Image Line Software FRUITY LOOPS-FL STUDIO 5 User Manual

IMPORTANT - Write your unique personal CD serial number here:

(locate your serial number on the CD case)

Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Image Line Software. The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. The software may be used or copied only in accordance of the terms of the agreement. It is illegal to copy this software on any medium except as specifically allowed in the agreement. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written permission of Image Line Software.

FL Studio and Fruityloops are registered trademarks of Image Line Software. Other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Image Line Software is a division of Image Line BVBA. Visit Image Line Software at

http://www.image-line.com

Visit FL Studio on the web at

http://www.flstudio.com/.

TTAABBLLEE OOFF CCOONNTTEENNTTSS

TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................................................3

FOR FRUITYLOOPS 3.x and FL STUDIO v4.x USERS......................................................................... 5

INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS........................................................................................................................ 6

FIRST RUN................................................................................................................................................... 7

MAKE SOME NOISE.................................................................................................................................. 8

HELP! ............................................................................................................................................................ 9

GET THE "GETTING STARTED" LOOPS ............................................................................................9

THE STEP SEQUENCER ......................................................................................................................... 10

TWEAKING THE CHANNELS ............................................................................................................... 12

TWEAKING THE NOTES........................................................................................................................ 18

THE PLAYLIST (from Patterns to Songs) .............................................................................................. 22

GENERATORS (from Samples to Synths)............................................................................................... 25

INTRODUCING THE TS404 .................................................................................................................... 40

MIXING & EFFECTS ...............................................................................................................................44

RECORDING WITH LIVE TWEAKING............................................................................................... 52

THE EVENT EDITOR............................................................................................................................... 55

THE PIANO ROLL....................................................................................................................................60

AUDIO TRACKS .......................................................................................................................................65

INTEGRATED WAVE EDITOR.............................................................................................................. 67

THE BEATSLICER ...................................................................................................................................68

SHARING YOUR WORK ......................................................................................................................... 71

EXTERNAL CONTROLLERS................................................................................................................. 73

CREDITS..................................................................................................................................................... 80

INDEX .........................................................................................................................................................81

Lemon Boy is in the house: Yo, whassup! Having problems? Before you panic and start spamming the FL Studio Tech Support, look for me. I'll pop up here and there with answers to common problems that might save you (and the FL Studio staff) some trouble.

FFOORR FFRRUUIITTYYLLOOOOPPSS 33..xx aanndd FFLL SSTTUUDDIIOO vv44..xx UUSSEERRSS

This guide is current to Version 5 of FL Studio. If you were the proud owner of one of the FruityLoops 3 versions (good for you!) or FL Studio v4 (even better), then read on to see what's new in this version.

1. FL Studio Name. Since version 4, the name of the product changes to FL Studio. FL Studio contains all the stuff you know from FruityLoops 3.x and much more!

2. Mixer. The effects window from FruityLoops 3.x is now a full-blown mixer with 64 insert tracks, 4 send tracks, per-track equalizer, balance controls and disk recording. You can also create complex mixer setups by routing the insert tracks to each other!

3. Playlist. New Piano Roll style showing the correct pattern lengths, supporting live mode pattern mixing and brand new audio tracks are some of the improvements integrated in the new Playlist window.

4. Per-Pattern Grid Length. In previous releases, the Step Sequencer had one fixed length for the entire project. Now you can adjust the sequencing grid for each individual pattern!

5. New in this version …. Check out the new generators and effects in this release! Check out the WhatsNew.doc in the main FL Studio directory for a brief run down of what else is new

IINNSSTTAALLLL IINNSSTTRRUUCCTTIIOONNSS

There are two ways to purchase FL Studio: on line, or in a box with a CD and this printed manual. The installation differs slightly in each of those cases. Read here what to do:

A. If you bought your copy of FL Studio in a box, here's what you do.

1. Run the CD. Insert the install CD-ROM that comes with your box in your CD-ROM drive. If you have auto-run enabled, you will see the CD menu automatically appear. Otherwise, right-click your CD-ROM drive icon in Windows Explorer and select Autorun.

2. Start the Installation. Select the FL Studio installation link. The installation window appears. Follow the instructions on screen.

3. The Serial Number. During the installation you will be asked for you serial number. You can find it printed on your CD-ROM case. Write it down for further use and make a backup of this number.

