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VOLUME AND NOTE CONTROL OF EACH DOT
So if you want to make your every beat sound different you first of all need the notes and sounds
that you would like, after you have a few good sounding ones then you make a line of beats that
you find fit to make your song rock
Then click on the "bar button" at the top right:
If you look at all the pink bars you'll notice that if you click up and down on the bar you can
select the volume of each individual beat.
Now to move on to the keyboard button, after meddling with the volume of the beats you can
now choose the tone of your individual beat by clicking the Keyboard button
The farther up you go on the keyboard, the higher the tone, the lower on the keyboard , the lower
the tone. That’s it, the whole 9 yards, I hope this helps you.
Simple-Loop creation:
This kind of loop is aim for websites or maybe a game. For this tuto you need to know at least to use basic
controls of the program. we will only using predetermined packs and effects that comes with this FL, so lets
get started.
1. First thing we are going to do once we opened the program is to add sounds from our packs options and
put them in the play list, you can see in the picture which ones we choose.(add temple bell just if you want)
Tutorial Part 1
Fruity loops is a highly underrated program when it comes to music production software. I find
the layout and usability of FL Studio top very ingenious. Songs are structured with on the basis
of compiling various patterns and layering various elements of these patterns. Automation is
used with effects and instruments to achieve various results and make the songs interesting. But
today i would like to compile a fruity loops 6 tutorial, on how to make a techno track. We will
start from loading up drum samples, then mastering these samples, then making a pattern
structure, then implementing a melody with a softsynth provided and then finally doing some
automation and exporting. Firstly a note, this tutorial will be showing true techno music, not
some scooter or paul van dyk, they aren’t techno!
First things first! You need to have a Fruity Loops version 6 installed and working. When that is
done open it up.
1. Download fruity-loops-6-techno-tutorial-part-1.zip file which contains all of the audio
samples I used in this song we are about to make. ( Found in Gollum Drive) Extract these
to the desktop then go into fruity loops: Options > File Settings. Then click on one of the
folder icons and select the folder location of the sample pack you downloaded. Another
method would just be to copy the samples into your root sample location. But meh! Both
work for this tutorial.
2. Next make sure you have the file browser open on the left hand side. Then search for
your sample folder name and expand it to see the list of audio files in the folder. If you
don’t see the file browser press “F8″.
3. Now that we have the house cleaning stuff sorted lets first set up our master effects
channel, so that when we are working with the samples they sound good and just how
they would sound in the final mastering, well almost! So make sure you have the master
effects channel open by firstly pressing “F9″ and then clicking on the bar that says
master. Then click on the little arrow next to the 8th effects channel:
Then click on “Select > Fruity Multiband
Compressor”. This compressor is new to Fruity Loops in version 6 and is a demon. Once
you have then compressor loaded into bay 8, click on the name of it to toggle the
window, make sure it is showing. In the top right hand corner of the Fruity Multiband
Compressor are two arrows facing opposite ways. This is the preset toggle option. Right
click on it and select “Mastering 2.4db”. Now we have a compressor. But for techno it is
also good to have another compressor on the master channel to give it a bit more punch.
So on bay 7 of the master effects load up the effect “Fruity Compressor” and select the
“Complete Mix” Preset.
4. So we have our master channel set up, but we don’t have any sounds banging out yet.
Let’s get our bass drum going. On the left hand side of the fruity loops window drag and
drop the file name Fb0205.Bd on to the label “Kick” which is on the pattern selector.
Make sure the pattern selector is toggled by pressing F6.
Next right click on the big rectangle thing that now says Fb0205.Bd, which before said
Kick and select “Fill Each 4 Steps”. Press spacebar to play! You now have a meaty kick
going at 140bpm. But we can make this sound better. So jump to step 5.
