FL STUDIO Beginner Tutorial

Alright, so i was outside smoking a cig and i thought.. " Why not make a basic tutorial for beginning producers? "

so thats what i'm going to do! get you started, so you dont have to go through endless hours of youtube videos, website searching, ect..ect.. i had to go through that and honestly it was a pain. so to make it easy for you, im going to try my best to give you what you need to begin, so here we go!

When you open up Fl you get your basic interface.
which looks like this.

on the far left side you will see your library. thats where you can pick and choose sounds you've downloaded or made.

over to the right, thats your step sequencer.
which looks like this.












you can arrange basic drum patterns with this.
also with the sequencer you insert sounds from your library. you can either drag and drop a sound into it or your can right click on the sound and click open in new channel.

next you have your piano.
it looks like this.

now, to get to this you select a sound in your sequencer. if the light is green next to the name, it is selected.
right click on the sound and click " Piano Roll " .

typically i dont send drum sounds into the piano unless im gettting complex. so what you usually want to do, is create melodies and basslines in the piano roll. so to get a sound you can create/ edit youll want to pick a plugin. so if your new to fl, you should have your basic plugins. so try this.

on the top of fl you should see a tab. it looks like this.                                                          
(sorry its so small)


the 1st button sends you to your playlist (ill explain that in a bit)
the 2nd button sends you to your step sequencer
the 3rd button sends you to your piano roll
the 4th button opens and closes your library on the left
the 5th button opens up your mixer (ill explain that later)

now that i have explained that, i want you to click the 2nd button and go to your step sequencer.
right click on any tab in the step sequencer. it could say "kick , clap, hat, snare, w.e, it doesnt matter.
then click " insert " and find " sytrus " then click on that.

(sytrus should look something like this)

now you have opend your first plugin. with sytrus you can create your own synths and sounds.

try clicking on your keys on the keyboard, you should hear sounds!

alright now what i want you to do is this. at the top right corner of Sytrus, you should see two arrow keys facing away from each other. right click on em and find a sound you like. play with the keys to hear your sound. once you find a sound you want to use go back to your sequencer. ( remember 2nd button )

you should see your sound is now in the sequencer. right click on the sound you just put into the sequencer and click Piano Roll. now your sound is in the piano roll. there's different ways to create a melody, but im going to show you one way for now.

move your mouse over to C6. click on the key and hold the mouse button down. now scroll down to C4 going over all the keys. see how the rows are highlighted?

thats where you can paste each note. try clicking in the first square next to C5. thats what a note looks like.
you can make notes longer and shorter by going to the far right of the note and holding down the left mouse button and dragging the mouse left or right. if you dont know how to play piano you might have to go by ear.
(ill post vids for you to watch visual tutorials, they are not by me tho)

so now you should have a basic melody.

next step is creating your tracks in the " Playlist ".
(the playlist is used for organizing your tracks to create your song)

go to the tab that i showed you earlier with the 5 buttons and click on button 1, the playlist button.

you should be in pattern one with your melody. rename pattern 1 to melody and click in the first square next to pattern 1. (to rename, right click on pattern 1 and click " rename " and type it in the box that pops up)

now go to pattern two and rename drum, drumbeat, bassdrum, w.e you like. make sure pattern two is selected.

now go back to the tab up top and click on the sequencer button, when the sequencer pops up it should be empty, thats good. that means your in your second pattern.

insert a bassdrum into the the sequencer and make a drum beat any beat doesn't matter. if you can, try to match it to your melody, but sounding good right now does not matter. im just giving you the basics so you understand how to use the program.

once you have made your drum beat go back to the playlist and fill up pattern two.

now push the space bar.

you have created your first " very basic "  track.

yes i know it probably wont sound too good first try, but i hope that helped you get going.

ill do a tutorial later on the mixer. that gets a little bit more complex. the mixer looks like this.

anyways, i hope you have enjoyed this and that you are on your way to producing music.
next tutorial should be up in the near future so keep updated on the blog and let me know if this has helped you in anyway!

thanks,

Subs2Bass.