The FL Studio Q&A Thread

osky · Post by **osky** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:13 am

cheers

wub · Post by **wub** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:16 am

Are there any inbuilt FL VSTs that operate in a similar way to Kontakt?

i.e. Let you add envelopes to a sample for pitch bend etc?

Brisance · Post by **Brisance** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 1:07 pm

just use the default FL sampler... It can timestretch, pogo, it has pitch, volume, pan, cutoff and res ADHSR(with adjustable curve) and LFO

EDIT: I made a tutorial for you

wub · Post by **wub** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 1:40 pm

Brisance wrote:just use the default FL sampler... It can timestretch, pogo, it has pitch, volume, pan, cutoff and res ADHSR(with adjustable curve) and LFO

EDIT: I made a tutorial for you

cheers, but was thinking more of an envelope that has lots of peaks and troughs in it - the on in FL Sampler can only have the one peak from what I've used?

Brisance · Post by **Brisance** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 1:57 pm

how about automation, will that do?

wub · Post by **wub** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 1:58 pm

Brisance wrote:how about automation, will that do?

Yeah, was thinking about using automation for it, but saw an example of Kontakt being used last night with the pitch modulation run direct from the sampler as opposed to an effect and wondered if there was an equivalent for FL.

More as a lazy thing than anything else tbh

wub · Post by **wub** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:40 am

Piano roll/scales trick

I'll choose a Piano for this, the FL Keys. It's a VSTi (Virtual Studio Instrument), which are widely used to get imported into music programs. You can have all sorts of shit there, Pianos, Guitars, Basses, all sorts of synthesizers but also FX.
To insert a VSTi, go this way:

Right-Click an existing Channel and choose insert. Not "replace"!
Then that dropdown thing will come up. Yours will propabely not have as many VSTis in it as mine, but that doesn't matter now. FL Keys itself looks like this:

You can hammer around on the keys of your typing keyboard to create sounds. FL Keys sucks, there are way better and also many free alternatives to it out there on the net, but I'll use it for demonstration purposes. On high notes, it doesn't even sound all that bad anyway.

Shit, now here comes some heavy music theory.

To have everything stay in tune with everything, all notes must be in the same scale. If you don't know what a scale is, learn it. The C-Major scale i.e. covers every white key on the keyboard. The D#-Minor scale covers every black key. However, we're not using either of those. To find out what scale we actually used, take a look at the strings again, as they're the only harmonic instrument we used so far. Look at the first chord of it and there you've got the answer:

It's a G#-Minor. That means we need a G-Sharp minor scale. How do I get that scale? I've got a damn helpful link for you here:

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

Chordhouse is an online application that shows you chords and scales that you selected on a keyboard. It basicly taught me scales and chords.

Once you get to it, do the following:

Minor is sorta tricky. I have yet to learn what Melodic Minor is. It's usually either Harmonic, or Pentatonic Minor, you have to listen to find out. In this case, it's propabely Harmonic.

Now, to further help you, we'll do a little trick here. In the FL Keys channel you have opened do this:

When you now click into the PR, it will automatically place the whole scale, starting from the note you clicked. Click G-Sharp.

For the sake of your ears, don't play that. It sounds horrible at once.

Now that I mixed Major and Minor here, I just found that this sounds a little odd. So, I look at the second chord in the strings pattern and see it's an F#-Major. So, choose the Major scale and click on F-Sharp.

Now, here comes the trick. Cut them down to four bars of size and copy the whole scale. Start with G#-Minor. Copy it and Paste it one octave below and one octave above the initial G-Sharp. Repeat this with F# Major. Now, get out of this channel and turn it's volume down to 0%.
Insert another FL Keys Channel:

This may look a bit different from yours because the PR isn't the same. At the time I took that screen I didn't know how shitty it would sound without the F# Major scale in there.

Get into the Keys #2 Channel's PR and do this trick:

Now, in gray, you'll see the notes from the other Channel. This "Ghost Channel" thing is an assist in helping to stay in tune. It shows every note played in any channel at the selected pattern, so now it shows you the two scales.