5. Left click on the sample, where it says Fb0205.Bd in the pattern maker window to bring
up the channel settings window. The top right of the sample channel settings window has
an LCD panel, which has two horizontal lines. Left click on it and whilst holding the left
mouse button drag it up so it says “1″. You have now patched this sample into the FX bay
channel 1. Which you should now see on the FX channel. We are going to load more
compressors and EQ’s onto this thing. So in the FX channel 1, add another multiband
compressor to it, and select the preset “maximize 2″. Add another fruity compressor on
channel 7 and set the preset to “Brickwall”. Press spacebar to play! More power. Next in
Channel 6 add a “Delay 2″ and set the cutoff to almost nothing, just so you hear a little
bounce back. Yah a rolling kick! But you can’t make an entire track from a kick.
6. Now its time for a second kick to give it more punch. Drag and drop the sample EBhouse_kick-8 onto the Clap sample and fill it every 4 beats. Then patch that sample to the
second FX Channel and add a fruity compressor on the 8th FX bay with the preset
complete mix. Bam More power. If you just got lost here, do steps 4 and 5 again.
7. So we have two kicks going, one with lots of bass and the other with punch. Now lets add
some hats! Add Fb3407.Hh and EB-trance_OPhh_2 to the last 2 sample banks in the
pattern maker. Set each to fill for every 4 beats and patch them through to FX bay 3. Now
you can manually put in the pattern, or since we did fill every 4 beats, while holding the
shift button and click where the green lights are in this image:
Once both have green lights hold the shift key and press the
right arrow on your keyboard twice to move them on the 3rd beat of each bar. We got
some hats going now! But they need some depth. In the 3rd FX channel add a Fruity
Reverb 2 and turn the Wet parameter (On the right hand side slider) to 20%. You can find
the measurement up in the top left of the fruity loops window, just under the file edit
channels etc. menu.
8. Let’s start adding some more elements. Drag the sample Fb2016.Perc just under the last
sample on the pattern maker. Patch it to the FX Channel 4 and add a Fruity Delay Bank
to the Bay 8. Click once on the right preset arrow (Top Right of the Fruity Delay Bank
Window). Next on the FX Bay 8, you will see a little dial on the right of the FX i.e on the
right of FX Bay 8 where it says Fruity Delay Bank. Set this to 30%. Add the reset of the
samples and i will show you below what fx to make and what settings.
Sample Settings
Fb1309.Tmbr
FX Channel: 3
Channel Settings: Volume 25%EB-trance_snare_1:
FX Channel: 3
EB-trance_CLhh_4:
FX Channel: 3
Channel Settings: Volume 50%
Fb9410.Chd.Fexit:
FX Channel: 5
Fb9502.Chd.Kvick:
FX Channel: 5
bass 2.111:
FX Channel: 4
Channel Settings: Volume 55%
EB-trance_ride_2:
FX Channel: 3
Channel Settings: Volume 60%
FX Channel Settings:
FX Channel 5:
Bay 8: Fruity Delay Bank
Preset: 3 Echos
FB Filt Cut: 13%
9. So now we have the settings, you’ve added all the samples, and set up the patching to the
FX Bays with the appropriate Effects settings and so. But you have no pattern! Well copy
what is below!
If you can’t follow what is above, please see the fruity loops tutorial file provided. Press
spacebar and enjoy your creation.
10. Next comes some melody! Click up the top of the fruity loops window and click on
channels > add one > Sytrus. This comes with the producer version of Fruity Loops 6 but
can also be bought outright as a softsynth. Make sure the instrument window is showing,
you should see a purple window. On the Left hand side, where all the samples for this
tutorial file are located, locate the Tutorial.fst file in the file browser. It will have a little
green s icon. Drag and drop this file on the Purple Sytrus Window. You will now have
the patch, or soundtype made for this tutorial. Usually i do not use Sytrus for Techno
basses, but it comes with Fruity Loops so i thought i better use it than give simple another
sample file made from another VST Synth. Patch the synth through to FX Channel 6 with
a fruity compressor with complete mix set as the preset and a paramatic EQ on the 7th
bay with these settings: Set the FX Channel volume (The red slider of FX Channel 6) to
65%.
11. Now that we have the right sound we need a melody. Right click on the purple rectangle
in the pattern maker and click on Piano Roll. Making sure Line is selected here:
Enter in this melody with the paint brush tool. Resize
and arrange as necessary.
