through. Oh. You can use side chain for other purposes as well. Like, for example, you might add reverb to your vocal and then side chain the reverb to the vocal so that every time the vocal comes in, that reverb dips a bit, which makes the vocal cut through. And then, when the vocal stops playing, the reverb level bounces back up again and you get a nice big long reverb tail without washing out the sound of the vocal. So absolutely side chain every instrument and the bass to your kick drum. This allows it to cut through the track and create that knocking effect. 42. Saturation & Harmonic Distortion: Okay, now we're looking at saturation and harmonic distortion. This is the secret to fatness, warmth and grit. So let's add some saturation and harmonic distortion to various elements in the track. We're going to start with the eight oh eight base. Adding saturation to your eight oh eight base will actually add in extra harmonics, which helps to enhance the presence and make it audible on a phone speaker or little kind of bad quality earphones. And basically, all we're going to do is we're going to open up the wave shaper. And we're going to bend it upwards. We can be quite aggressive with an eight oh eight bass. Now, of course, it does make it louder. But you'll find that when you turn it back down, that there are extra harmonics in there, which can help it to be audible on small speakers. We can do the same thing to the kick drum. So I'm going to open my drum pattern. And if we just solo the kick, let's open up the waveshaper and give it a bit of harmonic distortion. And give it a bit of saturation. And then I find on things like the high hats and the snare that adding some harmonic distortion can make them kind of sparkle or add a bit of grit. So we're looking for the blood overdrive here. And we'll do the same thing to our clap or snare, in this case. See how it's adding in extra noise or high frequencies. So here's before and after. That's a fat snare. With something like our melodies, we can add a bit of kind of grit or warmth. So they're on Channel 15 and 16. Let's just look at 15 for now. So again, we can just drag this waveshaper curve up. But as I think we looked at before, we can also draw in different shapes. And we'll do the same thing maybe on this layer. So I'm adding a bit more aggressive saturation by making the curve ramp up a bit quicker. So now, if we listen in context, we've got a saturated lead sound, a nicely saturated eight oh eight. And our kick snare and hat are saturated also. So in context, this sounds like this. Sorry, I'm always doing that song view. So trying to ignore the bad volumes because we haven't actually mixed the fader levels yet, I hope you can hear how the sound is a lot more fat. I'll just try and AB it. Mm. And saturation can also be pretty cool on vocals. There's also multiband saturation plugins. So remember from before with the multiband compressor, we can compress different frequency ranges. We can do the same thing with a multiband saturator for saturation. So we could maybe saturate the low frequencies a lot. Maybe the mids a little bit and the highs a lot to add in some sparkle. You don't want to be saturating too extreme, though. It's not the answer to trying to make your track fat. Definitely, you should be layering properly, but when it comes to things like the hats, the claps, the eight oh eight base, and, you know, sinth leads and maybe sinth cords, I definitely think saturation is an amazing tool for adding fatness. Fruity waveshaper is a proper kind of saturator whereas the blood overdrive, for me, it sounds more like harmonic distortion. So I tend to use blood overdrive on my drums and the waveshaper then on instruments. But there's plenty of other saturation plugins out there, and they all allow you to achieve this fat sound. One of the most famous is OTT, but that stands for over the top, and that is what it does. It is over the top saturation. In FL Studio, some people use the sound goodiser as a saturator. But that's not a saturator. That's actually multi band compression. You can actually see it in Maximus, what it's doing. Yeah, down the bottom there, sound Goodiser presets, A, B, CD. So when you're using the sound goodeiser, you're actually just using Maximus, and this is what Maximus is set to. It's more like saturation with some heavy multiband compression. Sound Godeiser some people laugh at producers using sound Goodiser and, you know, they kind of view it as amateur. But I think it all comes back to how it sounds. If it sounds good, it is good. Just be careful with sound Godeiser because it is quite heavy and it's quite heavy multiband compression. So it is going to squash the sound, and it is going to change the shape of that sound. 