User manual IMAGE LINE SOFTWARE FRUITY LOOPS - FL STUDIO 5

IMPORTANT - Write your unique personal CD serial number here: (locate your serial number on the CD case) Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Image Line Software. The software described in this document is furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. The software may be used or copied only in accordance of the terms of the agreement. It is illegal to copy this software on any medium except as specifically allowed in the agreement. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, for any purpose without the express written permission of Image Line Software. Copyright © 2002-2005 Image Line Software. All rights reserved. FL Studio Copyright © 2005 Image Line Software. All rights reserved. FL Studio and Fruityloops are registered trademarks of Image Line Software. Other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. Image Line Software is a division of Image Line BVBA. Visit Image Line Software at http://www.image-line.com Visit FL Studio on the web at http://www.flstudio.com/. TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................. 3 FOR FRUITYLOOPS 3.x and FL STUDIO v4.x USERS......................................................................... 5 INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS........................................................................................................................ 6 FIRST RUN ................................................................................................................................................... 7 MAKE SOME NOISE.................................................................................................................................. 8 HELP! ............................................................................................................................................................ 9 GET THE "GETTING STARTED" LOOPS ............................................................................................ 9 THE STEP SEQUENCER ......................................................................................................................... 10 TWEAKING THE CHANNELS ............................................................................................................... 12 TWEAKING THE NOTES........................................................................................................................ 18 THE PLAYLIST (from Patterns to Songs) .............................................................................................. 22 GENERATORS (from Samples to Synths)............................................................................................... 25 INTRODUCING THE TS404 .................................................................................................................... 40 MIXING & EFFECTS ............................................................................................................................... 44 RECORDING WITH LIVE TWEAKING............................................................................................... 52 THE EVENT EDITOR............................................................................................................................... 55 THE PIANO ROLL.................................................................................................................................... 60 AUDIO TRACKS ....................................................................................................................................... 65 INTEGRATED WAVE EDITOR.............................................................................................................. 67 THE BEATSLICER ................................................................................................................................... 68 SHARING YOUR WORK ......................................................................................................................... 71 EXTERNAL CONTROLLERS................................................................................................................. 73 CREDITS..................................................................................................................................................... 80 INDEX ......................................................................................................................................................... 81 Lemon Boy is in the house: Yo, whassup! Having problems? Before you panic and start spamming the FL Studio Tech Support, look for me. I'll pop up here and there with answers to common problems that might save you (and the FL Studio staff) some trouble. FOR FRUITYLOOPS 3.x and FL STUDIO v4.x USERS This guide is current to Version 5 of FL Studio. If you were the proud owner of one of the FruityLoops 3 versions (good for you!) or FL Studio v4 (even better), then read on to see what's new in this version. 1. FL Studio Name. Since version 4, the name of the product changes to FL Studio. FL Studio contains all the stuff you know from FruityLoops 3.x and much more! Mixer. The effects window from FruityLoops 3.x is now a full-blown mixer with 64 insert tracks, 4 send tracks, per-track equalizer, balance controls and disk recording. You can also create complex mixer setups by routing the insert tracks to each other! Playlist. New Piano Roll style showing the correct pattern lengths, supporting live mode pattern mixing and brand new audio tracks are some of the improvements integrated in the new Playlist window. Per-Pattern Grid Length. In previous releases, the Step Sequencer had one fixed length for the entire project. Now you can adjust the sequencing grid for each individual pattern! New in this version .... Check out the new generators and effects in this release! Check out the WhatsNew.doc in the main FL Studio directory for a brief run down of what else is new 2. 