FL Studio Beat Tutorial

A lot of us start off with a beat so i thought this would be where i start the tutorials. My forte is house music so i'll be covering house beats first off. I chose Fruity Studio for the tutorial because its a good intermediate package and a lot of you use it. I prefer cubase sx now but i used to be an avid fruity looper! I'll assume you know the basics like loading samples into the channels etc and i'll try to keep things basic for this tutorial.

Here's the samples we'll be using for the tutorial from my private stash... Not exactly hans zimmer but what the hey!:
Right click and save as
Ok load up fruity and have the samples ready for action. Set the bpm to 126 for now because we can always change that later. Load the kick drum (bdeHOE30019house1.wav) into the first channel and lay down a simple 4 beat pattern:

Have a quick listen to see what we've got so far. You guessed it: boom boom boom boom.... Not a particularly interesting beat at the moment but the foundation is there. Next we're gunna add the snare. I've chosen a subtle clack sounding snare for the moment but we can always change it later. Load up the snare (sda-housemusique056.wav) into the channel and make it play on every other beat like below:

Listen again. Wowee, i'm sure you could of done this before we even started. Next up we'll add the shaker. The shaker is used alot in house beats, its you dont often notice it but it can really add to the rhythm of the beat and interact with the hats. Lets add the shaker (shaHOE44001shaker.wav) into the channel and for the moment we'll give it a simple off beat pattern:

Take a listen now. Its starting to sound a bit better but there's still a lot to do. Now we'll add a lil hi-hat tap to the equation. Load the hihat (chhHOE42005hihat.wav) into the channel and again do an offbeat pattern but this time add one extra note:

Have another listen. We're starting to get a bit of a groove going on here and we've only used 4 samples so far. Notice how the 4th hat in the pattern sounds different to the rest? You can blame this on the interaction with the shaker, however in this case its a good thing because it sounds nice and different Now that we have a lil shuffle groove, why not add some more? Add the clack (prc-clack01.wav) into a new channel and place it just before the snare. For now we'll stick with the normal 1/16th beat timing but if you wanted to change the groove slightly then go into the piano roll and move the clack forwards or backwards slightly with the snap set to 'ticks'. If you're quite new to fl then ignore the last sentence! This is what OUr beat should look like at the moment:

Have a listen to the beat again. The clack sounds awful at the moment because its far too loud. The clack needs to be subtle really so reduce the volume of it to about 40%. Later on we'll change all of the levels for the beat but for now that clack is too annoying at a loud volume! Now I'm going to add an offbeat open hi-hat (ohhHOE43013openhihat.wav). At the beginning of the song you might not want to include this but for a chorus or an established verse you probably will. Its good to have the open hat come in as a bit of a build up rather than just going all the way through. However it doesnt mean you have to do this, it's best not to stick with one way of doing things for too long. Again i've changed the volume of the sample to about 40-45%:

Have another listen to the beat. Its sounding better now but the middle is sounding a little empty. We need to put something in to keep the flow between the 2 halves of the beat. A simple note addition on the clack channel sorts it out:

As we've got an alright beat laid down we should have a fiddle with the levels. When i'm sorting the levels i like to mute everything except the kick and slowly unmute each channel and change the level until it sounds right. I started with the kick and snare together and reduced the snare's volume to 60%. Next i unmuted the shaker and set it to around the same; 60%. The hi-hat tap was next and i set it to around 65%. I then set the clack to 30% and the open hi-hat to 32%. Btw if you're wondering how to find out what percentage your volume is at, turn the nob and look at the status bar in the top left of the screen just below the file menu. This concludes this mini tutorial because its ticking towards 2am and i'm a bit ill as it is. Included in the zip is a sample of what your beat should sound like after the above. I've also created a quick fill by adding 2 or 3 notes in the kick and hi-hat channels. I've also added a quick synth and bassline to show an example of what the beat sounds like in a song rather than just on its own. I know the bass is outta tune, it took 5mins