12. Now here is the trick. If you press space bar, the drums will stop and the melody will
keep playing. This is because the melody is longer than 4 beats. So click on this orange
button in the pattern maker window:
This will make the drums
continue to play with the melody. So now we have a melody playing with the drums. Feel
free to add more instruments or tweak the sound.
That is it for this tutorial. I have shown you how to add samples, do some basic mastering and
layering. Use the effects channel, arrange beats, navigate through files and make a melody. Next
i will continue this tutorial by showing how to arrange a full song with events and automation.
Firstly continue to play with the samplers and options in all of the effects bays.
As i said before, the sytrus synth does not fully suit techno music. I think this synth has too much
a metallic sound, not enough crunch and underlying bass. I recommend looking at Vanguard
VST and Albino. Two powerful synths that i often use for my basses.
Here is an export of what you should be hearing: fruity-loops-6-techno-tutorial-part-1.mp3
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to comment here and i will gladly reply
to you!
Tutorial Part 2
The previous tutorial taught you mastering principles, adding and manipulating samples,
including effects and effects layering techniques, using virtual soft synthesizers (VSTs), using
the piano roll and arranging a pattern. This arrangement of patterns is where this tutorial will
pick up from. Patterns are the platform from which an entire song is made up from. Patterns are
merely an arrangement of various hits, events, automation etc that can be placed on what is
called the “playlist editor” in FL Studio 6. Each horizontal line on the playlist editor hosts a new
playlist, meaning, you can have a different drum arrangement on the Pattern 1 track and another
on the Pattern 2 track, and then, when you play through your song the various patterns will play
out, and you will have “a song” ad not just a pattern looping for 5mins. If all of this isn’t making
much sense at the moment, don’t worry, all will be covered now. So lets get started!
1. First of all open your song track in fruity loops. A nice shortcut i use to open the previous
track I was working on is to press “alt + 1 You can close all of the VST windows that
load up, I.E close down the multiband compressor window etc. to make it easier to work.
2. Next make sure both the step sequencer and the playlist editor are open by pressing “F5″
for the playlist editor and “F6″ for the step sequencer. Both windows should now be
open. Now on the step sequencer we want to cut the melody from the sytrus VST and
move it to another pattern. I like to separate my melody patterns and drum patterns so I
can have more control over variations on my drum patterns, which you will see later on.
So on the step sequencer, right click on the purple rectangle, orthesytrus VST with the
tutorial preset and select “Edit > Cut”.
Next go to the playlist editor, and click on the text “Pattern 2″.
This selects a different pattern from the song, where you can input new arrangements and
so back on the step sequencer. When you click it you will notice that all the inputted
beats and hits on the step sequencer are gone. Don’t stress they aren’t gone, we just
haven’t inputted any for Pattern 2 yet. Back on the step sequencer, right click again on
the sytrus VST, where it says tutorial. Go “Edit > Paste”. Bam, our melody is back in our
song, but on the pattern 2. Now this is where the song building begins.
3. On the playlist editor, making sure you have the paintbrush tool selected, and snap to line
selected:
paint 4 pink boxes on the pattern one
horizontal line, and one big line on pattern 2 track. Your playlist window should now
look like this:
Sorry for all the images popping
up now, just a picture says a thousand words, and i don’t want you to be pasting boxes on
the step sequencer, that was what the last tutorial was about. Next, we want to see what
our efforts have done, so we will go ahead and play the song. Make sure you have song
mode enabled and not pattern, if you have pattern mode enabled you will just hear the
selected pattern on the playlist editor, nothing more. So click song mode:
.
4. Great, now lets add some variations to this beat. Right click on the last box of pattern one
to remove it. Making sure the pattern 1 line is selected press “CTRL + SHIFT + C” to
clone the selected pattern. A blank pattern will appear below it. Paste a box on the 4 bar
(Under where we right clicked on the other box) on the new Pattern 2. Your playlist
editor should now look like this:
Now make sure this new
pattern is selected in the playlist editor and go back to the step sequencer so we can edit
the beats. For the two top samples (The two kick drums) add a beat to the 3rd beat of the
last bar. I.e:
If you just want to hear this pattern loop over and over, make sure you are in pattern
mode. Otherwise let’s keep going in song mode and press spacebar to hear our creation.
