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  • Hello and welcome to the long awaited FL Studio 12

  • Complete Basic Tutorial

  • I am Nathaniel Fisher

  • And I'd like to firstly begin

  • by apologising for the low quality

  • and poor organisation

  • in the original FLStudio Complete Basic Tutorial

  • That was nearly three years ago now

  • and with the release of FLStudio 12

  • One of the biggest updates

  • to FL Studio in quite a while

  • I would like to take the time

  • to provide you with the tutorial that I

  • originally aimed to create

  • armed with a greater knowledge

  • of both music production

  • and the FL Studio interface

  • I'd like to say thank you for all of you kind comments

  • in the original tutorial

  • and also for the helpful advice

  • Despite the fact that arguably the tutorial

  • was successful, I really do think it was

  • very, very low standard-

  • very poor quality.

  • But with that, I think it's time

  • to move on with the tutorial

  • In this tutorial I will be covering

  • Navigating the application

  • Basic pattern creation

  • Adding your own plugins to the program

  • and creating very convenient

  • shortcuts to opening them

  • Automation

  • and mastering.

  • Basically, arming you with the knowledge

  • of how to create simple tracks

  • in FL Studio

  • So with that,

  • lets begin.

  • So, FL Studio 12

  • for me, has two really good selling points

  • over previous versions of the application

  • the first one is the Vectorial Interface

  • what this means, is that

  • these aren't images, that make up the

  • interface

  • These are mathematically calculated

  • shapes

  • Meaning that these can be

  • on massive screens

  • as long as the resolution is high enough

  • giving you lots of room

  • to work

  • The second selling point

  • is the implementation of a driver

  • called FL Studio ASIO

  • now ASIO is a driver

  • that allows for near zero latency

  • input

  • which is fantastic for live performing

  • and also for recording directly from a MIDI Keyboard

  • such as this one

  • into the application with maximum accuracy

  • FL Studio ASIO is the first driver

  • that not only allows for near zero latency

  • audio processing

  • it doesn't lock the audio device to one application

  • So I'd like to show you

  • how to utilise this driver

  • Now I believe it will startup with the

  • Primary sound driver

  • Now let me show you the difference

  • So that's with the primary sound driver

  • Now we can reduce this

  • But if we reduce it too far, and

  • a lot of tracks are playing at once

  • These things called underruns happen

  • Now these underruns, cause crackles

  • in the audio, artefacts

  • that can be really quite annoying

  • and can reduce the accuracy of what

  • you're actually hearing

  • with regards to the final track

  • Going below this number

  • a lot of the plugins break

  • instantly

  • Now with ASIO

  • which I cant switch to because it will

  • break my recording

  • It allows for that near zero latency

  • But, it locks it to FL Studio only

  • Meaning I can't record

  • So all you have to do

  • to take advantage of this

  • is go to FL Studio ASIO

  • and click show ASIO panel

  • It will be set to 512 initially

  • but if your CPU is good enough

  • you can turn it right down to 256

  • meaning only 6ms

  • Now of course plugins add to that

  • But this initial number

  • is a good 70 milliseconds less than with

  • the default audio driver

  • Make sure you select the correct

  • Microphone for any recording that you want to do

  • And make sure that you select the correct output

  • But it's that simple to setup

  • the near zero latency driver

  • If you don't mind a few artefacts

  • and want less latency

  • you can turn off Triple Buffer

  • as you can see, that's taken off 6 milliseconds

  • But basically, the more complex

  • your project is, the more you'll have to turn up

  • this value

  • But first try using Triple Buffer

  • Because that adds a minimal amount of latency

  • and can fix a lot of issues

  • I'm going to leave this unchecked for now

  • because I want the least latency possible

  • So that's how to set up FL Studio ASIO

  • Something that I think is brilliant

  • It's a really good advancement by Image-Line

  • Now that that's set up

  • I'd like to talk to you about the interface

  • And I'm going to make some more room here

  • by just adjusting the width of this browser

  • which gives me more room for the other

  • windows, which automatically resize

  • based on their snap locations

  • So now that we've got a fully open project

  • I'd like to rewind a little bit

  • and go to an empty project

  • This is what you'll likely see once you purchase

  • FL Studio

  • So let's go on that assumption

  • So the first thing that you want to do

  • is, if you don't have a MIDI device such as this one

  • then you can just click a button on your keyboard

  • Just to see that the sound's working

  • If you see feedback here

  • At the top center of the screen

  • But you can't hear anything

  • Then you might want to check your

  • Output device

  • And also ensure that the volume is at a

  • suitable level

  • But once you've got that working

  • You could start constructing a very basic track

  • Simply by clicking on these buttons here

  • So, now

  • Every one that's glowing, or bright

  • will cause the sound to be triggered

  • You can right click

  • to disable them

  • An easy way to fill in these

  • Is to right click the channel

  • in the pattern

  • window

  • and simply do "Fill each two steps"