3. 4. 5. 5 INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS There are two ways to purchase FL Studio: on line, or in a box with a CD and this printed manual. The installation differs slightly in each of those cases. Read here what to do: A. If you bought your copy of FL Studio in a box, here's what you do. 1. Run the CD. Insert the install CD-ROM that comes with your box in your CD-ROM drive. If you have auto-run enabled, you will see the CD menu automatically appear. Otherwise, right-click your CD-ROM drive icon in Windows Explorer and select Autorun. 2. 3. 4. Start the Installation. Select the FL Studio installation link. The installation window appears. Follow the instructions on screen. The Serial Number. During the installation you will be asked for you serial number. You can find it printed on your CD-ROM case. Write it down for further use and make a backup of this number. Register On-line. After you complete the installation successfully you can register on-line to gain access to the extra FL Studio website features and community. Go back to the CD-ROM menu (reload as described in step 1 if needed), and click on the link called "Click here to register to the FL Studio community" or go to this link http://www.flstudio.com/FLBoxRegistration. In case of problems. Please consult our F.A.Q. section on our website www.flstudio.com. Useful information about known issues can be found there. 5. B. If you bought your copy of FL Studio on line, here's what you do. 6. Download and Install the Demo. Download and install the demo version of FL Studio. It is recommended NOT to install over previous releases of FL Studio/FruityLoops. 7. 8. Apply for a Regcode. Go to www.flstudio.com/register and enter your username and password you received by e-mail after your purchase. Click the button below to your regcode to pop-up. Wait for the E-Mail. The FL Studio team will send you an e-mail with a link. Make sure your email account can accept emails coming from us (domain: e-officedirect.com). Please follow all instructions carefully. Run the Program. Restart FL Studio if it is running and you will be able to save your projects. 9. 10. Bookmark the Web Site. The FL Studio web site is an awesome resource. Check back at http://www.flstudio.com/ often to see what's up. 11. Read this Guide. As soon as you start FL Studio, you'll be confronted with strange dialog boxes and messages. Proceed to the next section of this guide to find out what to do next. Also check the extensive on-line help that comes with FL Studio. 6 FIRST RUN OK, so you just finished the installation and started FL Studio. Read this section for an explanation of what you're seeing. 1. The System Settings Screen. When you first run FL Studio, you may be confronted with a dialog box like the one below (if not, use F10 to bring it up now). You just have to use the select boxes to choose your sound card and MIDI drivers. At first, you may be looking at the MIDI screen, but for now the most important one is the Audio screen, shown below. Click Here Then Here 2. Select an Output Driver from the list in the pull-down menu. If you don't know which one to pick, just leave it as it is. Later on if you have sound problems, you can come back to this screen (by pressing F10) and experiment with the other options. The DirectSound Streaming Buffer. Most of the stuff on this screen you don't need to know about, but you should know what the Buffer Length does. Basically, if you make this buffer long, you are less likely to get choppy sound but changes you make to a playing loop will take longer to kick in. If you make it short, you are more likely to get choppy sound but changes will kick in faster. You want it short, but depending on your computer, you may need to come back to this screen later (F10) and make it longer. If you have a combination of a fast computer and a good sound card, you may be able to get the latency as low as 10ms. For a SoundBlaster Live, you can probably go as low as 30ms. The 3. 7 Use Polling option can also improve latencies for some operating systems (keep it turned on if you use Windows 95 or 98, but try switching it off in Windows 2000 to see if it brings better performance). 4. The Main Screen. After you close the Environment Settings window, you'll be looking at a screen like the one below. FL Studio is all about windows within windows. So you're looking at the outer Main Window with its Tool Panels at the top. Then within that you're looking at the Browser (left) and the Step Sequencer (right). The panels might be arranged differently for you, but that doesn't matter. Step Sequencer MAKE SOME NOISE Press the Play Switch. This is the button on the Transport panel (next to the stop and record buttons). You'll hear the FL Studio 3 demo song. If this is not the first time you've run FL Studio, you'll have to reload this demo. Select Open from the File menu in the top left and double click the file NewStuff.flp in the Loops directory. 