43. Reverb & Delay: Reverb and delay are essential tools for creating depth, space, and rhythm when making beats. So reverb can add space to a sound by simulating an environment like a room or a hall, and it can create a sense of depth by pushing sounds backwards in the mix or adding an ambient texture. Delay then repeats the audio signals at intervals creating a rhythm or a sense of echo. Delay can add groove, I can fill empty spaces or maybe highlight specific areas of the track. When using reverb and delay, we're going to be looking at something called send tracks. I'm going to grab an empty insert, an empty mixer track, and I'm going to come down to the bottom, Dock two, I like to dock mine on the right, but you can dock yours to the left if you'd like to. Just don't dock them to the middle because that will keep them here in the middle of your mixer. I'm going to dock two, one for reverb and one for delay. We'll rename them. Reverb. And lay. And now, it's pretty simple to use. We're going to open up a reverb plugin. So I'm gonna stick with the stock plug ins, and maybe we'll pick a preset here, a large hall. We'll come and we'll take our vocal, which is this. And what we'll do we need to turn on our reverb and our delay channels, too. We'll send it to the reverb by just clicking this arrow. You don't need to right click. You can just click once. And now we have reverb. This is your send level for how much signal you want to send to the reverb. And when using a plug in as a send, generally, we're going to want 100% wet. So I'm going to turn down the dry and I'm going to turn up the wet to 100%. Sometimes this might be on one knob that says wet slash dry, but it could be a knob that just says mix. For us here on fruity reverb two, we want to turn down the dry level, which is the original vocal signal, and we want to keep the wet at 100%. So all that's coming out of here is just the reverb. Mm And then maybe we'll send it to a delay, as well. So let's load up a delay. And again, with this, we want to turn the dry level down and leave the wet level up full at 100%. Then we can just adjust our sand level. Mm hmm. Let's now maybe apply reverb and delay to the piano. And let me just double check that the bus channel is also on. It is. And I think this Maximus is causing it to sound a bit weird. I think we must have had the high frequencies soloed. Yeah, we did. Okay. That's fine. Let's send our piano to the reverb first. Just a subtle amount of space and then maybe a subtle amount of delay for some kind of movement. Using reverb in this way is also great because it allows you to put everything into the same space. So generally, I would use two reverbs. I would use one kind of short one, so that would maybe be set to the likes of a drum room or a small studio. This would be to put all the instruments into one kind of similar space, and that works to kind of blur and glue them all together. Then I would use a second reverb set with a longer kind of tail or a longer preset like a hall or maybe a long plate, and I would only assign my main kind of elements to that. So that might be the vocals, the melody, and maybe something that I want a bit of extra reverb on like the arp. So now looking at the plugins, with reverb, there's three kind of main parameters that we can adjust or tweak. And those would be the room size. So how big this space is. So we're going from, you know, a small room to a medium sized room to a massive kind of arena. The decay, which is how long the reverb lasts for. So here that reverb tail is still ringing out. And if I turn this decay down, the reverb will cut out a lot quicker. And then you might have something like the pre delay where you can create a kind of slapback effect. So I'll just turn up the decay to hear this. Here how it sounds like the piano is kind of bouncing off the wall when you turn the pre delay up. And then with the delay, our main sort of parameters would be the feedback. So this sometimes has its own dedicated knob. But for fruity delay bank, it's actually a section. So we can control that here with the feedback volume knob. So let's turn off the reverb and up the delay so we can hear it. So the feedback controls how many repeats actually occur. So having this set really high will make the echoes go on and on and on forever. Then we have the time. This usually controls the interval between each delay. So, for example, if we turn this down, the delays will happen a lot quicker. In fact, they're so quick you can barely hear them. And then the higher this goes, the longer it takes for the delay to kick in. Generally, with reverbs and delays, you can just kind of play around with the different presets and usually find something that sounds pretty nice. The last thing I wanted to talk about was affecting the delays. So, for example, here, with hour delay, can I mute the piano? No, I don't think I can. So I'm going to have to keep the piano turned on, but I'm going to try and boost the overall delay volume. And we're gonna maybe distort the delay sound. So let's find some kind of distortion plug in. Maybe blood overdrive. And if we turn up the preamp. No, I'm looking for a more kind of obvious distortion. Maybe let's try destructor. That's pretty cool. See how that has created a really interesting sounding delay. 