Fruity Loops Tutorial! - The Basics to a Quick Beat

Hello Everybody,

Today is the day, the first tutorial day. For this first tutorial I'm going to show you the overall UI of the program, how to use some of it, and hopefully showing you how to make your first beat. It is a bit long winded but this was made for those just starting out. I'll get more advanced later. So without further stalling on my end, let's begin.




I'm using FL Studio 9 on a Windows 7 OS.
You can download the demo (or buy it) here:

So let's begin.


CLICK THE IMAGES FOR FULL RESOLUTION!

Get the finished project file here! (Will only work on FL Studio 9)


Step 1: Open FL Studio to become familiar with it.


Ok, let me tell you right now the what I call these bits of the software are most likely incorrect, but who cares!

Step 2: Let's make a simple drum beat!


In your pattern maker, you'll see names of instruments and some knobs and a green light to the left as well as multiple boxes to the right.  Each button, light, and box pertains to the row the instrument name is in.
The green light indicates whether the instrument is 'live' or not. Clicking the green light will put it out, thus muting the instrument. You can right click a 'solo' and instrument to mute all the others.

The first knob (the left most knob) controls your panning. Turn it all the way to the left to put all the sound ithe insturment is making into the left speaker, and vise versa if you want to have it to the right. Panning becomes increasingly important the more serious you are about making quality songs.

The next know controls the volume. Pretty standard, turn to the right to make it louder.

The next boxes, we'll call the triggers, determine when a note shall be played for that instrument. Click a box to light it up, and if you press play you will notice it will play. Consult the picture for some more info and to see the beat I have set up. Be creative, make it sound however you like!

Step 3: Picking an instrument.
Ok, so you have a simple/short beat set-up, now it's time to add some synths (or what ever). I'm not going to get into Plug-ins on this tut, so let's keep it simple.
Go to your browser (on the left side) and open "Channel presets". Next, open 3x Osc. Wow, look at all those presets, pick one and drag it onto the pattern maker. To here what it sounds like, light up a box or use your keyboard letters to play notes. Don't like it? Pick a new one! I'm going to choose Pluck (fat). Check the picture if you are lost!

Step 4: Using the piano roll.

Ok, time to learn how the real music making is done. Are you excited? No? Oh, well...
So what you're going to do here is right click on your chosen instrument and select "Piano Roll". A new window will pop-up, called the Piano Roll. (Crazy eh?) You can see a grid, I don't know what it is set to by default, but go up to the top of the window and click on the 'magnet' (snap-to) and change it to 1/4 of a beat. This means that every little box represents a 16th note. Now, see if you can hammer out a little melody stopping before you get to the 2nd bar. It's pretty short, I usually make my 'riffs' at least 8 beats, but this IS for beginners. Like this:

Congrats, you now know the basics. If you'd like, continue adding instruments, increase the length of the pattern, and just keep LEARNING until I release the next FL tutorial.

Here's what my beat sounded like at the end: 
Tutorial 1 by IYQ

Really sorry to those who really wanted to dig in, I'll post MUCH more advance tutorials in the future. Stay tuned!