  • That saves you a lot of work

  • But to be honest with you

  • those sounds are OK

  • Just to practice with, but they're not very

  • good in terms of

  • professional sound

  • So all you have to do to remove these is to

  • Right click them and click delete

  • And I tend to do this

  • You don't really have to

  • But it just cleans things up a little bit

  • Hold left click to add

  • Hold right click to remove

  • Quite simple

  • So what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose from

  • the plugin presets here

  • A generator

  • A generator creates a sound

  • An effect modifies an existing sound

  • So we're gonna go ahead with a generator

  • and choose a simple

  • Preset

  • Which is the default 3x Oscillator

  • All you have to do to add this to your project

  • Is to drag it from the left-hand side

  • Explorer window (browser)

  • And you can override an existing channel

  • Or just drop it underneath

  • Or above

  • To create a new channel

  • I'm gonna override the kick

  • Now, with FL Studio 12

  • Much of the default plugins that come with FL Studio

  • have been revamped

  • Their interface is very very clean

  • And very sharp indeed

  • For the purpose of this tutorial

  • I'm gonna go ahead and use my keyboard

  • For any generation that I do

  • But you can make do with a normal computer keyboard

  • For the time being

  • So here you get a simple sine wave

  • Three of them, it looks like

  • That's panning, as is shown by the symbol there

  • So, as you can see, the interface is quite simple to use

  • This means square

  • This is- looks like sine and square

  • Triangle

  • Saw

  • Quite harsh

  • And... noise- Very interesting

  • So yeah, its quite easy to start

  • producing things

  • As you can see up here

  • Pattern 1 would suggest the first pattern

  • the first collection of notes

  • So, all we have to do

  • to actually put this into your project

  • is to drop it here

  • If you hold control, and move the scrollwheel

  • up you'll find that there's actually some notes

  • You can delve deeper by double-clicking the pattern

  • And it will open it

  • This button switches between song and pattern mode

  • Highlighted, or glowing means it's in pattern mode

  • Which really doesn't do anything right now

  • And if you click it again, it goes to song mode

  • It's important to notice the difference between

  • these two windows

  • This is just one element of a song

  • And this is the entire composition

  • How did I do that?

  • The same way I did it in this window up here

  • Left clicking

  • As you can see, it loops so you can listen to things

  • over and over again with ease

  • To adjust the length of a note

  • All you have to do is click the end

  • And drag it left or right

  • You'll notice that the next note you place is the same length

  • as the last one

  • So the program adapts to you being able to duplicate

  • things

  • It's not called Fruity Loops for nothing

  • You can resize any of the windows simply by clicking

  • and dragging their borders

  • So, this is a simple way to create your first

  • pattern in FL Studio

  • It's important to have as much control as possible

  • over the notes you make

  • Because how loud they are

  • Can be just as important

  • as what note they are

  • I'll give you an example here

  • By speeding up the pattern

  • I selected all three of these notes

  • using a box select which is

  • Possible to do by holding CTRL on the keyboard

  • And then just dragging the area that you want to select

  • I can reduce the size of all the notes

  • By clicking on any of the notes that are selected

  • And it will reduce all the others accordingly

  • This even works with different sized notes

  • What I'm going to do in this case though

  • Is I'm gonna use this button

  • This button scales the entire pattern (that is selected)

  • Which is really really useful and not only does it

  • change their length but it also changes their position

  • Snapping is really useful in this case

  • But if you want to override it

  • All you have to do when you try and resize a note

  • Is hold ALT

  • And then you can adjust it by any amount you want

  • While I've selected the object

  • I just hold shift

  • Click any of the notes that are selected

  • And drag wherever I want

  • It's not locked to the same note

  • I can increase their "height"