44. Volume Balancing: Okay, so now you've come to the end of the mixing stage. You've used the techniques we looked at previously to mix and kind of sonically shape your track. Now we're looking at the final stage, which is volume balancing or volume mixing. So volume mixing is the backbone of a clean and professional mix. In this lecture, we'll explore how to balance your fader levels to create clarity and depth and ensure that each element of your track has its own proper place. So with this, it's quite subjective. We're going to be, I'm still on that. We're going to be looking at all these individual elements. And we're going to be looking at the relative balance. So the balance, you know, of this vocal compared to the bass, compared to the piano, compared to the melody and how they all fit together. The most important elements like your vocal, your melody in your eight oh eight, they should be louder than the supporting elements, which would be like your high hats, maybe, or the pads or the kind of risers or downlifters. You also have to consider the focus of the track. So for us, our main focus is probably this Whoops. I don't want it to be muffled. This vocal sample that we dragged in at the start, this kind of melody, this would probably be our focus, as well as our melody. And as well to a lesser extent, our bass. But also, in any sort of electronic genre of music, your kick drum, it's a given that this is also one of the main kind of focus elements of the mix. So some people have different processes of mixing. They might start with the chords and the bass, creating a kind of foundation for the track, and then they bring in their melodies above that. Some people start with the focus elements. They start with the vocal and the melodies and then bring in things like pianos and chords around them to support. Other producers like to group elements together, like they might do all their drums in one go and then all the chords in one go and then kind of balance each of them against each other. There's no right kind of way to do it. It's whatever works for you, but there are a few guidelines that I can give you. So first of all, we're going to start with our kiktrum because to me, it's one of the main kind of focus elements. And if I just loop this section here for a second. So I want to be setting my volume for this kitrum at about minus eight. So I'm going to use the fader, the output gain here. To bring the signal down to somewhere between minus six and minus nine is fine. But the reason for that is we're trying to leave a bit of headroom on the master channel so that when we come to mastering, when we come to adding compression and EQ and volume when we're mastering, that we have the headroom there to do that. So basically, we're volume balancing and volume mixing, but we're also kind of gainsging in a way for the mastering process. So for now, I like to set my kick around minus eight. Then I usually bring in the snare or the clap. I start with it silent at first, and then I gradually mix it in. And I'm looking for a balance between the kick and the clap here or the kick and the snare, because these are like the rhythmic anchors for the beat. So let's press play, and we'll mix our snare up until it matches the kind of volume level of the kick here. Maybe somewhere there. You're looking to do this with your ears and not your eyes. So I know that the volume level is different. The clap is coming in at -11 and the kick is coming in at minus eight. But audibly, if you listen, they sound like they're kind of around the same volume. Maybe the clap could be a touch louder. But if I was to do it visually and bring the clap up to minus eight, that to me is a little bit too loud. Then you can bring in things like your high hats maybe. These are going to be coming in below the kick in the clap. Maybe somewhere there. We don't want it as loud. We want it kind of in the background, adding a bit of bounce. And then we can add in things like percussion. These are also going to be at a slightly lower level. And also, at this stage, I'll also do a bit of panning. I might pan this perk sample way off to the right and maybe the hats could go slightly left. And the only reason for that is to kind of mimic a real drum kit. So on a real drum kit, if you imagine, you're the drummer, your high hat would be slightly off to your left, and the percussion or the Toms would be kind of somewhere off to your right. Next, we'll add in the eight oh eight. And what we're looking to do here is to make sure that it's balanced with the kick. So the eight oh eight should complement the kick but not overpower it. Let's just give that a go. Maybe somewhere there. And then from here, I might bring in my base layer and try to mix the volume of that against the other eight oh eight layer. So let's bring this layer down. And for me, I want this really subtle. Just kind of there in the background adding a bit of texture. In fact, that's actually probably a bit too much. Next, we're going to take the main melody. So let's just bring that in as well. And with