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Drums is one of my favorite things about FL Studio …
… you can do drums in FL Studio so many different ways.
And that’s true about pretty much everything in FL Studio.
Which means it’s a really flexible program.
But drums and bass are the heart and soul for most music.
It lays the foundation and groove for your track.
So let’s look at 5 different ways that you can create and use drums in FL Studio.
#1 – Pattern Window and Samplers
This is the most straightforward way to start creating drums in FL Studio.
When you open up FL Studio, likely you see the Channel Rack Window.
This is where you can create patterns for drum kits really easily.
So let’s talk about it.
The default template that opens in FL Studio has four samples that come preloaded.
There is a Kick, a snare, a clap, and a hi hat.
This will most likely be your first experience with creating drum patterns.
And it’s pretty intuitive. You click on buttons to turn them on. And those buttons tell FL studio when to play the sound.
You can do it manually.
Or you can right click on a sample and tell FL Studio to fill in every 2 steps, or every 4. And it will populate the grid for you.
You can stretch the grid size out, so you can go beyond 1 bar (which is the 4 beats that are loaded in by default. I.E. 4 beats = 1 bar in 4/4 timing).
To stretch it out, left click and drag on the right side of the channel rack window.
LOADING MORE SAMPLES
The next thing that you can do is load in other samples.
The window on the left side of the FL studio window is the library window.
You can open it and close it with the shortcut key ALT+F8.
Navigate down to Packs, and then you will see a bunch of folders that are available to you.
You can find other kicks, snares, claps, percussion, effects, etc. in the folders.
If you drag and drop on top of an existing sample in the channel rack, it will replace the sound. The name won’t change, but the sound will.
If you do want to change the name you can right click and pick rename, color, etc.
That will let you change the name to whatever you want.
You can also drag a new sample underneath of the existing samples.
That will open up a new sampler in the channel rack.
Another method is to right click on the sample and select open sample in new channel.
That will do the same thing.
velocity adjusting
One of the things that you will find out as you start to create the drum patterns is it can sound mechanical after a while.
Once you have laid in a pattern, you will realize that it’s triggering the sample with the same strength every time.
So the kick always sounds the same.
But that’s not how drums sound in real life.
When a person is playing, they don’t hit the drum the same way every time.
They might hit it a little softer at some point, or a little louder at another.
All of these small variations in the level of the sound give it a more organic feel.
And FL Studio has a way to change the strength of each hit.
There is a button in the top right of the channel rack that looks like this: It’s the one highlighted in a blue color.
If you click on that, a window will open up that has several tabs on it.
You want to make sure that you are looking at the velocity tab.
This is the tab that will allow you to adjust how hard the sample is played.
I can adjust the blue bar down to lessen the volume, or the strength that the sample is played at. This imitates a softer hit.
This can be really effective on kicks when you have two hits side by side.
Lowering the volume of one will give it a more natural feel to the listener.
Next let’s talk about the panning.
panning
So another thing to think about with a drum kit is that the kit itself is spread out around the person who is playing.
They may have the snare a little to the right.
Maybe a crash or a ride cymbal to the right.
They might have a few toms to the left.
The snare will probably be on their left (if they are right handed) as well as the hi hat.
So when you start to put together your patterns, you can think about the way the kit might be oriented to help you spread your drums out in the sonic space.
Put your drums from left to right to give it a more natural feel.
You can place each of the samples by using panning.
The panning knob is the knob on the left side of the channel rack where the sample is.
It looks like this:
It’s right next to the volume knob, which we will talk about here in just a minute.
You can turn the panning knob right to push the sample in the right side of the sonic landscape.
Or you can move it left to push it into the left part of the sound space.
Mess with this a little bit and you can start to get a more natural feel to your drums.
But also note that you don’t have to adjust the panning here.
You can wait until you have your samples loaded into the mixer to adjust the panning.
Some people prefer to do all their adjustments in the mixer (volume, panning, etc.).
So you can choose the place you want to mess with that as you get more familiar with a workflow that works for you.
So now we have the panning set, let’s move on to swing.
swing
Swing is a little difficult to describe.
It basically shifts when the sample hits by a little bit, making it have more of a feel.
The higher you turn the swing knob, the more it will shift the hit off time.
The swing knob is in the top right of the channel rack.
And when you mess with that, you affect every drum sample that you are placing onto the grid.
And every pattern.
So make sure that you don’t push it too much, unless that’s what you are going for …
This is going to be one of the most common kinds of adjustments you will make on your patterns.
Especially if you are working in the Lo-fi, Hip-Hop and other drum focused genres.
It’s nice to add a little swing to your patterns.
