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FL Studio Ebook
FL Studio Ebook
INTRODUCTION
I first began making beats with FL Studio at 14. Then it was Fruityloops. It was very
awkward. When Fruityloops 2 came out, I got it and began experimenting with it. It was a
dream come true to me that making beats was so convenient and easy. I didn't need
keyboards and a studio. All I needed was to download some software and began creating.
When Fruityloops 3 came out, I began to take my craft seriously. I probably spent my entire
8th grade summer figuring out Fruityloops. I learned how to sample on my own using
samples from Have You Seen Her by the Stylistics. I received instant attention because no
one knew about Fruityloops and I was coming up quickly learning how to make beats.
This year will be 10 years in the making. I will not hesitate to show you everything (useful) I
have learned over the last 10 years. I know you do not have time to read the entire E-Book
at once. I recommend using this e-book as a reference in case you want to instantly to a
certain thing. You are learning from the best.
Terry D. Smith II
www.damnmaynebeats.com
www.gulfcoastbeats.com
iceboogiexxl@gmail.com
Table of Contents
Lesson 1: Basics of FL Studio
Lesson 2: Sampling and Using .wav samples
Lesson 3: Using the Playlist
Lesson 4: Tempo's and their effect
Lesson 5: FL Generators and How to Install Plugins
Lesson 6: Personalizing your FL Studio
Lesson 7: Recording on FL Studio
Lesson 8: What Can I Do With the Piano Roll?
Lesson 9: What Can I Do With the Graph Editor? (Rolling Drums from Left to Right, etc.)
Lesson 10: What Can I Do With the Mixer?
Lesson 11: Saving and Bouncing Down Beats
Lesson 12: Tips on Creating a Beat
Lesson 13: Tips on EQ'ing and Mixing
Lesson 14: All the other tips I can Think of
Lesson 15: Wave Traveller
Lesson 16: More on Effects
Lesson 17: Volume Envelopes
4.) Understand that I work with very high tempos. If you normally make beats around 70100 beats per minute then take my tempo and divide it by 2.
5.) Practice makes perfect. Even with all the e-books if you don't devote time and effort
into your craft, you are going to suck.
5.) Right Click the Waveform and Click Edit. This should take you straight to Edison.
6.) Your editing is strictly up to you, but I will give a recommendation. If there is
a pause or anything before the beginning of what you are trying to sample,
remove it now. VERY IMPORTANT. Drag the mouse from the beginning of the
waveform to the beginning of your sample.
Press Delete
Your mission then will be to retrieve the saved file and load the sample as directed at the
beginning of Chapter 2.
ADDING EFFECTS
If you sampled something short like a vocal or drum sound, you can add great effects by
clicking the sample's channel box, holding CTRL and pressing L.
For the sake of time, I will only tell about the effect that I find useful.
EQUO This is a EQ plugin. There is a built in meter to show you how the sample is already
EQ'd. Always remember the low bass part of the sample is to the left and the high treble is
to the right. The middle is mid. For instance if it is a sample with an unneeded hi hat, take
the right side of the EQUO down.
Fruity Chorus This is a good effect with square synths. Do not use this too often. It can
cheese up your beat.
Fruity Compressor Very Good For Bass Guitars. Good For Vocals. Not very good for
anything else. It looks kind of complicated and trust me, it is. Just remember that the
threshold is the level where the bass, mid and treble will meet. The gain is how loud the
sample will go after it is compressed by the threshold. The ratio is how strong the threshold
is. The attack is how quickly the threshold reacts. Release is how quickly the threshold
releases. Yeah, Complicated! Kind of useful for skilled EQ'ers.
Fruity Delay 2 This creates echoes. The main knob you want to pay attention to is time.
When You move it, it will be a time indicator in the upper right-hand corner. Setting the
time indicator to 2:00, 4:00, 8:00 or 16:00 will take you a long way in your rap production
career.
Fruity Flanger This is fun if you have a little DJ in you, or you want to just add a cool but
sort of silent effect to your sample or beat. This creates the effect of two samples running
slightly offtune to create a windy-like passing effect.
Fruity Flangus I don't know why they invented this one. Its sort of cheesy. But it can do
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 9
wonders for a Clap sample. Basically just play with this one when you are bored or
something.