this, it should be sitting kind of on par with the drums and the eight oh eight, maybe slightly above, but definitely somewhere on par. Whoops, I have to be in a section where the melody is actually playing. Let's just solo them. And again, I forgot about my bus. So somewhere there feels right to me. It sounds like it's kind of sitting on top of these two elements. I'm now focused more on this than I was on the kick in the base. So that's a good sign there. And then we'll bring in our layer. And if I find that, you know, I'm using a lot of layers and I'm trying to get a balance between them, I can, of course, use a bus channel. So for example, here I have two layers. But let's say I had, you know, four and all these four layers were coming together to make one sound. What you could do is solo all the layers. Like this, maybe get a balance between them. So something like this, maybe. And then you would root all those four layers to their own bus. So then with this bus, I can control all of those layers together. So if we brought back in, for example, our kick or the drums, and we brought back in the bass, we can control both of those melody layers. So once we've gotten a nice kind of blend between them, we can control them all with this one fader now on the bus channel. So maybe somewhere there is a bit more natural this time. And then you can start adding in things like the chords, but we'll bring in our piano, which also has its own bus. And with this, you're looking to kind of support the main elements. So our melody, our bass and our kick drum, we're not looking to overpower. That's too loud. Now this is taking over. Now my focus is drawn to the piano rather than the melodies. I don't want my focus to be on the piano. I want it to be on the melodies. So just suddenly using that piano to support the melody. And then, of course, you can use your bus to mix them all in together, mix all those layers in. And this is the process you would take with every element in the track, including your uplifters, your downlifters, your kind of effects that you're using, the background textures. All of these need their volumes kind of mixed into the track. So just a few final tips, you want to make sure you're mixing at kind of lower volumes. This will just avoid ear fatigue and make sure that your mix sounds good at any volume. If you think about it, when you're enjoying listening to a track in the car, what's the first thing you do? You reach for the volume and you turn it up. And that's because when things are louder, they actually sound better. So what you want to do is maybe mix at a low volume. Make sure that your track sounds good at this low volume, and then when you turn your track up again, it's going to sound even better. Also, trust your ears, not your eyes. So the volume meters and things here in FL Studio, they help, but your ears are the ultimate guide. Make sure you're leaving about minus three DB on your master channel for mastering. It's recommended that you leave about minus six DB, but definitely leave about minus three DB of headroom for mastering. And also ear fatigue is kind of unavoidable. So just make sure you take regular breaks to keep your perspective fresh and prevent over mixing. With proper volume mixing, your beats will sound clear, they'll sound balanced and ready for mastering. This skill is essential in creating professional quality music. 45. Mastering & Exporting: Okay, now the track has been mixed and all the volume levels have been balanced, the panning is done, and we've added some stereo separation. Mastering is the final step in the music production process where the mixed track is prepared for distribution. So we want to make sure that this track is loud, clear, and competitive. So what I've done is because my laptop seems to be struggling to play through the track, I've just exported a rendered version of my mix. So we're going to master this final version of the mix, and then we can come back and export the whole thing. Firstly, I like to master by looping the loudest or kind of climatic part of the track. Because when we're trying to make the track louder, we want to make it louder without distorting. So usually taking the loudest part of the track will give us an idea of how loud we can actually make it. But first, we're going to be looking at adding some subtle EQ. So we're going to load up the parametric EQ too. And here we're just looking for nice frequencies to maybe warm up the sound or add a bit of clarity. We're also looking to get rid of some of this muddiness or boxiness. So there's a little bit of muddiness around here. So let's pull that out. We're aiming to be very subtle with this. I'm not a huge fan of these frequencies. So I'm gonna pull some of them out, too. Very gently and very subtly. Just a subtle boost in some of the high frequencies for clarity. And I also generally like to cut a small little area out from about 1.5, even thinner than that. And also from 2.5 to get rid of some of the middy and nasal qualities. Let's AB it and make sure