4. Register On-line. After you complete the installation successfully you can register on-line to gain access to the extra FL Studio website features and community. Go back to the CD-ROM menu (reload as described in step 1 if needed), and click on the link called “Click here to register to the FL Studio community” or go to this link

5. In case of problems. Please consult our F.A.Q. section on our website www.flstudio.com. Useful information about known issues can be found there.

B. If you bought your copy of FL Studio on line, here's what you do.

6. Download and Install the Demo. Download and install the demo version of FL Studio. It is recommended NOT to install over previous releases of FL Studio/FruityLoops.

7. Apply for a Regcode. Go to received by e-mail after your purchase. Click the button below to your regcode to pop-up.

8. Wait for the E-Mail. The FL Studio team will send you an e-mail with a link. Make sure your email account can accept emails coming from us (domain: e-officedirect.com). Please follow all instructions carefully.

9. Run the Program. Restart FL Studio if it is running and you will be able to save your projects.

10. Bookmark the Web Site. The FL Studio web site is an awesome resource. Check back at

http://www.flstudio.com/ often to see what's up.

11. Read this Guide. As soon as you start FL Studio, you'll be confronted with strange dialog boxes and messages. Proceed to the next section of this guide to find out what to do next. Also check the extensive on-line help that comes with FL Studio.

http://www.flstudio.com/FLBoxRegistration.

www.flstudio.com/register and enter your username and password you

FFIIRRSSTT RRUUNN

OK, so you just finished the installation and started FL Studio. Read this section for an explanation of what you're seeing.

1. The System Settings Screen. When you first run FL Studio, you may be confronted with a dialog box like the one below (if not, use F10 to bring it up now). You just have to use the select boxes to choose your sound card and MIDI drivers. At first, you may be looking at the MIDI screen, but for now the most important one is the Audio screen, shown below.

Click Here

Then Here

2. Select an Output Driver from the list in the pull-down menu. If you don't know which one to pick, just leave it as it is. Later on if you have sound problems, you can come back to this screen (by pressing F10) and experiment with the other options.

3. The DirectSound Streaming Buffer. Most of the stuff on this screen you don’t need to know about, but you should know what the Buffer Length does. Basically, if you make this buffer long, you are less likely to get choppy sound but changes you make to a playing loop will take longer to kick in. If you make it short, you are more likely to get choppy sound but changes will kick in faster. You want it short, but depending on your computer, you may need to come back to this screen later (F10) and make it longer. If you have a combination of a fast computer and a good sound card, you may be able to get the latency as low as 10ms. For a SoundBlaster Live, you can probably go as low as 30ms. The

Use Polling option can also improve latencies for some operating systems (keep it turned on if you use Windows 95 or 98, but try switching it off in Windows 2000 to see if it brings better performance).

4. The Main Screen. After you close the Environment Settings window, you'll be looking at a screen like the one below. FL Studio is all about windows within windows. So you're looking at the outer Main Window with its Tool Panels at the top. Then within that you're looking at the Browser (left) and the Step Sequencer (right). The panels might be arranged differently for you, but that doesn’t matter.

Step Sequencer

MMAAKKEE SSOOMMEE NNOOIISSEE

Press the Play Switch. This is the button on the Transport panel (next to the stop and record buttons). You'll hear the FL Studio 3 demo song. If this is not the first time you've run FL Studio, you'll have to reload this demo. Select Open from the File menu in the top left and double click the file NewStuff.flp in the Loops directory.

HHEELLPP!!

This booklet is just supposed to get you up and running quickly. It is not meant to be a reference manual for everything FL Studio can do (that would take a multi-volume encyclopedia!). Fortunately, there's a ton of info out there on what FL Studio does. Here's how to get it.