  • If I let go of shift

  • I'm using space to start and stop the pattern

  • I'm using the same techniques here to build

  • up by pattern even further

  • And you can copy and paste as many times as you want

  • As you can see, the pattern

  • automatically lengthens

  • If you want to undo more than one step

  • You can't just press CTRL +Z because it will keep reverting

  • between undo and redo

  • In order to undo multiple times, hold CTRL + ALT

  • And as you can see I've gone through multiple undo levels

  • Velocity is really important

  • Velocity is also known as volume

  • The only real use of the term velocity

  • is with regards to MIDI input

  • MIDI input has 127 levels of velocity

  • That's based on computer limitations

  • But as you can see, this defines the velocity of a note

  • I'll show you what this does

  • Once I've modified all of the notes

  • Now that is super important with drums

  • As you can see, once I've held CTRL + ALT + Z

  • It opens the current project history

  • Now the current project is interesting

  • because it shows you everything that you're using

  • Currently I'm using the Fruity Limiter

  • In the mixer

  • This tells you a lot of the information you need

  • So, as I'm hovering over these

  • Feel free to take a look at what is being displayed

  • Now I called this the song view, if you like

  • But it's technically known as the playlist

  • As you can see, even the shortcut keys are displayed

  • To the right hand side of that panel I just indicated

  • All you have to do to toggle these

  • Is to click them

  • Once they are opened, they will appear ontop

  • of any other window

  • As can be seen by this

  • Now, I've shown you the channel rack

  • The playlist, and the piano roll

  • The piano roll you can get to know as the patterns

  • One thing I haven't shown you, is the mixer

  • Now the mixer has been revamped in FL 12

  • You have multiple different ways to view it

  • This gives you the most large display

  • But it's good to be compact

  • If you're on any less than

  • two monitors, or a 4K display

  • Now, the mixer is great

  • It's very adaptable

  • In terms of display

  • But I want you to see the indication at this point

  • this highlighted green part when I press a key

  • As you can see,

  • That one is being triggered

  • This one is the master channel

  • This means that everything goes through the master

  • Any effects you apply to the master channel

  • Apply to all the different channels

  • All the sounds have it, for example

  • If I applied a reverb to it, my entire song

  • would have a reverb, not just the drum

  • So this isn't good, because this means that right now

  • I can only control my one instrument

  • through the master

  • Well, it's easy to resolve that

  • All you have to do is make sure that

  • the channel of your choice is selected

  • And right click the mixer channel that you want to

  • assign it to

  • Go to channel routing

  • And click "Route Selected Channel To This Track"

  • As you can see, the shortcut is CTRL + L

  • So now when I press

  • Not only does it go through the master

  • Because as I said previously, everything goes through the

  • master

  • But it also goes through

  • "Channel 1"

  • of the mixer

  • This means that I can apply effects to this

  • without affecting the rest of the instruments in my song

  • I'll give you an example here

  • So, with FL12 the different effects have been categorised

  • So it gives you a bit more context about what they do

  • If we go to "Filter" here

  • for example

  • And click Effector

  • This is a great versatile effect module

  • As you can see, it's not doing anything right now

  • This is because bypass is on

  • Turn off bypass and it will actually be registered

  • As you can see, as it's on reverb

  • There is a nice clean long reverb

  • So the two different axis

  • define the decay, and the size of the reverb

  • It would seem that the Y parameter

  • defines the size

  • And the X parameter

  • Defines the decay, or how wet the reverb is

  • Now, I want to prove to you that this is only

  • affecting the first channel

  • So what I'm gonna go ahead and do

  • Is I'm gonna click this button here

  • And instead of going to the plugin database

  • I'm going to go to a snap that I created myself

  • It was originally called Snap 5

  • As indicated by the number

  • But I renamed it to "Gen. External"

  • Which means, Generators, External (Generators)

  • Plugins that are not native to FL Studio

  • Now technically FPC is

  • But it is a little bit difficult to access

  • So I've decided to put it here

  • I'm gonna go ahead and drag this in

  • FPC is great because it allows you to

  • drag samples onto each of the pads here

  • And you have maximum control over the sound of your drums

  • I'm gonna go ahead and leave this

  • As it is but I want you to note

  • The channels that are being triggered

  • When I press a note

  • As you can see, Master is being triggered

  • But there is no reverb

  • Now, multiple channels can actually be assigned to

  • To the same mixer track

  • As can be demonstrated by doing the same thing

  • I've already said

  • But we don't want that, so we're gonna go ahead and

  • change that

  • Don't worry about the fact that I routed it to

  • this one first

  • Once you route it to another one,

  • it will be disassociated from the first one

  • As you can see

  • I'm gonna go ahead and apply a soundgoodizer

  • If we click this to make sure it's open

  • A is the lowest frequencies

  • Which is good, it's bass

  • D, in contrast, is treble

  • Doesn't sound very good

  • Now, it's important to not overuse it

  • I usually keep it around here

  • So now we have our drum with a bass boost

  • on it

  • And we have our oscillator

  • Now we want to put these two together

  • What I don't want to do

  • is start editing the piano roll of the drum

  • In the same pattern

  • Because this means that we can't mix and match

  • as we choose

  • Instead what we're going to do

  • Is click the plus button

  • Next to the pattern

  • And give it a name that's suitable

  • In this case I'm not going to, but you can do if you want

  • You can skip that

  • Simply by pressing enter

  • And it will remain as pattern 2

  • As you can see, I'm now just by clicking

  • While I've got Pattern 2 selected

  • I've now created the pattern here which is currently empty

  • I want to work on Pattern 2

  • But I don't want to listen to the rest of the song

  • While I do

  • So all I have to do is click

  • This button to make sure I'm in Pattern Mode

  • It's at this point in the game

  • Where I'm thinking "What kind of song

  • do I want to create?"

