How Fruity Loops (FL Studio) Changed Hip-Hop | Genius News

JACQUES: It’s September 2007 and the number one song in the country is Soulja Boy’s hit, “Crank That.” JACQUES: From it’s viral explosion to subverting the gatekeepers, Soulja rewrote the rules of the music industry and hip-hop in many ways, especially with how he produced his beats.

SOULJA: I did “Crank That,” right, on this program called Fruity Loops.

Probably took me like 10 minutes to make it and everybody knows I made 10 million dollars off of the song “Crank That.” JACQUES: FL Studio, originally called Fruity Loops, is one of, if not the most, influential beat program since the MPC.

JACQUES: First released in 1998 by Belgian software company Image-Line Studios, Fruity Loops’ look and intuitive design made it feel more like a video game than a professional music making application, which according to co-founder Jean-Marie Cannie, was the original business plan for the studio.

JEAN: …some adult video games.

One of them which is still is around is a Porntris.

JACQUES: Porntris was a successful adult themed version of the classic 80s video game Tetris.

In an effort to branch out, they brought on a new developer.

JEAN: We decided to go a little bit further than that so we hired Didier Dambrin who was one of the, or still is probably, one of the most talented developers I have ever met.

JACQUES: In his very first on-camera interview ever, Didier “Gol” Dambrin, shared with Genius News why FL Studio is so unique.

JACQUES: Gol told us that FL Studio was originally a pet project.

JACQUES: Didier mentioned that the app was indeed named after the Kellogg’s cereal.

JACQUES: But they were forced to change the name after a lawsuit.

JACQUES: In 1999, Image Line released the second version of Gol’s creation and it was an overnight success.

JEAN: …it seemed to have gotten pretty popular because as soon as we put it online, wherever we put it online, the service went dead.

JACQUES: The product had some early adopters – especially in the world of EDM where big names like Deadmau5 Martin Garrix and the late Aviici made their earliest hits on F-L.

JACQUES: But when it came to hip-hop, established producers didn’t take the program seriously.

However, North Carolina’s 9th Wonder was an early adapter and produced Little Brother’s breakthrough 2003 album, “The Listening,” entirely on Fruity Loops.

JACQUES: As well as the fan favorite, ‘Threat’ from JAY-Z’s ‘Black Album’ the same year.

JACQUES: Even though some “hip-hop heads” felt that beats made using FL weren’t authentically hip hop, 9th said he used it out of necessity, saying quote JACQUES: I didn’t choose Fruity Loops to sample – that’s the only choice I had.

But the fact that it’s a $50 program that you download off Kazaa and I [won] a Grammy off of it fucks with some people, man.

JACQUES: With FL Studio, all you needed was an internet connection, something Canadian producer Boi1da, who made Drake’s first hit “Best I Ever Had,” knows very well.

[BOI1DA] I ended up just taking my mom’s credit card and um just downloading Fruity Loops I started using it for the whole summer.

I wouldn’t even go outside.

JACQUES: However not everyone paid – many users, like Souja Boy, downloaded illegal versions – something Jean-Marie lamented.

JEAN: Oh, but you’re so lucky with piracy.

Not really. It didn’t bring in a penny for seven years.

JACQUES: Communities even sprung up online offering FL Studio insights.

NICK: I would watch videos on YouTube of like Cardiak Flatline making beats in FL Studio and Hopsin making beats in his basement on FL Studio.

JACQUES: That’s Nick Mira of Internet Money, the producer behind hits like Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams” and “All Girls Are The Same.” JACQUES: In 2012, after finding out that many of his favorite producers were using FL Studio, Nick bought it himself and dove in.

NICK: I just every single day just spend hours in my room just making beats.

JACQUES: He told us how easy the app was to use – a similar sentiment shared by T-Minus, the producer behind J. Cole’s “Middle Child” & Drake’s “The Motto.” T-MINUS: What I like about Fruity Loops is that…creating drums in urban music is an important thing and I find it’s easier with Fl Studio.

JACQUES: And these are just a few of the countless producers using a piece of software originally created as a pet project.

JACQUES: As for Gol, he left Image-Line in 2015 to focus on personal projects but Image Line’s co-founder tells us that FL Studio is still going strong.

JEAN: now we have over ten million people installing FL Studio every year.

JACQUES: And one of those 10 million producers could be making your next favorite song.

It could also be you! JACQUES: I’m Jacques Morel with Genius News, bringing you the meaning and the knowledge behind the music.

Peace!

