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1. Free VST Plugins

free VST plugins for FL Studio, Ableton Live, Reaper, Cubase and more! How to install VST plugins to Fruityloops When you get your first copy of Fruity loops it’s going to keep you stimulated for a while, But sooner or later you’re gonna grow bored of the built-in instruments, the boring wav files and everything else is going to feel.. dull. That’s where VST plugins comes into the picture! How to install VST Instruments in Fruity Loops 1. Go to c:/program/image-line/FL8/Plugins/VST (default installation route) 2. Unzip your new VST plugin into that folder. If it’s an .exe file, just run it, and if it’s a .dll file just extract it. 3. Open FL and go to channels/add one/more.. 4. Once there you’ll see all the available plugins. The ones with a box ticked with the letter F are active in your library of instruments already, and the ones with a blank box are not yet active. But for now, skip this for a few seconds. 5. Scroll down in that list of VST plugins until you hit the bottom. Press the refresh button and fast scan. If you’ve done everything right you’ll get a note saying 1 or more plugins found, next to the refresh button. 6. Just tick that box next to the newly installed plugin (marked in red text) and voilá, it’s done! How to install VST Effects in Fruity Loops You can pretty much follow the above steps, as long as you don’t tick the boxes in the instrument window, because if you do it will not end up in the effects list but the instruments list and we don’t want that now do we? So, install the VST plugin like it’s normally done and then go to the mixer by pressing F9. Once there head over to the effect section of the mixer(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) and press select/more… Now all you have to do is to hit the refresh button once again and it will list the newly installed VST effect in red color. Tick that box and it’s installed.. in the right place :) Good luck!

Wednesday, 15 June 2011 | 1210 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

2. Mixing Drums in FL Studio - Mixing in Fruity Loops

Mixing Drums in FL Studio Well mixed drums are imperative to produce a good dance track. Where they are positioned, their dynamic range and level envelope are all factors that can help boost the loudness of your music. By setting good foundations (drums) you are in an easier position, with the most significant element finished, to develop your track. This FL Studio tutorial will help break down each disaster you may encounter whilst mixing your drums. It is a complex and enduring process, so instead of tearing your hair out and screaming at your screen, understand each step thoroughly before advancing to the next. When to Start? If you have a full drum track consisting of your kick drum, snare/clap, hats, loops and percs, that harmonically and rhythmically work, you are now in a position to start mixing. There is no right or wrong way how to mix and creatively you can go as far as you like with it to put your own unique style on a track. However, in order to approach a mix in your own way, this tutorial will show you the fundamentals that will help you produce tight, detailed mixes that can then be developed to suit your taste. Ahh everything’s too loud! Yes your drums should be the loudest element in your mix, but don’t expect to turn everything up to unity gain and think that your mix will sound anything like a professional production. Adjusting the volume of each individual element within a drum track is the first stage of mixing and is essential in creating an interesting, dynamic sound. By lowering the volume of the less prominent parts of a drum loop such as the loops and percs it allows the defining elements such as the kick and snare/clap to come to the very front of the mix. There is a good article at http://www.tweakheadz.com/perfect_mix.html that indicates roughly what db level each individual element in your track should be at. This is a good indication, especially for beginners, but I’d try and use your ears more often than not to determine where each element should sit in the mix and listen to as many professional tracks as you can to compare with. A good technique I and many other producers use is a subtractive mixing method, where you put each drum element at unity gain and reduce the fader on each (other than the kick), until the element sits nicely within the track. Give your drums some space… After adjusting the volumes within your drum track, you need start thinking about where to position them. Positioning is as equally as important as any other aspect of mixing and should be taking seriously. Bad panning can make a track sound terrible, for example if the kick drum and snare were panned left and right, there would be no central energy to drive the track. The kick drum should always be positioned centrally in a dance track as it is the most prominent part of track, the clap/snare should also remain near the centre, as it is a defining element of a track and both speakers should generally share the same energy. As for the other elements, you can experiment with but I would try and mirror a drum kit on a stage to maintain a more natural sounding drum track so keeping: • Kick drum centrally • Snares and small toms centrally/right 5-10% • Hi-hats right/left 5-15% • Ride left 5-10%. This is just general and I would exaggerate these percentages depending on what you’re going for with your mix. The Clash of the Frequencies As with volume adjusting and panning, EQ can be used however you like and I am only going to give you guidelines for you to expand upon. Without some sort of EQ’ing your drum mix will most probably end up muddy sounding. This is because the different parts of your drum track will contain the same frequency content, resulting in a clash, which in turn creates an unclear mix. To prevent these clashes from occurring, by using an EQ unit you can either boost or subtract a frequency range to make it sound clearer in the mix. When mixing I would subtract frequencies rather than boosting as subtraction is far more natural sounding to our ears. Subtraction can also have the same effect as boosting, as when you subtract a range of frequencies, the higher frequencies in front will be perceived louder to due to the dip. When using EQ you really have to prioritize your drums, so asking yourself what will be the most and least important element to define my track? In a dance track the most significant elements are your kick drum and clap/snare, the other parts are used to glue your track together and implement groove. As these are your priority, EQ is significant in order to bring these instruments cleanly to the front of your mix. There are two ways you can do this using EQ; Subtract the frequencies off the other percussive elements that share the same frequencies as the dominant frequencies of the kick drum and snare/clap so for example, the attack stage of the kick and the snap of the clap/snare. Or you can use a small boost at these main frequencies to make them appear clearer in the mix. Dominant Frequencies Kick Drum Attack: around 3-6 kHz Bottom: around 60-100Hz Snare/Clap Attack: around 1.5-2.5 kHz Thump: around 200-400 Hz A good frequency chart can be found at http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm Also when using EQ on your drums, it is critical that you subtract all inaudible frequencies and unnecessary frequencies. For Example: Here is the FL Studio Parametric EQ 2 affecting a clap sound. I have removed all frequency content below 500Hz using a large Q acting as a high pass filter. This has helped to remove frequencies that don’t affect how the clap sounds and has helped make room for the bottom end of the kick drum. Compression Compression is a main ingredient of mixing if you want to achieve the typical sound heard on popular dance tracks. The drums are the most important aspect of a track as they drive it a long, but without compression your drums will sound unflattering and flat, resulting in a bad mix overall. I believe there are two main reasons to use a compressor across a drum bus: • To control signal peaks • Create the pumping effect heard on thousands of dance records Controlling Signal Peaks Firstly route each individual drum element to a separate drum bus with a compressor attached. After all elements have successfully been routed to the bus, we are then ready to set up the compressor. You have to set the threshold so that it’s just above the average signal level; this assures that only the peaks are subjected to gain reduction. You then have to set your ratio according to how much you want the peaks to be reduced, the higher the ratio the more they will be reduced. Your attack should be relatively short so that it clamps on the transients as soon as they exceed the threshold, but not too short so that it squashes them. Most importantly use your ears to determine all these levels. The Fruity Loops compressor does not have a gain reduction meter so without external plug-ins you will not be able to see visually how much you’re reducing, so it is vital that you learn to use your ears. Creating a ‘Pumping’ Effect This is a Practical Compression effect heard on thousands of dance tracks worldwide to make a track more ‘pumpy’ and energetic. There are two ways to achieve this sound: using Side Chain compression and a similar effect called Gain Pumping. Learn more about Side Chain Compression Gain Pumping Gain Pumping is used to help give a track a more dynamic feel similar to Side Chaining. It is a great practical compression technique that many producers use across a drum bus customarily. To achieve this technique you again have to route each individual drum element to a separate drum bus with a compressor attached. Then you set the threshold on the compressor just below the peak level of the kick drum, this activates the compressor each time the kick drum hits. Your ratio should be from 2:1 – 4:1, with attack and releases levels quite short to activate and deactivate the compressor quickly to create the desired pumping effect. Experiment with the release time, as too short of a release time can sound very unnatural and if pushed to short can cause distortion.

