Transcripts
1. Introduction: Old naming, naming. Hi everyone and welcome to your first introduction
to FL Studio. My name is Sam, also known as Weasel from
Isabella and weasel. I've been producing
in FL Studio for over 15 years and I've
been creating tricks in his program that
have been signed by labels like spinning records
or Mata ultra music. Today, I'm going to explain
you everything you need to know the absolute
basics of FL Studio. After these episodes, you can
start your own real song. First and foremost, I don't think I have to
tell you guys how important it is nowadays to be able to produce
your own music, especially in the
dance music industry. It's not enough to be
just a DJ anymore. You really have to
have two tracks as well to gain popularity. Built up a following
on social media. Producing music is
pretty important. But also if you're a songwriter or a acoustic music producer, or a producer or a musician, you play guitar or whatever. You have a basic knowledge of FL Studio or any other
music production software. Again, that will help you
in your recording process. You don't have to hire
a audio engineer or re, producer yourself
because your experience in the program yourself. Maybe you guys are already familiar with the 10
thousand hour rule. This is a rule and what it says is what it means is that you really have to put in 10 thousand hours before you are a true experts in something. I think this is also true
for music production. It's a tough process. It's pretty technical as well. But the fun thing
about producing music is that it's
so much fun that you don't really experience that you're putting in 10 thousand
hours before you're a pro. That's how much fun it is. So yes, it's technical.
Yes, It's hard. Yes, the learning
curve is pretty steep, but it's also a lot of fun. And see now, that will
make it a lot more easy, I think, to actually become
good at producing music. So if you do not have a
copy of FL Studio yets, you can download the
trial for free on the manufacturer's
website image line. Just go to www.image-line.com and download the free trial. It has almost all functions. So you can get going
right away and see if producing music is
something for you.
2. Starting the program: So first, if you've installed
FL Studio or to trial, start off the program. This screen you see right in
front of us is my screen. If you start off fl Studio
for the first time, it is possible it's kinda differs on which
version you download. It is possible that it starts
off with a demo projects. They do that because
they wanted to show you and get
you hyped up for the kind of music
you can produce in this in his music
production software. It's also possible, it
depends on our version that it starts up with
some kind of templates. If you want to explore
the demo track, for example, be my guest. But if you wanted to have this exact same screen
in front of you, just go to File New
from templates minimal, empty. Then you will have this. And if it doesn't look exactly
the same, don't worry, we'll get to all of
that in a second. Let me start off with telling
you that's creating music. Creating a song is like
laying down a big puzzle. You have all these
little pieces of the puzzle that you all
have to fit together. Hence, you will
have some kind of picture. In the beginning. Maybe the picture is not as
good as you want it to be. But there's always a picture. And let's start off
with explaining the first puzzle pieces that you'll need
for creating music.
3. Samples, part 1: So the first puzzle pieces for creating your big puzzle
are called samples. Will explain everything that's
on the screen right here. And we will start off right now with this
screen on the left, which is called the browser. In the browser, you'll find, well, not much in your case. But normally this isn't like the database for all
your puzzle pieces. If you click on PECS right here, you can see that there's a
couple of folders in here, like drums, instruments,
that kind of stuff. And all these things
that are in here are, almost all of them
are called samples. They're little
pieces of audio that you can use to lay
out your puzzle. These samples are all in the standard
tradition of FL Studio, so you should have
those as well. What we can do with this
puzzle pieces is we can drag them to our next screen. That's this one. It's the channel record
is step sequencer. So let's do that right now. And let's drag in a kick and drag it right over here into step sequencer
or the channel wreck. If you can't see this
screen right here, you can also click on the
browser button right here. This will hide or unhide it. The same goes for
the channel wreck or to sample sequence here, which is this one. Now we've dragged in
our first sample, we can start sitting
out a pattern. So let's do that right now. Just simply clicking here. And right here you can play your pattern right off the bed. You can hear that it's a
pretty fast pattern right now. Here you have to tempo
parameter that you can change this to whatever
projects tempo you once a half. Maybe now it's a good time
to talk about measurements. This is called the BPM, or two beats per minutes. It's, it's also, your heart rate is also
measured in beats per minute. For example, it's simply put, if you put this on 125, which is the common
BPM for house music, this will mean that there are 125 beats in one minute,
simple as death. Now, one of these things
is called a step. Four of these things
is called one beats, and four beats are
called one-bar. This is not really
important to understand the absolute basics
of music production. But it's good to
know because it's like basic knowledge
for are creating music. So if we fill out
our pattern again, if we change the tempo to 60, for example, the
tempo is now one beats or one kick per seconds. So now let's drag out some
other samples as well, maybe a clap and maybe
a high hats as well. Let's fill those
patterns out as well. Let's play that. You have. It's a standards
dance music pattern. Again, these samples are just
included within FL Studio. If you are serious about it's
producing music in general, you'll see that there are sounds of sample bags out
there on the internet. You can download them.