Fruity Free Filter Very Powerful EQ filter. It can filter out bass, filter out treble or filter
out mid. Low pass only plays everything below where the FREQ knob is set. Band pass plays
where the FREQ knob is set and High pass only plays above where the FREQ knob is set.
Confusing?
Look if you need some advice, if you want to take the bass out of a sample, set it to
high pass and the FREQ to maybe 400 through 600. If you need to take the treble out of a
sample, set it to low pass and the FREQ to 2000 through 5000.
Fruity Love Philter I recommend just using presets with this one.
Fruity Multiband Compressor If you ever become very good at mastering and you have a
SUPERIOR Set of MONITORS (SPEAKERS) worth at least $1000, then have at it. Otherwise,
don't stress yourself.
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 10
Fruity Parametric EQ If it were not for Fruity Parametric 2, this would be what you would
need to EQ your samples with.
Fruity Parametric EQ 2 This is what you need to EQ your samples with. Very powerful.
EQ'ing is kind of difficult, but much needed. In chapter 13, I will discuss EQ'ing using the
Fruity Free Filter and the Fruity Parametric EQ 2.
Fruity Phaser Good for organs. Not really good for anything else. You can experiment with
it though.
Fruity Reeverb Fruity Reeverb is a play on the word reverb which basically means fast
echoes. This makes your sample sound as if it was in a empty hallway or empty room. I
sometimes use it on Claps as a breakdown snare or with strings. Dont overuse it. The knob,
REVERB, is the only knob that is worth moving. The higher the percentage, the louder the
reverb.
Fruity Reeverb 2 It adds some sort of room graph which isn't very useful with rap music.
It may be useful with a movie soundtrack.
Fruity Scratcher Very hard and Very Lame Compared to the Wave Traveller (Discussed
with Generators in Lesson 5).
Fruity Stereo Enhancer This somewhat increases the quality of samples. I normally use
this on trumpets, strings and occasionally claps.
Fruity Vocoder The Fruity Vocoder is the brilliant, yet unknown, sister of autotune. On
my YouTube channel, there is a song called Get Paid Crusade. There is a robot that sings
Ooh We in here around every breakdown. This is vocoder. The great thing about vocoder
is you don't have to say a word if you don't want to. Fruity Speech, which can be found in FL
Studio 6, can be used to say the words and any instrument or sample can be used for the
tone.
Quick Tutorial
1. Sing a few words with any recording software, save the file and upload it to FL
Studio (or find a Speech file and drag it to the Step Sequencer and type in the
words to be sung).
2. Click the channel settings box and hold Ctrl and press L. Then find the mixer, or
press F9, and load the Fruity Vocoder effect.
4. Click Platinum Saw in the Step Sequencer. This will pull up Channel Settings. To the
top right of Channel Settings, a box should be there. When the mouse goes over it,
the mouse should change. Click the box and drag it to 2 (or whichever track the
sample is loaded on, should be 2).
5. Now the tricky part. On the step sequencer, there is a knob to the right of the
green button. It will place your sample in the left or right speaker. Move the
knob to your sample to the left and the knob to the Platinum Saw to the
Right. Then place a marker at the first beginning of each track like below.
6. Now Click the Keyboard editor and make a melody with the Platinum Saw and
there you have it.
I love it. Sometimes I get so creative with it. I make whole hooks with it.
That's it for the good effects to use. Feel free to experiment with the others. These are the
effects you can use on your samples.
Pattern 1 serves as my pattern with the first cymbal. Pattern 2 is the first small breakdown.
Pattern 3 serves as the biggest breakdown.
Next I hold Ctrl and press A to select all. This will turn them pink. Then I hold shift and drag
the patterns next to each other until I have a whole song. Stopping around 193 is plenty.
Then, I click on pattern 1, down arrow, patterns, clone selected. I do patterns 2 and 3 the
same way until I have a separate group. Then I right click on the patterns that I cloned to
delete them. This will serve as my intro. It should look like this.
Then I would click on pattern 2, 4 and 6 and take the bass drums and the chorus
instruments out using the right mouse button. I would repeat the entire process to make
verses.
Now if you want breakdowns, you can clone selected any pattern and modify the step
sequencer any way you want it. This way is less confusing than the way most people who
use FL studio do it. They have too many patterns. This way is also faster.