5. Too much rides! So on pattern 1 and 2, in the step sequencer right click all of the
highlighted beats on the ride cymbal, i.e EB-trance_ride_2. We will add it in again later.
For now let’s keep making some different arrangements by pasting the first pattern and
cloning it then editing it. I will make 3 more variations and post my final playlist and the
variations i made in the step sequencer.
Playlist Editor:
Pattern 2:
Pattern 3:
Pattern 4:
Pattern 5:
6. You can use the above patterns and arrangements for your song or whatever, i am just
illustrating how to use the playlist editor to arrange and build a song. So go ahead and
play your song, add tweaks, you are in control. Let’s add in our rides however, to give the
tech track a bit more power. Select what is now Pattern 7 (This should be free) and draw
in the rides. Paste the pattern on track 7 from bar 17 till 24. Add in the other patterns, i.e
the melody and whatever drums you made. My new playlist editor looks like this:
7. Next we will add some automation to our track, because I don’t like how the synth comes
in at the moment. I won’t make a full track here, but i am just showing you the basics of
how to compose a track with what FL Studio 6 has to offer. So let’s slowly fade in our
synth and add a filter! Firstly open up the FX Mixer by pressing “F9″. Select channel 6
which is the channel for our Sytrus Synth . On Bay 6 add the Fruity Filter Effect, not
Fruity Free Filter (Fruity Loops 7 will have a new bigger and badder filter, yum yum).
Back on the Playlist editor make sure Pattern 8 is selected. Then with the Fruity Filter
window open set all of the setting to:
8. Next right click on the “Cutoff freq” dial and select “Init song with this position”. This
will make sure whenever the song starts, the dial will snap back to this position, and not
the position that it ended on last time. Right click again on this cutoff dial and this time
select “Edit Events”. You must make sure you are still on Pattern 8 on the playlist editor,
or this may lead to some big confusion later on. A new window will pop up, this is where
you draw a graph, which controls the parameters of the dial. So with the paintbrush tool
selected, from the bottom left of the screen right click and hold to draw a diagonal line up
to the top of the screen ending at the end of the 4th bar. I.e:
9. Next step is to go back to the playlist editor, and paste a bar at the start of Pattern 8. You
have just created an automation channel, which filters gradually the highs of the synth we
made. Sounds good yeh ? You can do this for just about any parameter in fruity loops,
just watch out which pattern you are drawing in the event, it can cause some headaches
and frustration, believe me, I’ve stress tested this one. Here is my final playlist editor
window:
10. So continue to produce your song, add new elements, take some away. But now when
you are ready, lets export our track. Make sure the song mode is selected, or you will
export your track only with the selected pattern. Go to “File > Export > MP3 File”. You
can export to WAV if you like, if you don’t like the LAME ENC which FL Studio 6 uses,
or you wish to do further mastering in programs like Adobe Audition or Sony Soundforge
etc. But i think what we have here has enough punch, plus most of the mastering work is
best to be done on individual channels and sounds, not on the final song as a whole.
Anyhow, select MP3 File and select your save location. Next use these settings, although
you can select a lower/higher bit rate when desired.
We have made a song, exported it to MP3 format and ready to upload to our friends/the
web/record labels/radio stations whatever. This concludes my two part tutorial of how to make a
Techno track with Fruity Loops 6. Please if you have any tips for me and the others, or you
would like to show me your final version of the track or you got lost before you even read the
title of the post, please write me a comment here and i will get back to you! Hope you enjoyed
this tutorial, i will be writing more tips and fruity loops news when I get the chance to!