Originally viewed on How Fruity Loops (FL Studio) Changed Hip-Hop | Genius News

Best free DAWs for Music Production in 2019

Do you want to start making music using your computer without spending a fortune on expensive software? Then this video is exactly what you’re looking for! Another Producer What’s good fellow musician? Welcome to another producers video on the best free digital audio workstations. Today I’m going to cover ten music programs I think you should really know about Because first of all they are free and some of them are really really worth trying Personally I use Cubase 10 Pro but some of those free digital audio workstations amazed me with what they are capable of. In the end I’m going to share with you my favorite free DAWs for each operating system Windows, Mac, Linux and also your browser. You can make music inside your browser?! That’s right I didn’t know that either. Let’s get started! Pro Tools first is also the first DAW on this list. As Pro Tools is presumably still the industry standard in terms of DAWs I wanted to integrate it, although I think the stripped-down version of it really requires you to upgrade to one of their paid subscription plans. You can only have up to 16 tracks which is not a problem if you’re just starting to make music, but you also cannot use third-party plugins and it limits you to only three projects. Furthermore you always need an internet connection because your projects are stored in the avid cloud. However Pro Tools first is good to get some insight into how Pro Tools works. It comes with 3GB of sounds and 23 stock plugins, which is a lot. But it probably won’t satisfy your needs. If you still want to check it out, you will find a link to Pro Tools first and the other DAWs in the description below. The 2nd free da is OhmStudio by Ohm Force.

Ohm Force is a French company which mainly makes nice plugins like for example Frohmage, which is a free filter plug-in. It maybe looks a little bit weird but actually it is really cool, go check it out! With OhmStudio you can use your third-party plugins and you have no track limitations. Unfortunately you cannot export your tracks in a lossless format and your projects are also saved in a cloud. The reason for that is ohm studios real-time collaboration feature with which you and another musician can work on one project at the same time the downside of this is that you only can have 10 projects unless you upgrade to a hosting subscription plan. You can also upgrade the application itself which then comes with 24-bit recording lossless export and depending on which version you choose you get two or all of Ohm Forces plugins. Next up is Audiotool a browser application for either Firefox or Chrome. As you can see it comes with a bunch of fancy looking instruments and effects which actually sound really good. But what I like the most about Audiotool is that you can use presets and samples of other users if they make them available to you under a Creative Commons license. You just have to sign up on their website and follow the link to the application side to get to this user interface On the right-hand side you can see this big box with the different devices and I was really curious about this 808 emulation so I simply dragged and dropped it into the work area to use it. Audiotool has a modular structure which means that you have to connect your devices with those cables here like you would normally do in the analog world. In the lower zone you can edit your different tracks by for example drawing in some MIDI data.

Alternatively you can also record yourself playing them on a MIDI device. I couldn’t find a way to record audio directly inside this session but you can go on another website to record samples and then import them into your project similar to OhmStudio you can collaborate in real time by inviting any Audiotool user to your project. You then can communicate with each other via an audio/video chat in the lower right corner. Unfortunately you can only publish your music to Audiotool itself or SoundCloud. At least I couldn’t find a way to export directly to your hard drive. The downside of such an online DAW is that you face more latency and dropouts. I made this small loop here to demonstrate it and you can also check it out on Audiotool itself I published it under Creative Commons license for anyone to reuse.

BandLab is another browser DAW which only works inside of Google Chrome but it offers you over 120 different instruments and advanced features like time stretching and real time auto pitch. You can record audio directly inside your project window and it is structured more like a traditional DAW with this big playlist window in the middle. It also supports collaboration and even has got an app for Android and iOS. You can export your audio files in lossless 24-bit WAV format and it has got some mastering algorithm you could use to make your tracks more compatible in terms of loudness. What I found really annoying is that you have to freeze each track individually and I suppose it would be really handy to have some auto freeze function. Also here you have to face latency and dropouts. To handle it a little bit better BandLab has got a latency checker with which you can test your actual latency. Afterwards BandLab automatically applies some correction. I also made a small loop with BandLab to demonstrate to you the dropouts I talked about. But always keep in mind that those issues depend on your individual situation. For example if you have a great internet connection and good hardware it’s likely that you have less dropouts than me. Just check it out yourself Unlike the free version of ProTools I think Studio One Prime is a good DAW to start making music. Although you can’t use third-party plugins and have to be satisfied with only nine stock plugins and one instrument you have no limitations in terms of tracks and projects. Once you get to a point when you miss certain features you can upgrade to either studio one artist for around 100 € or professional for around 400 € You could also rent to own the professional version via splice for $17 per month over a period of two years. Also Ryan Bruce aka Fluff and Luke of Great Good Fine Okay use Studio One so maybe it is the right DAW for you as well With SoundBridge you get a complete DAW which is no lite version of a commercial product. Formerly known as Lumit audio SoundBridge allows you to have an unlimited number of tracks and you can use your third-party plugins You even can collaborate with other musicians via Skytracks.io. It comes with RitMix which is a drum machine and nine stock effects. As well as for the other DAWs you will find a link to SoundBridge in the description below Number seven is a free digital audio workstation for our exotic birds using Linux. Ardour is an open-source project initiated by Paul Davis. As SoundBridge Ardour does not try to limit you in terms of tracks projects or third party plugins It even has got a video timeline which is especially cool if you want to create soundtracks for film productions or simply edit your YouTube videos Ardour has no built in virtual instruments so you will have to rely on third party software if you want to use them. I’m going to cover the best free virtual instruments in another video so consider subscribing if you are interested in that. However Ardour has all the basic effects you need for a good mix.