Some of them cost money, some of them are free. And in my opinion, the samples that come with
fl Studio are not that good, but they are good enough to get a basic understanding
of the program. So just know that there are
sounds of sample bags out. They're all filled to the brim
with all kinds of sounds. Also know that samples are
not just drum elements. They are also like
samples of instruments, samples of
synthesisers, of bases, of strings, all kinds of things. And it's literally
anything that has audio information
can be assembled.
4. Arranging : Now that we've created our
first dance music pattern, we can now start
arranging our song, and that's what
this is right here. It's called the playlist editor. If you can't see the screen, you can unhide aids hide its width, this
button right here. And we can just draw
our pattern right here. You can see from
left to right that this is going to be our song. If you want to take this
out of the program, if you want to export it
to an MP3 or something, this is what will get exported. So above here you can see
that we have two options, pattern modes and song modes. If we change from
the pattern modes, which is this, this is our
pattern to the song modes. We can see that there's
now a cursor right here. See that that disappears and
it appears if we change this and that way we
can switch between listening to our pattern
and listening to our song. So that's our song right now. So now we notice we can
create several patterns. What I like to do is to
create a single pattern for every single elements
that I have in my project. To do this, you go to the
plus button right here, will automatically create
a new pattern for you. Let's call this one kick
and start filling gets out. You can press ride mouse
button and fill in feel each four steps to automatically get the
standards dance music pattern. And another pattern it's
called It's going clap. Let's fill this out as well. Another one, let's
call this hi-hats, fill that out as well. Now go to the plaintiffs editor. You can see right
here that there are there are the patterns
that we just created. Let's remove this
right-click and drag. Let's fill out the kick. And let's fill out the clip. Let's fill out the high hats, but let's put that
one right here. Now play our song. You can see right here that
are high hat comes in. This is the basic understanding of how you arrange a track. It's that easy. What you can also
do, and this is like an alternative to
how I produce music. You can, right away drag your stuff into the
playlist editor. If we just go, if we press Control and scroll, scroll through or you
can zoom in on your, your playtest editor, you
simply scroll, you go down. So Control plus scroll wheel. Right here you can, for example, just go and copy this
one the way you want. So you can do this and then
that way you can always see the waveform that's like the visual representation
of your sample. You can work like that as well. It's a matter of
preference for me. I like to put it in
patterns because that keeps things well organized
in my opinion. But it's completely up to you. When we dragged in this sample, you can see that
our patterns are now disappearing
from the screen. There are this little
tab right here. So this tab from patterns, this step for the audio. And also right here
you can also see debts are dragged in. Samples from earlier
are now gone. If we click here and go
through unsorted so we can see all the samples
we have in our pattern. And if we go to audio, we can see the audio that we dragged in to our
playlist editor. Can also see both
if you press all, this is really a
matter of preference. I will suggest to
go with this way because that will keep
things more organized. But really, it's a
matter of taste.
