FL Studio (Fruity Loops) has one of the most non-standard, inconsistent interfaces I have ever worked with. Functionality is duplicated but randomly different throughout the application. I wish I could tell you that these inconsistencies are worth their individual stress because of some wondersome flexibility but at least half of the inconsistencies are completely unjustified except, perhaps, as historical. (Which, of course, is not consolation.) Not having assignable keyboard and mouse actions locks you into someone else’s random decision process. No, individually, these inconsistencies are not worth the trouble. Collectively, however, that’s a different story.

FL is still the first app I reach for when I need to record soft-instruments (soft-synths, soundfonts, virtual drums sets, etc.) because it’s solid, hosts any kind of plug-in (both fx and synth) and has one of the cleanest mixers (to my ears anyway) around. And the price makes it the best bargain out there by any standard.

I have uploaded a sample project file [right-click, “Save Target As…”] that incorporates the majority of the workarounds I have come up with in the last two years of working with FL. (Caveat: this project was created using “Producer Edition” and I can’t vouch for which features in the project or in the text of this article is unique to PE and which are in lower versions. That I’m afraid is an EFTR.)

There are a lot of things going on in this seemingly simple project that I will break down here. This project represents my most anal retentive side. Of course I don’t work quite this extreme all the time (if ever) but hopefully the example is demonstrative of what is possible in a sane use of the application and that one or two of the techniques may be helpful.

There are a few implied rules in this sample that I should make explicit:

• I never use the channel settings for effects unless I’m convinced there is a specific sound that comes most easy and “natural” from these settings. All effects will be handled in the mixer.

  Most important: don’t do any level, panning or filtering here.

  Just about every “problem” or effect here can be solved in a much more consistent way across the board by using effects and plugins in the mixer. Not to mention that many of the specialized channels don’t even have most of those panels (Wave Travellor, Audio Clip, SoundFont Player, etc.)

  Is the original sample or wav in the channel too quiet? Then call up your wav editor and normalize the track, or use Parameter EQ to boost the overall signal or using the Soft Clipper or other compression plugin to raise the volume. You want LFO on the filter resonance? Use the Peak Controller against the Fast LP. Want delay? Fergedzsake use Delay or Delay 2. — all done from the mixer, not in the channel.
  

• I never use the “built-in” EQ in the mixer. I realize how incredibly handy it is to have this here but you have to make up for the application’s inconsistencies somehow and there’s nothing worse than having some mixer tracks EQ’d using plugins and other using the built in because it’s more than easy to forget which is which, it’s guaranteed. The FL Parametric EQ is just fine in general and perfect for most FL projects. It will cost you three clicks to put on to any mixer track. Seems worth it to me.
  

• I never, ever (or even ever) record automation onto an instrument track. Through painful data-loss lessons, I have gotten into the habit of always creating a track in the playlist for any automation data (knob tweaks) I am recording. I always put the word “auto” somewhere in the title of the playlist track (e.g. “Auto: Intro Fadeout”) and I usually set the color to some bright, very noticeable color like pink or yellow.

OK, now onto what you actually can see in the project:

Keep Instruments Isolated. Yes, it’s as bad as that. But if you can get into the groove of this particular discipline FL actually rewards you in unexpected (and undocumented) ways that I’ll get into later.



Of course there are countless ways to create the instrument channel but I will skip that because things are complicated enough in this article. Let’s assume that you have the channel sitting there in the step sequencer. Here are steps I have made habitual in order to set up projects:

1. Select the track in the step sequencer and no others. (The little green oval light should be on, all others should be off.)
2. Right click on the track to bring up the local menu and select “Rename”
3. Type in a name that actually means something to you. I try to stay as close to the name of the instrument.
4. Click in the color square (circled here):
5. Select a color that will represent the instrument throughout the project. Believe it or not, FL actually makes this hard because if the color you choose is too light it won’t show up in the step sequencer and mixer, too dark and it will wash out in the playlist. Sigh.
6. Keypress Alt-G to bring up the Group naming entry window and name the group after the instrument.
7. Bring up the mixer window and select an unused mixer pod.
8. Keypress Control-L to assign the channel (along with color/name) to the mixer pod.
9. Bring up the playlist window and click on the last unused track to select it.
10. Right click on the selected track to bring up the naming/color entry box.
11. Optional: Create a black track by hitting the space bar, then the Enter key. Select the next track down and right click again.
12. Type in the name of instrument and select the color that is close enough to the channel color and still be seen here.

Yes, that many steps per channel seems like a huge set of tasks but the fact is, when you’ve trained yourself the whole process is over in seconds. And the rewards I mentioned above?

Well, for one, it turns out that FL treats the Playlist view as a Groups browser. Every time you click on a playlist track it will “open” the right group and select the top track.

One huge win from this is the selected track is the one that receives MIDI input. That means that by simply selecting tracks in the playlist you can enter parts in your MIDI keyboard without stopping to find the track in the step sequencer and clicking on the little green selection light (with all it’s vagaries).

I’m sure that’s a lot for many readers so we’ll take a break. In the next installment I’ll cover how I created the GM MIDI drumset layer and how you can use it as a basis for any kind of drums sounds.