Wednesday, 15 June 2011 | 1316 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

3. Fl Studio - Mixing Tutorial - Fruity Loops Music Production

Rule #1. There are no rules. Be creative. Make your listeners go, "Wow, check that out! That's baaad (or good, or wonderful, or whatever)! Book a pre-mix clean up session. Take an hour or so to come in with the engineer, and erase all the throat-clearing, the guitar clicks, the out-take solos, etc. You'll feel fresher at mix time, because you can concentrate on the creativity, not the housekeeping. Allow for more time than you think you need to mix. There's nothing worse than thinking it will take 3 hours to mix a song, and it ends up taking 5. You're under pressure, the engineer's under pressure, and the studio's next client is pacing back and forth in the waiting room. Have extra money (if you're paying the studio) on hand, so that if you go over budget (always the case) you aren't sweating bullets. DON'T COMPRESS THE STEREO BUSS OUTPUTS! Ok, every Mix Magazine and Keyboard Player and Home Studio Addict magazine has got all the cool ads for high-end compressors. Ah! THAT'S how to get my home studio to sound like Ocean Way! Nope. Save your money on that high-end compressor, or just use it on your tracks that need individual compression. Leave the stereo compression for the mastering engineer. Overly compressed mixes reduce the number of options I have to make your cd sound it's best. If one mix is very compressed, and several others are not, guess what? Once they're all together, you'll hear the difference, and in 99% of cases, my artists have all wished they didn't compress their mix! When I master, sometimes I compress, sometimes I limit, sometimes I do both, sometimes I level correct in the Sonic, and sometimes I leave well enough alone! I can bring more musical consistency to your cd if you give me a bigger range of options in this area. Bring in a few commercial cds with you to the mix. But first, know your market. What radio station would play your music? What are the cd's they play often? Which music sounds good over the air? Who's drum sound do you like? Who's vocal, guitar, string, piano sound do you like? Your idea of a big sound may be different from your engineer's, so if you bring in a cd, hand it to him, and say, "Check out cut 5 for the vocal sound." he/she knows exactly what you like. "Put in this other cd and listen to the guitars." You get the idea. This is also cool at tracking time. You have an abundance of material in the form of commercial cds to get ideas from. NOW HERE'S THE CATCH - Cds have been mastered! I recommend that you audition some older cds as well as newer ones. Why? Because the older cds haven't been compressed and limited as much as the newer ones have, and this gives you a truer sense of the dynamics you hear in a mix. Your goal is to compare the sounds and tones of the cds as a guide during your mix. For instance, you may be used to hearing the bottom end of group ABC sounding great at home. You may have heard the guitars of group DEF on the radio sounding rad. But since the studio monitoring environment is different, your impression won't necessarily translate into the mixing room exactly the same. The characteristics of the studio speakers will be different. So when you bring in those cds, you now hear what impressed you in the real world right there in the studio next to your mix. If your mix doesn't impress you as much when you first A-B to a cd, don't rag on your engineer! It's just a process, and being diplomatic will save you time and increase the creative flow. Just say, "I like some of what we have now, but I'd like to get a little more of [fill in the blank]". Give yourself some slack at first. Group XYZ may have had a $50,000.00 budget for their mix alone. Mix so that when you push the cd-player-button, they sound great, and when you push the stereo buss button, YOU sound great too, in the context of your music and the tools you have to work with. Cd mastering leveling practices have changed, even in the last three years, such that for pop recordings, we are engaged in a level contest to see who can cut the hottest cd! Depending on the style of music, your favorite cd could sound way different than the original mix did! I heard a cd of a popular group that I could tell was very well recorded, but in mastering, it was squashed just for the sake of making it sound loud next to other cds. It sounded awful! There is a delicate balance where level and musicality meet. It's a judgment call, and this is where musical ears make a big difference in this decision. Competing for level is an old trick that dates back to vinyl, but with vinyl, there was a different reason for cutting a hotter lacquer. Since vinyl inherently had surface noise to it, the hotter the sound (and therefore the wider and deeper the grooves), the less you'd hear the surface noise. Also, if the song come on strong, level-wise, it seems more exciting right out of the gate. (You never get a second chance to make a first impression, right?) Vinyl is an analog medium, and it is a flexible medium, in that there is an acceptable range where the signal can be increased depending on the dynamics of the music. But with digital, there is NO fudge factor. A 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0. There's no 1.3. So when the level hits Digital Zero, that's IT. There are no more numbers. So we mastering engineers, when presented with the hotter and hotter cds of our associates (I don't use the word competitors - there's plenty to go around), we've used our expertise to compress, limit, de-ess, level-correct, and multi-band compress the sound right up to the max. What we have to control is two things: (1) The RMS level, or average volume and (2) The Peak levels, those things that can light up the 'digital over' light like crazy. With analog tape, we engineers used to be aware of the tape hiss, and adjust our levels upward to eliminate that hiss, keeping our eyes on how much headroom we had to work with on the tape, so as to avoid (or utilize) tape distortion. With cds, it's the opposite. We watch the very top peak of the song, and gear everything around how close to digital zero we're going to get with that peak. How much RMS level ends up on the cd depends on how we manage the peaks of the music. Now I'm perfectly happy cutting a loud cd for you. Cool. Just know that the problem is that all the transients take on a different shape and sound when we do this. For instance, many musicians like punch. Well, think about it. The punch you feel from the bottom or mid-bottom comes from the speaker excursion. The cone moves forward a certain amount and then moves back, and so forth. When we compress the peaks, we are able to bring up the body of the music (the non-peak stuff) higher. That's what gives you that louder, RMS level on a cd. BUT THE RELATIVE DISTANCE THAT THE SPEAKER MOVES IS LESS. That means that the over-all sound is louder, but since the speaker doesn't push the sound wave forward as far, there is less impact from the movement of the air. (Unless you turn it up to glass-shattering levels, in which case the sheer intensity creates the impact.) These articles have been collected from several sources throughout the internet and some are written by our in house team. If you find your own among these articles and you think they should be removed, drop us a mail and it will be removed immediately or we will arrange credits/links to your page. There is no malicious intent behind using these articles only a hope that they will reach the audience that the authors intended them to and to help new musicians in improving their art.