This is the moment, where you start dropping some notes. Here are the basic guidelines to melodies:

* Only put in notes that are laying within the scale, don't put in notes that are not shown as one of those ghost notes.
* Don't hop between high and low notes. There are some jumps you can make, but usually it sounds shitty if the notes are far away from each other.
* Vary the duration of the notes and don't always stay on the ticks. If you always stay with quarter notes, the melody gets boring. Throw in eighth notes, maybe even sixteenths or anything inbetween. Make sure it's not confusing the rythm, though. Turn on the FL Studio Metronome by pressing [Ctrl]+[M]. It will tick-tock everytime you playback your melody so you can ensure that it's not going too far offbeat.
* Repetitions. I read in a musician's magazine that repetition in a melody is the key to bugging one's ears. Make some rythmic patterns appear several times in the same melody, maybe even the same notes. It really gives a lot to the melody.

So, with this guidelines, lay down some notes. I made some shit, like this:

You can see that I didn't jump between high and low notes, varied the rythmic patterns and also got a repetition in the middle of it. It's not particulary a great melody, but it'll do.

(Taken from here)

POND LIFE · Post by **POND LIFE** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 3:31 pm

i dunno if i'd rule out jumping between low and high notes, especially for other genres. almost essential to do that in some styles of electro, and a lot of dubstep i'd say. like, i dunno, dz and rastratronics' pink floyd rmx.

hassanova · Post by **hassanova** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:04 pm

quick question
erm sometimes my mouse just changes and when i click on a block on the piano roll it just snaps to the nearest block, whereas sometimes i can just click anywhere and resize the block to as small as i want
whereas sometimes i can only make it it fit into the blocks
lol
sorry if its confusing
anyone know how to toggle inbetween?

antics · Post by **antics** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:24 pm

In the piano roll the last button on the right (the one that looks like a grid)

Change that to however accurate you want your snapping to be

hassanova · Post by **hassanova** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 1:01 pm

perfect
cheers for that

twistedol · Post by **twistedol** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:59 pm

yo, just found this pretty useful tutorial on youtube about sidechaining in FL. Feelin the comedy scouse vibe too.

Can we have this thread moved to the to of the forum pls?

twistedol · Post by **twistedol** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 9:01 pm

yeah, the link is usually a good idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGKoBOoFX1E

FL studio sidechaining!

Im sure theres a milli ways to do it but just spreading the love

tripaddict · Post by **tripaddict** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:26 pm

*handy tip

if you re-organise your samples folders and fruity cant locate the samples

goto the options panel (f10)

where it say select additional folders to scan select the new path to your samples

.... now every time fruity loads if it cant find your samples in the directory it'll 'quickly' check in the folder(s) you specify in the options

handy .... remix's a plenty .... time to dig out and remaster some of my old tracks

tripaddict · Post by **tripaddict** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:46 pm

Wub wrote:Piano roll/scales trick

sick i like this tutorial

very cool

relik · Post by **relik** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 9:53 pm

TripAddict wrote:*handy tip

if you re-organise your samples folders and fruity cant locate the samples

goto the options panel (f10)

where it say select additional folders to scan select the new path to your samples

.... now every time fruity loads if it cant find your samples in the directory it'll 'quickly' check in the folder(s) you specify in the options

handy .... remix's a plenty .... time to dig out and remaster some of my old tracks

to prevent that from happening in the first place, a better tip is to save as zipped loop packages. every once in awhile (think it's a bug somewhere) it doesn't save all of the files in the zip though. not sure why.

antipode · Post by **antipode** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 12:40 am

a better tip is to save as zipped loop packages.

That's not really a better idea at all

tripaddict · Post by **tripaddict** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 12:58 am

epoch wrote:
a better tip is to save as zipped loop packages.
That's not really a better idea at all

lol swings an round abouts, depends what your going to do with the files lol

tripaddict · Post by **tripaddict** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:00 am

twistedol wrote:yeah, the link is usually a good idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGKoBOoFX1E

FL studio sidechaining!

Im sure theres a milli ways to do it but just spreading the love

dam i was going to do one

tripaddict · Post by **tripaddict** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:45 pm

Tutin wrote:I write most of my synths in 3xosc, but there's only so much you can do with 3 oscillators, does FL have anything with more oscillators that I don't have to buy? I use Reason and Ableton as well, but I'm learning how to use FL right now and was just wondering.

use a midi controller to control 2 or try 4 or 5 synths by setting the midi channel to the same as your controller ;0)

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