FL Studio 21 Beginner Tutorial: Step-by-Step Music Production Guide

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, Steven here. Today we're going  to learn how to use FL Studio. We'll start with the very basics. Make a simple melody and  beat all the way through completing your very first song and exporting it. By the end of the  video, you'll know the essentials of FL Studio.

[00:00:17]Let's get started. Let's get FL Studio. Head  over to the description and click on the link.

[00:00:24]Here we are on the main page. Click on the  download button in the center of the screen.

[00:00:30]You have two options, Windows and Mac. Since I  have Windows, I'm going to click on download.

[00:00:36]Now that you've installed FL Studio, you're  going to come across the main interface, and you're probably wondering, what's all this  stuff? All these knobs? All these sliders? I guess it's a bit overwhelming. But I'm going to  guide you through the process step by step so you won't have to worry by the end of this video. And  to help us do that, we're going to write a jingle for the Kevin Cookie Company, and I usually like  starting with a melody. And in order to do that, we have to focus on the channel rack up here. The  channel rack is where all your instruments go.

[00:01:14]So, if you want to add a keyboard, like what  we're going to do in a second, we're going to add that to our channel rack. And I'm going to show  you how to do that. We'll click the plus icon.

[00:01:24]And here you have a list of all the instruments  you could put in. We have like drum synth, we have here, we have a bass,  but I'm going to click on keys.

[00:01:38]And now the keys just popped up. And we've  added it to the channel rack. Now that we've added FL keys to the channel rack, we  no longer have a need for this window, so we can go over here and exit out. Now  you can see that FL keys has been added to the channel rack. But right now, we can't  hear any sounds. So, we're going to have to open up the piano roll, which tells the FL  keys what notes to play. In order to do that, right click on FL keys and then click on  piano roll. Now that the piano roll is open, we could go ahead and start clicking anywhere on  it for a note to appear. And before we do that, make sure this pencil icon is activated. So, let's  go ahead and click on it and click anywhere on.

[00:02:35]And you'll see that the notes are coming up on the  screen. And now you're probably wondering what is on the left. That's an image of a keyboard,  and that tells you what note you're playing.

[00:02:47]And you can even see here, I'm playing an  A, here I'm playing an F, and so on. And this top bar is telling you when the note is  playing. So, this is the first note to play, then this note comes next, then this note  and so on and so forth. I could also delete notes if I don't... Let's say I want to get  rid of it. I just click on the right mouse button and that'll get rid of a note. I could  also move a note. If I want to move this note, I can move it up there. And the last thing I  could do is if I want to lengthen the note, I go to the edge and I drag over to lengthen it  or left to shorten it. Okay, well now that I've placed down a couple notes, let me place down a  couple more and we can see what it sounds like.

[00:03:43]If I want to play, I can go up here and hit the  play button or I can hit the space bar if you want a faster approach. So let me go and hit this play  button. Oh man, I don't really like that melody, so I'm going to get rid of it. So, in order to  do that, I'm going to hit the select button and select all my notes and delete them like  this by hitting the delete key. Now that we're getting comfortable writing in the basics  notes, let's write an actual melody. So, make sure the pencil icon is activated and I'm going to  start writing out a melody and it goes like this.

[00:04:47]Now these notes here are too long. I want to  shorten them. So, like I said before, let's click on the edge and drag it back. Go to the  edge, drag it back. Go to the edge, drag it back.

[00:05:03]Actually, I want to lengthen this note right here.  So, I'm going to go like that. Let's continue.

[00:05:19]Oh, now I've run out of space and I want to  play a lower note. So how do I do that? One way is to click on this box over here  and that reveals more of the keyboard.

[00:05:40]Now some of these notes are too  long, so I'm going to shorten them.

[00:05:48]Okay, I've got my first part.  Let's see what that sounds like.

[00:06:00]I actually like the way my melody is  shaping up, so for the next section, I'm going to reuse the melody from the  first three bars. So how do I do that? Well, I need to first let FL Studio know which ones  I want to select. So, let's go up here to the selection tool and select the ones that  we want to copy. So, I want to copy these.

[00:06:27]Okay, so I copied them. Now, where do  we paste them? How do we do that? So, in order to do that, we need to make sure  that this playhead here in the upper left is where we want to paste it. So, if  I hit paste right now, I would paste it right here on the on the first bar. But I  want to go all the way to the fifth bar. So, I click on this draw icon and I move the  playhead by clicking on the number. So here.

[00:06:56]Now I've moved the play head over to the five.  And now all I'll do is paste it by hitting Ctrl V.