Tutorial Part 3
The last couple of tutorials have shown you the basics of what fruity loops 7has to offer. How
the program itself works and how you can build a track from a mere series of patterns. Since i
have now taught the basics of fruity loops 6 i will continue this fruity loops 6 tutorial series by
examining the various elements of fruity loops 7, the packaged VSTs and various techniques that
can be used within fruity loops 7. This time we will be looking through FL Studio’s Fruity Slicer
instrument.
Fruity Slicer is an instrument that can load a WAV file and attempt to divide the WAV sample
into various key frame segments. From here you are then able to play each individual element,
even out of order, of the sample. This technique of beats production and usage of samples can be
used in various other music styles such as hip hop and jazz as many of these styles are based on
the usage of samples cut from existing tracks. As i said above this tutorial will now be using the
Fruity Loops version 7, which should be no problem to get your hands on if you have the
lifetime updates package bought from image-line. So let’s have a look at the Fruity Slicer in FL
Studio 7.
Tutorial Files:
requiem-for-a-dream-tutorial.zip (Gollum)
1. Firstly set up your mastering channel like the one I made on the FL Studio 6 Techno
Tutorial. Do this both on the mastering channel and the first channel. We don’t want to
add any delay on the kick on the first mastering channel, we are making Drum & Bass
here not a rolling techno kick that stomps the hell out of our listeners. Next we want a
fast BPM (Beats Per Minute) on our track. Drum & Bass usually hangs around the 170 180bpm level, so lets set ours around there, i am setting mine to 173, just to be odd. Left
click on the BPM LCD Panel and move your cursor up until it says 173 BPM.
2. Now that we have our platform for quality sound lets get going with fruity slicer. Right
click on the “Kick” Sample which is created by default on the Fruity Step Sequencer.
Now select “Replace > Fruity Slicer”. You guessed it this simply replaces the VST with
another, in this case the Fruity Slicer.
3. Next Make sure the Fruity Slicer window is open, so you can see it. You should see a
small window, that looks much like the other sampler windows. This fruity slicer is
black, you can’t do anything with it at the moment, no sounds will come out. So what we
need to do now is load a wav or mp3 track into it. Left Click on this button
and go “Load Sample”. Select the sample provided in the provided
tutorial pack and click open. Or if you have the browser open on the left hand side of FL
Studio 6 or 7, simply drag and drop the sample onto the blue lcd panel of Fruity Slicer.
Done, you will now see on the step sequencer that fruity slicer has made a ladder in the
piano roll. Patch the fruity slicer into the FX channel 1 and press spacebar to play.
Doesn’t sound like 173bpm does it?
4. The current sample has been detected by Fruity Slicer to be a length of 8 beats.
Unfortunately in this case Fruity Loops was wrong. So what we need to do is set the
sample to a length of 4 beats. Stop the song and set the Fruity Slicer Sample to 4 bars by
left clicking on where it says “8 Beats” and drag it down to “4 Beats”.
Sounds much more like Drum & Bass now right! You could even use this as a nice DnB
beat. However we haven’t used Fruity Slicer to its potential yet; we could of just used a
sampler to achieve this same effect. I don’t like the kicks in the loop so much, so what we
are going to do, is rearrange the loop to our liking. We do this by messing with the Piano
Roll, just like we did when we made a melody in the Techno Tutorial.
5. So let’s right click on the fruity slicer and select “Piano Roll” to open up the piano roll
window. Here feel free to paste any rhythm you want, remember this is only a tutorial,
you are the musician. But at the same time, this is a tutorial, and you want to see some
drum and bass techniques. So feel free to look at my simple pattern below:
You will notice that the second window, below the notes window, has varied heights.
This window here displays the velocity of each sample played, and also depicts how long
each note is played. So what do you do if you have two notes played on the same beat?
Or what do you do when you can’t clearly see which velocity bar belongs to which note.
Simple. Let me explain how i changed the velocity setting for Slice #12, the chunky high
hats.
6. Select the “Select Tool” (No Joke) from the piano roll window
. Next
click and hold the left mouse button over a region of notes you want. I selected the top 5
notes. Notice how both the notes and the velocity bars of the notes turn a light redish
colour. Next we want to edit the height or velocity of these notes. Switch back into the
paintbrush mode by clicking on the paintbrush icon in the Piano Roll window
. Next simply left click and hold on the redish bars and move the
mouse cursor up or down depending on the effect you are looking for. I turned mine
down as the hats didn’t suit too well to the rest of my beat.