Wednesday, 15 June 2011 | 1102 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

4. Mix Image Using FL Studio’s Beepmap

Step 1: Find a Picture For this trick to work you will need a picture of something or someone. Preferably a clean sharp looking picture so the detail is easier to see as this trick can get a little messy with overly complicated pictures. FL Studio’s Beepmap works by scanning an image from left to right and turning the colors into frequencies with varying amplitudes. The red portion of a pixels color will sound on the left and the green will sound on the right (with colors in-between sounding well…in-between!). The height of the pixels will determine the frequency it will start at. So the very top row of pixels will be your highest frequency. Remember, the picture you pick will affect the final sound! Step 2: Start Up Beepmap Beepmap is considered a synthesizer in FL Studio and can be loaded like any other instrument. Before you click to open, set the Max Bitmap Height to 999, this will affect how big your picture can be as Beepmap will only support up to 999 pixels. If your picture is too small or too big it will skew it appropriately to fit in that pixel range. If you are going for the greatest clarity in your picture then I would suggest sticking to 999. After that open up your picture in Beepmap.     Step 3: Spectral View If you hit and hold a note right now you will probably notice that it doesn’t work very well. That is because you have nothing to look at! In your master channel, add the plugin Wave Candy or some other spectral viewer plugin. If you choose wave candy you will notice that it loaded two windows, one of which controls the plugin and the other which shows the audio data. In the control window, click on the spectrum tab to turn the audio window into a spectogram. Now when you play a note in Beepmap you should see some representation of your sound.     Step 4: Tweaking Now when you played your note you probably realized that it didn’t look anything like your picture. That is most likely because the time and frequency scales are not correct for our purposes. Set the Freq parameter all the way to the right and set the length parameter all the way to the left. What this does is it maximizes that available frequency range we have to work with and shortens the duration Beepmap will spend on each pixel before moving on. Now if you wanted Beepmap to last for the duration of a song you would obviously need a much longer duration but for testing purposes the shortest duration works fine. Try running your sound now in different octaves and see what your picture looks like at different starting frequencies… If Beepmap was set to a Log scale then it was probably fairly detailed but it probably got skewed in different ways at different frequencies. If you want a less detailed but more proportional picture change the Log scale to Linear (don’t bother with Harmonic as it is only good for cool sounds and not clear pictures).     Final Thoughts As you have probably noticed, this technique renders some fairly strange and evolving sounds. You could theoretically craft your own additive synthesizer of sorts with any painting or photo editing software if you really wanted to spend the time to do so. For less obvious uses of it try lengthening the time the picture lasts so that no one will readily see it unless the analyze the entire song and zoom out from their spectral view. You may have also noticed that they tend to be very noisy patches since there always seems to be some frequency being played. If you want to avoid this, use the color black in your picture. Black will not play at all and will make for a much smoother sound (relatively of course). If want a quick and dirty way to try it, load your picture in the free software called GIMP and under the colors tab is an option called threshold. Play with this parameter and save your picture and see how it sounds then. Thank you for reading and I hope to see you in your next track!      

Wednesday, 15 June 2011 | 548 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

5. Can i make professional beats using Fl studio? THE TRUTH!!

Probably the number one question when it comes to making beats with FL Studio is - "Can I get professional results?" And the answer is a resounding "YES!" You have to understand that FL was never intended to be a newbie tool from the beginning so it doesn't exactly hold you hand through the process. You need to have some sort of an idea of what you want to accomplish before you begin. If you want professional results, then you have to think like a professional beat maker. There is no shortcut to this. Before you get scared and think that FL is not for you, let me add that there are tons of videos on youtube and sites like Warbeats FL Studio Tutorials that will help tremendously. Before you know it you can be using techniques known to professionals in your own beat making. Think of FL Studio as a tool. it will not make or break you. That is all on your level of commitment and talent and even more importantly, LUCK. Yes, it's true that the most talented beat makers are not always the most famous or successful beat makers. Luck is about 70% of the equation. Putting in the work and investing the time (and in some cases money) will prepare you for the opportunities and generate some of that luck. Don't sell yourself short. Like any dream, making beats for a living is one that requires some investment in time and effort to become a reality. Start today and that's one less day you have to invest later!

