FL Studio 21 Piano Roll Tutorial for Beginners
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
Get our book on mixing: https://slimegreenbeats.com/products/how-to-mix-beats-ebook
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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.