  • Now, one of the most defining factors

  • About this is the tempo

  • Different genres tend to have different tempo ranges

  • Electro tends to be pretty much always 128 beats per minute

  • Dubstep can be between 140-150 BPM

  • Drum and bass can be between 150 and 170 BPM

  • Metal can be 170 BPM plus

  • Orchestral can be as low as 60 BPM

  • There is a massive range

  • And luckily FL Studio allows you to change that here

  • So, I'm gonna go ahead and say I want to create an electro dance track

  • So I'm gonna go to 128 BPM

  • I want to make sure that that sounds right

  • So I'm gonna use the metronome

  • The metronome is great because if I was to record something

  • And there was a lot going on

  • Or if I don't trust my own instinct to

  • how large the interval is per beat

  • For a 128 BPM song for example

  • The metronome kind of gives me a bit of guidance there

  • Now I could do this same thing that I did with the

  • original pattern

  • Which was to place the notes manually

  • But instead I think I want to record

  • So all we do is press the record button

  • Now for recording the keyboard its just

  • The easiest thing to do is just to click "everything"

  • So when I press play it should give me a countdown

  • I wanna make sure I've got the right tracks here

  • The right notes to press

  • There's a basic pattern

  • When I press stop the pattern appears

  • Now, I must admit even though I did have the metronome

  • My rhythm is not the best

  • So as you can see, it's not really with the lines

  • of the track

  • Luckily there's an easy feature to do this

  • If you want to do a few notes, box select them first

  • But if not, without selecting any

  • and instead just press CTRL + Q

  • To quantize the notes

  • This constrains them

  • To the beats or intervals of the BPM

  • Which is really helpful, and it allows you to clean up any sloppy mistakes

  • Now, it's not complete perfect though

  • I was so off tempo at the end,

  • That this has quantized the wrong values

  • Which you can see very clearly because that shouldn't be there

  • Should be here

  • As you can see, every other note

  • Starts on a big bold line

  • As should this one

  • So now if you press play

  • If we turn off record mode

  • Now as you've noticed, well I hope you have anyway

  • The pattern 2, which is the drums

  • Has updated, it's got larger

  • And it's got lots of notes in it.

  • Now, all I have to do to hear them both together

  • Is to untick this, and press play

  • Alternatively, you should just be able to click

  • anywhere in the playlist

  • Which makes things a little bit easier

  • It's not exactly going to be number one

  • But, I think it's a good start

  • OK, so we've got the basic patterns down

  • But I want to change the sound of my sounds over time

  • How do I do that?

  • Well, it's quite simple really

  • As you can see here, we've got the

  • Mixer, and this is where you apply effects

  • Generators make a sound,

  • Effects change the sound

  • Now I'm gonna change what this effector does

  • I'm going to turn it onto filter

  • I'm gonna go ahead and press the pattern button

  • And I'm gonna navigate

  • to pattern one

  • By clicking this

  • and dragging it up or down, to select the pattern that I want

  • Now I'm on the right pattern,

  • I'm gonna take a listen at what the filter sounds like

  • I'm also gonna turn off the metronome

  • So I'm gonna pick a position that I think sounds good

  • For the start

  • About there

  • And now, all I have to do because this is a native plugin

  • To change it over time,

  • Is to right click the knob that I want to change over time

  • And create Automation Clip

  • I'm gonna do the same for the Y parameter aswell

  • As you can see, some tracks have been created

  • underneath our existing patterns

  • I'm gonna switch to song mode right now

  • So that I can hear how my sound changes over time

  • And over time, I'm going to make these

  • about 50%, which is displayed

  • in the same notification area

  • As I've showed you previously

  • Now I'm gonna change the curve of these

  • Just by clicking this middle controller here

  • And then start making my song a little bit longer now

  • I can either copy these, just by doing that

  • Or I can extend them just like I would with a note

  • Make them look roughly identical

  • Now, you might want to start controlling these patterns a bit more

  • You might want to create a very similar pattern, but not

  • know what the exact values were for example

  • And it's really easy to do this

  • Say, for example, I wanted to take this part, and loop this part

  • But not this introductory part

  • All I would do is, use the slice tool

  • Which is available just by clicking this

  • Or by pressing "C"

  • And I'll take this pattern here

  • Of these automations

  • And just cut them both in half

  • Now, this is quite good for duplicating this part alone

  • But if I change this part

  • Then the other part changes too

  • Now that could be a good thing,

  • But in this case, I don't think it is a good thing

  • I'm not a big fan of that

  • I want this one to be different to that one

  • But I want it to be based on that one to begin with

  • which is why I copied it

  • To do this all you have to do is click "Make Unique"

  • And now if you change this pattern, which is why

  • I'm gonna make this

  • In line with the other end, so it doesn't sound quite

  • as jarring when it switches back again

  • As you can see, it doesn't change this one over here

  • And now I'm gonna do the same with this one

  • And now I'm gonna copy these

  • See what it sounds like

  • Now, as you can see I'm zooming in and out quite easily just by

  • Holding CTRL and using the scrollwheel

  • Alternatively if you do that over this

  • Then you'll scroll up and down

  • And you'll scroll left to right here

  • You can also use this control

  • To change the vertical zoom

  • Or, hold ALT and scroll

  • So, we've gone through the basics of using FLStudio

  • But what about if you want to expand on it?