1. The Hint Bar. This is located on the Main Window just under the Menu Bar (see the previous page, in

2. On-line Help. FL Studio also comes with a massive on-line help reference. Just use the Help Menu

3. Tutorial Loops. Click File >Open and surf to the Tutorials directory. These loops contain notes on

4. The Web Site. FL Studio comes with a massive web site at http://www.flstudio.com/. The site has a

the top left). You can mouse over any of the controls anywhere in FL Studio and this panel will display a short description of what that control does. The Hint Bar also shows you the Shortcut Key that will activate the same function. This is displayed on the right. Pressing this shortcut key has the same effect as pressing the corresponding button.

and select Contents. This help also features context-sensitivity – select a window and press F1 on your keyboard. The reference automatically displays the help you are looking for.

how to do various things in FL Studio.

support section that includes a FAQ and a Discussion Forum, Online Tutorials, Video Tutorials (soon), Song Exchange section and the Samplefusion samples site. Check these to see if anyone has answered your questions already. If not, feel free to post your own question on the discussion forums.

GGEETT TTHHEE ""GGEETTTTIINNGG SSTTAARRTTEEDD"" LLOOOOPPSS

To use this guide effectively, you should find and load the "Getting Started" loops that were included in the FL Studio package. Go to the File menu (above the Hint Bar) and click on Open. Alternatively, click on the File Open Icon below the Hint Bar. Either method will get you a file dialog box open on the Loops

Directory. From here, double-click the Tutorials Subdirectory, and then the Getting Started Subdirectory and you will see the Getting Started Loops. Load up the first one (GettingStarted1.flp), press Play and move on to the next section!

HEY! Don't skip that step. This guide will work a lot better if you're looking at the example loops while you read…

TTHHEE SSTTEEPP SSEEQQUUEENNCCEERR

When you start FL Studio for the first time, you'll see the Step Sequencer window (see the “First Run” section). This is where you lay out your drum and melody patterns for your songs.

1. What is it For? This is where you find channels, and dots. The channels are laid out horizontally (see below) and each one contains a single sound. Each channel has 16 dots. If you're musically inclined, these dots represent 16 are the four beats of a basic drum loop. (The layout below is from GettingStarted1.flp. You should have this loop loaded now.)

A Channel

A Channel Name

2. What Dots are For? Clicking on a dot lights it up and tells FL Studio to trigger the channel (play the sound loaded into that channel) at that point in the loop. For instance, the 1 the DNC_Kick channel are lit up, telling FL Studio to play the kick drum sound four times during the loop (if you are thinking of groups of four dots as a single beat, FL Studio will play the sound at the start of each beat.) Try changing the pattern of dots in the DNC_Kick channel. (If you need to turn a dot off, right-click it.) Once you've got the dots to light up like the picture below, press the play switch to hear what you've created.

notes. If not, think of each group of four dots as one beat, so 16 dots

Some Dots

, 5th, 9th, and 13th dots in

Suggested Changes

Channel Controls

TThhee SStteepp SSeeqquueenncceerr

3. Play with the Channel Controls. After you've set up the pattern, try playing with the Channel Controls on the left. The two round knobs (wheels) control the volume and pan of a single channel,

and the green light switches the channel on and off (panning is like the balance control on your stereo; turning this knob moves the sound from left to right in the stereo field). If you want to reset a wheel to it's default position, right-click on it and select reset.

4. Make Your Own Beat. Don't like the beat above? Good, make your own! In the next sections, we'll teach you how to load in new samples, set up melodies, and change the sound of each channel (and even each dot) using Plugin Effects.

Don't Save! If you create a masterpiece and you want to keep it, at least save it under a new name. We need you to keep GettingStarted1.flp around so we can use it to explain some of the more advanced features later.

TTWWEEAAKKIINNGG TTHHEE CCHHAANNNNEELLSS

In this section, we'll show you how to modify the sound of the loops you create by tweaking the sound sample on each channel. FL Studio supports so much of this kind of tweaking that it's possible for two people to create loops that sound totally different using exactly the same samples (technically, each channel contains a Generator, which could be sample-based or could be a synthesizer plugin. More on that later, though).

Wait! What's a "sample"? A sample is a little piece of sound stored in a disk file. Each channel in FL Studio uses a single sample, usually containing a single note (like a snare drum hit or a single bass note), but they can also contain entire beats or tunes. Samples are usually ".wav" file types, but FL Studio supports ".xi" sound files

1. Open the Channel Settings Dialog. OK, let's get going and modify the kick drum sample. Load up the original version of GettingStarted1.flp again and click on the name "DNC_Kick" to bring up the Channel Settings window for that channel (shown in the picture below).

