This tutorial will teach you how to use the Fruity Loop piano roll

Now that you know how to make a basic drum beat, you need to learn how to make melodies.

The piano roll shows you which notes are playing and how long they are playing. You can also view/change the velocity of the notes, the panning, and the volume. To bring up the piano roll you can either right click a sample in your channel window and click piano roll, or just hit F7.

Piano roll can be used with any sample in the channel window – (it does not have to be a piano as the name might imply.)

There are many different methods to “making sounds” with the patches or samples

1. You can connect a midi keyboard and play the notes from there
2. You can use your computer keyboard to play the notes
3. And clicking around the piano roll and “drawing” the notes

Recording with a Midi Keyboard or Qwerty Keyboard

To record the sounds you make with a midi keyboard or qwerty keyboard, all you have to do is hit the record button which is at the top right next to the stop button. It is highlighted in red below

Once you hit that, you might get a window showing asking you how you want to record. I usually select “Automation and Score” when I want to record to the piano roll.

The record button should be orange now, and that means that next time you hit play, Fruity Loops will record everything you play into the piano roll for the instrument you selected. If you hit play while you have pattern playback selected, the recording will stop at the end of the pattern – but if you hit play while you have song playback selected you can play indefinitely.

What you record is not permanent – you can always go back and edit what you have in the piano roll. This is explained below

“Drawing” and Editing Patterns

First I will talk about drawing patterns. This technique is extremely easy. First make sure you have the paintbrush or pencil selected. Now all you have to do is click somewhere in the piano roll, and a box will be made. The box represents a note. You can drag it anywhere, and also extend or shorten its length. You can also slice, select specific notes, zoom, playback or select snap settings – these options are all available at the top bar of the piano roll. You should be able to find each of these (if you put your mouse over any of them it will say what it is in the top left of the program) They are highlighted in blue below.

Velocity

You can change the velocity of each note (how hard it hits/loudness) with the little bars at the bottom, they are highlighted in orange above.

Each line corresponds to a specific note (shortening a bar makes lowers the velocity and lengthening a bar increases velocity.) This can be useful when humanizing your drums, or making ghost hits. You can also use this to make a series of notes fade out.

Also Note: If the right click the area to the left, you can pick what you want the bars to represent. They can also be used to edit attributes such as panning, volume, and pitch.

Cool Piano Roll Features

Here are some interesting things in the piano roll you may not have known. There are definitely more, and I have limited this section to discuss only a few.

Piano Roll Slide

You can make notes slide from one note to another (like a guitar or bass in real life) by using the button highlighted in yellow below:

You have to have that selected, before you make the note to make that note slide.

Chords

Fruity Loops has a bunch of preset chords you can choose from. Just hit the upside down triangle button (highlighted in green in the images above), and then go to chord. You will see a list of chords you may choose from. Once you select one (for ex. Major), once you draw a note in the piano roll a chord will show up. If you want to make single notes again you would have to go back to the chord menu and hit “None”.

Arpegiatte

You can arpegiatte chords automatically with FL Studio as well. Arpegiatte means to play each note of a chord separately, or in sequence. To do this, select a chord (it will be in red once selected), and then hit the tools button (its the wrench left of the pencil tool). You could also just hit Alt + A when the chord has been selected.

Quantize

Sometimes when you record from a keyboard, your notes may be off time. You can do a quick fix by quantizing. To do this, select what you want to fix and hit Ctrl+Q. Ofcourse, this is not perfect, but it can help you save some time when editing your recording.

Thats it for now! Play around with the piano roll, there is so much you can do with it. If you have questions feel free to ask. If you want to see me using the piano roll (i also explain a lot of the things in this tutorial), please view this post and watch the video: FL Studio Tutorial: How to Make a Simple Beat (Video Tutorial)

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The following tutorial will introduce the Playlist and the Mixer

Playlist
Before you use the playlist, you should know how to store multiple patterns. At the top of the program next to the tempo, you should see a box with “Pat” under it (image below). It should say 1 right now – you can click this and move your mouse above it and it will go to the next patterns. You can make as many was you want. You can also select different patterns in the playlist, simply by clicking “Pattern 1″…”Pattern 2″… Etc.