Tuesday, 21 September 2010 | 1167 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

6. Best 5 Ways Increase Traffic To Your Music Myspace or Soundclick

5 Ways Increase Traffic To Your Music Myspace or Soundclick A lot of people have trouble getting people to their music sites, even when their music may sound amazing. You must remember that no matter how great your music is, you won’t get traffic unless you market yourself. Here are some really simple ways to increase your traffic significantly [...] Use Youtube A great way to increase traffic is to post a sample(s) of your work on Youtube. Make sure you have chosen an appropriate title and keywords so people can find your video. The people who watch your video will most probably be part of your target audience because they searched for the keywords that brought your video up, or were looking at similar videos. Always leave a link to your page so that they could visit and hear your other work, or view your offers. Post on Relevant Forums Forums are one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site. There are countless forums about hip hop, rap, producing, and just music in general, where you can post your work and discuss it with other people. You can also post your music for review on these forums - and they will usually give you an honest opinion about what they think of your work. You can also build relationships on these forums with other producers, or even build relationships with your target audience or clients. Give Out Something for Free Who doesn’t want something for free? If you’ve got professional beats, and you occasionally give one out for free, people will come to your page and seize the opportunity. If you keep changing it up also, they will continue coming back to see what the new free beat is. They might hear your other tracks and buy some, or simply create publicity for you and raise your ranking. If you are an artist who doesn’t sell beats (raps or sings on your own tracks or others’) you can give something else out for free - for example a few shirts or a few tickets to your next gig. Work With Other Artists If you want to get your beats or production heard, my advice is to find a local artist that has potential and to work with them. A lot of people do not like listening to just instrumentals, and usually like songs more when there are vocals on them as well. Put someone on a hot track, and then advertise that track somehow with both your names on it (perhaps with some of the methods above). People may hear it and think to themselves - “Wow the beat in this song is amazing, I wonder who made it”, or “This is how I want my tracks to sound, I better get in contact with who produced it”. Make sure they know you made the beat (have a link somewhere to your page), and make sure the track is great, or else it may end up hurting you. Add The Right Friends This is most applicable to myspace. Too many times people fall into the trap of friend blasting everyone and their mothers. The problem with blind friend blasting is that you may never reach your target audience. Also half of the people you add may be bots anyways. You need to target your demographic. When people like what they hear, they will come back for more. For example, if you make mainstream beats, add people who comment on mainstream artists myspace pages. You can go even further and add the people who comment on the artist’s pictures, because bots don’t do that- they usually just comment on the main page. Once you start finding your audience, they will start finding you - people will like what they hear and tell their friends. I hope these tips will help you get more people to your music pages. These are only 5 ideas, and there are defnately so many more methods to increase traffic. If you have more suggestions please add them as comments to help others.

Tuesday, 21 September 2010 | 650 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