5. Samples, part 2: So the samples we just
discussed, all these samples. They are all called
one-shot samples. There's also a different kind
of sample called a loop. And a loop is like a sample, but it's maids to repeat after each other the NCI
time it's looped. So let's drag in
some loop right now. We can put it right here. You can see that this loop, it's made to repeat
after itself. So these loops that
come with fl Studio, they are synchronized with
the BPM of your projects. You'll use your own sample bags or your downloaded
sample packs in future. That will not
always be the case. Let me just show you by
taking some kind of loop. This one, you can see
right away that it doesn't sync up with
this line right here. We just removed this
right-click remove. That's not in sync
with our projects. To fix this, we can double-click
on the loop itself. And in this screen
you'll find a lot of the properties of your
audio file to fix this, to make it sync to our temple, we right-click on the time
parameter right here, and we go to outside insects. Now normally, when you have
simple packs in the future, it will tell you the BPM, the tempo of the sample in the title of the sample itself. So right here you can see that this loop
is in a BPM of 130. So we know that the tempo
of this loop is 130, so it's already estimating that, but it has some kind of weird
fluctuation. Not sure why. We can type it in ourselves
manually right here, 130. You can see right away. And it's syncs up. Widths are with our projects, lines like the bars. And we can again copy this. You can now hear that it's
in sync with our projects. So that's how you
work with loops, which you can also
do if it's unseen, is you can zoom in. Again. Control plus scroll
wheel to zoom. You can, um, you can check or uncheck this little
stretch button right here. If you set it on stretch, you can drag the
sample yourself to a point that you
finds it's should be. You should zoom in to do this. But if you don't want
to reset it right here, you try it this way, you will see that it's
not really possible. So you get it's on
the exact line. You want to fix sets. You have this thing called Snap, and the loop wants to
snap to something. You can turn this function on or off with this
button right here. Just click the magnets that snap magnets and it goes to num. Now you can drag it exactly
the way you want it. That's how you work with
loops and how to get them in sync, which
are projects. You can of course also drag loop straight into your
step sequence term. But it's for me personally, I like to put loops into the playlist editor and
because you have a nice visual of them right
away, that works for me. But you can also do
It's right here. I wouldn't suggest to do so. So I'm not going to explain it.
6. Piano roll: So as I mentioned, samples are important
building blocks are puzzled pieces
for your song, for your big puzzle. And it's another
big building peace for your song is instruments. So since this, since the
beginning of this video, we only started
with drum samples. Let's now start our
first instruments. To do dance. We go to ads. And you will notice
that this screen is way difference at your version of FL Studio at your screen. Because I have a summit of custom instruments live
with sample banks, you can all show downloads. Lot of instruments
on the Internet's. Some are free, some
you have to buy. And the ethyl keys, which are the thing we're
gonna load up right now, come standard with fl Studio. So you should find that as well. Let's start it up. Ethyl keys, let's start a new
pattern as well. Let's call its keys. And it is possible that you only see this if you drag right here. You can also see the
piano if you wanted to. I have a keyboard
right here and so right away you can here, this is a piano. The next thing we're
going to discuss is a really important part of
perusing music as well. It's called the piano roll. Starts the piano roll. We right-click on FLC 0s and
we click the piano roll. You can also hide or unhide it with this
button right here. It's called a piano
roll because voila, you have all the keys on
the piano right here. The higher you go, the higher
denotes and lower you go. The lower to note. Right
here in the piano roll, we can create some
kind of melody. We can just draw it in and we can make it longer, for example. And let's just
draw something in. Right now we made
our first amenity. Let's listen to
that. Let's click on the pattern, and
let's play this. So that's our first melody. Let's drag that
into the playlist. Let's go to the playlist
again. Let's drag that in. Let's click right here
to starts our song. Your first melodic
information in your track. If you're already
familiar with music, you probably know that there's
something called quartz. Quartz are just notes. These things are called notes. Notes stacked on
top of each other. We can control click to select everything and maybe
put this an octave. That's what's the change between this node and
this node is constant. Let's put it at one octave down. Now let's go
through pattern. Listen again. Now it's
one octave lower. So now we can maybe add
some other notes as well. There you have it.