Another free DAW which also runs on Linux is T7 by Tracktion. It basically is an older version of their current flagship Waveform 10. With T7 you get a complete DAW with all the basic effects and the biotek synthesizer. Tracktion does feature a single screen interface which lets you access all their features in only one window. For only 69 bucks you get the full version of Waveform 10 with advanced features including Melodyne essential and Antares auto tune, so definitely go check it out.

Mac users probably want to check out GarageBand. It is a free music production software from Apple and somehow a stripped-down version of their professional DAW Logic Pro X It comes with a variety of instruments loops and effects. You can even learn to play guitar and piano with the help of integrated music lessons GarageBand restricts you to 32 tracks which is totally fine to create great music productions. A friend of mine produced his complete EP inside of GarageBand but if you still need more features you can upgrade to Logic for $200 In case you have an iPhone or iPad you could also use the GarageBand app Last but not least we have Cakewalk by BandLab and you might think “Wait a second.. BandLab? Wasn’t that the browser application you just talked about?” And yes you are totally right. Cakewalk was formerly known as SONAR by Cakewalk. After the active development of Cakewalk products were ceased BandLab acquired certain assets of the company and made SONAR available for free to all BandLab users It comes with four great sounding instruments, nice effects and it has got a great customizable user interface. You can arrange it by simply dragging around the different windows. Furthermore it comes with VST3 and ARA support. For those who use Melodyne for example. Unfortunately it is Windows only So which DAW is best for you? If you are using Windows I think cakewalk is the best choice. You get a great DAW which is updated frequently and supports leading technologies. The only thing that might bother some of you guys is that you have to install the BandLab assistant to use it As a Mac user the best option is obviously GarageBand. Typical for Apple it is super intuitive and offers a variety of ways to get creative. If the 32 tracks and features in GarageBand aren’t enough for you you can upgrade to Logic Pro X for $200. If you’re working on a Linux system I would use T7 by Tracktion. It gives you great features and is relatively inexpensive to upgrade with only $69 for Waveform 10. The single screen may be a feature but it also could be a disadvantage if you want to use multiple screens. Making music in the browser was a whole new experience for me I liked BandLab better than Audiotool because it allowed me to export my music to my hard drive in high quality. So if you can handle dropouts and latency BandLab is really really fun to use. Alright so I hope this video helped you to determine which free DAW is right for you. Let me know which DAW you use in the comments below and check out one of my other videos on the right-hand side Until then, have an absolutely awesome day!

Originally viewed on Best free DAWs for Music Production in 2019

Women Music Producers Fighting for Equality (HBO)

Last night, Beyonce once again dominated the BET Music Awards…

— Beyoncé! winning Album of the Year and more awards than any male artist.

But apart from performers, women don’t get much recognition in the music industry— because they’re barely even represented.

In music production, women make up less than 5 percent of producers and engineers, meaning almost every song you hear is produced by men.

A group of four female producers sat down with Mary H.K. Choi to explain why.

— What are some of the politics inherent in getting a producer credit? — What happens in today’s forum is a lot of artists don’t write a lot of their songs.

And the majority of them that are more like the Patti Smiths, Chrissie Hyndes, they’re at home, rocking out, and don’t need anybody’s approval.

And so, they don’t come out.

But then the ones that do come out are the ones that want credit for things that they haven’t done.

— The few times that I’ve done sessions, like, for other people you show up and, I think, for example, at least me, I think people more perceive me as an artist than a producer.

And people will actually not believe that I do it because of this.

— Why do you think it’s important to just own everything that you make? Because you very pointedly do.

