FL Studio Interface
October 18, 2009
Hello again,
I’d like to go through the different parts of the FL Studio interface that are important to make music. I don’t know enough about all the options in the interface yet. I’ll just go through some of the things I’ve worked out earlier this week. Make sure you read this post on the site so you can watch the video that explains in more detail what is outlined here.
What I will do here is show you images of the different parts of the interface. To see where these can be found, either watch the video on the right or view the previous post ‘My Software Setup’ which has an image of the full interface that you can enlarge.
Top left – menu options
This is your typical area to open/save files, view help, edit preferences and so on. As we make progress with making our tune, we’ll learn about these as and when is required.
Top center – play area
Here you can play/stop your tune, record audio or midi onto it and change the tempo of the tune to play it slower or faster.
Top center – record options
Most of these options relate to recording audio or midi. At the top is shown the volume level of what is being played and how much RAM and cpu power is being used. This is quite useful as if you have too many instruments and effect being played, you will run out of processing power and won’t be able to add any more. Here you can monitor how much power your tune is taking up.
Top right – window toggle
These buttons we’ll be using a lot. They show/hide the most important windows we’ll need: step sequencer, piano roll, playlist, mixer.
Left – browser
This is a shortcut to get to instruments, plugins and projects. I don’t think I’ll need to use this, not sure yet.
Center – step sequencer
FL Studio is mainly used as a pattern sequencer. This means that we create patterns of instruments and play these back, repeating patterns where necessary. For example, if you had a very simple song consisting of intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, outro, then we’d have 4 patterns: intro, outro, verse, chorus.
The sequencer is split up into channels, each one being an individual instrument. Below I’ll show you how to add an instrument.
There are 3 ways to record into a channel: clicking on the squares of the step sequencer, converting it into a piano roll to make more complex melodies, or using an external midi keyboard.
Center – playlist
This is where we place our patterns to make the track. For the previous example, we’d put our 4 patterns on here and repeat the verse and chorus twice. Note that the playlist is split into 2 areas. The top area is where you would record audio clips and also insert midi patterns if you want to use some editing options. Mostly you’ll put the patterns in the bottom area.
Center – mixer
Every instrument channel has its sound played through the mixer. You can actually send the audio to a particular mixer channel so you can manipulate it separately from the rest of the audio. Manipulations may be changing the volume level, panning or adding effects such as reverb.
VST plugins
To add an instrument to your song, you need to install a plugin that will play the instrument’s sound. FL Studio can handle a few different types of plugins. VST tends to be the most popular and you can download demo or free versions of plugins from www.kvraudio.com. To select an instrument from already installed plugins, choose ‘Add one’ from the ‘Channels’ menu dropdown. You’ll see a list of all plugins installed on the computer.
To add a new plugin, you will first need to install it into a plugins folder that FL Studio knows about (which I will do in the video). You can then select ‘Add one’ then ‘More’.
A list of all installed plugins appears where you can switch them on and off. By selecting ‘Refresh’ then ‘Fast scan’, any newly installed plugins will be found.
Until next time….
Next time we will start to make a tune. This won’t be our proper tune, just a demo one so we can go through the different features in more detail. I will start with the step sequencer.
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Forum topic of the week
Do you have any tips on using the FL Studio interface? If so we’d all be interested to hear them. If there are any technical issues with signing into the forums, please contact me, the link is in the header at the top of the page.