[00:07:05]And that pastes it. If I want to see more of  the melody, in this case, I can barely see it. I just click on here and I drag it over.  Now that I've added the repeating section, I want to add a little bit more to my melody.  One more bar. Now that I've completed my melody, I'm going to take a listen to it. So, before I  do, I have to make sure that this playhead is back at the beginning on the number one. So let me  do that. Let me make sure click move the playhead over to the one and then I'll hit the space  bar to play the music. And right off the bat, I think that the song is too slow, so I'm  going to speed it up. How do I do that? Well, I find this box over here. And this shows  me that right now it's 130 BPM beats per minute. And I want to increase that to  170. Make that go a little faster. So, what I'm going to do is click on it  and then drag up to change the number.

[00:08:09]Okay, I'm at 170. Let's take  a look at listen to that now.

[00:08:18]That's much better. I like that. The melody  sounded pretty solid and I've got the tempo all good. So, we can X out of this view. Now that  we've created our melody, look at the center of the screen and you'll see pattern one. That's our  melody. But that's not a very descriptive name.

[00:08:38]So, let's rename it to something like melody.  Click the right mouse button and rename. Hit enter. Next, let's add our melody to this  arrangement. The arrangement is basically like our song. Right now, it's empty. If you  look, we have several tracks here, but we don't have any music on them. I'm going to put my first  instrument on one of the tracks by clicking on it and dragging it over, and dropping it to where I  want it. In this case, I want it at the beginning of the song. So, I'll drag it to number one.  Now, notice that there are several more tracks.

[00:09:20]What we're going to do now is create another  pattern so we can start building up our song.

[00:09:26]I'm going to click down here on  the plus icon. Now notice that we've created a pattern two. We're going  to call it something else. Maybe chords.

[00:09:40]Now, we're going to add another instrument  to our channel rack. So first, let's click on the plus icon at the bottom of the  channel rack. And this will bring up a whole bunch of instruments to choose  from. I kind of like this one called GMS. Right down here. It's kind of like  a synthesizer. Let's use that one. Okay, so now the window popped up and we need to  find an instrument. There's so many knobs, but we're going to go to this program window  right here to find an instrument that we like.

[00:10:18]And we have all these options.  We have basses, leads, synths, pads. I'm probably going to do something  for chords and that's going to be a pad.

[00:10:30]And we have all these options  here. Let's see. If I click on one, I'll click on it and then  hit a key on my keyboard.

[00:10:41]And that'll play the sound.

[00:10:45]Hmm, which one? I kind of like this one, pad 16.

[00:10:53]Hmm, let me try this one since it's 16.

[00:11:12]Okay, let me go with that one. So, I've clicked  on it. I've selected it. Now let's just exit out.

[00:11:18]And here too, we'll exit out.

[00:11:21]Now, like we did before, we're going to go into  the piano roll like we did with the FL keys. Let's just go to the instrument and right click and go  into piano roll. Now that I'm in the piano roll, I'm going to start putting down my notes  like we did for the melody. But in this case, I'm going to put three notes together. So, let's  see. Let's start by putting down the first note.

[00:11:48]You know what? That's actually a  little high. I might go down to C4.

[00:11:56]And now I'm going to stretch this note. It's  a little short. I'm going to stretch it all the way out to three. And now I'm going to  put another note on the same, starting at the same position on the one. I'm going to  move that over to this note right here. E4.

[00:12:14]And then I'm going to put one more G4.

[00:12:20]Okay. Now we've got our first  chord, our C major chord.

[00:12:25]And now I'm going to do the same thing. And now I'm going to copy. I could do each one  individually, or I could just copy it, which actually I could do that. I'm  going to click on the selection tool.

[00:12:39]Select them, control C, and then  move the playhead over to three, and then control V to paste it. So right now I've  got my chords for the first four measures. I'm all done laying down my chords. And now I can exit  out of this screen by going up here and clicking the X button. Now that I've completed the chords,  I'd like to hear what they sound like in the song.

[00:13:04]So, I'm going to drag the chords right  here over into the arrangement window.

[00:13:10]And I'm going to drag them at the  beginning of the song to number one, because I'd like them to  start where the melody starts.

[00:13:21]Now, notice that there's, in the upper  left-hand corner, there's pattern mode.

[00:13:28]And what that does is it plays the  pattern that's currently selected.

[00:13:41]If I click on melody, I  could also hear that as well.

[00:13:48]But now I'd like to hear them together. So,  to do that, I'm going to click on song mode.