that we like how it sounds. I think we're adding in just a little bit too many high frequencies. Remember, you want to be really subtle with this. The reason why you want to be subtle is because everyone's headphones and earphones and speakers and car stereo systems and their phones, they're all kind of adding their own color or EQ to the sound. So we don't want to effect that too much. We want to try and keep it as flat as we can, whilst also kind of subtly boosting frequencies we like and subtly pulling back on frequencies we don't know, removing things like muddiness or boxiness. Next, I jump straight for Maximus. This, as we know, is a multiband compressor, and because our master channel has a lot of frequency spectrum information, we've got low frequencies all the way up to high frequencies, it's a good idea to use multiband compression. So let's set our frequency bands. With this, you're looking to just about hear the bottom of the snare. Maybe somewhere there. Your maids, you're only looking to hear the kind of bottom end of your high hats. Maybe somewhere there. And then we're going to go about our normal process. So we're gonna come into our lows add where we want our threshold to be, drop down the ratio. Same with the mids. W and same with the highs. With the highs, you want to be a little bit more subtle. So, for example, with our lows, we're going to use a higher ratio, the mids a little bit less, and the highs a little bit less again. Now, let's go back and do our makeup gain. So the purple is what it was originally, and the white is what it is now. So it looks like we're losing about three DB. The maids were not actually losing as much, maybe one or two dB. And the highs again, maybe one or two DB. Now, also within Maximus, for our low frequencies, we're going to merge them. So this works the same as the stereo separation knob here on the mixer. We're going to merge our lows to make sure that they're mono. We're going to separate out our mids a bit, and then we can really expand out the highs. Then after doing that, we can add some soft clipping. This is a really soft saturation plug in that can just help to add a bit more volume. So not only are we adding in a small bit of volume, but we're also adding in some of those nice saturation harmonics. Then we're going to grab a limiter. And the limiter does what it says on the tin. It limits the sound at a certain threshold. So basically, it allows nothing past that value. So, for example, our ceiling or threshold is set to 0.0. I like to turn this down to about -0.2, usually just to make sure that it's active. And then we can use the input gain to really kind of squeeze as much volume out of this as we can. We don't want to be squeezing it too much. We don't want to squash the dynamics. Just enough to give us a sort of full loudness. And now we have mastered our track. We've shaped the sound subtly. We've used multiband compression to control dynamics, and we've also used the stereo separation here to widen the stereoimage. We've added some subtle saturation to add an extra bit of fatness in and squeeze out a bit of volume. And then we've used a limiter to make sure we're not clipping and that the track won't damage any audio systems. We also used the gain knob to just squeeze an extra bit of volume out. Now because your track is mixed and mastered, we can go ahead and export the entire track. You would just highlight the area you want to export, export, wave file. It a name exported. Beat. And with this, our mode should be song selection. The tail should be set to leave remainder. The wave bit depth should be set to either 24 bit or 32. I usually like to use 24. Make sure it's set to stereo, and also make sure that high quality for all plug ins is turned on. Your resampling quality, I usually set to the highest it can go, highest quality, but your render time will be a little bit slower. Congratulations on composing, arranging, mixing and mastering a full beat. 46. Finished Beat Playthrough: [No Speech] 47. Course Conclusion: Congratulations. You've made it to the final lecture of this course. By now, you've learned how to craft beats from drums to bass to chords, structure your tracks using proper song structure and arrangement, mixing techniques with EQ, compression, and saturation, and mastering. But what happens next? How do you take what you've learned and keep growing both creatively and professionally? Well, this course conclusion will cover the final pieces of the puzzle, how to evolve your career, stay inspired, overcome perfectionism, and truly embrace your identity as a producer. Think of this as the fuel for your long time journey in music production. Whether you're making beats in your bedroom or you've already started working with artists, growth in this industry is a never ending journey. So here's how to keep moving upward. Growth doesn't happen by chance. You need to aim for it. Ask yourself, do you want to work with major artists? Do you want to score placements on TV and film? Do you want to build your own brand