7. Using Fruity Loops - Starters and beginners

Using Fruity Loops - Starters and beginners     The Step Sequencer   In order to understand this tutorial, you will need to know the basics of operating FL. When you start up FL studio you should be greeted with a screen with a bunch'a blocks on it. This is the step sequencer. The step sequencer is where you make the patterns that make up the song. The different drum parts, the different "riffs", and so on. Then you assemble this riffs in the playlist, which I will explain next. I will explain the parts. 01. This adjusts the beats per measure in this pattern. (By default it shows -- and it has 4 beats in the measure) 02.The pattern in the blocks will repeat while a piano roll sequence is playing. For example, If you set a kick to go off on each beat, but you assign a piano roll pattern to an instrument in this pattern to go for 8 beats, the 4 beat kick pattern will repeat once over the 8 beat intrument pattern (will explain better later..) 03. This little slider adjust the swing, When set all the way left, there is no swing, when all the way right, each beat is heavily accented and the notes in between each beat are kind of grouped together in a kind of triplet feel. 04.Graph editor - Controls note velocity, cut-off, resonance, ect. 05.Keyboard Editor - A worthless simplified version of the paino roll. 06. Clicking this little LED mutes the track beside it. 07. Adjusts the panning of the track (All the way left makes the sound play only in the left speaker, all the way right makes it only play in the right speaker) Defaults to center. 08.Adjusts the volume, default is 75%, and there is almost no reason it should go higher than that. Dont just go cranking up the volumes for no reason. 09.Sequencers, Add a note left clicking on one of these boxes with all a note there. Get rid of a note by right clicking. (the note will be the root for the song, more on that later) These are pretty much only used for drum tracks, you should use piano rolls for instuments. (more on that too..) 10.Drop down menu shows different sets of intruments, used for better organizing songs with alot'a synths, I dont ever use it though. 11.Little white "LEDs" show what note the sequencer is on while playing.   Drums   I know, reading this is boring, so I'll give you a little something to do. Make sure you are editing the first pattern. (make sure the little led display with "PAT" underneath it says 1) See the kick instrument? Left click on the box at the beginning of each beat. Like so.. Hit the play button. You have just made an extremely basic drum beat. Mess around with the drum instruments you see here, left click to add, right click to remove. Dont go overboard with the drums! When you are ready to move on.. move on!   The top bar thing.. I dunno what to call it.   01. These little buttons switch between the pattern in the step sequencer, and the entire song in the playlist. 02. Little slider to slide through the song.. :P 03. Play, Stop, and Record. 04. Adjusts tempo, just click and move the mouse up or down. 05. Selects a step sequencer pattern. Adjusted like tempo. 06. Playlist editor. (F5) 07. Step Sequencer. (F6) 08. Piano Roll (F7) 09. Browser. (F8) 10. Mixer. (F9)   Basslines   Now you will learn how to add a bassline using the piano roll. But, first, remove all the fiddling you did with the drums, or open a new project with File > Open. Now, put a kick on each beat, and a hihat on each offbeat, and a clap on the 2nd and 4th beat. like so. Click play to see how it sounds. Nice and simple. Now, for the bass. Right click on the snare, and go to Insert > BooBass. A screen will appear with the boobass settings, this synth is very basic, and only has 3 knobs, Treble, Bass, and Mid. Mess around with them if you like, and see what it sounds like with the little keyboard on the bottom. Once you are done with that, right click on the BooBass and select Piano Roll, a window will appear, it will have a keyboard on the right, and a buncha empty slots. It appears a little daunting at first, but it isnt hard at all. Basically, on the big bunch of squares next to the keyboard, you place notes. The time goes from left to right when you click play. You place notes just like you did with the drums. But now, you can drag them around, and change the notes. Make something like this. This makes an eighth note play on every offbeat at C5. Press play. Starting to sound like a song isnt it? I put the bass on the offbeat, so the mix doesnt get muddy, if I had the bass and the kick going at the same time they both take up a very similar frequency range, and things would get kind of muddy. The Kick-Bass pattern is a staple in most electronic music styles. Now go to the next measure in the piano roll, place the same pattern at F5, then the next measure should be G5, and then F5 again, A simple I,IV,V progression. Click play. Didnt sound right did it? The drums only played during the first measure didnt they? Easy fix. Toggle the little box next to the arrow at the top right of the step sequencer. (Labeled with a 2 on the diagram). Press play, and the drums should repeat every measure. CLICK HERE FOR THE IMAGE   Playlist Editor   Press F5 to open the playlist editor. It looks kinda similar to the piano roll, but you organize patterns instead of notes. Place the pattern with the bass and drums you just made, which should have been pattern 1, so just click next to pattern one, and position it to take up the first 4 bars. Place another to take up the next 4 bars. Mouse over to the play button, but before you click play, toggle the little square with the word "SONG" next to it, to play the stuff in the playlist, instead of the one pattern in the step sequencer. Then click play. (You can click anywhere on the blackish horizontal bar with the numbers on it to skip around the song.)   Making A Good Synth Sound   Time to program a nice lead synth! 01. Right click one of the instruments in the step sequencer and go to Insert > 3xOSC. This synth has some pretty complex controls compared to BooBass. This synth has 3 synths that play at once. (Hence the 3xosc). Press some buttons on the little piano keyboard. By default, this synth is pretty plain sounding. Lets spice it up a bit. 02.Under Osc 1 click the shape that looks like a backwards N, this changes the wave of the sound to a rough saw shape, instead of a smooth sine. Still sounds pretty plain though doesnt it? Go ahead and change all the OSCs to this shape.   Osc stands for oscillator, it basically generates a very simple sound waveform in the shape you specify (The white buttons), This intrument, layers 3 oscillators over each other. The settings we just plugged are refered to as a Super Saw most of the time, these settings are very overused, and appear in hundreds of trance songs. Producers have grown sick of this preset, and most hate it to death. But, it will work for now.   The Knobs next to the osc are Volume, Pan, Course Tuning (1 note at a time), and Fine Tuning (around a cent at a time, up to 50 cents in either direction). By default, the Course tunning is set to have a 3 octave harmony, and the fine tunnings are all at 0 detune. 03.On Osc 2, very slightly adjust the Fine knob to the left, and on Osc 3, move it slightly to the Right. This will create a chorus/flanger effect. The slight dissonance between the 3 oscillators makes the intument sound wider, fuller, and bit fatter. 04.At the top of the 3xOSC window, click on Misc, and toggle the box that says Porta. This will make thesynth slide from note to note, mosts lead synths sound better with a subtle slide. The knob labled slide, changes the speed of the slide, leave it at default for now. 05. At the top right of the 3xOSC click on the box label FX, and drag your mouse slightly upward, so it says 1. This routes the instrument through the first Effects channel. Press F9 to open the mixer. There should be a master, and a bunch of inserts, and 4 sends. The inserts are the places where you insert intruments to add effects, adjust volume, EQ, ect. The master add effects to the entire track. The sends are a little weird. Sounds can be sent here via plugin, or sometimes synths have options to send parts of the synth to one of the sends. I will explain the uses of the sends in a later lesson. 06. Click on Insert 1. This is the insert you just routed your new synth too. All the way to the left. There is 8 things labeled from 1 to 8, these are the 8 slots for effects. 07. Click on the arrow next to one of the eight slots, and go to Select > Fruity Reverb. Adds a reverb effect to everything in insert 1, which is only the lead synth we made. 08. On the new window click on the button in the very top right corner and go to Presets > Subtle. This will change the settings of the reverb to something more subtle. 09.Now add an effect to slot 2, Insert > Delay 2. Set the preset to Stereo Effect, and adjust the Cut knob to a little less than half way. The cut knob adjusts the effects low pass filter. This will make the higher frequencies the repeat be cut out, so the repeat isnt as pronounced as the note itself. Play around with the keyboard some more, see how it sounds. CLICK HERE FOR THE IMAGE The settings for the synth, and the effects. (Dont just copy this, there is another step, and valuable information in the above paragraph) Now, to write the lead. Got to pattern 2. I felt like doing a corny major happy riff thing. So I did. (See the pattern below)Basically, its the root of the chord in that measure, the major 3rd, and the 5th, its basically and arpeggio of the Cmajor chord. And then, you select the lasso tool from the tools at the top of the piano roll, and select all of the notes. Hit Ctrl+c to copy, scroll over to the next measure and paster, drag the notes up to F6, so it transposes to an Fmajor arpeggio. Do that for the paste and transpose to G for the next measure, and then F measure for the last measure, a simple, happy sounding major lead. Now, place that pattern in the play list matched up with the second 4bars for pattern 1. CLICK HERE FOR THE IMAGE Hit play. The bass and drums should play, and then the lead should kick in the second time around.  

Tuesday, 21 September 2010 | 1578 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

