These will affect not only the timing of the beats but also the velocity, and alter what kind of emphasis is placed on the different beats. In the lower part of the window you can adjust quantize strength, which may be enough for some purposes.Ĥ:For a better groove, click on the Groove template file load icon and you will see a number of preset groove templates. To get a more human feel for your beat, go to the Piano Roll’s Tools menu and choose Quantize, which opens the Quantize window. If you double click on any note you can open the note properties window where you can set various parameters including velocity and release on a note-by-note basis.ģ: The Piano Roll and step sequencer tend to give you very rigid results which is good for some types of music but not others. They will default to one measure in length.Ģ: Drag the boundary of any note to change its duration, or drag the note from its centre to change its position in time or move it to another drum channel. Open the Piano Roll editor and use the Pen tool to draw in some beats. Here we have chosen Fruity DrumSynth Live, which is a nice simple drum synthesizer for making electronic beats. So however you approach beat making in FL Studio, there’s sure to be something on offer that will get you the best results possible.ġ: Start by setting your project tempo and calling up an instance of one of FL Studio’s bundled drum plug-ins. When you have a kit built from synth modules you can really get to the heart of the sound, detuning and morphing each element of the kit in ways that aren’t possible with samples, in order to get a really unique sound.
The bundled plug-ins allow for drum synthesis as well as sample-based beat creation and it’s here that things can get really interesting. It’s rare that you would want to just use a single beat, so FL Studio also makes it easy to layer up patterns, create variations and add things like percussion and other, non-drum sounds to your beats to keep things interesting. For a more “human” feel, say perhaps for hop hop, dubstep or even rock you can add groove quantization and swing so that the music doesn’t necessarily sound like it’s been generated by a machine. Straight quantization will give you a more mechanical feel, which you might want for certain types of electronic music like house or techno. When you have your beats in the Playlist, you might want to quantize them and there are tools for that too. In addition to the various virtual instruments provided for making beats you can also import your own loops of course, and slice them up or time stretch them to make new variations and patterns. And the multiple programming options open to you mean that whether you prefer to play your beats in using the mouse, a step sequencer or an auto generator, there’s sure to be something that works for you. There’s Drumaxx, SrumSynth Live and Groove Machine as well as support for any third party plug-ins you might care to add. FL Studio provides you with a number of great tools to program, shape and process your beats to make your tracks sound even better. FL Studio is great for making beats, and there’s more than one way to go about it, as Hollin Jones reveals…īeats are at the heart of most kinds of music, be they sparse acoustic sounds or full-on electronic assaults.