To bring up the playlist, click the button highlighted in purple:

Make sure you have the paintbrush tool selected in the playlist window, and just click to the right of where each pattern is listed, again left click to add, right click to erase. You can put the patterns on top of each other to make them play at the same time. Go ahead and try this with a few different patterns. To hear the patterns as they are arranged in the playlist, make sure you check “Song” at the very top, to the left of the play button, otherwise only the selected pattern will play.

You can zoom with the zoom tool, or use the little boxes at the top right .

The area in the top is where you will see clips if you decide to add any. You can literally drag a clip from a folder in your computer to the box up there and it will be inputted in the playlist.

You can also adjust the snap settings with the snap tool – basically it changes the way you drag the patterns around.

This is essentailly everything you need to know about the playlist. It is straightforward.

Mixer

The mixer is very important in production. This is where you’re gonna get all your levels right, apply reverb, compression, etc. To bring up the mixer hit the button highlighted in red:

The red is the insert that you are using. You can link specific sample(s) to each insert and then edit them individually. This is important in EQing, and also allows you add effects to specific patches easily.

The area in the yellow box is where you can EQ. Here you can change the highs, mids, and lows, as well as the shapes of your alterations. You can also change the axis and volume.

The area in green is where you add effects or plug ins to your insert. Click the drop down and select from the list provided. You can add more (check the VST article). If you click the little green buttons it will mute the effect. The knob next to the green button will change the degree the effect changes your sample (sorta like the volume of the effect).

The area in purple under the insert is where you can change the panning of the volume of a specific insert.

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The following tutorial will contain a basic overview of the FL Studio interface and will introduce the Browser and the Channel Window, which includes the Step Sequencer

Welcome to HipHopTutoral.com! We will begin our tutorials with a basic overview of the FL studio interface. Though a lot of things are pretty easy to find, there are some items that are not so apparent. If you have already started using the program and feel comfortable with it, you might just want to skim through this really quick to see if there is anything you didn’t already know.

Interface
It is fairly easy to find everything in FL Studio. The following images were obtained from the FL Studio manual, you should familiarize yourself with everything here:

Most of what you need to know can be found in those pictures.

Incase you lost or can’t see your browser, step sequencer, mixer, piano roll, or playlist, check out these buttons. They control what you are viewing.

Browser
All of your drum samples should be loaded on the left side under “Packs”. You can click on each sound and hear it, and drag the ones you like to the Channel Window. If you want to learn how to add more samples, please read Free Hip Hop Drum Kit.

Channel Window
Once you have loaded your sounds to the Step Sequencer, you can start creating a drum pattern. Lets begin with something simple, a Kick, a Snare, and a Hat. Load one of each into the sequencer. Once loaded, you can click the little boxes to the right of each sample to activate them (a left click will place a sound at the given time, and a right click will remove it). You can then press play and hear what your pattern sounds like. Here is a sample pattern:

Pretty easy isn’t it? Each box represents a 16th note. You can use longer notes or shorter notes – to do this you would use the piano roll, which is later in this tutorial. Mess around with this simple sequencing method for a while and become comfortable with it.

You can also make your pattern longer. To increase the beats per bar for the pattern, simple click and hold the item highlighted in orange in the image below – while holding, move your mouse up to increase the beats per bar, or move down to decrease. The most common beats per bar setups are usually 8 beats per bar, or 16 beats per bar. However, you can do whatever you want!

Panning and volume control are also readily controllable in the channel window. In the image below, the item highlighted in blue is the panning control, and the item highlighted in red is the volume control. Each loaded sample has its own control. Further panning and volume control can be accessed in the mixer, which will be discussed later in depth. Also, the little green button to the left of the panning control can be used to mute the selected sample.

The swing in the top right is used to “humanize” the pattern when it is played. It helps your track sound less mechanic, and more as if a real drummer is playing, if that is what you want.

The dropdown labeled “All” in the bottom left is used to essentially pick what is shown in the Channel Window. Sometimes when you have certain imported samples (like acapellas) they might not show up in your pattern with your other samples unless you select “All”. If you are confused it will make more sense when I show you how to use acapellas in FL Studio.

When you click on a sample in your Channel Window, the Channel Settings will pop up. These are the properties of the given sample. I won’t go into too much depth about this right now, but there are a lot of interesting things you can do here which will be explained later.

Part II of this tutorial will introduce the Playlist and the Mixer

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What does this mean?
VSTs have changed the face of music production – you can have an arsenal of powerful sounds all loaded up into one interface. Companies and individuals make new VSTs everyday, and the possibilities are really endless. They have created a whole new sector in the music production business, and have allowed musicians all over the world to more fully express themselves in their music. I highly suggest trying out free VSTs and looking into buying some new sounds for your production!

Recommended VSTs
If you are serious about your music, the best synth VST I have come across is KOMPLETE 7. Really, nothing else comes close. If you are not really serious yet though, there are plenty of free sounds in FL Studio, and you can also find free sounds that people make online. As for Piano, I would recommend Synthology’s Ivory II Italian Grand. Trust me…it sounds like a real piano. There are also other VST’s you can get that are not actually instruments, like Antares Autotune, which is the best autotuner I know of at the moment. It’s not perfect, but if you tweak it right, you can sound just like T-Pain.

How to Install VSTs
Not sure how install a VST that you bought or downloaded? You can check out our older video on how to do this. We took some of the links in the video because the websites are gone! The method to install VSTs still works though. We will get some new free links up soon, and will also re-record without all the noise in the back! Here it is below for your convenience. Enjoy!

Free VST Downloads
Here are some websites where you can get free VSTs for Fruity Loops and other software. These are not the best…but they may be good to learn how to produce music with when you are first starting out:

• http://www.vst4free.com/

• http://www.gersic.com

• http://www.kvraudio.com

• http://free-plugin-list.com

• http://www.audiomastermind.com

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Where to Get Midi Keyboards
Almost every music store carries midi keyboard. Note that you may already have a keyboard that is midi compatible and not even know it. I had a keyboard for many years of my life (it was just sitting around) and when I got into music production I discovered I could hook it up to my FL Studio and use it. This was great because I could figure out if it was worth it to buy an expensive controller. Look around and see if you have an old keyboard in your home.

How to Setup a Midi Controller (Drivers)
Most of the time, you will get instructions with the controller you buy. You will just need to install some drivers, and connect the controller (usually through a Midi to USB)
If you have a keyboard that does not have its own midi to USB cable, you will need to buy one.

It’s pretty simple to setup the hardware – it came with a CD and all I had to do was install some drivers. Where some people have trouble is getting to work with their production software.

How to Setup a Midi Controller in FL Studio
After installing your drivers, and making sure your controller is plugged in, open up FL Studio. Go to “Options” and click “Midi Settings” (or hit F10).
Your controller should be listed under “Output” and “Input”. Click on the your midi controller on your output and then enable “Send master sync”, by simply clicking the option (the box should turn orange). Also click on the listed midi controller under input and click “Enable”.

If you do not see your midi controller listed, click “Rescan MIDI devices” – this should fix the problem. If it does not, make sure you have properly installed the drivers, and that you have correctly plugged in your controller to your computer or interface. If it still does not work you should contact the manufacturer of the keyboard, or look into their troubleshooting.
Once you’ve got your controller enabled, load up some sounds and hit some keys. If you hear something…congratulations! You have successfully set up a midi controller with FL Studio!

Recommended Midi Controllers
Here are controllers that I recommend based on personal experience. These are all industry standards. With them you will be able to do anything you need with FL Studio. What’s great is that there are smaller more portable midi keyboards. You can play your melody in one octave, then move it around wherever you want on FL Studio. Or you can always get a full sized controller. You can also see that the Amazon reviews for all of these are really good. Also, you might need a midi to USB converter depending on your set up.

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What you need is something affordable, yet something that will allow you to make professional sounding music. Though many people prefer hardware, software is becoming increasingly more popular because of the bang for the buck. People also like to use a combination of hardware and software. It’s really your choice.

I have personally taken the software route, so most tutorials here will be about software. Having used both Proppelerhead’s Reason and Image-Line’s FL Studio, I have found FL Studio to be the right match for me. You can do anything you’ll ever want to with this program- sample tracks, record vocals, program drums, run VSTs, etc. You can even connect your hardware and use it with this program. There are some big names in the industry who use FL studio, one of them being 9th wonder himself.

If you have a decent computer and some speakers, the next step is buying the software. You can read more about each program and buy them here:

 
Once you’ve gotten your hands on this, you can use the rest of the resources on this site, enjoy!

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