You've created your first two nodes, courts. And if we go back to our
playlist right here, there you have it, your
first courts in your song. It's that easy if
you are a musician yourself and if you're
already well-known, width agile creates music. You can read notes, that kind
of stuff. You can all show. Records it yourself. So let's remove all this control plus a to select all delete, to delete it, you can press
the record button right here. Let's switch your pattern first. You can press the record
button right here. Click on everything. If you press play and if you starts playing stuff
on your keyboards, you can simply recording
your own notes information. That way you can
already get going with actually be recording
your own stuff into, into your music
production software. It's elite debts as well.
7. Mixer, effects & automation: So next up is the most complicated thing
to explain to beginners. I think it's the mixer. If we wanted to start
off the mixture, you can press this
button right here. This is your mixture. And if your screen is
slightly different, that's because this
is set to compact. So maybe you endure a screen, it's set to wise or something. If you want the
exact same screen, just put it on compact. Maybe this is different. You at your screen as well. I'm just switch
that accordingly. Get this exact same screen. The mixture track is kind of the place to control all
your individual sounds. So for example,
this mixer track, mixer track one corresponds
with this one right here. If we go back to our
pattern, kicked pattern, you can see that if we play this kick is coming in
in mixture track one. Let's double-click
this loop and put that to mixer trick five. So we double-click that. We are now going to
change this to five. You can see right
here, the mixture. If we change this, the mixture track
changes as well. So this five corresponds
with this five right here. And if we play this, you can hear and see that that's
audio signal is coming in. Mixture track five. Let's now control all of our sounds and put them in their own separate mixing for x. So this is our clap. We can change the
pattern here as well. She's got to clap,
which is the next one. Let's put this on
mixer trick to. It goes to the open hi-hats. It is on the mixture track
three and the ethyl keys. Let's put that mixture track. For now. Everything is corresponding
to its own mixer track. And if we play our song that everything is coming in
on their own mixer track. What we can do with
this information or with this function, is that we can assign effects to every single individual elements or mixer trick, which
we have right here. So all these mixture
track combines, they all come together in the master mixer track
is like the like, where everything comes together. So if you export your song into an MP3 at the
end of the day, your master track is
what you will here. So keep that in mind back
to the mixer tracks. Let's solo the clap, which is mixer track too. If you want to, you can right-click and rename
and call this clap. Lets do that. On the right side, right here, you can see all kinds of slots. And what you can do
with these slots is you can put effects into them. And there are tons of
different effects. Again, this screen
will look a lot different at my screen
then at your screen. But let's put, let's load up a effects that's
both you and I have. Let's go for the fruit, the delay to start that up. Now we load It's
our first effects into the collapse mixer track. If we want to
listen to the clap, you can right-click to
listen to his solo. Right-click against
listened to everything. But what we are gonna do
is we're just going to press the pattern and listen
to the pattern itself. Right away. You can hear that there's
an effect of being applies. Delay. And delay is like echo. It's a thank you. Didn't know what it does
and you're hearing it. But this is one example of an effects of sounds of different effects
that are out there. This way you can apply
different effects to all kinds of different
sounds. In mixed track. One, we have to kick,
can change this. This is the high hats. We know that this is
the keys, I think. Yep. And this is the loop we have. We can now decides to
throw something on the loop mixing channel or the keys mixing channel or the high
hat mixing channel. Clap, Nice. In general, it doesn't
matter. The next thing we can now do is we can starts
controlling this effects. So we have this effect. Let's say I like that effect, but I don't want it
throughout my complete song. I just wanted to add
a specific time. You see all these
parameters on here. You can control every
single parameter to control it
throughout your song. This parameter right here, it controls how much of the delay you want to apply
through your Mixer Channel. If we put it to 0, we can
just hear the clamps. If we increase this parameter. You can see when I
change the parameter, the delaying gets more. You can hear it more. If we right-click