[00:13:56]And what that does is it plays  both the melody and the chords.

[00:14:13]Now that I've listened through  the entire song, I'm not quite sure I like the sound of the chords. That  was the GMS instrument that we picked.

[00:14:24]So, I want to change that. In order to do that, let's click back on GMS and select a  new instrument from this list of pads.

[00:14:36]Let's click number 24.

[00:14:39]And now I'll hit the spacebar  to see what that sounds like.

[00:14:48]I don't quite like that either. So let me try one more thing. Let's choose  another bank right over here.

[00:14:56]I think I have one in mind. I think there's a  keyboard that I really like. It's called Funky Rhodes. Let me click on that. I think  that's going to be the right one. Yeah, that one's perfect. I like the sound of that. It's not too full. It's shorter. And it gives  space for the melody to be listened to.

[00:15:27]Okay, let me exit out of that. Now that I  have both the melody and the chords done, I'd like to add another instrument. I  think I'm going to go for the drums. So, I'm going to click on the plus  sign right here and put in drums.

[00:15:45]Now, the next step is to drag  them to the arrangement window.

[00:15:50]And I think I want to put it at the beginning  of the song with all the other instruments.

[00:15:56]Now, you'll notice that I don't  have any notes in there yet, but as we go to the channel rack and start  putting in notes, they're going to appear on the arrangement window. So that's what I'm  going to do now. For laying down the drums, I'm going to take a different approach. Instead  of the piano roll, we're going to do it right through the channel rack. And it's actually an  easier way to do it, at least for the drums.

[00:16:21]So, see these boxes in the channel rack? They tell  you when an instrument should play or not to play.

[00:16:29]So, if I go and click on this first box over  here, that means that an instrument will play.

[00:16:38]Let me see what that sounds like  by clicking on the space bar.

[00:16:44]Now, once I've laid down the kick, I'm going  to add a snare right over here in this box.

[00:16:56]Okay, I like the sound of that. Let me keep going.

[00:16:59]Now, notice that we've kind  of run out of room right here.

[00:17:04]I'm going to go down here to this little  bar and use the mouse wheel to move over.

[00:17:12]And what that will do will give  me a little bit more space.

[00:17:16]And now I'll click on a box over here.

[00:17:22]Let's see what this sounds like.

[00:17:28]Okay, now I need another snare, so I'm going to click on this bar  again and move over a little bit.

[00:17:36]I'll put it right there.

[00:17:41]Okay, now I need to add a hi-hat.  So let me go back to the beginning.

[00:17:52]And now I think I have a pretty good idea. Here's  a cool trick. If you want to fill it in the boxes without clicking on them, you could click on  the instrument, and here you could fill in the boxes. This is every two, every four, every  eight. So, I think I want to do every two.

[00:18:16]I think that's too many. Let me  go back and do it every four.

[00:18:27]Okay, I like the sound of that.

[00:18:30]So now I'm going to go back  to the arrangement window and I'm going to drag this pattern  over into the arrangement window.

[00:18:43]I'll do that a couple of times  until I get to the end of the song.

[00:18:48]And that's the drums. Notice that when I put  the drums pattern into the arrangement window, I clicked on it four separate times.

[00:18:59]Imagine if we had a song that went on for 40 bars  or 50 bars. I'd be doing that quite a lot. So, I don't want to do that. And I'll use  the paint icon to do it very quickly.

[00:19:13]And now I'm going to make sure that the drum  pattern is selected and then go over to the arrangement window, click on where I want it to  begin, and just drag over to the right like that.

[00:19:26]Another tip for deleting patterns on  the arrangement window is to right click on a pattern and then drag to the left.

[00:19:40]So those are just a couple quick  tips for adding and deleting in the arrangement window. Now that  I've listened to the drum kit, I think I want to change the snare sound. I  want to swap it out with a different one. So, to do that, I'm going to focus on this browser  window over here and click on all. This is where you find all sounds and plugins and various  instruments. I'm going to click on packs, and here we have a list of drums and loops and sound  effects. We're going to focus on drums and snares.

[00:20:20]Now here we have a list of all  different types of snares. Right now, we have the 808 snare right here.  Let me go for maybe something.

[00:20:31]By clicking on it, you can hear what it  sounds like. Let me try this one. Oh, I like that snare. And bass snare. So, what I'm  going to do is send it over to the channel rack.

