FL Studio Tutorial

Introduction:Creating music can often be a tedious task and learning to play an instrument can take years of practice. But technology allows us to change that in such a way that any beginner can be creative. FL Studio is a Sequencing program that allows you to create music loops by combining different sounds and tones. This tutorial will show you exactly how to navigate through FL Studio and create funky loops and tunes.

Materials:FLStudio

Process:

Step 1:Open FL Studio.

Step 2:When open, you should get a screen that has multiple panels, each panel can be opened or closed my pushing the buttons at the top right of the screen.

These 5 buttons each represent a panel: Playlist, Step Sequencer, Piano Roll, Browser and Mixer.

Step Sequencer:

The Step Sequencer is where you would normally create your beat loops. A new file will automatically start with 4 layers that each has their own sound to them. The way it works is that you have 16 nudges and each represents at beat at point in time.

Simply left click to turn on a nudge or right click to turn off a nudge. Each nudge can change its tone by clicking the button that looks like a piano, in the top right corner of the panel. A whole set of piano keys will drop down under the nudges so the tones can be changed by clicking the keys.

You can also add layers to the Step Sequencer by right clicking a layer, then insert and then AudioClip.

Doing this should add an audio layer. To view all layers not just the audio layers simply click at the bottom the the panel.

Now each layer has its own sound options. Clicking on the layers name can access this panel.

Clicking the little folder in the panel to import a sound file can change a layer’s sound.

You can also use sounds from the browser library by dragging the sounds to the sound option pane right beside the folder icon. Then choose from the drop menu which sound you would like.

Step 3:

Now 2 very important functions in FL Studio are the tempo and Pat options at the top of the screen.

The Tempo option lets you change the speed at which your beat flows. Pat on the other hand, is very important when it comes to creating your complete project. We learnt that in the Step Sequencer we had multiple layers all combined. Well this combination of layers is called a Palette.

Playlist Panel:

The playlist panel is the panel in which you get to combine all your different beat sequences together.

Each pattern or beat sequence represents a layer in the playlist panel. To add a sequence at a specific time you ether click the pen tool or brush tool to add a block of sound.

To add blocks in different layers, toggle the Pat button at the top of the window.

Step 4:Now comes the time to create your full piece. Add blocks and create new patterns.

Step 5:Once finished, you might want to convert your music into a file that you can play with any player. To do so, Click File, export at the top left of the window and voila you can now enjoy your music anywhere.