8. Soundflow in FL Studio Video Tutorial

Soundflow Soundflow is the flow of the sound in a specific environment, from where it begins and where it goes, all the different stages that modify it in some way are going to be explained here. Soundflow in FL Studio begins in the channel window, more specifically in the step secuencer or alternatively the piano roll. The sound in FL Studio is produced by "channels", and these can be samplers, VST instruments or internal generators. Each channel can be assigned to a specific mixer track, from wich the sound will go to the main mixer track called Master and then to the soundcard output(after the main volume and main pitch steps), but if you don't route the channel to a mixer track the sound will directly go to the Master, leaving you without the possibility to add effects to that specific channel, but you can still generally add the effects along with all the other channels that weren't assigned to a mixer track. At the end of the soundflow we got the main volume and main pitch sliders at the top of the main panel, you can manipulate the main volume at will while working on your project, but you must reset the slider to default position to render your work. For the main pitch you may do as you please. Step secuencer Audio data in FL studio is introduced via the step secuencer or alternatively the piano roll. Both data inputs do the same work, but providing easy interfaces to aproach the music cration in different ways depending on what your needs are. Step secuencer makes it really easy to create percussion loops, it's as simple as clicking some dots on the screen and then click play or (spacebar) to hear it. Of course, making music is actually more difficult than that, but the main procedure is the same. To add some complexity to your loops you can click on the "Graph editor" icon (G) to show an array of properties that can add new dimentions of depth to really simple loops. Those properies are: note panning (Pan), note volume (Velocity), note release velocity (Release), cutoff (Filter cut), resonance (Filter res), pitch (Pitch) and shifting (Shift). Lets say you fill completely all the steps in a hi-hat sample, and let it play just like that. Pretty annoying in my opinion. Now open the "Graph editor" icon (g) and randomly modify the pitch sliders, nothing special, just enough to hear how the same steps sound very different with little effort. If you think about it, messing with the pitch in this way is not very musical, in the sense that you can't make a note progression by modifying only this property, or at least it will be more difficult than using "Keyboard editor" (k). "Keyboard editor" is a micro piano roll embedded in the step secuencer, more inmediate to use than the actual "Piano roll" and with a few characteristics to have in mind: 1)you can traspose the notes you draw in it by pressing and holding ctrl key. 2)notes can slide by pressing the slide button at the top of the "Keyboard editor". 3)making chords is not an option, for that is the actual "Piano roll" You must remember the general law of VSTi and DX instruments: they don't natively support FL Studio slide feature. This is solved by the use of portamento in each VSTi and DX instruments individually. The maximum lenght of a pattern made in the step secuencer is 64 steps, if you want more space...just make another pattern!

Tuesday, 03 August 2010 | 665 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

9. FL Studio Tutorial: The Basics Part II - How to Use Playlist and Mixer

Playlist Before you use the playlist, you should know how to store multiple patterns. At the top of the program next to the tempo, you should see a box with “Pat” under it (image below). It should say 1 right now - you can click this and move your mouse above it and it will go to the next patterns. You can make as many was you want. You can also select different patterns in the playlist, simply by clicking “Pattern 1″…”Pattern 2″… Etc. [...] To bring up the playlist, click the button highlighted in purple: Use this image to find everything in the explanation below: Make sure you have the paintbrush tool (red) selected in the playlist window, and just click to the right of where each pattern is listed (yellow), again left click to add, right click to erase. You can put the patterns on top of each other to make them play at the same time. Go ahead and try this with a few different patterns. To hear the patterns as they are arranged in the playlist, make sure you check “Song” at the very top, to the left of the play button, otherwise only the selected pattern will play. You can zoom with the zoom tool, or use the little boxes at the top right (blue) The area in the top (green) is where you will see clips if you decide to add any. You can literally drag a clip from a folder in your computer to the box up there and it will be inputted in the playlist. You can also adjust the snap settings with the snap tool (light blue)- basically it changes the way you drag the patterns around. The item highlighted in pink is the slicing tool, this is useful when you are cutting samples within the playlist. This is essentailly everything you need to know about the playlist. It is straightforward. Mixer The mixer is very important in production. This is where you’re gonna get all your levels right, apply reverb, compression, etc. To bring up the mixer hit the button highlighted in red: To link various samples from your Channel Window to specific inserts or channels in your Mixer, all you need to do is: Click on the sample you wish to link Go to the mixer and right click the insert you wish to link the sample to Go down to “Link selected channels”, and click “to this track You could also just hit Ctrl+L once you have clicked on the insert you wish to link the sample to On a side note, when you first load up FL, if there are already samples in the Channel Mixer (There might already be a kick, clap, hat, and snare loaded) they will already be linked to inserts 1, 2, 3, and 4. You can delete them or just put your sample where they are and they will automatically be linked to the insert. Panning and Volume Control Highlighted in pink. The green button at the top mutes the channel if off. The knob controls panning and the bar controls volume. Effects and Plug Ins If you want to use an effect or plug in on a certain insert, you go to the section highlighted in yellow. There are a lot of useful effects and plug ins you can use here, some of my favorites are Edison, Fruity Compressor, and Fruity Reverb. Adding new plugins If you want to add more plugins just click the arrow on the very left, then click “More…”. Then you can select from all the plugins available. If you recently installed a new plugin, hit refresh, then fast scan. The new plugin should show up in your list in red. Check and then you will be able to use it. Linking an insert to another insert You can link insert together by using the button highlighted in blue. For example, if you want to link insert 3 to insert 4, you would click on insert 3, then hit the button (highlighted in blue in the image) for insert 4. EQ The EQ is each insert is located on the bottom right, highlighted in yellow. Here are a few guidelines, however there will be an indepth EQ lesson later. The left side consists of low end frequencies (more bass), and the right side consists of high end frequencies (more treble), and the middle sections consists of mids You can “boost” different frequencies by moving the line up at certain points. You can mess around with this a bit right now just to sort of understand its workings — however if you want to learn more you can read the advanced EQ lesson coming later. Thats about it for the basics of the playlist and the mixer. Please send me any questions or comments, and I will get back to you. You should now have a basic understanding of how the program works.

Tuesday, 03 August 2010 | 881 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

10. FL Studio Tutorial - Basic Introduction

FL Studio is a pattern based sequencer. This is somewhat different than the more "normal" sequencers in that they are more arranger-centric. While being pattern based is different, it is also very easy to understand and can lead to highly creative results. The basic interface and workflow relies upon 3 main areas that work together. The Pattern, The Playlist and The Mixer Pattern The pattern is where you will generally create the various musicl phrases or "loops". These loops are created by placing a new channel in the pattern and assigning it to play back something. These can be drum beats, samples or instrumentation. A pattern channel can be any type of sound source supported by FL Studio whether it's a VST instrument, a built in generator or a WAV/OGG/MP3 sample. The Pattern supports note entry in either the step sequencer or the piano roll (FL Studio Producer and XXL only). Each channel can be further augmented by assigning it to a Mixer channel to be further processed. Mixer   The mixer represents your typical mixing board interface. Here you will be able to control various sounds from pattern channels that have been routed to mixer channels. The main fader controls the over all volume and there is the ability to add more effects (built-in, VST, DX) to the sounds routed to each individual channel. This makes it use for routing groups of sounds together for processing. For example, you might route sounds of Cellos, Violins and Violas to a single mixer channel and apply reverb to them as a group. Playlist   This is where it all comes together. The playlist represents a series of patterns and audio clips to be played simultanouesly and in a specific order. This is equivalent to arranging your song. You might have a Pattern with a drum loop play along with a pattern containing a recorded guitar part for example. You can add remove patterns from the timeline as neede to create a fully arranged musical composition. Conclusion This is a very basic explanation of FL Studio and how it works. For more specific guidance, browse the rest of the site or use the search function to find out more information.

