Complete Basic Tutorial

I am Nathaniel Fisher

And I'd like to firstly begin

by apologising for the low quality

and poor organisation

in the original FLStudio Complete Basic Tutorial

That was nearly three years ago now

and with the release of FLStudio 12

One of the biggest updates

to FL Studio in quite a while

I would like to take the time

to provide you with the tutorial that I

originally aimed to create

armed with a greater knowledge

of both music production

and the FL Studio interface

I'd like to say thank you for all of you kind comments

in the original tutorial

and also for the helpful advice

Despite the fact that arguably the tutorial

was successful, I really do think it was

very, very low standard-

very poor quality.

But with that, I think it's time

to move on with the tutorial

In this tutorial I will be covering

Navigating the application

Basic pattern creation

Adding your own plugins to the program

and creating very convenient

shortcuts to opening them

Automation

and mastering.

Basically, arming you with the knowledge

of how to create simple tracks

in FL Studio

So with that,

lets begin.

So, FL Studio 12

for me, has two really good selling points

over previous versions of the application

the first one is the Vectorial Interface

what this means, is that

these aren't images, that make up the

interface

These are mathematically calculated

shapes

Meaning that these can be

on massive screens

as long as the resolution is high enough

giving you lots of room

to work

The second selling point

is the implementation of a driver

called FL Studio ASIO

now ASIO is a driver

that allows for near zero latency

input

which is fantastic for live performing

and also for recording directly from a MIDI Keyboard

such as this one

into the application with maximum accuracy

FL Studio ASIO is the first driver

that not only allows for near zero latency

audio processing

it doesn't lock the audio device to one application

So I'd like to show you

how to utilise this driver

Now I believe it will startup with the

Primary sound driver

Now let me show you the difference

So that's with the primary sound driver

Now we can reduce this

But if we reduce it too far, and

a lot of tracks are playing at once

These things called underruns happen

Now these underruns, cause crackles

in the audio, artefacts

that can be really quite annoying

and can reduce the accuracy of what

you're actually hearing

with regards to the final track

Going below this number

a lot of the plugins break

instantly

Now with ASIO

which I cant switch to because it will

break my recording

It allows for that near zero latency

But, it locks it to FL Studio only

Meaning I can't record

So all you have to do

to take advantage of this

is go to FL Studio ASIO

and click show ASIO panel

It will be set to 512 initially

but if your CPU is good enough

you can turn it right down to 256

meaning only 6ms

Now of course plugins add to that

But this initial number

is a good 70 milliseconds less than with

the default audio driver

Make sure you select the correct

Microphone for any recording that you want to do

And make sure that you select the correct output

But it's that simple to setup

the near zero latency driver

If you don't mind a few artefacts

and want less latency

you can turn off Triple Buffer

as you can see, that's taken off 6 milliseconds

But basically, the more complex

your project is, the more you'll have to turn up

this value

But first try using Triple Buffer

Because that adds a minimal amount of latency

and can fix a lot of issues

I'm going to leave this unchecked for now

because I want the least latency possible

So that's how to set up FL Studio ASIO

Something that I think is brilliant

It's a really good advancement by Image-Line

Now that that's set up

I'd like to talk to you about the interface

And I'm going to make some more room here

by just adjusting the width of this browser

which gives me more room for the other

windows, which automatically resize

based on their snap locations

So now that we've got a fully open project

I'd like to rewind a little bit

and go to an empty project

This is what you'll likely see once you purchase

FL Studio

So let's go on that assumption

So the first thing that you want to do

is, if you don't have a MIDI device such as this one

then you can just click a button on your keyboard

Just to see that the sound's working

If you see feedback here

At the top center of the screen

But you can't hear anything

Then you might want to check your

Output device

And also ensure that the volume is at a

suitable level

But once you've got that working

You could start constructing a very basic track

Simply by clicking on these buttons here

So, now

Every one that's glowing, or bright

will cause the sound to be triggered

You can right click

to disable them

An easy way to fill in these

Is to right click the channel

in the pattern

window

and simply do "Fill each two steps"

That saves you a lot of work

But to be honest with you

those sounds are OK

Just to practice with, but they're not very

good in terms of

professional sound

So all you have to do to remove these is to

Right click them and click delete

And I tend to do this

You don't really have to

But it just cleans things up a little bit

Hold left click to add

Hold right click to remove

Quite simple

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to choose from

the plugin presets here

A generator

A generator creates a sound

An effect modifies an existing sound

So we're gonna go ahead with a generator

and choose a simple

Preset

Which is the default 3x Oscillator

All you have to do to add this to your project

Is to drag it from the left-hand side

Explorer window (browser)

And you can override an existing channel

Or just drop it underneath

Or above

To create a new channel

I'm gonna override the kick

Now, with FL Studio 12

Much of the default plugins that come with FL Studio

have been revamped

Their interface is very very clean

And very sharp indeed

For the purpose of this tutorial

I'm gonna go ahead and use my keyboard

For any generation that I do

But you can make do with a normal computer keyboard

For the time being

So here you get a simple sine wave

Three of them, it looks like

That's panning, as is shown by the symbol there

So, as you can see, the interface is quite simple to use

This means square

This is- looks like sine and square

Triangle

Saw

Quite harsh

And... noise- Very interesting

So yeah, its quite easy to start

producing things

As you can see up here

Pattern 1 would suggest the first pattern

the first collection of notes

So, all we have to do

to actually put this into your project

is to drop it here

If you hold control, and move the scrollwheel

up you'll find that there's actually some notes

You can delve deeper by double-clicking the pattern

And it will open it

This button switches between song and pattern mode

Highlighted, or glowing means it's in pattern mode

Which really doesn't do anything right now

And if you click it again, it goes to song mode

It's important to notice the difference between

these two windows

This is just one element of a song

And this is the entire composition

How did I do that?

The same way I did it in this window up here

Left clicking

As you can see, it loops so you can listen to things

over and over again with ease

To adjust the length of a note

All you have to do is click the end

And drag it left or right

You'll notice that the next note you place is the same length

as the last one

So the program adapts to you being able to duplicate

things

It's not called Fruity Loops for nothing

You can resize any of the windows simply by clicking

and dragging their borders

So, this is a simple way to create your first

pattern in FL Studio

It's important to have as much control as possible

over the notes you make

Because how loud they are

Can be just as important

as what note they are

I'll give you an example here

By speeding up the pattern

I selected all three of these notes

using a box select which is

Possible to do by holding CTRL on the keyboard

And then just dragging the area that you want to select

I can reduce the size of all the notes

By clicking on any of the notes that are selected

And it will reduce all the others accordingly

This even works with different sized notes

What I'm going to do in this case though

Is I'm gonna use this button

This button scales the entire pattern (that is selected)

Which is really really useful and not only does it

change their length but it also changes their position

Snapping is really useful in this case

But if you want to override it

All you have to do when you try and resize a note

Is hold ALT

And then you can adjust it by any amount you want

While I've selected the object

I just hold shift

Click any of the notes that are selected