8 HELP! This booklet is just supposed to get you up and running quickly. It is not meant to be a reference manual for everything FL Studio can do (that would take a multi-volume encyclopedia!). Fortunately, there's a ton of info out there on what FL Studio does. Here's how to get it. 1. The Hint Bar. This is located on the Main Window just under the Menu Bar (see the previous page, in the top left). You can mouse over any of the controls anywhere in FL Studio and this panel will display a short description of what that control does. The Hint Bar also shows you the Shortcut Key that will activate the same function. This is displayed on the right. Pressing this shortcut key has the same effect as pressing the corresponding button. On-line Help. FL Studio also comes with a massive on-line help reference. Just use the Help Menu and select Contents. This help also features context-sensitivity ­ select a window and press F1 on your keyboard. The reference automatically displays the help you are looking for. Tutorial Loops. Click File >Open and surf to the Tutorials directory. These loops contain notes on how to do various things in FL Studio. The Web Site. FL Studio comes with a massive web site at http://www.flstudio.com/. The site has a support section that includes a FAQ and a Discussion Forum, Online Tutorials, Video Tutorials (soon), Song Exchange section and the Samplefusion samples site. Check these to see if anyone has answered your questions already. If not, feel free to post your own question on the discussion forums. 2. 3. 4. GET THE "GETTING STARTED" LOOPS To use this guide effectively, you should find and load the "Getting Started" loops that were included in the FL Studio package. Go to the File menu (above the Hint Bar) and click on Open. Alternatively, click on the File Open Icon below the Hint Bar. Either method will get you a file dialog box open on the Loops Directory. From here, double-click the Tutorials Subdirectory, and then the Getting Started Subdirectory and you will see the Getting Started Loops. Load up the first one (GettingStarted1.flp), press Play and move on to the next section! HEY! Don't skip that step. This guide will work a lot better if you're looking at the example loops while you read... 9 THE STEP SEQUENCER When you start FL Studio for the first time, you'll see the Step Sequencer window (see the "First Run" section). This is where you lay out your drum and melody patterns for your songs. 1. What is it For? This is where you find channels, and dots. The channels are laid out horizontally (see below) and each one contains a single sound. Each channel has 16 dots. If you're musically inclined, these dots represent 16th notes. If not, think of each group of four dots as one beat, so 16 dots are the four beats of a basic drum loop. (The layout below is from GettingStarted1.flp. You should have this loop loaded now.) A Channel A Channel Name Some Dots 2. What Dots are For? Clicking on a dot lights it up and tells FL Studio to trigger the channel (play the sound loaded into that channel) at that point in the loop. For instance, the 1st, 5th, 9th, and 13th dots in the DNC_Kick channel are lit up, telling FL Studio to play the kick drum sound four times during the loop (if you are thinking of groups of four dots as a single beat, FL Studio will play the sound at the start of each beat.) Try changing the pattern of dots in the DNC_Kick channel. (If you need to turn a dot off, right-click it.) Once you've got the dots to light up like the picture below, press the play switch to hear what you've created. Suggested Changes Channel Controls 10 The Step Sequencer 3. Play with the Channel Controls. After you've set up the pattern, try playing with the Channel Controls on the left. The two round knobs (wheels) control the volume and pan of a single channel, and the green light switches the channel on and off (panning is like the balance control on your stereo; turning this knob moves the sound from left to right in the stereo field). If you want to reset a wheel to it's default position, right-click on it and select reset. Make Your Own Beat. Don't like the beat above? Good, make your own! In the next sections, we'll teach you how to load in new samples, set up melodies, and change the sound of each channel (and even each dot) using Plugin Effects. 4. Don't Save! If you create a masterpiece and you want to keep it, at least save it under a new name. We need you to keep GettingStarted1.flp around so we can use it to explain some of the more advanced features later. 11 TWEAKING THE CHANNELS In this section, we'll show you how to modify the sound of the loops you create by tweaking the sound sample on each channel. FL Studio supports so much of this kind of tweaking that it's possible for two people to create loops that sound totally different using exactly the same samples (technically, each channel contains a Generator, which could be sample-based or could be a synthesizer plugin. More on that later, though). Wait! What's a "sample"? A sample is a little piece of sound stored in a disk file. Each channel in FL Studio uses a single sample, usually containing a single note (like a snare drum hit or a single bass note), but they can also contain entire beats or tunes. Samples are usually ".wav" file types, but FL Studio supports ".xi" sound files t 1. Open the Channel Settings Dialog. OK, let's get going and modify the kick drum sample. Load up the original version of GettingStarted1.flp again and click on the name "DNC_Kick" to bring up the Channel Settings window for that channel (shown in the picture below). Click Here Channel Selector Sample File Name 12 2. Tweaking the Channels Load a New Sample. The first thing you can do is change the sample being used on the channel. The sample file name is shown on the picture above. Clicking on the file icon to the left will open a browser on the directory