FL Studio 21 Piano Roll Tutorial for Beginners

Slime Green Beats

This is a FL Studio 21 piano roll tutorial. Learn the basics.   Get our book on mixing: https://slimegreenbeats.com/products/how-to-mix-beats-ebook

Transcript

00:00What's good y'all, Slime Green Beats in the building. This is an FL Studio 21 piano roll tutorial.

00:06In this video I'm going to show you how to input notes, access the piano roll, change the note length, and create melodies.

00:14Before we get started, make sure you guys check out the How to Make Mixed Beats book, the sequel to the How to Make Beats book.

00:22This is on Amazon, it's also on our website. We've got ebooks, we've got paperbacks, whatever you need.

00:28We have that, and yeah, check that out. Link in the description. SlimeGreenBeats.com, How to Make Mixed Beats.

00:37Okay, so let's piano roll it up, right? So to access the piano roll, there's a lot of different ways to get there.

00:45But you click this icon right here. This is the piano roll, and it's kind of like self-explanatory.

00:53It's called the piano roll. It's basically the piano side, the note side of beat making.

01:02Melodies especially, also drums use the piano roll.

01:09Basically, any type of melody pattern that you make, it's going to involve the piano roll.

01:17I'll just go ahead and play something. First, let's pick a melody.

01:21I always recommend picking something that sounds good. We'll use Citrus, so everyone can follow along.

01:28Citrus is a free VST, and maybe we'll just choose some random keyboard sound.

01:38Maybe soft E piano.

01:41Alright, just keep it simple here.

01:46So...

02:16Alright, we'll just try to play that.

02:27Alright, so this part is kind of like...

02:31I'll try to play a decent melody, so I'll make a good video here.

02:47I'm just hitting notes.

02:49Okay, so I'm just recording on beat.

02:51Alright, so we just recorded a bunch of stuff.

03:17Alright, we can take the metronome off.

03:19Alright, back to the piano roll.

03:24Alright, so basically what I just recorded is here, kind of just raw.

03:30Basically exactly what I just recorded.

03:32Hit play.

03:34You can either go to song or pattern.

03:37If you're in song mode, you've got to make sure the pattern is on the playlist.

03:41So you'll see this is the playlist, the pattern is here.

03:44If I delete it, you just left click with 1 here, it'll come back.

03:49You can double click on the pattern to enter the piano roll.

03:52Here we go.

03:55So I'm going to pick out the best section that was played.

04:06I think that sounded fine right there.

04:14Alright, so we've got this part here, which actually sounds decent.

04:18Let's just move that to the front here.

04:27Alright, so we can just copy that part.

04:30We'll just keep it simple.

04:31This part sounded alright.

04:35I wish I could do a live one.

04:37Which melody sounds better?

04:38This one?

04:42This one?

04:46This one isn't that great.

04:48Okay, now which ones?

04:49Let's do this one again.

04:55I feel like this one's a little bit more complex to the left here.

04:59So what about this one?

05:01Ctrl A, Ctrl B, B, B.

05:06That's the copy paste.

05:07Ctrl A, Ctrl B.

05:08Learn your hotkeys.

05:09I always say, learn your hotkeys.

05:11That's like piano roll lesson number one.

05:13That's a whole different video if you guys want to check out the hotkey video.

05:16Slime Reads Beats Hotkeys.

05:22So you can change the note length.

05:23If you highlight multiple notes at once,

05:25which you can hit Ctrl down to highlight multiple notes like that,

05:29or you can use this here.

05:34And then switch back to the pencil here.

05:37You can extend the length of all these notes at the same time.

05:40If you just want to extend the length of any specific note,

05:45just left click.

05:48Now that's easy to do.

05:52Extending notes in FL Studio is easy.

05:57That's pretty much it on timeout.

05:59Okay, so we're just creating a melody.

06:00So we showed you how to input notes.

06:02You can also input notes just by clicking here,

06:05left clicking with the pencil icon.

06:15So you don't necessarily need a piano.

06:16I forgot to show.

06:17I'm using a piano here.

06:19I'm just going to play this with.

06:26So we can delete these.