Tuesday, 03 August 2010 | 611 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

11. A Guide to Freezing and Bouncing in FL Studio

Freezing. Bouncing. Rendering tracks. Whatever you call it, it is a useful part of music production because it allows you to free up CPU power for more plugins and creates an audio file. While it’s not a one-click solution, bouncing in FL Studio is a process that is easy enough to be straightforward but complicated enough to give the user a lot of control. The first five steps may be all you need to know to get started with freezing tracks in FL Studio, and you can check out the rest of this tutorial to go in-depth with handling special circumstances. To clarify, freezing a track means rendering that track as an audio file, and then disabling the plugins. This tutorial is about doing this process in a way that does not alter the sound of the track, and that allows you to keep the plugins in the project file in case you decide to “unfreeze” and adjust the plugins. Example 1 Step 1: Project Data Folder Before we begin, we can specify a folder to hold all our bounced audio material for this project. Use keyboard shortcut F11, and navigate to Project > General Settings, and click on the project Data Folder to do this.     Step 2: Select Timeline For this first example, I have a synth that is sent to a mixer track, which is then routed to two other mixer tracks where it is being heavily effected and modulated. It’s an intro effects soundscape that is taking quite a bit of CPU. I’ll be using this to give an example of how to bounce a track with effects. First, navigate to the part of the Playlist where the section you want to freeze is located, which in some cases will be the whole song or most of the song. Regardless of how big it is, select the section, and be sure to give enough space on the end for the sound to fade out. Muting the other tracks is not necessary, but may help with determining where the sound ends.     Step 3: Prepare for Rendering Open the Mixer and click on the Arm Disc Recording button for each track you want to render, which in my case is the two effected tracks. Each time you click this button, a dialog will pop up asking you to give a name for the file. It won’t render the tracks until later, but this will give it a name to have ready.     Next, go to the Mixer’s dropdown menu, and select Disk recording > Render to wave files. I recommend having all the options selected.     Now FL Studio will render the files, and automatically save them in the project data folder, with the names we specified. When it’s done, check the Playlist to see the files appear.     Step 4: Disable or Delete Plugins, Save CPU Power To finish the freezing process, mute the midi and automation clips in the Playlist or mute the plugins, and enable Smart Disable for all the instrument and effects plugins that went into making this sound. This will allow you to turn off the plugins and free up some CPU power, and you could reactivate the plugins later by muting the audio clips and enabling the plugins. Alternatively, you could delete the plugins and erase the clips, but then you would not be able to go back and alter the sound.     Step 5: Optional Finishing Touches From here, you can choose to route the audio clips to the mixer however you want. Another note is that because I used this technique, I was able to get a separate audio file for both mixer tracks, and I took advantage of this by reusing one or both audio files at different times in the arrangement.     Perhaps you would like to signal that a track is frozen by noting it through a certain color and icon.     Example 2 Pattern freezing, Pre-FX bouncing In the first example, we rendered a pattern post-fx. But often, you’ll want to freeze an instrument without the effects. At times you may want to render a pattern that repeats itself in the song. We’ll tackle both of these situations in the next example. There are two patterns. One of which is called IntroPad, which plays three times, and the other is calledsPad which plays once. The easiest way to render this would be to select the whole timeline and render it all, and sometimes the arrangement is so complicated that this is the best route. But this time, we could save some hard drive space by rendering the two patterns and then arranging the audio clips to match the song.     You may have noticed in the image that there is an obstacle preventing us from doing this disc space-saving plan, and that is that each pattern instance has unique automation. This is automating an EQ in the mixer FX. We can render the audio, one clip for each of the two patterns, without the EQ to get the unaffected instrument sound. Then we can reapply the same effects to the audio files and have the same sound. An easier way to do this, however, is simply to route the instrument to a blank mixer track and render the audio files without any mixer effects or level/pan adjustments. Then, we’ll route the audio files to the mixer track that the instrument was originally linked to. This will freeze the instrument plugin, but our automation and effects settings will remain intact and tweakable. Step 1: Route to Blank Mixer Track First, let’s reroute the instrument to a blank mixer track.     Step 2: Select the Timeline Then, we’ll select the timeline. While you could go into pattern mode, I prefer remaining in song mode and selecting the area in the Playlist, so that I can manually adjust the timing if the sound has long release. Then following the same process from earlier, select the Arm Disc Recording button, and name the file the same as the pattern. Step 3: Rendering the Files From the Mixer menu, select Disc Recording > Render to Wave Files, and wait for the file to render. Next, let’s select the other pattern and do the same process.         After that, arrange the audio files to match the patterns.     Step 4: Route Back Into the FX Track Then select the audio clips and link them to the mixer track that the instrument plugin was originally linked to.     Step 5: Muting and Disabling Now that the routing is done, we’ll need to mute the original instrument. We should also select Smart Disablefor the instrument in order to save CPU. (sound familiar?)     Step 6: Optional Finishing Touches Lastly, let’s return the “blank” mixer track to its original blankness. Making a habit of this will keep the mixer neat and clear. The easiest way to do this is to navigate to the Mixer Presets folder in the Browser, and drag and drop the Default.fst file onto the mixer track.     Since we’ve muted the instrument, it doesn’t matter how we handle the midi clips in the Playlist. You could delete the clips if you want, but you might want to stack the midi clips with the audio to have a visual representation of the notes, or you may want to keep the midi on its own track and mute it to visually show that its been frozen. The following image shows what two visual techniques might look like:     Example 3, Partial Freezing We’ve covered situations when you want to render a track with or without effects, but there is a third option. What about situations when you want to render a track with some of the effects? This is actually quite a common situation. For example, you might want to bounce down a track for which you’re sure about the compression, but still want to be able to tweak the EQ or Reverb. For this next example, I’m going to bounce the instrument and its compression, but not the EQ. Here is the track in the Playlist.         Above is the mixer set up. As you can see, the track I want to freeze, which is the Distort Reese track, has two other tracks routed to it, which are Bass1 and Bass2. This sound is actually made up of two instrument plugins being sent through their own mixer tracks with their own effects, and then they are routed together to the same bus. I stand to save a lot of CPU by bouncing these instruments. Step 1: Decide How Far The basic idea is to decide how far into the signal chain to freeze the sound? What should be permanent? What should be adjustable? First, mute all the effects plugins you don’t want to freeze, and be sure to note the values of the level and panning of this mixer track. We’ll need to set the panning to center and the level to the default value, so that when we route the audio back to this track it will be received by the EQ plugins the same as it was before the bounce, pre-level and pre-panning.     A note about the level, however, is that if setting the level to the default value causes the audio to clip, then you’ll want to keep the level at the setting it currently is, and then reset the level after bouncing. Resetting the fader makes it transparent, so that it won’t add or take away from the volume of the track. Step 2: Bounce Next, Arm disk recording and render the audio file.     Step 3: Mixer Routing, Flip the Plugins On/Off Link the audio file to the mixer track, and turn on the effects that were turned off for the bouncing. Basically, what was off gets turned on, and what was on gets turned off, and disabled. Also, adjust the panning to its previous location and adjust the level if needed. This will result in having the same sound before we began this process, the only difference being that we save some CPU and we can’t adjust the frozen plugins. Step 4: A Special Situation     In this situation, much of the automation was recorded to the same patterns as the notes, so we can’t mute the Midi track in the Playlist. You may be concerned about the notes in the track, but they will not cause anything since the instrument is muted. That’s possibly all there is to know about bouncing in FL Studio. In the first example I covered the basic process for freezing in FL Studio, and in the other two examples I showed how to freeze without effects. Once you get this down, bouncing tracks will take only a minute, and this can be a handy technique to have available when the CPU starts getting overloaded. Thanks to freezing, you can keep loading new plugins as you need them. Final Words Aside from freeing CPU, there are other benefits to rendering tracks: It makes the sound permanent. You don’t have to worry about accidentally changing it and it backs up your work for the future. You can render groups/busses in order to make stems for mixers and remixers. You can further edit and manipulate bounced tracks with audio-specific techniques like chopping, scratching,and stretching.