as a producer slash artist? Once you've figured out what your goals are, break them down into smaller actionable steps. So, for example, your goal of wanting to collaborate with assigned artist might become reach out to ten artists per week with tailored beat packs. Maybe your goal of wanting to place a beat in a movie, that could become research music supervisors and send polished sample beats. Success in music production isn't just about talent, it's about connections. Try to collab with other producers, artists, and engineers, leave meaningful comments and respond to messages and participate in music communities. Also, as a final note, try to evolve your sound. Staying relevant means evolving. Study the trends and experiment with new tools and always be open to learning. Growth comes when you push the boundaries of your comfort zone. Inspiration doesn't always strike when you wanted to. To maintain a steady creative output, you need systems in place to keep your ideas flowing. Creative people often hate the idea of routine, but structure can actually amplify your creativity. So for example, you could do a daily practice, maybe spend 30 minutes to an hour every day working on beats, even if you're not feeling inspired. You can also set aside time for different parts of the process like sound design, melody creation or mixing, or at the very least spend time each week listening back to your work and identifying areas for improvement. Next, we have borrowing from other genres. Inspiration can come from unexpected places. Borrow elements from genres you don't normally work in like Afrobeat, classical music, or ofi. By combining these influences, you could create a sound that's uniquely yours. Try unfamiliar tools or instruments. If you're stuck in a rut, maybe pick up an instrument you don't know how to play. Experiment with a plug in you've never used or try a completely new daw. The act of exploring can really unlock some creative breakthroughs. And finally, feed your mind. This is a big one. Creativity doesn't just come from making music. It comes from living life. Read books, watch movies, explore visual art, travel, you know, immerse yourself in different cultures and reflect on your personal experiences and try to channel them into your work. Next, we have methods of trying to overcome beat block. So first of all, perfectionism is the enemy of progress. It's the voice in your head that says, This beat isn't good enough or I'll finish it later when I'm more inspired. But music is subjective. There's no such thing as a perfect beat. Focus on completing your tracks instead of endlessly tweaking them. Remember, the best producers don't just make hits. They finish them. For every one hit track, there's about 100 that didn't even get close. If you do struggle with finishing beats, set strict deadlines for yourself. You know, set an alarm maybe to finish the beat within 2 hours or maybe commit to uploading two or three beats a week. Deadlines can force you to make decisions and move things forward. And lastly, establish systems to keep your creativity flowing. So use daugh templates for different genres to kind of jump start your process or keep a folder of unfinished beats, melodies, or drum patterns that you can revisit later. Also, spend time experimenting with no pressure to finish anything. Sometimes your best ideas just come from having fun. So you've completed the course, and now you have all the tools you need to succeed as a producer. The most important thing from here on out is to trust yourself. Your unique taste, your style, and perspective are all what will set you apart. Don't let this course be the end. Let it be the beginning, set goals, take actions, and keep learning. Remember, growth is a journey. It's not a destination. Stay connected with fellow producers and artists, share your knowledge, ask for feedback, and celebrate your wins big or small. The music community thrives when we all support each other. And at the end of the day, remember why you started making music in the first place. Whether it's for self expression, connection or maybe just the love of sound, the world needs your music. So thank you for taking this journey with me, and I'm excited to see where your music takes you. Remember, I'm always here if you have questions or you need guidance. Now, go out there and make some beats. 