7. I edited my pattern to have a double kick at the start and more intense snares on a new
pattern. Here is my second pattern. If you don’t know how to add a pattern, please review
the FL Studio 6 Techno Tutorial.
Something handy to know; in the piano roll, if you want the exact size or length of a note
already pasted, simply left click on that note/bar and then click again on a free place in
the piano roll and the paintbrush tool will paste a note the same size elsewhere. This is
handy so you don’t need to attempt to guess the size of the note. Also make sure you play
around with the step sizes to get accurate note lengths. If you want to make sure your
notes are cut off to the bar and are precise, press “CTRL + Q” to do a quick quantize.
8. So we have a beat, but i like to get some melodies going with my tracks. So i decided to
make the Requiem For A Dream theme song for this tutorial, it fits nicely with the Drum
& Bass style i think. Go ahead and add a Sytrus Instrument to your song. You can do this
by going “Channels > Add One > Sytrus”. I used the pattern “Octaver Orchestra” in the
Orchestral section of the presets. Next i turned down the pitch by left clicking on the
purple rectangle and right clicking on “C6″ on the piano keyboard in the instrument
options window. Complex i know so here is a screenshot:
Next go into the Sytrus’s Piano Roll (Right click on the purple rectangle > Piano Roll)
whilst making sure you have selected pattern 3 or 2 if you didn’t make a variant of the
drums. Input the following melody:
Press spacebar to hear our creation if you like. Next, if you know the theme song from
Requiem For A Dream, there are tiny bells going through the song. Insert another Sytrus
and select a new pattern. Set the base note, like above and the “C6″ to “C2″, so the notes
should play out higher. I used the preset “Bach” which is found in the Organ presets.
Turn down this instruments volume to 50% by left clicking on the volume knob next to
the instrument and dragging down.
piano roll.
Next input this melody into the
9. Next i made sure that both synths were patched through to FX Channel 1 where a fruity
compressor was, with the preset complete mix set. I turned down this channels volume to
78%.
So we created a Drum & Bass beat with our new friend Fruity Slicer. We also got some
melodies in the song to living it up a bit. Now let me explain some more features of the
fruity slicer that may come in handy in the future. The PS and TS options of the fruity
slicer effect how the sample is broken up into pieces. How the pitch is effected or how
much gap between slices should be brought in so as to maintain the 4 beats we need. PS
deals with pitch and TS deals with gap. Perhaps PS means pitch stretching and TS means
time stretching i am not sure, not that it matters anyhow. You can some nice effects with
this tool.
The Att and Dec are two components dealing with how to treat each slice, how fast the slice
should be played initially and how to treat the played sample in terms of offset. I don’t really
touch these settings, but it can be useful if you are dealing with strings or other non-drum
instruments.
Another fun tool is the arrangement generator in Fruity Slicer
. This
basically pastes various arrangement styles into the piano roll and helps to get new and
sometimes random beats into your tracks. I don’t however use this option very much.
Lastly the two knobs down the bottom of the fruity slicer window help to break up the various
slices. You can break up the slices depending on their low cutoff and or their high cutoff. You
are able to simplify the slices posted into the piano roll (reducing your control over arrangement)
or increase the complexity of the piano roll (reducing your ability to think). I usually leave them
as default, but if there is a long and simple sample, i keep it simple by placing both knobs on the
left.
Well that is all for this tutorial. I hope you enjoyed my take on Requiem For A Dream and
enjoyed learning a bit more about fruity slicer. If you have any disagreements or have some tips
for myself please leave a comment. Also I would love to hear what you have made by yourself or
even just a variation of my tutorial, so post a comment and i will get back to you. I think next
tutorial will be more on mastering techniques, and less to do with composition techniques.
Tutorial Stolen from:
http://www.pixel2life.com/tutorials/FruityLoops/All/