this parameter, you can create an
automation clip and that's what we're
going to talk about next. Automation clips are ways
to control your Effects. And let's do that right away. Let's click create
automation clip. If you now go back to our
playtest editor and you can see that this thing
appears right here. And this is your kind of like your chalkboards to control
this specific effect. This is called an
automation clip. You can just drag in
everything that you want. So let's say we don't want
the effects to be here. So this, if it goes all
the way up, it's on 100th. So if we go to this
part on the song, we go to our mixture. You can see that it's
now all the way at 100s. If we put that all the way down, we can see that it's now at 0. Let's say we want the
delay to start here. Let's delete that
right-click Delete. So right-click right here to
create an automation points. And Dr. Clegg right here and
create an automation points. And then we want the
delay to be gone. Again. If we listen now to
this part of the song, you can hear it at
that specific points. The delay is increasing. This way you can really control how much delay you
want to be applied and where in the song gets that
this is kind of complicated, especially if you don't know
what you can do with it yet. But with this mixer
track right here, you can stack all
kinds of effects. So if we open up another one, we can start off maybe
a phasor or something. Fruity phasor is also
something you should have. If you can't see it, you can also click more
plug-ins right here. You can just type
it in and find. So you can type in phasor
and click it right here. If we go back to a
pattern right now, and if we also go back
here to actually see it, this is the phaser effect. You can choose to
apply this effect in your mixing channel. So this mixing channel, it works from top to bottom. So the effect that is applied on the first slot
is applied first, then the second slot
is applied, etc. etc. If we use the scroll wheel, we can actually change
watts effect comes first. That could be
something you want. So if we put up the, the effects all the way, let's just, let's just
listen to the pattern. You can now hear
that the phasor, which is an effect I
won't get into right now. You can hear it is being
applied to the delay as well. But if we use a scroll wheel to put the phasor before the delay, you can hear that's
the delay is not being phasors, just the clap. I hope that's kind of, you can kind of hear what's, what's the difference
is in that. But just know that it works
top to bottom right here. This is the most
complicated thing about being an absolute
beginner in FL Studio I think, but automation makes it possible to control the
effects in your song. Also known that there are
so many effects out there. And just like with
sampled banks, just like with instruments, there are sounds of effects
out there on the internet. Some can be bought,
some are free. And you can control everything. You can control everything
in the Effects. Just right-click,
create automation clip to control that specific
parameter within the effect. If you can imagine is
you can control it. Guys, I think that's it
for this first episodes. I don't want it to be too long. I think we discussed everything. I explained what the browser is, explained, what the
step sequencer is. I explained how you can drag sounds from the browser
into your step sequencer. I explained how you can then
put those patterns that you create in the step sequencer
into your platelets editor. I showed you how you can simply arrange your first little song, our first thirty-seconds song. I also showed you
how you can drag audio straits sue the playlist
editor if you want to. I showed you how to
arrange or how to connect specific samples to
your specific mixture track. So you can do that through here. Through here, it doesn't
matter, it's the same. And also double-click
an audio clip and change it through here. I then also explains
how you can rename your mixer tracks and apply effects to your
individual mixer trucks. Yeah, I explained
how everything in the mixer in your mixture comes together in
the master chain. That's cotton, that's
covering everything. I think samples, ranging,
mixing, automation. That's all you needs to create
your very first on track. It will not sound goods
in the beginning, but at least you can start
creating your own little song, especially with the piano roll. I haven't touched upon that
in this last little bit. We can really start getting
creative with metadata. This is just a single
chord pattern, but of course you can
as little notes as well and go completely
crazy with this. And it's a little fun. So that's it for
this first episodes. In the next episode, I'll
go in a little bit deeper. I hope you had fun and I hope
you learned something and I hope your hives to
start creating music. See you later.
Mr. Belt & Wezol, DJ/producer duo from the Netherlands
