Hi. This is my first post on publish0x and I'm happy to be here. I hope you feel as welcomed by my presence as I do yours.
I'm going to show you how to make a beat in fl studio using only the built-in plugins and sounds. I'm using fl studio version 20 but you can use whichever version you're on, or whatever daw you prefer. the principles are the same. For your convenience, I have made a video guide you can follow too.
I am going to make a hip hop beat.
Video guide:
WRITTEN GUIDE:
Step 1:
Open Fl studio and navigate to the packs in the browser (list on the left)
I ended up getting most of my sounds from packs>legacy>hiphop (or packs>hiphop if you're on ver.11 or earlier.)
Step 2:
Add a bass, kick, hi-hat and snare to the channel rack. For my bass, i used an 808 kick which i found in packs>drums>kicks.
Step 3:
Add a VST or SoundFont. You can do this by pressing the + icon at the bottom of the channel rack.
Step 4:
Right-click on your VST in the channel rack and click Piano Roll. You can now draw in a melody, experiment till you find something good.
Step 5:
Tune your bass if you've not done so already by clicking the bass and right-clicking on the audio waveform. click on edit in Edison or edit in audio editor. Then when it loads up, right-click and select Regions>Detect pitch regions. this will give us our root note. If your bass has a little drop, discard the first reading and use the reading that holds for the bulk of the note. Now you can exit Edison and go back to your audio file. click the second or third tab. You should see a piano at the bottom. Right-click on the root note it showed you in Edison. It doesn't need to be the same octave.
Step 6:
Create a melody in the piano roll like you did for the Vst, but this time for your bass.
Step 7:
Using the step sequencer, fill in the rest of the drums. Snares are usually on 2 and 4, (1st red one of each 4 counts of reds) or the 3 and the 7 (3rd obe of every 4 barz)
To separate your tracks, right-click the pattern near the top and click split by channel. you can now arrange your beat. Remember to save it by hitting CTRL+S.