Click Here

Channel

Sam File Name

Selector

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee CChhaannnneellss

2. Load a New Sample. The first thing you can do is change the sample being used on the channel. The sample file name is shown on the picture above. Clicking on the file icon to the left will open a browser on the directory containing the file "DNC_Kick.wav" along with a number of other kick drum samples. As you click on them, FL Studio will automatically play the sounds for you. Try opening some of these other samples and listening to the effect a new kick drum has on the sound of the loop.

3. Check out the Browser. Another way to load samples is to use the Browser (that's the other window you see when you first opened FL Studio in the "First Run" section above.) This is a special browser for selecting and loading samples, loops and presets files. To find the DNC_Kick sound, click on Packs, and then Dance. Left-clicking on a sample will play it, right clicking will open it into the selected channel, and you can also drag and drop into the step sequencer. (You select a channel by clicking on the green Channel Selector light to the right of the channel name as shown above.)

Click Here

Lost the Browser? No problem. The five big buttons on the tool bar shown below will open and close various windows for you, including the Browser and the Step Sequencer. (Don't worry about those other windows for now, all will become clear in the fullness of time…)

Then Here Then Here

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee CChhaannnneellss

4. Play with the Sample Effects. Ok, at this point the best advice is to start the loop, then play with the controls in the sample (SMP) panel of the Channel Settings Dialog and listen to the difference in sound. Here's a short description of what some of them do. For more info see the on-line help.

ol, Pan: These are the volume and panning wheels that also appear on the main screen for each channel. Turning these will make the wheels on the main screen turn as well.

Remove DC Offset: Use this option to fix “vertical” offset in the samples (see Wave View below). Reverse Polarity: "Flips" the waveform vertically. Normalize: Maximizes the sample volume without distortion. Fade Stereo: Creates a stereo fade from the left to the right channel of the sample. Reverse: Reverses the sample. Swap Stereo: Switches left and right channel of the sample.

Wave View Window: Shows the shape of the sound sample. Click here to hear the sample with all the effects . Also a drag and drop window for loading samples.

Pitch: The wheel changes the pitch of the sample (speeds it up or slows it down). The number indicates how far the pitch wheel can stretch. Move it by clicking and dragging.

Fade In (IN): Applies a quick fade in to the sample (turn maximum to left to disable). Fade Out (OUT): Applies a quick fade out to the sample (turn maximum to left to disable). Pitch bend (POGO): Applies pitch bend to the sample. Useful with drum samples. Crossfade Loop (CRF): Allows you to crossfade the sample for the creation of smooth loop sections (turn maximum to left to disable). Trim Threshold (TRIM): FL Studio trims the silence at the end of the samples, as this frees up RAM and does not alter the resulting sound. This control allows you to raise the volume threshold below which FL Studio detects "silence".

Can't hear the difference? If you press a button or turn a wheel

and you can't hear any difference in the sound, try making the same change on another channel. For example, sometimes a change that doesn't affect a kick drum much will make a huge difference to the sound of a snare. If you still can't hear the difference, stop the loop from playing and listen the sounds separately by clicking on the wave view window. You might be able to hear the effect better without the other instruments.

eadphones)

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee CChhaannnneellss

5. Add Some Echo. Go back to GettingStarted1.flp, open the DNC_Kick channel settings and click the FUNC tab to get the view shown below. The controls in the top section (Echo delay / fat mode) can be

used to set up a cool echo effect for a single instrument. Start by turning up the FEED about a quarter of the way, and listen to what happens to the kick drum sound… Try playing with the other controls to change the sound of the echo… You can also toggle between various echo and “fat” modes by clicking the title bar of the Echo Delay section (the default is Classic Echo). More on these different effects can be found in the on-line manual…

Feed: Echo volume (sets how quickly the echo dies out).

Ping Pong: Makes the echo flip back and forth from left to right (sounds cool

n h

Arpeggiator: This gets explained in the Generators section of this

uide.

Pan, Cut, and Res do the same job as on the sample panel, but the effects build up as the echo dies out.

Pitch controls the pitch of the echo. If you turn this wheel right, the echo will get higher as it dies out.

Ech: Number of times the instrument will echo before it

sto

Time: Controls the amount of time (in dots) between each echo. Maximum delay time is 16 dots.

