From the course: Learning FL Studio 12

Building a beat in Drumaxx - FL Studio Tutorial

From the course: Learning FL Studio 12

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Building a beat in Drumaxx

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- There are multiple ways of getting started building basic beats in FL Studio. One great way of doing this is to use the default plugin Drumaxx that comes bundled with the program by default. Let's take a look at this plugin now. First of all, you want to make sure that you've added Drumaxx to your default FL Studio project by going up to the Channel rack, pressing the Add new channel button, and selecting Drumaxx from the drop-down menu. As you can see, we've already added one, so we don't need this new one that we've automatically created. What Drumaxx does, is it automatically links itself to your MIDI keyboard, so you can then use your MIDI keyboard to record in MIDI and create a drum pattern without drawing it in automatically by hand. So for instance, when I start pressing keys on the MIDI keyboard, this will be reflected in some of the actions that Drumaxx then responds to. (drum music) As you can see, as I play around on the MIDI keyboard, this then responds in Drumaxx to the MIDI inputs that I'm giving it. As you can see, you can then change the types of sounds that you're creating, as well as the MIDI keyboard key that that actually links to So for instance, our bass drum is linked to C3, (drum music) the bottom note on our MIDI keyboard, whereas the snare is linked to C4, (drum music) which is the key an octave up from this. You can then change these settings completely to suit your heart's content, or whatever you're most comfortable with. Then, once you're done doing this, you can either select and use the drum sequencer and draw in a pattern by hand, or you can record in MIDI using the record button at the top here and record in a drum pattern yourself. So, we're going to lower the tempo down to 100 and have a go at doing this ourselves. Select the playlist, make sure you've got an empty pattern, hit the Record button, and make sure that what you select is the Everything when it asks you what you'd like to record. Simply select this and we'll now record in some basic MIDI. Remember to hit the Play button in order to start the recording. (drum music) We can then press the Stop button, undo the Record button, and you'll see that it's been played into Pattern 1. Once we then bring that up and draw that into the playlist, we can then unselect the Pattern Mode and play this back. (drum music) One great feature about using MIDI keyboads to record in drum beats is that you get that human touch, which you don't get by drawing in the MIDI yourself. If we double-click on this pattern and open up the Piano roll, and scroll up to where our MIDI keyboard has been recorded, you can see just by looking at the MIDI notes that they're all slightly offbeat and unquantized. If you wanted to quantize these, you could do this very easily by using the Piano roll options and then Tool, and Quick quantize or Quantize. But often times, people like to leave them where they are because this gives them a human touch. Sometimes your MIDI notes will be vastly offbeat, such as with this bass drum here. But you can simply zoom in, hold down the Alt key, and then draw it back in so that it's then where you want it to be. You can then very easily create an interesting human influence drum pattern that has different velocities, as you can see at the bottom here, that still maintains human touch and still retains interest. Using Drumaxx is better than using individual drum samples, as the sound is generated organically each time as well using the synthesizer. This means you get a more dynamic and humanized sound.

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