  • With producer level plugins for example

  • Some of you might of heard of Nexus, or Massive

  • Well, installing this is quite simple

  • When you install them, you get a .dll

  • That you put in your FL Studio folder

  • If you have lot's of plugins, for example

  • And you don't want to store them on an SSD

  • Because of limited storage, just go to general settings

  • Or in fact, it will be "File"

  • And you can choose a folder to find the plugins from

  • Now, I've already done this

  • But the issue is once you've

  • loaded all your plugins

  • They won't be very easy to access

  • You'll have to go through the "Browse all installed plugins"

  • And go to the VST folder

  • And go through this entire list

  • Now that isn't very fun

  • And besides, you might have a preset in that plugin that

  • you want to save, and load very very quickly

  • Which is why I created my External snaps

  • Snaps basically save the state

  • of the browser so you can switch between them

  • Right here I have a custom sound library called "Vengeance"

  • For drums

  • I don't want to have to navigate to it each time

  • And if I open all the menus that I possibly want

  • it's going to get very very confusing

  • So if you go to snap 7, for example,

  • and you want to

  • Have one category on display

  • For example mixer presets

  • Snap 7 will now save that

  • And all you have to do to make it more

  • Informative, is right click that label

  • And you can rename it something like

  • Mixer Presets

  • So now, when you click this

  • You'll see Mixer Presets as one of your snaps

  • Good eh?

  • I'm gonna go to generators external

  • because I think I am missing a plugin

  • Hardcore Kicks Free Editon

  • Let's use that for example

  • OK, so,

  • Hopefully I'll turn that down in editing

  • Let's say I've got it like this

  • And I want to save the state of what I've customised

  • And I want it to be easily accessible

  • I'm gonna got to my generators external

  • I'm gonna make sure that this one is selected

  • And then simply going to go to this little arrow

  • At the top left

  • "Add to plugin database"

  • It's going to be added to External

  • And there it is

  • Now this is fantastic,

  • But what if I have multiple different hardcore kicks with different setups?

  • They're all going to be called "Hardcore Kicks VST Free Edition"

  • Now this is a bit of an issue, that I've discovered

  • That I'm not sure if I can solve it within FL Studio

  • But I do know that I can solve it

  • I do know that I can solve it using the Windows Explorer

  • What you'd have to do is navigate to your FL Studio folder

  • Go to "Data"

  • "Patches"

  • And then navigate to "Plugin Database",

  • "Generators"

  • "External"

  • You should see the name of the

  • Preset that you've just added

  • I'm gonna rename this to

  • "Hardcore 1"

  • This is instantly going to break it

  • - You need to rename the rest of the files

  • Now it's worth noting, that it will still be broken

  • Because this NFO file tells you

  • What the image is called

  • Now I've just renamed the image

  • So I'm gonna also update this

  • And save it

  • And it might take a second for this to work

  • That way I can just

  • Drag in my Hardcore 1

  • Make some modifications to it

  • And then go ahead and click "Add to plugin database"

  • again

  • There's the image updated now

  • If you don't want an image, just delete the image

  • And now I can go ahead and do the same thing

  • Drag it in there

  • And if I were to open My Computer again

  • I could go ahead and rename that and call it

  • "Hardcore 2"

  • And it's that simple

  • This is really really useful in a case such as this

  • Here's Kontakt

  • Great plugin player

  • Lot's of different sound libraries here

  • But "The Giant" is a piano

  • There is not much flexibility to it, that's what it is

  • And if I want a piano, I don't want to have to open Kontakt

  • Then go to there, then there

  • It's just more clicks

  • So all I had to do was,

  • Open Kontakt

  • Load "The Giant"

  • Save it as a preset

  • Or "Add to Plugin Database"

  • Rename it to "The Giant"

  • In My Computer / Windows Explorer

  • And there we go, we've got the giant

  • I can do the same for for example The Rickenbacker Bass

  • Just load that

  • The same can be done for effects

  • I can just go to

  • The effector here

  • Click the dropdown arrow

  • "Add to Plugin Database"

  • I don't think it will work adding it to Generators

  • So you'd have to go to Effects

  • You'd have to create a folder first

  • Like I have done

  • And you can go "Add to Plugin Database"

  • You can also just save the preset

  • Which is useful for slight variations

  • Of something

  • Instead of an entirely different instrument

  • Like the Rickenbacker Bass

  • Versus The Giant Piano

  • That are both in the same plugin

  • But if it was The Giant Piano "echoey"

  • Or something like that

  • For example Eternity or Dreamland

  • Which I'll show you the difference now

  • I guess there isn't much difference between those two but

  • Entirely different classifications of instrument within the same plugin

  • Should probably be saved as adding it to the plugin databse

  • Instead of just a preset

  • OK, so now I've shown you how to add your own plugins

  • and be able to access them easily

  • The next thing I want to do is to, say

  • How to control external plugins

  • Now this isn't 100% accurate

  • It doesn't work for everything

  • But it does work for a lot of things

  • Let me give you an example here

  • Let's delete some of this just to ensure that performance

  • is optimal

  • Because to be honest with you, I don't really like this sound of

  • Much of FL Studio's

  • Plugins

  • And if you want to delete one of these, it's

  • As simple as going right click, delete file

  • Let's use Massive for this

  • Let's go for a Dubstep Bass

  • You'll notice if I right click here

  • I've got some options

  • That don't really work because it's inside FL

  • And these don't communicate with FL

  • However, there is a way to make it work

  • So Multilink to Controllers allows you to define

  • What virtual controller

  • Is assigned to what FL Studio or in fact physical controller

  • like a MIDI keyboard

  • So I'm gonna go ahead and click this button here

  • It's now telling me to tweak the controller I want

  • to control

  • And that's the LFO speed in this case

  • Firstly, if you wanted to use a MIDI controller with that control

  • If I tweak this

  • As you can see

  • The LFO speed is now tied to this

  • Which in fact I can record

  • Inside FL Studio

  • Let's add a new pattern for this

  • Now, it's quite good to use that to record

  • But

  • It makes modifying the

  • automation there a little bit difficult

  • So you might want to control the speed seperately

  • It's great for performing

  • But with regards to having the maximum control

  • Can be a bit difficult

  • So instead of that what you can do

  • Is click the Multilink to Controllers

  • Click the LFO speed

  • And then you can right click this

  • And Create Automation Clip

  • So now click the paint brush tool instead of the pencil

  • which allows you to paint as many times as you want

  • Now create a pattern in Pattern 3

  • And open the piano roll

  • It's important to note that this won't work while you're in pattern mode

  • Click the pattern to make sure it's selected here

  • You can also select it via that

  • Paste that in

  • Now it doesn't sound very good

  • For a start, dubstep usually isn't

  • 128BPM

  • The speed here is pretty terrible

  • But as you can see, the basic gist is using automation

  • To control external plugins

  • So now, I just want to finish up

  • Now that I've told you about how to use the interface,

  • With going about composing a basic song

  • You define the BPM based one what genre you're gonna use

  • That can be tweaked later, if you want, but it's good to start out with a basic idea of what you need

  • Might as well remove that as well

  • So I know that I'm gonna need drums

  • So the first thing I add is drums

  • Now, most songs have bass

  • Massive is quite good for bass

  • They have a lead

  • Which carries the bassline

  • Which is the catchy part of the song

  • And then they might have some kind of

  • Organic instrument

  • Such as a piano

  • So we're going to use The Giant in this case

  • So that's all I really need

  • To create a pretty cool song

  • But, I want some drama in the situation

  • So I'm gonna go ahead and use Kontakt

  • And I'm going to use this thing called Rise and Hit

  • This is really really cool

  • I'll give you a sample of what it sounds like

  • Let's start deciding what sounds we want to use in our song

  • I'm gonna reset this to empty

  • Now I've got my own sounds here

  • Which are really easy to add

  • All you have to do to add your own samples

  • Is to go to the FL Studio folder

  • Data, Patches

  • User

  • And then you can put anything you would like there

  • And then you can just create a snap by navigating to it

  • And as you can see it's opened my folder here ready

  • So, we're gonna go with electro

  • So I'm gonna go ahead and click for an electro bassdrum

  • If you're wondering how to add a MIDI device

  • Just plug it in, wait for the driver to install

  • And FL Studio should have native support for it

  • It has Native support for a large amount of devices

  • I think I should just make you aware of a certain thing

  • Which is really really cool

  • If you don't own a MIDI device, but you want something more tactile

  • to use

  • For example, a tablet, or a phone

  • Image-Line have actually came up with a

  • App called Image-Line Remote

  • which is free

  • You can get it from both the Android and Apple appstore

  • You instal that onto your device

  • You make sure it's connected to the WiFi

  • You click "Enable Image-Line Remote"

  • You launch the device

  • And you should be able to see some controls there

  • For pressing keys, but it's really good if you don't have a MIDI device

  • But there is some latency involved because it is over WiFi

  • So, now that we've got a basic drum kit

  • What we can do is make a basic pattern

  • To see if they really do work out well together

  • So because I know which ones go where...

  • I'm pretty happy with the sound of those

  • I'm now going to allocate them a mixer track

  • So that I can control them further

  • So Arpeggiation (Arpeggio) is where you take

  • basically the rhythm of a song but you spread it across multiple notes

  • Or octaves

  • An octave is basically a group of twelve notes

  • You have got G3, and then G4

  • So, even though I'm pressing two different notes

  • because they are the same note on a different octave

  • It doesn't destroy the rhythm as much

  • I'll show you what I mean by that

  • And to finish off

  • So now we've got a bit of a groove going on

  • Let's look for a dance Lead

  • That sounds quite good, I like that

  • Now at this point we've actually got

  • Very low notes there

  • So I'd rather have these approximately at the same velocity

  • It doesn't have to be exact

  • But I want the high notes to be a little bit louder than the low notes

  • To give more of a sense of rhythm

  • It's good to build up to high notes sometimes as well

  • so we could do something like this

  • If you want to change one of the notes that's overlapping

  • if it's part of a chord, just select that note

  • And the other one will maintain its velocty

  • So as you can see, I'm trying to make the lower notes lower than the higher ones