Getting Echo Time Just Right: The "Time" control is fine-grained to get you just the exact echo you want. But if you want to echo on the beat, you will have to look at the Hint Bar while you turn the dial. If you want the echo every three dots, just turn the dial until the hint bar shows "3:00".

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee CChhaannnneellss

6. Play With the Instrument Settings. Ok, let's take a quick look at the INS panel before we move on. (There's also stuff you should read about in the MISC panel too, but you can get that info from the

On-line Help.) Click on the INS tab and you'll get to the Instrument Settings. Here you can add Envelopes and LFO to your sample for the Volume, Pan, Cutoff, Resonance, and Pitch settings.

Indicator Light

Set Middle Note

LFO

Effect Selector

Envelope

7. What's an Envelope? An envelope causes a particular parameter to rise, and then fall over the life of the sound. The most classic thing to do is to have a Volume Envelope that makes the sound rise then fall in volume. But you can also put an envelope on Pitch, Cutoff, and Resonance. You can get more info on what all the parameters mean in the On-line Help, but Delay (DEL) sets how much time passes before you hear the sound, Attack (ATT) sets the fade-in at the beginning, Hold (HOLD) sets how long the sound lasts at full volume, and Decay (DEC), Sustain (SUS), and Release (REL) control how the sound fades away. Play with the wheels and watch the graph change.

8. What's LFO? LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillation. It makes a particular effect oscillate up and down during the life of the sound. Again, more info is available in the On-Line Help, but Amount (AMT) sets how much the effect oscillates, Speed (SPD) sets how quickly it oscillates, Delay (DEL) sets how much time passes before the oscillation starts, and Attack (ATT) sets how quickly the oscillation ramps up to it's full amount. Play with the knobs and watch the graph change.

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9. How do I Use Them? Use the Effect Selector (see diagram above) to choose the effect, and then turn the knobs on either the Envelope or the LFO. To turn the Envelope on and off for each effect, click on the Indicator Light. To turn off the LFO, reset the Amount (AMT) to the middle (knob pointing straight up.)

10. Why Can't I Hear the Effect? Well, if you're still on the Kick Drum from GettingStarted1.flp, it's going to be pretty hard to hear any LFO effect, although the Envelope might make a difference. These effects are more audible on longer samples. To hear the effects better, go to the Instrument Settings for the Ins_Round sample and play with the settings now.

Now we're cookin' with gas!

TTWWEEAAKKIINNGG TTHHEE NNOOTTEESS

By now you're familiar with many of the ways FL Studio lets you tweak and shape your sounds. In this section, we'll show you how some of those effects can be applied to each dot separately. We'll also show you how to program melodies.

1. Check out the Graph Editor. The easiest thing to wrap your mind around is probably the Graph Editor utility. First, select a channel to edit by clicking on the channel name, or by clicking on the green Channel Selector light to the right of the channel name. Then press the button that makes the graph editor pop up as shown below. (Make sure you've loaded up the original version of GettingStarted1.flp first.)

Channel Selector

h Editor

Gra Button

Graph Editor

Effect Selector

2. Check out the Effects. Try clicking-and-dragging the Effect Selector to see which of the various effects are available. You should find Pan, Velocity (another name for Volume), Filter Cut, Filter Res, Pitch, and Shift. Most of these effects were discussed previously, in the "Tweaking the Channels" section. The difference here is that you can also tweak the value of these effects for each separate dot. Each bar on the graph sets the effect value for the single note above (or below) it. GettingStarted1.flp already has some tweaking in it. Check out the Volume tweaks in the CHH channel and the Cutoff tweaks in the Ins_Square and Ins_Round channels.

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee NNootteess

3. Panning the Kick Drum. Try setting the pan effect as shown below for GettingStarted1.flp. The pan graph centers in the middle. You can set pan values by clicking inside the bar for each note at the desired level. After you have set up the view shown below, you should hear the kick drum flipping back and forth from one speaker to the other. This sounds really cool if you combine it with the 3-dot echo you added in the previous section…

4. Try the Velocity. You can get instruments to fade in and out over a pattern using the velocity graph. Try this effect on a channel as shown below. This graph does not center in the middle like pan, but goes from zero to maximum, with zero at the bottom. Volume slides like this can sound extra cool when combined with Cutoff and Resonance slides. (Hint: to make a smooth line in the graph editor, right-click on the first bar, then drag the mouse to the right to set the values of all the bars at once.)