It gives it a nice groove and feel.
Volume adjustment
One of the most common kinds of adjustments you will make will be to adjust the level of the sample itself.
This will be true when you are pulling in samples from different kits or places.
Not all the samples are going to be brought in at the same level.
So you can adjust the level by using the volume knob that is located to the left of the sample window.
Most of the time I like to adjust the volume down, instead of up.
Because I want to have more headroom to work with once I get to the mixing stage for a song that I am working on. This is the first layer in the process of gain staging.
Like I said earlier, some people will not use the volume knob that is in the channel rack window. They will wait until they have placed their drums into the mixer before they adjust the levels.
This is anexample from Internet Money, a YouTube channel, that shows the leveling process that he uses to adjust the volumes of his samples once it is in the mixer.
Let’s move on to recording midi with samples.
#2 – Recording Midi with Samples in Piano Roll
So one thing that I like to do is to bring in a sample into FL Studio.
But instead of laying the sample out on the grid for the pattern, I will record playing the sample with a midi keyboard.
You can do this by making sure that recording notes option is checked.
You can find the option in the recording options window.
(right click on the record button to see this window pop up)
Then I will play the sample with my keyboard.
I will let the pattern loop a couple of time and play on the keyboard. Until I like what I am hearing.
Then I will press the record button and record the take.
This records the midi that I play on the keyboard.
And tells FL Studio when and how hard to play the sample.
You can also change the pitch of the sample with the key that you play on the keyboard.
Once I stop the recording, the buttons will disappear on the channel.
And you will be left with something that looks like this:
If you click on it, the piano roll window will open up.
You will see the notes that you played during the recording.
You can go back and adjust things like the velocity, and do quantization.
Quantization will get the notes to line up more on a grid.
Or you can manually adjust the position.
You could also delete notes if you ended up pressing the wrong key at some point.
The nice thing is that a lot of the variety of velocity and when you hit the note are already baked into the recording.
This just means you have to make small adjustments to get it exactly the way you want.
So let’s move onto the FPC.
#3 – FPC – Using Kits and Creating Your Own Kit
You might be thinking what the heck is the FPC?
It’s basically FL Studio’s version of the old school drum machine, the Akai MPC.
It’s set up so you have 16 pads that are loaded or can be loaded with samples that you want to trigger.
One option to load the FPC is to click on the + icon on the bottom of the channel rack:
And then select FPC from the DRUM section of the menu that comes up.
But instead of having the physical interface, like the MPC, you can tie the FPC to a midi keyboard or edit the notes manually in the piano roll, to create drum patterns.
The nice thing about the FPC is that it comes with a few drum kits already pre-loaded.
You can access and load these kits by clicking on the arrow at the top left.
Then going to PRESETS, and picking a kit, like GRETCH, or HQ Jazz Kit, or 808.
It will then load all those samples into the FPC.
You can see what samples are loaded by pressing each pad (click it with your mouse, or use the midi keyboard). Once you have figured out where all the samples are, you can get set up to record.
With the FPC, I like to utilize the Blend Notes option that is near the transport controls section.
With this turned on, it lets you keep layering sounds over one another with the FPC.
If you don’t have this option turned on, you will overwrite whatever you just recorded before.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that.
I lay down the kick and snare.
Then I go back to put in the hi hat, and when it finishes all I have is the hi hat.
So make sure that you turn the Blend Notes option on. This is what the button looks like
PREMADE PATTERNS FOR INSPIRATION
One of the cool things with using FPC as well is that you utilize the pre-made patterns that FL Studio has for the FPC.
You can access these by scrolling down to the Scores section on the browser Window on the left side.
Open up the folder labeled FPC drumloops.
You’ll see folders that are labeled by style, like ambient, hip hop, glitch, etc.
Once you get there, you can drag those files directly onto the FPC channel in the channel rack.
It will populate the FPC with that pattern.
And then you can create a new pattern and drag another into the FPC.
This is a great starter thing to do.
It lets you work on something quickly and start to get some ideas.
You can also modify the patterns that you drag in by going into the Piano Roll and editing the individual notes.
That’s pretty slick.
CUSTOM DRUM KITS
Now the next thing that you can do with the FPC is to create your own custom kit.
This is great to do if you have downloaded a sample pack or two, and what to create your own setup from the samples that you like.
Let’s say you downloaded and installed a sample pack.
And as you’ve used it, you’ve found that you come back to some of the same samples over and over when you are making your own music.
So let’s make a custom drum kit from some of those favorite samples.
To create a new kit, first select the option to load up an empty kit.
You do that by clicking on the top left arrow which will bring up a menu.
Go to the Presets, and select EMPTY.