containing the file "DNC_Kick.wav" along with a number of other kick drum samples. As you click on them, FL Studio will automatically play the sounds for you. Try opening some of these other samples and listening to the effect a new kick drum has on the sound of the loop. Check out the Browser. Another way to load samples is to use the Browser (that's the other window you see when you first opened FL Studio in the "First Run" section above.) This is a special browser for selecting and loading samples, loops and presets files. To find the DNC_Kick sound, click on Packs, and then Dance. Left-clicking on a sample will play it, right clicking will open it into the selected channel, and you can also drag and drop into the step sequencer. (You select a channel by clicking on the green Channel Selector light to the right of the channel name as shown above.) 3. Click Here Then Here Then Here Lost the Browser? No problem. The five big buttons on the tool bar shown below will open and close various windows for you, including the Browser and the Step Sequencer. (Don't worry about those other windows for now, all will become clear in the fullness of time...) 13 Tweaking the Channels 4. Play with the Sample Effects. Ok, at this point the best advice is to start the loop, then play with the controls in the sample (SMP) panel of the Channel Settings Dialog and listen to the difference in sound. Here's a short description of what some of them do. For more info see the on-line help. Vol, Pan: These are the volume and panning wheels that also appear on the main screen for each channel. Turning these will make the wheels on the main screen turn as well. Remove DC Offset: Use this option to fix "vertical" offset in the samples (see Wave View below). Reverse Polarity: "Flips" the waveform vertically. Normalize: Maximizes the sample volume without distortion. Fade Stereo: Creates a stereo fade from the left to the right channel of the sample. Reverse: Reverses the sample. Swap Stereo: Switches left and right channel of the sample. Pitch: The wheel changes the pitch of the sample (speeds it up or slows it down). The number indicates how far the pitch wheel can stretch. Move it by clicking and dragging. Fade In (IN): Applies a quick fade in to the sample (turn maximum to left to disable). Fade Out (OUT): Applies a quick fade out to the sample (turn maximum to left to disable). Pitch bend (POGO): Applies pitch bend to the sample. Useful with drum samples. Crossfade Loop (CRF): Allows you to crossfade the sample for the creation of smooth loop sections (turn maximum to left to disable). Trim Threshold (TRIM): FL Studio trims the silence at the end of the samples, as this frees up RAM and does not alter the resulting sound. This control allows you to raise the volume threshold below which FL Studio detects "silence". Wave View Window: Shows the shape of the sound sample. Click here to hear the sample with all the effects . Also a drag and drop window for loading samples. Can't hear the difference? If you press a button or turn a wheel and you can't hear any difference in the sound, try making the same change on another channel. For example, sometimes a change that doesn't affect a kick drum much will make a huge difference to the sound of a snare. If you still can't hear the difference, stop the loop from playing and listen the sounds separately by clicking on the wave view window. You might be able to hear the effect better without the other instruments. 14 Tweaking the Channels 5. Add Some Echo. Go back to GettingStarted1.flp, open the DNC_Kick channel settings and click the FUNC tab to get the view shown below. The controls in the top section (Echo delay / fat mode) can be used to set up a cool echo effect for a single instrument. Start by turning up the FEED about a quarter of the way, and listen to what happens to the kick drum sound... Try playing with the other controls to change the sound of the echo... You can also toggle between various echo and "fat" modes by clicking the title bar of the Echo Delay section (the default is Classic Echo). More on these different effects can be found in the on-line manual... Feed: Echo volume (sets how quickly the echo dies out). Ping Pong: Makes the echo flip back and forth from left to right (sounds cool on headphones). Arpeggiator: This gets explained in the Generators section of this guide. Pan, Cut, and Res do the same job as on the sample panel, but the effects build up as the echo dies out. Pitch controls the pitch of the echo. If you turn this wheel right, the echo will get higher as it dies out. Ech: Number of times the instrument will echo before it stops. Time: Controls the amount of time (in dots) between each echo. Maximum delay time is 16 dots. Getting Echo Time Just Right: The "Time" control is fine-grained to get you just the exact echo you want. But if you want to echo on the beat, you will have to look at the Hint Bar while you turn the dial. If you want the echo every three dots, just turn the dial until the hint bar shows "3:00". 