48. Industry Game: Welcome to this comprehensive lecture on one of the most important aspects of being a producer, branding and your business strategy. While crafting beats is the core of what we do, understanding how to create a recognizable brand and sustainable income from your music is just as crucial. Here we're going to cover everything from developing your sonic signature to uploading your beats, working with an artist, pricing your work, and even a simple little idea to diversify your revenue. A beat tag is like your logo. It's a vocal or audio stamp that plays at the start or throughout your beat. It's essential for branding, especially if you're uploading beats online or sharing them with artists. So in reference to the three points there on the screen, we have recognition, so your tag helps people to know your beat. Protection, it can discourage unauthorized use of your work and identity. A good tag reinforces your branding. A good example would be Pierre Bourne's beat tag. I have an example of that here. Yo, Pierre, you want to come out here. To make your beat tag, you could either make one yourself or maybe hire a voiceover artist from platforms like Fiber. Make sure to keep it short and catchy. Your tag should be memorable but not distracting. Also, use lots of fun and creative effects like reverb, delay, and pitch shifting to make it unique. And finally, put the tag at the start of your beat and possibly in a few other sections, usually before the drop or the chorus. So when making beats, you need to know where your potential customers, rappers, artists and creators are. Here are the platforms to focus on. YouTube is ideal for showcasing your beats. Use thumbnails and titles that reflect the style. For example, free dark trap beat for nonprofit use. Or you can optimize with keywords like Juice world type beat to attract artists looking for a specific vibe. We have Beat Stars, which is a marketplace specifically for producers to sell beats. It allows for licensing and also pricing flexibility. Some producers opt to post short beat snippets with visuals or text captions on Instagram and Tik Tok. Here you can engage with artists directly through DMs or by tagging them in your posts. SoundCloud can be quite relevant for building a portfolio and networking. And finally, you can upload to a personal website and use it as a central hub for your beats, your bio, your contact info, and maybe a page where people can purchase your beats. When uploading, try to upload regularly to build an audience and use engaging cover art or videos to make your upload stand out. Also, that optimization trick for search engines is great by using terms like Drake type beat or free non copyright beat. And when you are uploading, always include a link to purchase or download your beat. Collaborating with artists is a great way to create hits that generate income through royalties and licensing. You can find potential collaborations by maybe scrolling through social media and DMing upcoming artists on Instagram or Tik Tok. There are also collaboration platforms like Airbit or even discord communities can help connect you with vocalists and rappers. When working with an artist, communicate clearly, meet deadlines, and respect the artist's creative input. Always discuss your terms early, so make sure both parties agree on the royalty splits, the credits, and licensing. And licensing just determines how an artist can use your beat. So common types include non exclusive licenses where you can sell the same beat to multiple artists and an exclusive license where the artist who purchases the beat gets the sole rights to the beat. Each license should specify price usage, like, streaming limits and commercial rights and the credits, how you'll be credited for the final work. Generally, I've seen non exclusive licenses go from about $30 to $100 and exclusive licenses going from $300 to, I mean, if you're working with big artists, it could be way above $1,000. But as your reputation grows, so should your rates. And also the last point there, always use contracts to protect yourself. Sites like Beat Stars have built in contracts, or you can hire a lawyer to create a custom one, but key terms include payment structure, royalty splits, and ownership rights. So here's a simple little idea to generate extra revenue. Producer packs are bundles of sounds that you can sell to other producers, things like drum kits, loops, and one shots. They're a great way to diversify your income. You could make drum loops, melody loops, or effects, and you can even include midi files or presets for added appeal. Next, we're looking at sound selection as branding. So your sound selection is part of your brand, just like Metro Bowman's bells or Pierre Bourne's flutes. You need to find a consistent palette of sounds that reflects your style. So to do this, you can follow the three points on screen by experimenting with unique instruments or textures, reusing signature sounds across beats to create familiarity. And use other producers for inspiration. But always add your own twist. Don't straight up copy. Your identity as a producer is what makes you stand out in a crowded market. It's a combination of your sound, your branding, and your personality. Know your niche. Decide what genres or vibes you want to dominate. Be consistent from your visuals to your sound to keeping your branding cohesive. Engage with your audience, interact with listeners and artists on social media and stay authentic. Don't chase trends, create your own lane. Building your brand as a producer takes time, but it's absolutely worth the effort. By establishing a clear sonic signature, using smart upload strategies, collaborating with artists, and diversifying your income with things like producer packs, you can turn your passion into a sustainable career. Start implementing these strategies today, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or you want feedback. Let's try to make your producer journey a success. 