You must get very familiar with tempos. In fact, you must know ahead of time what tempo
is in your head before you put the beat down. It will give you a time advantage. You can
read this e-book all year, but the key to your production success is practice.
To give your track a bit of a groove, try offsetting your claps and snares. Do this to
experiment a bit.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Experiment with the OFS knob and notice the effect of the song.
This creates a powerful subwoofer instrument. It goes so hard in the trunk, everybody will
be wanting a track.
If you play higher notes, it turns to a synthetic flute sound which is very popular.
To add a slide effect (which is very popular):
1. Click MISC.
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 21
Should look like the above picture. Experiment with the slide button until you get the sound
you like.
Another powerful Generator is the Sytrus generator. The Platinum Saw and Gold Saw are
two powerful instruments in the Sytrus generator.
Pull these up by going to the browser and clicking plugin presets/generators/sytrus/synth
string then dragging either the Gold Saw or Platinum Saw to the step sequencer.
Every other generator in FL Studio basically sucks. I haven't tried FL Studio 9's generators,
but Image-Line has had 6 straight series of disappointing generators. So I recommend using
VST Plugins which, when installed, look and play like generators.
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 22
Click on the little folders under browser extra search folders. Click the folder you want
to put in the browser and click OK. And you are done. You can also give the folders a new
name that can only be seen in FL Studio.
4. If you are recording vocals, you must go below ASIO4ALL v2 mono. Click Mic
Input 1.
5. Click Record and FL Studio should walk you through the rest of the process.
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 26
All these keys match in a minor chorded rap song. The purple key is the first key you play.
When you make your melody, you may play the purple key or the green keys in any rhythm
you want, but if you play any other key, you will break the melody resulting in a wack beat.
When you get better, you will notice you can change the main key of your melody in a
certain part of the beat. Remember two things. 1. Change your main key to one of the keys
within your melody. And 2. Never break the melody. Just remember those mathematics I
gave you (2 notes above, 2 notes below, 5 notes above, 5 notes below and 7 notes above, 7
notes below and sometimes 3 notes below).
It would be very beneficial to learn the letters of the keys.
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 28
The piano roll allows you to do anything with your rhythm. Learn how to use the gridlines in
the piano roll very well.
Example.
If you want to use it to cancel an instrument that would otherwise play too long.
1. Select a step anywhere you want to stop the instrument.
2. Pull up the graph.
3. Make sure you are on the velocity graph. Pull the bar of the step where you
would like the instrument to stop down until you cannot see the bar.
DAMNMAYNEBEATS.COM PRESENTS COME BE A FL STUDIO EXPERT FL STUDIO TUTORIAL E-BOOK 30
Since the drum was high quality, I raised the treble until it stood out from the rest of the
track.
You may have a brass, a strings, a bell and a synth. Whatever the case, all instruments have
their place. The key is to sharply eq each so that they all have their place. If the brass is
drowning the strings out, you may have to eq the strings until you can clearly hear both.
The point of eqing is that you hear every instrument clearly. Eqing will bring you to this
point. If it is not working for you, replace the instrument.
Terry D. Smith II
Now the key to the Wave Traveller is each space between the two lines is a step. Make
sure that the line goes diagonally some sort of way if you want a sound on that step. For
instance: The first space on the graph is the first step on the sequencer. The first diagonal line
makes the first scratch sound.
I have to let you take it from here. Get creative but just remember to always remember
to go diagonally over the spaces and keep it set for 16 steps.
Left to the right of Master Volume), and in the Event Editor make a diagonal
starting at the center and go to the bottom.
Should look like this.
Now play the song and you will notice that all these do allow you to automate the increase of
an effect. I don't do this often. You can do this with whatever effect you like. The video I was
referring to had longer effects. You can make your automated effects as long as possible. This
is very time consuming.
A volume envelope set like this will make a sample fade out quickly, yet softly. Like
strings or a trumpet.
A volume envelope set like this will have a very sharply cut ending like a synth.
If you increase HOLD, the playing time of the sample increases. If you increase DEL, the
playing time of the sample is delayed. Keep in mind the sample itself is not delayed, only
the volume of the sample is delayed. The sample principles apply for PAN, CUT, RES and
PITCH.
07/25
Well that's all for now. I actually forgot these three chapters. If I remember more things
to put in the e-book, you definitely will receive an update FREE OF CHARGE.