15 Tweaking the Channels 6. Play With the Instrument Settings. Ok, let's take a quick look at the INS panel before we move on. (There's also stuff you should read about in the MISC panel too, but you can get that info from the On-line Help.) Click on the INS tab and you'll get to the Instrument Settings. Here you can add Envelopes and LFO to your sample for the Volume, Pan, Cutoff, Resonance, and Pitch settings. Indicator Light Effect Selector Envelope LFO Set Middle Note 7. What's an Envelope? An envelope causes a particular parameter to rise, and then fall over the life of the sound. The most classic thing to do is to have a Volume Envelope that makes the sound rise then fall in volume. But you can also put an envelope on Pitch, Cutoff, and Resonance. You can get more info on what all the parameters mean in the On-line Help, but Delay (DEL) sets how much time passes before you hear the sound, Attack (ATT) sets the fade-in at the beginning, Hold (HOLD) sets how long the sound lasts at full volume, and Decay (DEC), Sustain (SUS), and Release (REL) control how the sound fades away. Play with the wheels and watch the graph change. What's LFO? LFO stands for Low Frequency Oscillation. It makes a particular effect oscillate up and down during the life of the sound. Again, more info is available in the On-Line Help, but Amount (AMT) sets how much the effect oscillates, Speed (SPD) sets how quickly it oscillates, Delay (DEL) sets how much time passes before the oscillation starts, and Attack (ATT) sets how quickly the oscillation ramps up to it's full amount. Play with the knobs and watch the graph change. 8. 16 Tweaking the Channels 9. How do I Use Them? Use the Effect Selector (see diagram above) to choose the effect, and then turn the knobs on either the Envelope or the LFO. To turn the Envelope on and off for each effect, click on the Indicator Light. To turn off the LFO, reset the Amount (AMT) to the middle (knob pointing straight up.) 10. Why Can't I Hear the Effect? Well, if you're still on the Kick Drum from GettingStarted1.flp, it's going to be pretty hard to hear any LFO effect, although the Envelope might make a difference. These effects are more audible on longer samples. To hear the effects better, go to the Instrument Settings for the Ins_Round sample and play with the settings now. Now we're cookin' with gas! 17 TWEAKING THE NOTES By now you're familiar with many of the ways FL Studio lets you tweak and shape your sounds. In this section, we'll show you how some of those effects can be applied to each dot separately. We'll also show you how to program melodies. 1. Check out the Graph Editor. The easiest thing to wrap your mind around is probably the Graph Editor utility. First, select a channel to edit by clicking on the channel name, or by clicking on the green Channel Selector light to the right of the channel name. Then press the button that makes the graph editor pop up as shown below. (Make sure you've loaded up the original version of GettingStarted1.flp first.) Channel Selector Graph Editor Button Graph Editor Effect Selector 2. Check out the Effects. Try clicking-and-dragging the Effect Selector to see which of the various effects are available. You should find Pan, Velocity (another name for Volume), Filter Cut, Filter Res, Pitch, and Shift. Most of these effects were discussed previously, in the "Tweaking the Channels" section. The difference here is that you can also tweak the value of these effects for each separate dot. Each bar on the graph sets the effect value for the single note above (or below) it. GettingStarted1.flp already has some tweaking in it. Check out the Volume tweaks in the CHH channel and the Cutoff tweaks in the Ins_Square and Ins_Round channels. 18 Tweaking the Notes 3. Panning the Kick Drum. Try setting the pan effect as shown below for GettingStarted1.flp. The pan graph centers in the middle. You can set pan values by clicking inside the bar for each note at the desired level. After you have set up the view shown below, you should hear the kick drum flipping back and forth from one speaker to the other. This sounds really cool if you combine it with the 3-dot echo you added in the previous section... 4. Try the Velocity. You can get instruments to fade in and out over a pattern using the velocity graph. Try this effect on a channel as shown below. This graph does not center in the middle like pan, but goes from zero to maximum, with zero at the bottom. Volume slides like this can sound extra cool when combined with Cutoff and Resonance slides. (Hint: to make a smooth line in the graph editor, right-click on the first bar, then drag the mouse to the right to set the values of all the bars at once.) 19 Tweaking the Notes 5. Play with the Other Effects. Try to get a feel for the other effects on the graph editor. Filter Cut and Filter Res can be used to add or subtract values to the main cutoff and resonance wheels in the INS panel of the channel settings dialog box. (See the "Tweaking the Channels" section.) Pitch makes the sample higher or lower, like the pitch wheel in the channel settings dialog box. Shift can be used to push a dot closer to the dot beside it (you more musical types can use this to groove a beat). Check out the Melody. When you play GettingStarted1.flp, that synth melody you hear is being played on the Ins_Round channel. To see the notes of the melody, click the Keyboard Editor button with the Ins_Round channel selected as shown below. What you see now is a vertical piano keyboard for each dot on the screen. Hopefully, you have some keyboard skills. (If not, it's time for some lessons!) You can change each note by left-clicking one of the buttons on the keyboard. Right-click turns the note off. When the loop is not playing, clicking a note will also play that note. Keyboard Editor Button Channel Selector Keyboard Editor 6. 7. Change the Melody. Now go ahead and change the melody! You can make it sound how you want, but below is a suggestion for those who like a note of tension in their music (you can find this melody in GettingStarted2.flp). You can use the keyboard editor on any sample - synth, bass, guitar, even drums. Have fun! 20