FL Studio Tutorial: MIDI Recording in FL Studio – Part 2

Carrying on from Part 1, Hollin Jones continues to show you how to get FL Studio setup for MIDI in our latest FL Studio Tutorial     7: Next to the Keyboard Editor button is a Graph Editor button. Press this to reveal a window that lets you control the CCs for any of the […]

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Carrying on from Part 1, Hollin Jones continues to show you how to get FL Studio setup for MIDI in our latest FL Studio Tutorial

7: Next to the Keyboard Editor button is a Graph Editor button. Press this to reveal a window that lets you control the CCs for any of the notes in your pattern. Use the mouse to drag up or down to make individual notes louder or quieter using the pencil tool. Drag the Pattern window to make it longer if necessary.

8: In The slider at the base of the Graph window can be moved to reveal other CC parameters including Pan, Release, Mod and Shift. Use the pencil tool to draw in controller data for any of these and make your part more dynamic and interesting rather than just a straightforward set of notes. Draw in a zero value to delete data.

9: As an alternative you might well want to use a MIDI keyboard to input MIDI note data. With your device set up, right click on the Record button and make sure that you are set to send data to the Piano Roll, by ensuring Record to Step Sequencer is off. Then play some notes and record them, perhaps with a countdown.

10: We’ll look in a future workshop at the many MIDI editing tools, but there’s more you can do with recording and programming in the Piano Roll editor. For example if you go to the Options menu and the the Chord section, you can draw in any of a number of complex chords just by clicking with the mouse : great for sounding like a pro player.

11: Another way to create music is to play or draw in some simple notes and then apply MIDI processing to them. Try this by inputting some notes into the Piano Roll editor and then from the Options menu choosing Tools > Arpeggiate or pressing Alt & A. You will see an arpeggiator window plus some controls.

12: Use the arpeggiator control window to load a preset and then tweak it. You can dial in different kinds of settings to make simple parts more complex while keeping them in time. You might not think of this as recording MIDI, but it is in the sense that you are creating notes out of nowhere and using them in a pattern.

13: You can try the same trick with other tools from the Tools menu. Try for example selecting some notes by dragging around them and then choosing the Flam, Strum or Claw tools. Each one introduces some tweakable new pattern into the proceedings and helps you to generate new parts with minimum effort.

14: Another option is to quickly enter MIDI notes using your computer’s keyboard. This can be done by going to the Options menu and checking that Typing Keyboard to Piano is switched on, or pressing Alt & T. Now you will find that your keys trigger notes in a chromatic fashion, which is handy for monophonic parts and beats.

15: If you return to the Step Sequencer window you can tight click on any sound source and choose to fill the sequence with every 2, 4 or 8 steps. This is a quick way of creating beats, and data can be shifted around or randomized once it’s inside the sequencer to quickly alter your beats, melodies or riffs.


 

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