Book Image

The Music Producer's Ultimate Guide to FL Studio 20

By : Joshua Au-Yeung
Book Image

The Music Producer's Ultimate Guide to FL Studio 20

By: Joshua Au-Yeung

Overview of this book

FL Studio is a cutting-edge software music production environment and an extremely powerful and easy-to-use tool for creating music. This book will give you everything you need to produce music with FL Studio like a professional. You'll begin by exploring FL Studio 20's vast array of tools, and discover best practices, tips, and tricks for creating music. You'll then learn how to set up your studio environment, create a beat, compose a melody and chord progression, mix sounds with effects, and export songs. As you advance, you'll find out how to use tools such as the Piano roll, mixer console, audio envelopes, types of compression, equalizers, vocoders, vocal chops, and tools for increasing stereo width. The book introduces you to mixing best practices, and shows you how to master your songs. Along the way, you'll explore glitch effects and create your own instruments and custom-designed effect chains. You'll also cover ZGameEditor Visualizer, a tool used for creating reactive visuals for your songs. Finally, you'll learn how to register, sell, and promote your music. By the end of this FL Studio book, you'll be able to utilize cutting-edge tools to fuel your creative ideas, mix music effectively, and publish your songs.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1:Getting Up and Running with FL Studio
6
Section 2:Music Production Fundamentals
12
Section 3:Postproduction and Publishing Your Music

Exploring the FL Studio workspace

FL Studio is a software work environment. It comes equipped with tons of tools to assist you with your music creation. In order to create a song, you need to understand the basic workflow. When you first open FL Studio, you will be greeted with a workspace similar to the following screenshot:

Figure 1.1 – FL Studio workspace

Figure 1.1 – FL Studio workspace

It's possible that you may see a slightly different landing screen depending on what version of FL Studio you are using. To ensure that we are all seeing the exact same workspace, open a new template using Basic with limiter:

Figure 1.2 – Basic with limiter

Figure 1.2 – Basic with limiter

You'll notice that there are lots of other templates to get you up and running quickly. I encourage you to explore the other available templates as well if you're curious.

The FL Studio workbench is divided up into five panel sections:

Figure 1.3 – Toolbar

Figure 1.3 – Toolbar

These panels can be opened or hidden by left-clicking the icons in the Toolbar. The first five buttons on the Toolbar open up the main sections of FL Studio. They can be opened or hidden by clicking on the tool symbol.

Here are the buttons in the order they appear from left to right:

  • Playlist: Used to arrange your song compositions.
  • Piano roll: Used to compose melodies.
  • Channel Rack: Used to load your instruments and compose percussive rhythms.
  • Mixer: Used to route your instruments and apply effects for mixing and mastering.
  • Browser: Contains all your files. It's an organizer used to navigate through your samples.

The Playlist, Piano roll, Channel Rack, Mixer, and Browser are the foundational building blocks of FL Studio. Using these five tools, you'll be able to create, organize, and apply effects to your music.