[00:20:45]And when I send it over, it's going to replace  the one that I currently have. Let me click on the channel to make sure that it's activated.  Right now we have it on the kick channel, but I want to send it over to the snare channel.  So, I'll click there and then right click on the new sound and send to selected channel. And now  you notice that the new snare is on the channel.

[00:21:16]Let's listen to it by  clicking on the pattern mode.

[00:21:24]Yeah, I like how that sounds.  It really fits much better now.

[00:21:30]Okay, so now I'm going to go back to the  song mode and see what that sounds like.

[00:21:42]Yes, I like that. Okay, now that we have the  drum kit, we're going to proceed to the bass.

[00:21:48]I'm going to add another instrument. Click on the  plus icon and enter in the name of your pattern.

[00:21:58]And you'll see that the pattern appears below the drum kit drums. Now drag the bass  over into the arrangement window.

[00:22:08]We also need to create a new channel in the  channel rack. I'm going to hit the plus icon.

[00:22:16]And a good one for the bass is called  the BooBass under miscellaneous.

[00:22:23]X out of that. And now the last thing we need  to do is create notes for the BooBass. Click on the channel, right click, and hit piano  roll. Now that we're inside the piano roll, I'm going to show you another  technique for putting in the notes.

[00:22:43]You can use your computer keyboard or a  MIDI keyboard. All you have to do is hit a letter name on the computer keyboard and  you'll see a light come up on the screen.

[00:23:01]Just like that. But notice that we  don't have any notes on the screen. So, to do that, we have to record them first.

[00:23:11]To record, there's a red button here at  the top of the screen. If I click that, the notes will start recording.

[00:23:19]But before I do that, there's these tools at  the top of the screen which will help me. One of them is the metronome and another  one is the countdown before recording.

[00:23:31]You can also see in the upper left what  the tool is called. So here it's metronome, here it's wait for input to start playing, and  so on. These tools could come in handy. So, I'm going to click on them before hitting the  record button and make sure they're active.

[00:23:50]And now hit the record button. Now you'll get a  menu that pops up when you hit the record button.

[00:23:57]I'm going to just record everything.

[00:24:01]And now the recording hasn't  started yet. To do that, I have to hit the play button so the arrangement  starts playing. And when you're done recording, you could hit the spacebar to stop the song  from playing and then deactivate the recording.

[00:24:33]Now that I've recorded the notes, I'm going  to make some edits because I don't like these two over here so I'll just delete  them by hitting the right mouse button.

[00:24:43]And I'll do a quick edit here  by lengthening this note.

[00:24:51]And that's about it. I think we've got a good  bass. Now we can exit out of this window.

[00:24:58]And you'll see that the bass has  been recorded onto the arrangement window on track 4. The song's  coming together pretty nicely, but I think I want to add vocals to it, so  to do that, we have to set up the microphone.

[00:25:13]Let's go to options and audio settings.

[00:25:18]Next to device, we see FL Studio ASIO. That's  the default, so we'll leave it where it is.

[00:25:24]Now let's go to show ASIO panel.

[00:25:27]Now you'll see another window where  you can select the input and output.

[00:25:33]When you select an input, you'll see a  list of all the microphones connected to your computer. Select the one that you want.

[00:25:40]Next, go over to output. These are  all the outputs on your computer.

[00:25:45]Go for a headphone so you don't have the  music of your song bleed onto the vocal track. Now that we've set up the  microphone, let's X out of that.

[00:25:58]Here and here. Now we have to  create the audio track. So, let's click on this plus icon  and click on add audio track.

[00:26:08]Notice that it's now in the arrangement area.

[00:26:12]And we have to do a couple things before  recording. We have to arm the track.

[00:26:19]And then we have to pick the source  of the microphone. Here it's line one.

[00:26:25]And now we know that it works because we  could see the levels right here in this box.

[00:26:32]Now let's go to the record button up  here and click on everything. And when you're ready to record, just hit the play button.

[00:26:56]I think that turned out okay for now. So, the next step is to disarm the track. Let's do  that by clicking on this red button over here.

[00:27:06]I'm just about done with the arrangement. I've got  the song sounding pretty close to where I want it.

[00:27:12]But there's still one last step. And that's to  make sure all the volumes blend well together.

[00:27:19]And that's where the mixer comes into play.

[00:27:22]But I need to make sure that all the  channels are routed properly to the mixer so I can start adjusting the volumes.  Now I need to route the channels to the mixer.

[00:27:35]Each channel has its own insert on the mixer. For  example, this 808 kick has an insert 1 right here.

[00:27:47]This clap is on insert 2.