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee NNootteess

5. Play with the Other Effects. Try to get a feel for the other effects on the graph editor. Filter Cut and Filter Res can be used to add or subtract values to the main cutoff and resonance wheels in the INS

panel of the channel settings dialog box. (See the "Tweaking the Channels" section.) Pitch makes the sample higher or lower, like the pitch wheel in the channel settings dialog box. Shift can be used to push a dot closer to the dot beside it (you more musical types can use this to groove a beat).

6. Check out the Melody. When you play GettingStarted1.flp, that synth melody you hear is being played on the Ins_Round channel. To see the notes of the melody, click the Keyboard Editor button with the Ins_Round channel selected as shown below. What you see now is a vertical piano keyboard for each dot on the screen. Hopefully, you have some keyboard skills. (If not, it's time for some lessons!) You can change each note by left-clicking one of the buttons on the keyboard. Right-click turns the note off. When the loop is not playing, clicking a note will also play that note.

board

Editor Button

Channel Selector

Keyboard Editor

7. Change the Melody. Now go ahead and change the melody! You can make it sound how you want, but below is a suggestion for those who like a note of tension in their music (you can find this melody in GettingStarted2.flp). You can use the keyboard editor on any sample - synth, bass, guitar, even drums. Have fun!

TTwweeaakkiinngg tthhee NNootteess

8. Super Important Tip. When you want to make a melody out of long samples, you often need to set it up so that each note cuts off the previous one. You can do this most easily by right-clicking the Channel Name in the Step Sequencer and selecting Cut Itself from the pop up menu. Notice that the Ins_Round channel has this option selected. Try deselecting it, but be warned - the results can be nasty!

Big News! You can now undo the last tweak! Do it from the Edit Menu or with ctrl-z.

ars

TTHHEE PPLLAAYYLLIISSTT ((ffrroomm PPaatttteerrnnss ttoo SSoonnggss))

Now you've seen the basics of what can be done with sampled sounds in a single pattern. In this section we'll show you how to program more than one pattern and link them together into a longer loop. Load up GettingStarted2.flp and read on…

1. Check out the Pattern Selector. FL Studio lets you create hundreds of different patterns. In the previous sections, we've just been working with pattern 1, but we can access the other patterns either by changing the number in the Pattern Number box. Use your mouse to drag in the Pattern Selector or use numeric ‘1’ till ‘9’ or ‘+’ and ‘-‘). You’ll find these controls somewhere on the tool bar at the top of the main FL Studio window.

QuickPad

(sometimes disabled)

2. Check out the Playlist. This screen can be opened using the button under the hint bar, or by hitting F5, or by right-clicking the song/pat button on the main screen (see above). Try it and you should get

a new window that looks something like below. This window is somewhat similar to the pattern view, except that the dots operate on whole patterns rather than single channels, and the bar lengths here vary to reflect the pattern length. Notice that GettingStarted2.flp consists of pattern 1 repeated 11 times and pattern 2 once at the beginning. Make sure Song is selected and press Play. You should see the Play Indicator on the playlist start to move, and hear the patterns it is playing. When it comes to the end of the dots, it jumps back to the Loop Point and continues playing. Try moving the loop point (right-click where you want it to go) and see what happens. (If you press the Pat button, FL Studio will just repeatedly play the current pattern in the Step Sequencer.)

Loo

Play Indicator

Point

Pattern Selector

Song/Pat Button

Pla Indicator

Patterns

(right-click to rename)

TThhee PPllaayylliisstt

3. What's the Point? Now you can assemble a number of patterns together to make a song. This lets you alter melodies, change beats, insert fills, and reuse some of the early parts of the song later. Many composers use a separate block of patterns for drums, bass, lead, etc. so they can work on them separately at first, and then piece the song together in the Playlist.

4. Add Fill Patterns to GettingStarted2.flp. Here's a simple example. Select pattern 3 using the Pattern Selector and then lay it out as shown in the first picture below using the DNC_Snare found in Packs > Dance. Press the Pat button to hear this pattern play. Then repeat and lay out pattern 4 using the VT_Crash sample found in Packs > Basic >Vintage or DNC_Crash sample found in Packs > Dance (You will have to add two new channels for this by clicking and dragging from the sample browser or by using the channel menu.)

