Preface
FL Studio is a cutting-edge software music production environment. It's an extremely powerful and easy-to-use tool for creating music. This book will cover everything you need to know to produce music with FL Studio at a professional level.
You'll begin by exploring FL Studio's vast array of tools and discover best practices, tips, and tricks for creating music. You'll learn how to set up your studio environment, create a beat, compose a melody and chord progression, mix sounds with effects, and export songs. You'll learn how to use tools such as the piano roll, the 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 how to mix and master your songs. Along the way, you'll explore glitch effects and create your own instruments and custom-designed effect chains and sound design. We'll also cover ZGameEditor Visualizer, a tool 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 and master music effectively, and publish your songs.
Who this book is for
This book is for musicians, music producers, composers, songwriters, DJs, and audio engineers interested in creating their own music, improving their music production skills, mixing and mastering music, and selling songs online. To get started with this book, all you need is a computer and FL Studio.
What's new in the second edition
In this second edition of the book I include topics on FL Studio's newly added plugins. I've added topics on Luxeverb, Vintage Chorus, Vintage Phaser, Distructor, Fruity Newtime, VFX Sequencer, Pitch Shifter, Frequency Shifter, Fruity Granulizer, Multiband Delay, and Frequency Splitter.
I have also updated existing topics to ensure you're using the latest and greatest FL Studio features.
How to use this book
This book is organized in a logical order assuming you know nothing at the start and gradually builds up skills and techniques as you progress. I've tried to compartmentalize topics so you can jump into any chapter and learn the topic without having to rely too much on other chapters. My goal is for this book to act as an easy-to-use reference guide regardless of whether you're new to music production or on your way to becoming a pro and just want to learn the ins and outs of a specific FL Studio feature.
What this book covers
Section I: Getting Up and Running with FL Studio
Chapter 1, Getting Started with FL Studio, introduces you to FL Studio. Here we'll discuss a brief history of music production, the musician career path, and overall process of song creation you'll discover throughout this book. You'll end the chapter by creating your first song and learning how to export music out of FL Studio.
Chapter 2, Exploring the Browser, Playlist, and Channel Rack, helps you learn about the main features in the browser, playlist, and channel rack. These, along with the piano roll and mixer, are the core tools of FL Studio.
Chapter 3, Composing with the Piano Roll, helps you understand how the piano roll adds melody notes, arranges them, adjusts the inflection of notes, and easily moves notes between instruments. You'll learn tips for creating excellent chord progressions from scratch. Once you know how to use the piano roll, you'll be able to compose melodies for any instrument.
Chapter 4, Routing to the Mixer and Applying Automation, gets you familiar with the process of how audio is passed around the mixer in order to apply effects to your music. We'll explore methods of automating effects and how to freeze audio.
Section II: Music Production Fundamentals
Chapter 5, Sound Design and Audio Envelopes, lays the foundation of how sound works. We'll learn what it is, how it's manipulated, and how instruments create sounds. We'll learn how to use Mod X and Mod Y as another method of applying automation.
Chapter 6, Compression, Sidechaining, Limiting, and Equalization, teaches you mixing techniques with compressors and equalizers. We'll explore the Fruity Limiter and Fruity Parametric EQ 2 plugins.
Chapter 7, Stereo Width (Panning, Reverb, Delay, Chorus, and Flangers) and Distortion, explores tools to increase stereo width. We'll explore the Reeverb 2, Fruity Convolver, Luxeverb, Fruity Delay 3, Fruity Chorus, Vintage Chorus and Fruity Flanger, Fruity Phaser, Vintage Phaser, and Distructor plugins.
Chapter 8, Recording Live Audio and Vocal Processing, discusses the setup and preparation you need before recording. We'll learn how to record into FL Studio, how to mix your vocals, and best practices for applying effects to vocals. We'll explore microphones, record audio with Edison and pitch correct with the Newtone plugin. We'll learn how to retime audio samples with the Newtime plugin.
Chapter 9, Vocoders and Vocal Chops, teaches you about special effects that can be used on vocals. We'll discuss how to create vocal harmonies and how to use vocoders to modulate your vocals with an instrument. We'll explore the Pitcher, Vocodex, and Slicex plugins.
Chapter 10, Creating Your Own Instruments and Effects, teaches you how to create glitch effects with sounds, transform samples into playable instruments, and create custom instruments and effect chains that can be reused in any project. We'll explore the Gross Beat, DirectWave, and Patcher plugins. We'll learn how to use the advanced arpeggiator called VFX Sequencer inside Patcher.
Chapter 11, Intermediate Mixing Topics and Sound Design Plugin Effects, introduces you to FL Studio's sound design plugins. We'll explore Pitch Shifter, adjusting frequencies with Frequency Shifter, stretching audio waves with Fruity Granulizer, and delay effects with Multiband Delay. We'll learn multiband processing with Frequency splitter.
Section III: Postproduction and Publishing Your Music
Chapter 12, Mastering Fundamentals, helps you understand the mastering process. This will help your music get to production-level quality and be ready for distribution. We'll explore using the Maximus plugin to master your music.
Chapter 13, Marketing, Content Creation, Getting Fans, and Going Viral, will help you learn about developing your brand, marketing/promoting yourself, getting booked for music gigs, developing a show, suggestions for musicians using YouTube and TikTok, and tips for creating visuals for your music. We'll explore using the ZGameEditor Visualizer plugin to create reactive visuals.
Chapter 14, Publishing and Selling Music Online, helps you understand how you can release your music online to the world and collect royalty revenue.
Download the color images
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/zyMHh.
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this: "Select System info from the Administration panel."
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Get in touch
Feedback from our readers is always welcome.
General feedback: Email feedback@packtpub.com and mention the book's title in the subject of your message. If you have questions about any aspect of this book, please email us at questions@packtpub.com.
Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you reported this to us. Please visit http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, click Submit Errata, and fill in the form.
Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at copyright@packtpub.com with a link to the material.
If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit http://authors.packtpub.com.
Share your thoughts
Once you've read The Music Producer's Ultimate Guide to FL Studio 21, Second Edition, we'd love to hear your thoughts! Please click here to go straight to the Amazon review...