06:29Maybe we'll move some of the top notes down, up and down.

06:50Or we can just play with it.

07:00Move these top ones up too, maybe.

07:08So it's like we've made more variety to the melody.

07:12So try to have variety while making the melody also consistent

07:18and able to be sung over.

07:20So maybe I don't like this part too much.

07:22Bring it back.

07:24Maybe do a little hum to it.

07:28Sing to it.

07:41Alright.

07:42I mean, that's the piano roll tutorial.

07:44That's pretty much it.

07:45I'll keep going, show you some more stuff.

07:47If you highlight everything, it hits Alt-R.

07:50You bring up the randomizer.

07:52I don't really focus too much on this part here.

07:55Here you can randomize the velocities.

07:59And I like to do this because it makes it sound a little bit more natural.

08:04Like more natural like when you're playing in real life,

08:10you'll probably hit the notes a little bit more like velocity.

08:13So velocity is kind of like the pressure you put on the note.

08:17Like I watch.

08:20So we randomize these.

08:21But if I lower the velocity, you can hold Alt.

08:28You can scroll your mouse down with the scroller thing.

08:31You can bring all of these down at the same time.

08:34See, it's like just softer basically.

08:36This is a neat tool because sometimes I feel like it can be too harsh.

08:42Charging on the ears.

08:49That's a piano roll.

08:50And we're rolling.

08:51Again, piano roll is here now.

08:53Extend it, you'll see like it's not there.

08:56And we're rolling.

08:57The piano roll.

09:00What else?

09:01You can like mute notes by clicking this icon here.

09:05Clicking on the note that you don't want to play.

09:22You can go like that.

09:28Bring it back.

09:32What else?

09:35Panning.

09:37Panning is like when you pan left ear, right ear.

09:39I don't do too much of that with the melodies.

09:43There's a lot of different ways to pan too.

09:46You can slice notes in half.

09:48So I can be like this.

09:52I can mainly slice it up here.

09:58This is actually really useful with hi-hats.

10:02Hi-hats for sure.

10:04Or if you just want to cut a note off at a certain place.

10:07You can just left click it and drag it actually in here.

10:11Or you can slice it.

10:16You can select different sounds from up here too.

10:22Right now you can zoom in with this zoom icon.

10:35All right.

10:36That's pretty much it.

10:41Delete obviously.

10:42You can just right click to delete.

10:44Right click.

10:51Cool, right?

10:53That's the piano roll.

10:54Any questions?

10:55That's the piano roll.

10:57Put in notes.

10:58The notes align with these keys.

11:00C5 bass note.

11:04So you can totally make patterns with just clicking them in like that.

11:08If you want.

11:09I just play it because I play piano.

11:12Layered piano.

11:15So I just play piano.

11:16But you can plug in the notes too.

11:19You can plug in drum sounds too.

11:22So we can play.

11:24And this kind of corresponds to the piano roll.

11:26So I can go like this.

11:27So each two step.

11:28And you'll see like now it's in the piano roll.

11:35Yeah.

11:41See that?

11:44Same functionality.

11:57Oh yeah.

11:58Let's check out some of this stuff too.

12:04You could snap it at like a third beat.

12:06I think that's probably the last neat thing to do.

12:09Especially with the hi-hats.

12:12So you see it splits it at a third.

12:14Versus like.

12:19So you see like.

12:22So you can make some kind of like more interesting.

12:26Compelling hi-hat patterns with that.

12:30Alright.

12:31That's it for this video.

12:32Thank you guys for watching.

12:34We have two books out.

12:35Officially.

12:36The how to make beats book.

12:38Which is like three or four years old.

12:41And the new how to mix beats book.

12:43Which is even longer than this other book.

12:46Which everyone.

12:48Like well we've got negative comments about the length of this book.

12:52Which is about 40 pages.

12:55I think it's fine.

12:58We cut out a lot of stuff.

12:59Fluff.

13:00But this book here.

13:02Is 140 something pages.

13:06So I mean.

13:08Two great books.

13:10Flying Green Beats.

13:11Peace out.

13:13Subscribe.

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