  • So an easy way to do that is simply just to select all the low notes to ensure that

  • They're all at least somewhat lower than the higher notes

  • So right now we get the lower notes good, down there

  • But after that one is layered with the high note

  • I want to give a bit more presence to the lower note

  • After it, just to maintain its dominance

  • I think that looks good

  • That doesn't need to be too loud though, because it

  • is stacked with another one, so I don't want to

  • overpower it

  • Pretty happy with, that let's see what all three of those

  • sound like together

  • I'm pretty happy with that

  • Let's go ahead and add some piano inflections

  • So some flairs

  • I'm gonna change my octave on my MIDI keyboard

  • So one thing to note is some plugins can be a lot louder than others

  • The Giant is actually quite quiet

  • And Nexus is extremely loud

  • So it's at this point that I'm kind of prompted towards

  • starting to master a little bit,

  • or at least just mix

  • To get a better balance

  • So this is where I allocate

  • Each of my channels a mixer track

  • As you can see, they're all currently just

  • routed to the master channel

  • which isn't any good

  • So if you wanna see the levels

  • You can see that this one

  • Unfortunately the

  • OK, so we're about minus 6 decibels there

  • Whereas the sub bass is even lower it looks like

  • Now the drums you want to be slightly louder than every thing else

  • And there's multiple ways you can do this

  • These controls are very simple, you've got the channel

  • volume, and the channel panning

  • Panning is which speaker it's more dominant in

  • Songs are usually stereo

  • Left and Right channels

  • Volume, speaks for itself

  • So I'm going to increase the bass volume here

  • In fact,yeah, yeah, I'll increase the bass volume

  • I can change that later

  • So if we go in the master here, what's really important

  • is for it not to clip

  • So currently, I'm sorry, I have to lean closer to my screen

  • It's quite difficult

  • That's one thing about the interface I don't like

  • We're hitting zero I think that's because of the limiter

  • Yeah, there's a limiter here

  • That's limiting it at zero decibels

  • That's not good, we want it to naturally limit at zero

  • So what we're going to do, is we're going to turn down our channels

  • We're going to start turning them down

  • So our master's still being hit quite harsh, and I think that's mainly because of the bassline here

  • No, it would appear that the sub bass is still far too loud

  • I'm going to go ahead and remove this limiter

  • Replace "none"

  • So I can get more- Yeah there you go-

  • I can get more of a natural sense of where the tracks are

  • So now, even though we are technically nicely below zero

  • I would actually like to limit them a little bit more

  • What's important here is not the level of these knobs

  • These are an offset,

  • What's important is that the output value here

  • My drums are maxxing out at minus 3 decibels which is great

  • Whereas, my sub bass

  • Is way down there

  • So I don't mind having a little bit more presence to my sub bass

  • To go to about minus 6 decibels

  • Now this, is quite quiet at this point because the limiter

  • is not doing all of its quirky stuff

  • So we can actually turn this up now

  • Until we're comfortable

  • I'm happy with that, it's at minus 3

  • In fact, I'll turn it down slightly and just turn up the sub bass a little bit

  • Bass is good

  • So this is basic mixing

  • Now if we look at our piano

  • Look how low it is

  • So the first thing to do in this case is because of the way that it's mastered

  • The easiest thing to do is actually to turn up the base plugin

  • This will lead to probably the best outcome because its the plugin that controls it

  • before anything else

  • So now we're reaching a much more respectable level

  • So we've done some basic mixing here to try

  • to actually be able to hear all of the sounds

  • At the correct levels that we want

  • And to decrease the chance of clipping

  • But as you can see, we're still peaking a little bit

  • It would appear that the drums may be a little bit loud

  • So what I'm going to do is I'm going to

  • continue to turn things down a little bit

  • to make room for the piano

  • I might turn them up later when I do the mastering

  • I'm gonna get a few phrases

  • up here

  • Start our countdown...

  • Excuse the poor playing

  • So as you can see, the pattern's not actually

  • Going to start

  • At the start of the song- because I only start pressing a note here

  • so it's going to snap to the nearest four bars

  • Now we don't really want that in this case, we want to get more of a square lineup

  • So we're gonna go in here turn off autorecording

  • and listen what the output sounds like

  • So that definitely starts at the wrong time

  • I'm gonna go ahead and press CTRL+Q to quantize the notes

  • To make them a bit more accurate

  • OK, so now that we've got a few different patterns

  • working together in harmony

  • We want to start making the song have some progression

  • So we're going to move the main bulk of the track over here

  • And think about how we can start

  • So that sounds more like an introduction kind of beat

  • So we're gonna go to Pattern 5

  • and we're going to clone that as well

  • We're gonna remove that and replace it with Pattern 6

  • And now we can go

  • So give it a bit more of an introduction

  • These drums are pretty good but they need a bit of variation, some breaks

  • Now, I wouldn't actually start with the piano

  • The piano has given the melody at the start here

  • Which you want to add some evolution to by the way

  • So let's go ahead and do that

  • Very very cheaply

  • Simply by choosing an Effector

  • Using what we used earlier

  • (Turn off the bypass)

  • Choosing the path that you're likely to take, this is how I Like to do it anyway

  • OK, let's make this much more linear

  • Simply by using this control

  • That's a little bit sharp

  • I like that

  • It's important to maintain these at all times, if you get

  • lazy with them they'll stay in the same position and you won't realise

  • How big an effect it's gonna have on your song

  • So it's important to whenever it's going to be playing

  • Make sure you've got a automation clip if you're gonna control it at all

  • So the last thing I want to talk about before I finish off

  • is Mastering

  • Now, mastering is basically giving room to each of your sounds

  • So that it doesn't become muddy

  • And reducing excess sound in each instrument

  • to make room for others

  • What I usually do is use two things

  • I use a compressor

  • This is for drums, so I'm going to make the ratio

  • 20:1

  • And there isn't much difference between different volumes

  • I'm going to increase the gain here, so it will initially be louder

  • And now, I'm gonna add some EQing to it

  • Parametric EQ

  • So as you can see, you can see the different frequencies that are being

  • triggered, if you like

  • And what I want to do is pick some

  • Different ranges that I want to boost

  • And some that I want to decrease

  • So this is for the kick

  • So around C2

  • The snare is more of a middling

  • frequency

  • The hat is towards the higher end

  • But I don't want it to be too high so I want to boost the lower end a bit

  • So what I've done here is I've highlighted some areas that

  • I want to save for the drums

  • Now if I was to add- boost this part for the bass

  • It would get a little bit muddy

  • But instead I can just boost around here

  • And they won't have such a negative effect on each other

  • So I'm not going to bother with the compressor for this part

  • But it's important to choose wisely

  • Now, the sub bass is great, but it's quite difficult to hear under the song anyway

  • Whereas this frequency range is very very present

  • If you want to lower all of them at once you can just do that

  • As you can see there's no frequencies being generated there

  • So now Ive made room for both the drums and the bass

  • At this point I need to check that my song isn't clipping

  • Which it would appear it is slightly

  • So this means more turning down

  • If you want to just create a loop region to loop around

  • You just hold right click and drag an area

  • Now a limiter is good to ensure that it never clips

  • But, it should only be used as a catch all

  • So it's important to keep modifying this as you go along

  • Now I'm very very comfortable with that part

  • So a high intensity part of the song

  • And I don't think it will clip at any point

  • Of course I can use the limiter to make sure it doesn't

  • Which I'll do later

  • But while I'm constructing the song, I need to ensure that all the changes I'm making

  • aren't grossly causing clipping

  • So it's not perfect, it's not fantastic

  • It's slightly catchy I think

  • But the most important thing is that the rhythm is there

  • The mastering is OK

  • I'ts not clipping

  • The EQing is alright

  • We've give from for different elements of the song to come through

  • So I think that this tutorial has been very long

  • I'm going to edit it of course

  • I've gone right through different ways of navigating through FL Studio

  • Customising it to your needs

  • Creating basic compositions and controlling them

  • and mastering, the basics of mixing and mastering, using the channels

  • So please, if you've got any questions

  • please let me know

  • Please give me feedback on this tutorial

  • It's a long time in the making

  • And I wanted it to have the same kind of style as my original one, trying to cover everything

  • But being a little bit more articulate, obviously better audio

  • And other things like that

  • But anyway, nevertheless, I hope you've managed to learn something from this

  • I hope it has been useful to you

  • And if you'd like to see any more tutorials or have any questions about anything

  • in particular

  • Please let me know, and I'll do my best to help you the best I can

  • So, with that, I'd like to say

  • Thanks for watching!

  • I'm going to give you

  • a peek at something I'm working on myself

  • So guys,

  • Thank you very much for watching again,

  • I hope this is useful to you

  • I hope you can make use of much of FL Studio

  • While this plays I'm going to tie up a few loose ends

  • So, this shows you the CPU usage

  • If this is really high you're going to want to turn down the quality of your playback

  • increase the buffer length as I've shown you earlier

  • here

  • This is the amount of RAM you're using,

  • if that is to high, again you're going to want to do the same things

  • Or consider investing in more RAM

  • This is the time keeping

  • You can switch between the amount of bars that have gone by

  • Or seconds, I prefer seconds personally

  • The metronome is up here

  • Don't forget, this the Multilink to Controllers to link external controllers to FL Studio

  • This allows the playlist to continue following the song as it goes along so you don't have to manually scroll

  • So I think that's everything really

  • Like I say, any other questions please let me know

  • And apart from that

  • This is Nathaniel Fisher, signing out!

  • WHAT?!

  • WHAT THE F-

Hello and welcome to the long awaited FL Studio 12

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