[00:27:51]If I look at FL keys, I notice that  it doesn't yet have an insert. So, I'll move it to one that isn't occupied.

[00:28:00]I'll go to 7.

[00:28:06]And here I'll go to 8.

[00:28:12]And for the BooBass, I'll go to 9.

[00:28:17]Now I've properly assigned each channel rack to  an insert, so I'm ready to start mixing. Now that all the channels are on the mixer, I can start  adjusting the volumes. But before I do that, I want to rename the inserts to  make them easier to identify.

[00:28:38]So, for insert 1, to rename it, I can right  click on it and rename it like that. Or I can click on the F2 button to rename it. Now I'm  going to go ahead and rename each of my inserts.

[00:28:56]Now that I've renamed the inserts to  reflect what we see on the channel rack, the next step is to listen to the song and  see if any of the instruments stand out above the others. Now I'm going  to hit the spacebar to listen.

[00:29:16]I notice that the vocals are a little loud,  so I'll lower them. I can use the mouse wheel.

[00:29:28]That sounds good. I'll also  lower the keys a little bit.

[00:29:42]And these too as well.

[00:29:48]The vocals are still a little bit loud.

[00:29:52]And I think I'll lower the snare as well.

[00:30:01]I think that's sounding pretty  good, so I think I'll stop there.

[00:30:06]Now that I've adjusted the volumes to where I  want it, I'm going to add an effect to the vocals.

[00:30:13]So, make sure the insert that you  want to add an effect to is active.

[00:30:19]So here the vocals are active. Here if I  click on keys, you'll see that the green rectangle moves over to keys and it shows  that it's active. Let me go back to vocals.

[00:30:32]Now over on the right side, you see all these slots. This is where  you can start adding in your effects.

[00:30:41]Let me click on slot 1.

[00:30:44]Now you'll see a panel with a whole  bunch of effects that you can add.

[00:30:52]Here you can add reverb. If you have  a guitar, you can add some distortion to it. You've got other things like  filters and even a fun thing like chorus.

[00:31:04]I'm going to add fruity reverb 2.

[00:31:08]Here you see an active panel now for the reverb.  We have a lot of different options that you can tweak and find the right sound that you want.  I'm going to go with presets and small studio.

[00:31:24]Let's exit out of that. Now I'm going to play the  song so you can hear what the effect sounds like.

[00:31:41]If I want, I can also turn the effect  off by clicking on this green button.

[00:31:48]That turns the effect off.

[00:31:52]And if I want to turn it back on, I can just  click on the button again to turn it on.

[00:31:58]If I want to go back into the panel  and tweak the effect a little bit, I can just click right here  and the panel will open up.

[00:32:09]If I want to, I can add some more effects by  going to slot 2 or 3 and I can start layering them on to one another. Now that I've applied  reverb to the vocals, I want to hear what they sound like on their own, so I will mute the  other inserts by clicking on this green button.

[00:32:34]I could also solo an insert instead of muting it.

[00:32:39]So, for the vocals, I could go over there  and I can click on the right mouse button.

[00:32:45]And you'll notice that it's soloed. Take a listen.

[00:32:57]If I click on the vocals  again, I could un-solo it.

[00:33:03]And then all the other buttons will be activated.

[00:33:08]And this same process applies to the  other parts such as the channel rack and the arrangement window. I can solo  various tracks by right clicking on them.

[00:33:21]Or if I want to undo it, I could click on  the right again. Now that I have finished adding the effects, I'm ready to export the song.

[00:33:31]So, I'm going to go over to file and export.

[00:33:36]I'm going to choose wav file. Here you have  other options such as mp3 and ogg. But I'm going to want to retain the highest quality  audio. So, I'm going to click on wav file.

[00:33:48]Here, just name your track  and save. Now we're on the rendering panel. Since I've selected  wav, we see that it's active here.

[00:34:00]We can also choose the bit depth here from 16 to  32. Keep in mind, the higher the bit rate, the more space it takes, but the quality is also going  to be better. So, I'm going to choose 32 bit.

[00:34:15]Here we have other options such as  resampling. Let's keep that at 32.

[00:34:22]Everything else looks good, so I'm going to keep  it the way it is. Now I'm going to hit start.

[00:34:31]And that's it. I've rendered my first song. Now that I've successfully exported  my song, we can now listen to it.

[00:34:50]All right, that's a quick look at FL Studio.  You're doing great. If you have any questions, be sure to put them in the comments.  To watch more videos like this one, consider subscribing, and  I'll see you in the next one.