Pattern 3

Pattern 4

Big deal…

TThhee PPllaayylliisstt

5. Using the Fill in the Song. Yeah, big deal. But now lay out the Playlist as shown below, and hopefully you'll begin to get the idea. Note that you need one extra dot for Pattern 1 and you need to move the Loop Point to the second bar (Right-Click to do that.) You can find the finished product in GettingStarted3.flp.

Groovy.

6. What is in Pattern 2? By now you probably checked out pattern 2 and discovered that it seems to be empty and still appears to be long in the playlist. All will be revealed eventually (but you could experiment with removing the pattern from the playlist to see what difference it makes…). We’ll talk about what pattern 2 does in the section on Live Recording. For now, just enjoy the ride!

7. What is the Empty Area Below? This feature in FL Studio (Producer edition only) – is for audio tracks and automation envelopes. Audio tracks give you the freedom to see and edit your samples right in the Playlist. A good example of using audio tracks is the startup project itself. Open NewStuff.flp and check the audio tracks area:

Each track can hold unlimited number of waves (unlike patterns, where each line is a specific pattern). Each wave is actually held in an Audio Clip channel (double click a wave to see its properties). To add a new instance of a wave, just click in an empty place inside the tracks. Try moving the waves or cutting them with the slice tool. You can find more tutorial projects explaining how to use them and also plenty of information in the on-line help (focus FL Studio and press F1). See more info in the chapter Audio Tracks. You can apply automation envelopes (eg. to fade in/out an audio clip) on top of these audio clips.

GGEENNEERRAATTOORRSS ((ffrroomm SSaammpplleess ttoo SSyynntthhss))

Up until now we've only been playing with Sample Channels. But FL Studio also supports channels that contain sounds made in real time by software synthesizers like Wasp, SimSynth Live, and the TS404. To use the proper terminology, every Channel contains a Generator, which could either be a sample, a synthesizer plugin, or some other type of sound generator in combination with the effects in the Channel Settings dialog. The combination of these Generators with the sample channels gives FL Studio a major power boost!

1. Adding a Synthesizer Channel. To add a channel containing a synthesizer Generator, click on

Channels > Add One as shown below and select one of the many available like TS404, 3xOsc, BeepMap, BooBass, Buzz Generator Adapter Fruity DrumSynth Live, Fruity DX10, Fruity SoundFont Player, Plucked!, SimSynth, Wasp and

many others (the list of generators is growing with each release!).

(not included in boxed editions), FPC, Fruit Kick,

GGeenneerraattoorrss

2. What to Expect. The new channel will appear in the Step Sequencer and the Generator's Configuration Screen will appear (except for the TS404). If the Configuration Screen is small, it will

appear inside a Channel Settings window (3xOsc, BeepMap, Fruit Kick, Fruity SoundFont Player, Plucked!,…). Otherwise, it will appear as a standalone window (BooBass, Buzz Generator, FPC, Fruity DrumSynth Live, Fruity DX10, SimSynth Live, Wasp, …).

3. How Do I Use 'Em? We will review the TS404 in detail in the next section, and much of what you learn there will be applicable to the other synths. But it's important for you to know that most of these Generators have their own help available. If the Configuration Screen for the Generator is embedded in a Channel Settings window, click on the channel name. If it's in a standalone window, click on the corner of the dialog.

Preset Sounds

Help

4. Preset Sounds. Many of the synthesizer generators (BeepMap, Buzz Generator, Fruit Kick, Fruity DrumSynth Live, Fruity DX10, SimSynth Live, Wasp,…) have preset sounds available. In most cases, you can get to them from the Presets section of the menu shown above, or by clicking on the little arrows in the top right (see picture above).

5. The Channel Settings. All these generators have a Channel Settings window that you get by clicking on the Channel Name, just like for Sample Generator Channels. But since each generator is different, they may not all have the same panels as the Sample Generators do. For instance, the TS404 has the SMP, MISC, and FUNC panels, while the BeepMap has INS, MISC, and FUNC.

+ 58 hidden pages

Image Line Software FRUITY LOOPS-FL STUDIO 5 User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual