HOW TO GET STARTED ON FL
By Toby 'Radiation' Fox 2011
1. Open FL.
Because there is so much stuff going on in FL, let's just ignore most of it for now. Except for the Play and Stop buttons. Those are pretty important.
See the big window open in the middle part of the screen? That's the Playlist. This is where our song will be put together on FL. The playlist works by playing different permutations of Patterns, the building blocks of FL. Each pattern represents a measure of music, notes, or some sort of FX.
Next to the green smiley face is our first pattern, "Pattern 3." I placed it on the grid by clicking in there. I can right-click to delete it if I want.
Next to the disembodied face of JFK is our Pattern Selector, an endless database of (now-empty) patterns we can choose from. I selected this pattern by clicking on it, and I'm going to right-click on it to rename it so I don't get confused. Always do this, or you'll make JFK sad.
2. Double click on the pattern to open the Step Sequencer. If the Step Sequencer doesn't show up, you can press F6 or go to the View menu to force its hand. We're going to make a drum beat!
See all those 16 boxes next to the four instrument channels we already have? (kick, clap, hat snare...) Those represent beats in a measure. You can click to light them up and make a simple beat! But I find that boring and generally never ever ever ever use it. I'm just warning you in case you accidentally click on one of those and can't figure out where the stray note came from.
3. Right click on the Kick and click Insert (or Replace) to insert a new instrument into the Sequencer. I usually use Fruity Soundfont Player, because I like soundfonts and there are plenty available for free on the internet.
4. Click on "Fruity Soundfont Player" in the Step Sequencer to open Channel Settings for the instrument channel.
By default it is set to some terrible string soundfont which I should never hear you use. Instead I am going to use the Mega Man X soundfont, because I like Super Nintendo games. I put a square around the folder because stupid. You can also drag and drop a soundfont into the "Channel Settings."
(You can get the Mega Man X soundfont for free here! It is by Dave Harris.)
oops wrong picture....
5. Hey, I forgot to mention, you can also adjust the volume or panning of the whole track, if it is too loud or you want to pan it.
Anyway, click on the Name box to open the Patch List I trust you can figure out how to select an instrument. I am going to select the Percussion patch at the bottom!
6. Now to... ACTUALLY WRITE... A MUSIC.... So let's right-click on Mega Man X and go to Piano Roll!!
7. Left-click to place notes! Right-click to delete notes! Look I already made a song. Because this is a MIDI drum patch, each note will play a different drum sound, so there's no need to deal with separate instrument channels for kick, clap, etc.
Up there at the top I've squared all of the different tools you can use. I might as well explain what they do now.
Pencil - the one you want to use now, and almost always. Lets you place notes, delete them, and stretch or squash them by grabbing the end of them. Make sure this is selected.
Paintbrush - Creates a continuous string of notes.
Ghostbuster Logo With No Ghost - Deletes notes.... or you can right-click... with the pencil...
Razor - Allows you to cut notes into parts. Draw a line through where you want to cut. Useful for making strumming or... well... cutting notes.
Selector - Allows you to select notes. Really useful!!!
Magnifying Glass - Changes range of vision. Click once to see maximum range.
Speaker - Listen to notes/chords.
Waffle - See Step 10.
8. Some notes were too loud, so I adjusted the volume by clicking on the Selector, selecting all of the notes I wanted, then going down to the bottom and changing the Velocity. Imagine a keyboard... the harder you press down a note, the higher the velocity... in most cases, this simply changes the volume of the note, but it might change the nature of the attack if the sample set you are using accounts for it.
The minus symbol on the top-right of the Note Properties window lets you adjust how much zoom there is. Usually I say: NO ZOOM!!!
9. As you can see, you can adjust other things in the Note Properties Window as well. Here I have panned the cymbal to the left. You can also control the volume, panning, or pitch of the whole channel, too!
10. If you were paying attention, you may have noticed I said the Grid Tool was a Waffle. It's not! It actually allows you to change what step or beat the notes will automatically snap to.
I think straight eighth notes are kind of boring, so I am going to make the song sound swung by using triplets! Notice the grid in the background changes its divisions as well. Make sure to change it back when you need to.
11. Okay, I am finished composing my pattern, but I think it could sound cooler.
See that white box in the channel settings??? Roll it up to change the FX Channel the audio from it will be sent to. We're going to add some FX!!! Now press F9 or View Mixer to open up the Mixer.
12. Welcome to MIXER ZONE. You ought to rename any mixer channel you are working with so you don't forget what it does.
Make sure you have that channel selected, click on the drop down arrow and Select an FX plugin. I am going to select Fruity Reverb, but I am also putting a box around Fruity Parametric EQ 2 because it's really important.
13. Reverb makes the audio from your samples reverberate, as if the sound from them is bouncing off the walls. Without reverb, samples can sound very dry. Dryness is mainly a problem with acoustic samples.
Some VSTs or samples have built-in reverb. In that case, be careful about adding more reverb.
I guess this isn't necessary for me to tell you, but because these are drums, you don't necessarily want too much decay most of the time, or your piece will sound very muddy. I also raised the low cut, so the low kick isn't affected as much.
Too much FX can easily sound bad. I think Reverb is both the easiest to make sound good and the easiest to screw up. Always err on the side of caution. Limiting and EQ sound kinda funky when applied to a whole drum track...
14. Note that you can turn anything in FL with a little circular green light off by clicking on the green light. You might want to do that to see how the sound compares before and after. You can also adjust how much FX is used by twisting the knobs.
Now's as good a time as ever to mention that you probably want the Fruity Limiter in the Master Channel turned off. If there isn't one there, good. You don't want it there until you know how to use it.
Make sure to try lots of different FX. Here are my favorites that come with FL:
CHORUS - Creates slightly de-tuned copies of the audio panned left and right. Can sound ghosty or cool. A special treat to use sometimes.
LIMITER - Prevents audio from being louder than a certain point by crushing the waveform. Is a form of compression... which is just gradual crushing of the waveform past a certain threshold. Use it on the Master Track to prevent peaking, or, in other words, the loudness of the track going over the limit. You can also use it on individual instruments to soften their loudest parts.
FREE FILTER - Simple filters, including highpass, lowpass, and band. Highpass quiets all audio below the frequency, and lowpass quiets all audio above the frequency. Fun for LIVE FX.
REVERB - You know what this does!!! Reverb 2 is actually better, I think... but Reverb is easier to use...
PHASER - Stuns opponents for 3 turns. Nah, try it and see what it sounds like. Like Chorus, don't overuse it... although I'd use it even less than that.
PARAMETRIC EQ 2 - Customizes presence of different frequencies in the audio. With this you can make cymbals crisper, kicks bassier, and give vocals more presence... use it like a sculptor to make instruments fit together better, so they are not competing for the same frequencies. Doing this well will take a lot of experience. For now, cut more than you boost, and don't boost a whole lot.
DELAY 2 - Creates echoes. Very useful, but you almost ALWAYS want to turn the FX knob down a lot so the echoes aren't so loud. Also, when the tempo changes, all current echoes will be cut off. That is because the delay synches to the current tempo.
WAFFLE - Not implemented yet.
15. So now that you know what to do, why don't you make a whole song? Just go click in the Pattern database, rename a blank pattern, and stick it in the Playlist. You can arrange them like me.
In case you are wondering why any patterns won't play except the one you have selected, it's because you selected Pattern instead of Song. When listening to the whole song, you definitely do want Song. When working on a new pattern, you definitely want Pattern.
Before I go, here's some more important stuff you should know...
16. That big slider on the far left is the Master Volume. The slider next to it is the Master Pitch. Their consequences are pretty obvious. If your song suddenly sounds quiet or like it's in the wrong key, you may have accidentally clicked them.
I thought the song was too slow, so I adjusted the Tempo. Again, the consequences of adjusting this are pretty self-explanatory.
The last thing is the Record Button. While this button is highlighted and "Play" is pressed, the CURRENT SELECTED PATTERN will record ALL of the knobs you turn, sliders you change, and notes you play with a MIDI keyboard. I use it for DYNAMICALLY CHANGING FX. Learn this power!!!
Experiment a lot. FL comes with some decent tutorial/sample projects too, check them out. They might not be exactly like the music you want to make, but the production on them is very nice!
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thank you to everyone that helped me learn, and also Image-Line for making FL Studio!!! It is a very great program!!!