Thursday, 29 July 2010 | 1124 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report

12. Quick Tip: Using Multiple MIDI Controllers in FL Studio 9

Everybody loves MIDI controllers. They’re so much fun, some people buy a few of them. Before version 9, FL Studio used all connected MIDI controllers to control only one channel, but now each one can be configured to control something completely different.   Step 1 Plug in and set up your MIDI controllers. Make sure the inputs are enabled in FL Studio’s MIDI settings and everything is working properly. I’m going to be using my Evolution MK-449C keyboard and a Korg PadKontrol.     Step 2 Add the instrument channels you want to control with each MIDI controller. I want to control some drums with my PadKontrol and a bass sound with the keyboard, so I’ve added FPC and 3xOSC channels.     Step 3 Now we can configure the MIDI controllers and the channels in FL Studio so that each channel is controlled by a seperate controller. When multiple channels in the step sequencer are selected, the MIDI channel that each note is sent on determines which channel (each instrument in FL Studio, like the 3xOSC and FPC, is called a ‘channel’, it’s confusing) it controls, from the ones that are selected. So, when 16 channels in FL Studio are selected, the first channel responds to MIDI notes sent on MIDI channel 1, the second on channel 2 and so on. The MIDI channel is part of the note on and note off messages sent by the controller. When we set up a controller to send notes on MIDI channel 1, it doesn’t tell FL Studio that it’s being operated on channel 1, each note message just happens to be on channel 1. In the case of the PadKontrol and many other controllers, we can send notes on any MIDI channel we want. Knowing these limitations, we can predict how FL Studio will respond to different MIDI channels. For example, let’s select 2 different channels in FL Studio’s step sequencer. FL Studio doesn’t know how we’ve configured our MIDI controllers or what MIDI channels we might be using. Any notes on MIDI channel 1 will be sent to the first channel in the step sequencer. Notes on MIDI channel 2 get sent to the second channel, as do any notes on any of the remaining MIDI channels.   Step 4 Read the manual for your MIDI controller to find out how to determine and change which MIDI channel(s) it’s operating on. My PadKontrol sends all notes on channel 10 by default, because in prehistoric times, channel 10 was always used for drums. My keyboard is set up on channel 1 by default, so this works out well. If the keyboard used any other channel, I would have to change it to channel 1, as any notes on channels 2 and above will get sent to the second selected channel in FL Studio. Since the PadKontrol is sending notes on channel 10, the FPC channel should be below the 3xOSC channel in the step sequencer. Selecting it (by clicking the little green light next to it’s name) and pressing Alt+ Up or Down Arrows will move it up and down.     Step 5 Now with both the FPC and 3xOSC channels selected by right-clicking the green lights next them, the PadKontrol plays the drums while the keyboard plays the bass. If you have a friend, this is a great way to collaborate.     Extra Step 1 Let’s revisit the PadKontrol to do some really amazing things with this. Each pad can be configured to any MIDI channel, so with a bit of planning, multiple drum sounds can be triggered at the same time with just Sampler channels and no FPC or Layers. I’ve set up 4 pads sending notes on MIDI channels 1-4. To make things a lot easier, I’ve set each pad’s note to C4, which FL Studio sees as C5. This is just so that there’s no weird pitching going on.     Extra Step 2 If you’re having fun with this, go into FL Studio’s MIDI settings window and click the ‘Record to step sequencer’ button. Now, if you play a cool beat on the pads, FL Studio will record each hit right into the step sequencer and it can easily edited from there. Whoooa!  

Thursday, 29 July 2010 | 1013 hits | Print | PDF |  E-mail | Report