— You know, there is that level of wanting to show that you know exactly what you’re doing, because you are female and you’re going to be held at a higher standard.

So, when you go into those environments, especially if it’s out of your comfort zone, you want to have your shit together.

— Do you ever feel, like, an onus to be like, “I have to level the playing field in this very specific way?” — No. If I don’t find them good musicians, then I don’t feel as though they deserve to get raised up more than someone else.

I view myself in the same way.

I’d rather be in someone’s top 20 producers, I’d rather be the 20th person than someone say, you’re my favorite female producer.

— How many times has someone been like, “You’re my favorite female producer”? — All the time.

I feel as though I have to overcompensate, so I’m very public about, like, this is music technology I’m into— I’ve done tutorials, I let people see all my sessions.

And yet, to some degree, when I look at myself do that, I’m like, I shouldn’t have to.

I mean, sharing knowledge is fine… — It’s annoying because dudes won’t share knowledge— like, if I’m in a session with someone, I’m like, “Oh, what are you using?” or whatever, and they’re like—don’t want you know.

— But, also, I think they have a community.

Like, when you see Rick Rubin in footage with, like, Jay-Z and Pharrell and those other producers, my first thought is, well, how come females aren’t doing that? — I’ve actually been thinking there should be, like, a music union or, like, a women musicians union or something that—you know what I mean? Something where it’s, like, where we can recreate like what they have.

— How important are the Grammys to y’all? — Accolades? I love those.

Give me a trophy, I’ll take it, you know, because it gives me an opportunity to get in front of a bunch of people and tell them how I really feel.

— Okay, so, because I tried to apply for Producer of the Year for the Grammys this, or last year, and they wouldn’t let me, because I’ve never— I hadn’t worked on anyone else’s album.

I would have had to have another artist hire me, and I would have had to have, like, produced a track on another successful record.

— I think it can be discouraging, if a young girl has aspirations of wanting to go into production and looks at the Grammys and goes, “Well, there’s no one that’s female, and there’s no one that looks like me.” “Why in the hell would I think I can be successful in that arena?” — How high does your pain threshold have to be in order to do this? — I think you have to have pretty thick skin, generally, to be in the entertainment industry.

— Especially with the internet comments.

Oof. They’re brutal.

— It’s like, to even defend ourselves, we have to, like, get death threats and all this shit and it’s just like… — How often do you get death threats? — Well, I’ve disabled everything for, like, a year now so I don’t know.

— So do you think that the press is largely complicit? — The press is fucking so complicit.

Sorry, no offense.

— Say more things—no, none taken.

— I’ll say this—if I said the things about male artists that they say about me, I, like, wouldn’t have a career.

— It’s not just male journalists, though, ’cause I feel like patriarchy has no gender in that sense.

— Yeah, no, female journalists get mad, too.

— Jesus. This is all really bleak, you guys.

— It’s really easy to feel undermined and… maybe we have to pay a higher price than our male counterparts.

But we’re we’re doing that.

And then the next generation may not have to as much.

— We just need to focus on the positive.

Just figure out who we are as artists, and just figure out what your success is, and just go for it.

That’s it.

Don’t be afraid, just go.

Watch on Youtube Women Music Producers Fighting for Equality (HBO)

FL Studio 12 COMPLETE Basic Tutorial

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.

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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 scroll wheel.

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 velocity.

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! 

Pure2 Signal Path For a Typical Mastering Set Up

Pure2 is a mastering grade 24Bit/192kHz AD/DA 2 channel converter and master clock that includes a relay controlled volume attenuator. Pure2 can be used in many ways. One of the more conventional ways is a traditional mastering setup using an analog loop. Once the Pure2 is set up and installed we can then set up a send and return channel in your desired DAW, in this case LogicX. The send channel is set up to output on USB Play Stereo Out 1&2. This is then routed in the Pure2 control panel to go to the DA 1&2. This feeds the analog chain of your favorite outboard processors. The output of that analog chain is then sent back to Analog In 1&2 on the Pure2. The signal is then routed in the Pure2 control panel as USB REC 1&2. The return channel then receives this signal once armed and monitoring.

This way you can now process the analog loop with your preferred software plug-ins.

Your return signal is set to output from the Stereo Output 3&4. This is then sent to the Monitor Outputs via the Pure2 control panel, which then feeds your outputs to monitor the entire chain. In this way, using Pure2 we can process our stereo signal via our analog chain and our software plug-ins while hearing and monitoring the whole chain. We can also monitor each individual part of the chain, allowing us to A/B between different processors.