49. Fundamentals of Boom Bap: So in the next few lectures, we're just going to look at the basic elements of creating different genres. So, for example, here we're looking at boom bap. With this, you're going to want to use something like a jazz, a sol, or a funk sample. You can chop it up or make other edits if you like, but the one that I found is actually pretty good. You also might layer in a vinyl crackle, kind of ambient texture underneath. But this sample, in particular, already has a vinyl crackle. Then you're going to use some kind of old fashioned 90s sounding samples. So this is a Shaker sample that I've gone with. Here is an offbeat hat. This is the kick. And this is our snare. We also have another drum pattern where I layer in another snare and this extra offbeat shaker. You're also going to use a lot of swing, about 50% swing. You're also looking for a really sort of funky hip hop drum pattern from the 90s. And also, with this, your bass pattern is going to be a little bit different usually opting for shorter notes that mimic that 90s style, but also fit the drum pattern. And then for extra flavor, I just layered in a kind of string pad sound and this lead instrument. Let's hear it all together. 50. Fundamentals of Lofi: Here, we're going to have a quick look at Lo Fi. For this, you want to keep your BPM between about 60 and 90 BPM. Use mellow sounding drums. And one little trick that I like to do on my high hats is to when they're in here in the piano roll. If you delay the second high hat, so the high hat is playing on every first and second beat. If you delay the second high hat or the high hat on the second beat, delay that by about a quarter of a step up here. You end up with this kind of lazy swing feeling. Then you're going to want to use some really kind of jazzy keys, either normal piano or electric piano, or sometimes a really kind of dreamy guitar can work as well. So this was my sample before I added effects to it. It's almost like lounge music. And that's an actual genre, if you want to look that up. So with this then Oops. With this, I added a cabinet to kind of amplify it a small bit and make it a little bit more muffled. So before and after? Then I added vibrato, which is a slight kind of pitch wobble. Oops, I keep doing that. It makes it feel kind of slightly detuned or out of tune. And then I just added some subtle bit crushing. So you can hear there it kind of added in like a vinyl crackle. And then I just layered this with a really simple bass and that drum pattern that we were talking about earlier. The idea with low Pi is to try and create a dreamy, hypnotic, kind of relaxed and flowing sound. It's also one of the genres where if you layer in like rain sounds or the sounds of maybe a city with cars beeping and things, but you put loads of reverb on it, so it sounds like it's far away. This genre is great for those kind of ambient effects. 51. Fundamentals of Detroit: Here we're going to have a quick look at Detroit style. You're going to want to use repetitive piano or synth melodies, like this. It's gonna be in a minor tonality, and it has to sound dark and kind of ominous. I've also layered in this dark synth loop I got on Lupermen as a background texture. Some people like to make Detroit in double time. So I'm set at about 1:05, but they might set their BPM at 2:10, but that's just a personal preference. The main part of Detroit style comes from the drum pattern. So you're gonna want to draw your kick like this, and it should sound like this. It's also usually pretty heavily distorted. So the kick originally sounded like Where's my kick? It originally sounded like this. But we want to give it a bit of bite, so we kind of over distort it. And then your base pattern is just going to follow the pattern of the kick. So again, with this, I've also added a bit of distortion. And here's how the beat sounds. 52. Fundamentals of UK Drill: Finally, we're just going to have a quick look at UK drill. So these tracks are usually pretty dark and often have repetitive kind of haunty melodies. Let's have a listen. These haunty melodies are usually pretty simple and as I said, repetitive. We're going to have a classic kind of trap kick and snare pattern. But our high hats are going to be pretty syncopated. And then the other main element of UK drill would be the eight oh eight subbase, but it's nearly a melody in itself. And there's also a lot of sliding notes. Now, my bass pattern is probably a bit over the top, but that's okay. I'm just trying to demonstrate the core kind of elements of each genre. So let's have a listen to this o Oh, I also forgot to Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the melodies are often quite detuned, like this. So, again, I used that vibrato effect.