This will load a completely blank kit.
Click on the first pad.
From the left side of the window, drag in your first sample into this section of the window:
Once you do that, you should be able to click on that pad and hear the sample you just loaded.
Keep doing that until you have loaded all the samples that you want.
SAVING A CUSTOM KIT AS A PRESET IN FPC
BONUS TIP – you can also select what note will play each sample on the FPC.
So if you have a midi keyboard like the Akai MPK Mini MKII, you can make the pads on the top be the “keys” that trigger the samples.
This is great to create the actual tactile feel of having drum pads.
You have to do a little detective work to figure out which pad is which note.
Press the pad, look at the information bar in the top left of the screen.
It will tell you the name of the note.
And then go back to the FPC location.
Click on the midi note for that pad. Then click the LEARN option.
Then press the pad that you want to use to trigger that sample.
Repeat this process until you have all the samples loaded that you want to use.
Once you have the samples loaded and the pads setup the way you want them, then you can save this as a custom kit.
Click on the arrow at the top left of the FPC window.
Then select Save Preset As.
And then name the kit.
Next time you open up FPC, you click on the top left arrow, go to presets, and you should see the name of the kit that you just saved.
When you click on that option, your custom kit you saved will load up.
How fun is that?!
You just created your own personal drum kit for your song productions.
So let’s move onto the using the samples directly in the playlist window.
#4 – Laying Down Samples Directly in the Playlist
To open up the Playlist window, press F5
Now I showed you originally how you can drag the sample into the channel rack window to put together a drum kit.
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But you can also place the drum samples directly into the playlist window.
To bring up the Playlist window, press F5.
Now with the browser window open on the left side of FL Studio, you can drag the sample directly into the playlist.
Once you have placed it once, you can hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard and left-clik drag the sample,.
this will make a copy of that sample and let you place it where you want to put it next.
So you could lay down 4 kicks like this:
Then you could drag in another sample like a snare, place that.
Then you could use the SHIFT and drag method to bring more snares onto the playlist where you want them.
If you just want to play a certain section of the playlist over and over like a pattern or loop, you can go up to the time bar, and drag with right click on the mouse button to select the section that you want to loop.
If you are working in a 4/4 time, then you will most likely select 4 bars or 8 bars.
Then you can drag other samples onto the grid and keep layering things until you get it sounding like what you want.
Here is an example from a song that I was working on.
Some samples I dragged onto the grid directly to add to the sounds and make it sound larger and more full than it did before.
I used some patterns to lay down the basic beat and then dragged in other samples to give it a more epic, cinematic feel.
It’s nice to have a few different ways that you can blend together.
It just makes it easier to know what workflow works best for you.
Try them all out and see what you like.
If you want to see another example of someone laying down the samples directly on the playlist, you can check out thisvideo from Another Monster. I always like seeing how other people work.
One last method that I want to cover for you is the VST instrument method.
#5 Utilize a VST Instrument for Drums in FL Studio
If you produce music for any amount of time, you will start hearing about VST instruments.
For drums there are many VSTs, like Kontakt, BFD, Addictive Drums, EZ Drummer, Superior Drummer, etc.
With these, you load in the kits.
And then you can either use the Piano roll/midi keyboard to start laying out a pattern.
Some of the drum VSTs will come with midi patterns that are already created.
And with the patterns that are already created, you can sometimes drag those into the channel rack window and create the midi directly on there.
This is true with the Native Instruments Kontakt Abbey Roads Drummer, and the other Drummer packs that are available through Native Instruments.
And that can mean some pretty easy creation of patterns and ideas when you are starting out.
CONCLUSION
So like I said at the start of this, there are so many ways that you can use drums in your productions.
There is no way to do it.
So you find what works best for you.
What fits best with the style of producing that you enjoy.
Personally I like blending a couple of these methods right now in my music production.
I like to record midi for certain samples.
Then I lay certain patterns on the grid.
But then I have also been laying in samples directly on the playlist, when I want to fatten up certain sections of the song. To make it have more impact and punch.
The beauty of FL Studio is that there are many ways to do the same thing.
That can also be frustrating when you are first starting out.
You feel like you have so much to learn.
But try each one of these methods out. Figure out what you connect with the most.
Then use that method until you get really good at it.
So that was just drums.
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There are so many other parts of putting together a song in FL Studio.
And as a beginner, it is intimidating trying to figure out how to do everything.
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So if you want someone to show all the basics of FL Studio, then check out the FREE guide on the 6 Simple Tools You Need to Produce Spotify Smashes in FL Studio.
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This guide will show you all the basic things that you need to start producing your own hits.
Cheers,
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Jeremy