# Let's talk about making things sound good: a short FL Tutorial



## Moekii (Jul 19, 2009)

So, I'm new to FA. I've been on SA for a long long time, since they allowed music to be on the site, as it happens. 

FA has something to a sizable degree that SA does not. No, it isn't the porn. But that's cool too. What SA has is sheer volume of people who are noobing it up in FL Studio. 

It's awesome, I love it. 60% of those people are going to get really awesome. But for now? They all seem to be at the same level I was a couple years ago. Super FL Slayering it up. That was all fine and good when I was doing it, when it was rather difficult to do much else. But now? there's so much more to do.

Most people stick FL in its own category of fail. Taking a random song like, say, This and automatically assuming that that is the absolute limit of the program. 

Then there are the people who are good with FL Studio who will tell you, and prove to you via relatively amazing music, that FL is capable of much much more. Provided you know what you're doing of course. 

Well I'm one of those people, and today I will at least START to explain how to FL your life better. I will begin by giving you a selection of pieces of mine to illustrate my progression as an FL user. 

I started with songs much like the one posted above. I cant seem to find any, which is odd. 
I moved on to something similar: Like This, only it's a little better sounding. 

More recently I have made This. Pretty far removed from the above tracks

And now here's my new standard: This almost sounds like real guitar! Well, that's because it is. Beside the point! 

Listen to the random song from the top and then listen to the last song in this list. It's difficult to consider that it's made with the same program. How is this possible? The key is simple. 

Get the hell away from FL stock material. 

It starts very ground level. Break out your favorite google homepage and type in "free drumloops" and any applicable variation. Take all of them. "Free Samples" is also good. after that, google "free soundfonts". the file format you want is .sf2. 

Insert the new drumloops you've found into FL by adding them as fruity slicer channels. Mess with them heavily to find a groove you enjoy. SoundFont sets usually have drum sections that are arranged in GM midi format. The format the drums would be if they were in a keyboard sample library. You open the soundfonts using the FL SoundFont player. 

Armed with new materials you can now make things much like "Forest", the third link posted. With the notable exception of the guitar sounds. 

To fake a guitar, you must first think how a guitar is routed to make the sound you're looking for. Electric guitar line in, clean guitar signal is processed and distorted. Very good. 

Slayer attempts to emulate this routing by giving you the "clean" guitar option. In "Forest", what I did was I used a slayer channel on clean, but distorted it via a new FX plugin VST. 

VSTs are fun. Google "free VSTs" as well for neat things. Specifically, google for "Voxengo Boogex" for a nifty guitar amp emulator. 

To insert new VSTs: Get the vst file and put the file in your FL directory, or install them to your systems "vstplugins" folder that will normally be there or created by the VST if it has an installation process. In the FL directory, Image-Line/FL#/Plugins/VSTs and just put it in there. Back in the FL program, go to add a new effect, or generator (there can be VST generators) click on "more" in the list. On the window that pops up hit "refresh/fast scan" and the new VSTs that get added should show up in red. Check the "f" boxes. Go back into the channels or FX adding drop downs and your VSTs will be there. 

Even without some more tips I will share with you, you are now armed with so many new and interesting things to do to make songs new and interesting beyond anything the original FL material could do. There isnt a single thing in the "Inhumanity" track that was FL original. But we continue anyway! 

One of the simplest things you can do to a song to give it the best kind of boost is multitracking. This is having two or more of the same line layered over each other but stereoized. For example: In the Inhumanity track, the guitar parts were Quad tracked. I played each (incredibly simple and noob) guitar part four times. I then panned two to the left, and two to the right. 

The thing about using most third party amp emulation software (I actually use a program called GuitarRig for my actual guitar. It works wonders for it, but in the past I have found it wasnt so good in using samples or generators with) is that it comes out mono. So to fix this, you need to haev two (or more) FX channels with the same voxengo preset, one panned left, and the other right. 

This also means you need two of whatever audio source you're using to get amplified. Things like Slayer are never the same twice, since they are generated each time, so stereoization works good. Run the slayer clean sound through the voxengo and you'll get a new guitar sound. 

Now, i said "new". Not "better". The idea is to get away from the Slayer sound entirely. getting it to sound "good" is an absurdly different task. 

Unfortunately, since getting a real guitar and having a vastly superior sound accessable at any time for a hundreth of the effort, I don't really remember specific settings or such for the FX sends or generators. So it's up to you to experiment the shit out of it until you find stuff you like. 

Getting to this point in your journey not only has given you a glimpse into creating better guitar sounds, but at large better at using FL. doing the free VST search will open your world in terms of possibilities. doing the Free drumloop and sample search will as well. 

Expand your aresenal of ready made awesome sounds and use them until you're good enough to actively create and manipulate your own in ways that are as good or better than the cheap shot presets. Dont get me wrong, Songs made entirely from presets work wonderfully. 

The real key here is to try and try and  try and try. Experiment everything, dont worry if something sounds like ass, finish it to a decent degree then start fresh on something new. Maybe that only works for me, but thats what I did. It left me with like, 300 mediocre songs and 10 or 20 id consider selling worthy. 

Compare your work to your favorite commercial artist. Listen to how their stuff sounds and figure out how to do that. You'll be a profressional grade audio engineer in no time. 

So thats it for now. I think in the future I might just make a video to explain stuff like this better. But really? who knows. No one has any real reason to think I ever will ;p

Ask me questions if you have them. Go look at the little stuff i've got up on my page so far and comment and stuff, ill return the favor :]


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## Lyxen (Jul 26, 2009)

I've been seeing from SA come to FA recently. What is SA?
Your best bet in FL is to go pure 3xosc Modding to your needs..


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