The mixer and automation clips

October 28, 2009

Hi all,

If you’re not reading this on the site, make sure you do so you can watch the video at the same time. In the video I will be using the mixer and adding effects. I will also show you how to automate plugin parameters (like a rotatory knob or a slider) so they change by themselves. This can be done either on the pattern level as events or on the playlist level as an automation clip. Note that if you can’t see things in detail in the video, click on it when it’s playing to view a larger version in youtube.

The mixer and effects
Every instrument channel in a pattern can be sent to a particular mixer insert channel so it can be processed differently to other channels. Let’s say we want to add a chorus effect to the kick drum. The 1st thing to do is click on the channel name to bring up a load of other options. I’ve no idea what most of these do. At the moment I’m only interested in the top-right area saying ‘FX’. This is the mixer channel number. Change it with the scroll wheel or with click & drag of the mouse. You actually have 64 insert channels to choose from, more than enough.

Let’s take a closer look at the mixer.

For each insert channel you can set volume, panning, effects, how much of the audio signal goes to shared effects, how much audio signal goes to the master output, and some more. You can also mute a channel by left-clicking the green led and making it play solo by right-clicking the led.

You can add up to 8 effects on individual insert channels. Here you can see I’ve added the ‘Fruity Chorus’ plugin. If you need more than 8 effects to be applied, you can send the signal to 1 of the 4 shared channels called ’send channels’. I’ll explain how to do this in the video on the right.

Automation clips
In the next tutorial we’ll start looking into synthesizers as they are very important for trance tunes. A good tune will have some synthesizer parameters changing over time, such as the cutoff frequency. We don’t want to do this manually each time we play the tune. Luckily, there are a couple of ways of automating any plugin parameter whether it be a knob, slider or something else.

One way of achieving this is to play the tune back in record mode and move the control around manually. These movements will be saved as ‘events’ for the selected pattern. However, let’s say we want to make changes throughout many different patterns. In this case we create an automation clip.

The 1st step is to load up the plugin and make a change to the control we want to automate. This is so FL Studio knows which control we’re on about.

Here I’ve loaded up the Nexus plugin which I hear is pretty decent for making trance leads. I’d like to automate the cutoff frequency in the bottom left so I 1st move this around a bit to gain focus to it. Then I create an automation clip from the navigation options.

This will insert the automation clip in the playlist editor. Initially you see a central line as we haven’t tweaked the values for this parameter yet.

To create values throughout time, use the mouse and drag it around. Here the cutoff frequency will increase and then decrease again.

Until next time….

Finally, we’re finished with the introduction of the FL Studio interface. If I’ve been going too fast on any subject matter or haven’t explained things properly, please let me know in the forums and I’ll revisit those areas.

Before we start making trance, we need to understand synthesizers so that is what I want to concentrate on next. Once we nail that, we’ll be ready to create the best trance track ever (maybe).

If you want to be updated when I put up another post, you can sign up to the mailing list in the top-right.

Forum topic of the week

Do you have any tips on using the mixer or creating automation clips? 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.