Fruity Loops Studio Tutorial (**New** John Legend remake!)
*** Edit:Â Crap, I completely forgot to mention this the first time I posted this; this tutorial is a remake of Nas's "The Message" ***
I've been looking for a good song to help showcase this new way of sampling, and I think this song fits the bill well. Just make sure that, if you're interested in trying this out, you do it soon ... these files will only be up for a limited time (however, I might re-up them one more time if someone REALLY needs it).
Now, this method might not be entirely new ... I used FL4 for years, and I know you couldn't do it on there. I totally skipped FL5, but you might be able to do it in there. However, for the best bet, use FL6 like I do.
To me, the main advantage of this style of sample-based beat-making is that it's a lot more intuitive - everything you do, you can see it happen right before you (unlike the other ways of sampling, where doing things like time stretching leaves you just kind of guessing and tweaking until you get it right). And when you get good at it (it took me less than a day to get comfortable doing things this way), it's also a LOT more efficient. It will take a lot of explaining, but TRUST me, just try it, and I'm sure you won't go back.
So, let's start things off by introducing you to the enhanced "playlist" mode in FL. Open it up by either clicking the playlist icon, or simply pressing F5 on your keyboard:
Try left-clicking the box that I marked with a red "x" in the image above ... from here, you can load up any samples you have on your computer (another way of doing this is to save your samples in FL's "Project Bones" folder, and then you can simpy drag-and-drop the file into the playlist - very convinient).
So, head on over to Palmsout Sounds and get Sting's "Shape of My Heart":
http://palmsout.blogspot.com/2006/05/sample-wednesday-8-nas.html
Got it? Now open it up in playlist mode like I just described above, and you should now see a big graphical display of the song in your playlist window (the song takes a couple bars to get going):
Now, there is one CRUCIAL step we need to make here; I don't know why Image-Line didn't just make this feature automatically on; because it starts out as being off, I imagine most people will go on using FL never realizing they can use the playlist for samples. So what you need to do is switch on "live mode":
Once you're in "Live Mode", you can start listening to and editing your sample in playlist mode. Two other helpful settings to switch - make sure this is lit up:
This used to be standard in FL4 ... I don't know why they changed it, but you have to turn this option on so that the screen follows your song as you play it. Also, back in playlist mode, to make chopping up your song easier, set the grid to "none":
There will be times that you'll want this set to "none", and other times it might be more helpful to set it to "line" or "main" ... the more you use this style of sampling, you'll get a feel for it. For now, leave it to "none".
Finally, to make it easiest to chop up the sample, we want to zoom in all the way, so we can see things really clearly:
You want to hold down the left mouse button and drag your mouse upwards to do this.
Okay, still with me? I know, some of that might not make sense yet, but the stuff coming up ahead will put it all in perspective.Â
So now, let's start making a beat!
Now, the first thing we need to do, as always, is detect the tempo - this, unfortunately, still doesn't come easy, but new features to FL6 *do* make things considerably easier. Simply left-click the drop-down menu for your sample:
... and choose "detect tempo":
Now, FL needs a little help guessing the sample's tempo:
I'm not entirely sure how FL goes about detecting a sample's tempo, and there are a ton of things that can go wrong (especially, alot of genres of music actually use more than one tempo setting over the course of a song). But there are alot of times it can get it right, especially if you set it in the right direction. Now, hopefully, if you're to this point in my thread, you've been making beats for a while, and have a general idea of what different tempos sound like. So listen to your sample ... if it's really slow, choose "50 to 100", if it's really fast, choose "100 to 200", but the VAST majority of the time you can go with "75 to 150" ... and that's what we'll choose for this sample.
It tells us that the sample is "84.203", and this looks like it's correct ... but let's just try to line things up and find out for ourselves.
Scroll over a little bit until you reach bar 3:
And notice where the song starts:
Now, let's move this over a bit, so the song starts at the beginning of a measure (this makes chopping easier, imo). Simply hover your mouse above the sample, and it should turn into a cross-hair-like pointer. You can now just hold the left-mouse button down, and drag the mouse to the left or right to move the sample around. Let's move it so the song starts on the start of the 4th measure:
Now, scroll over to around measure 15, where the drums have come in, and listen for the snares:
The snares hit on beats 2 and 4, just like they should - and they continue to do so all the way until the end of the song, if you listen the whole way through. In other words, we've got the tempo correct, everything is in line with the grid, and if Sting didn't sing through this, you could just go ahead and rap over this as is.
*continued in next post*
But now, we have one last tempo challenge left - our song is at 84.203, and Nas's song is at 89.300 (or, at least, that's what FL tells me, and it looks correct). So what we need to do is stretch this sample so that, at 89.300bpm, it's still in line with the grid.Â
Now, there are a lot of timestretching methods, but this one using the playlist is, as far as I'm concerned, BY FAR the easiest and best way to do it, because you can see how everything is changing right in front of your eyes. So here's how I do things - scroll all the way to the end of the song, and make a mental picture of EXACTLY where the sample ends (with our current tempo):
It ends just a little after the third beat of measure 101.
Now, change the tempo to 89.300, and as you do that, you'll notice the sample stretching out a little more and more to the right:
The sample now goes all the way to measure 107.
Now, what we need to do is hover our mouse over the very end of the sample, so that the pointer looks like a two-way arrow (sorry, I can't do a screen capture of this; I hope you understand what I'm saying). You can now hold the left mouse button down, and drag the sample back so it ends EXACTLY where it did when our tempo was 84.203bpm (so, it should end just a little after beat three of measure 101). Now go back and listen to your song - everything is lined up perfectly again, the snares and everything! The only change is that it now sounds a little sped up, and if you listen to it now, compare it to Nas's song, and the two should sound exactly alike! This is an essential method, imo, since you can now take any sample and make it fit PERFECTLY in any other tempo you might want.
If you've made it to this point, congratulations - everything is smooth sailing from here.
Let's go back to where the song begins ... there are three measures of silence, and obviously, we don't need those, so let's just chop them off. Select the knife tool:
And slice right where the song starts:
This is kinda hard to describe, but easy to do ... you just left-click at the bottom of the sample, and then drag the mouse up to the top of the sample, drawing a line over where you want to chop. Now, switch to the "draw" tool:
As you can see, FL has created two slices for you; one is the couple bars of silence you don't need, and then the other slice is the rest of the song. Using the "draw" tool, simply hover over the slice of silence, and then just right-click the mouse - now it's gone!
So now, we can finally move on to creating the loop used in Nas's song. You probably recognize the first measure or two, but throughout the song, some of it is chopped up and played in a couple different patterns, so it's useful for us to split them up so that we can organize them however we need them.
So, here's the first slice we need:
Now, scroll over to measure five, and slice it on the third beat:
And, finally, slice it right before measure six starts:
Now, switch back to the "draw" tool, and go back to your first slice (the one in measure 4). Access the drop-down menu for the slice, and choose "make unique". This is a VERY important feature, for a number of reasons. First off, if you were to do something to this slice, for example, we'll say you stretch it, it will also stretch all the other slices of te sample you cut it from. If you make it unique, then you can change it without changing everything else. We'll see some more uses of it soon. FL will suggest you call it Shape Of My Heart - Part 1 ... that's what I'll use, but feel free to call it whatever you like. Now, go ahead and make the other two slices unique, too. In case you want to make sure you've done everything alright, here are my versions of the three slices:
Slice 1
Slice 2
Slice 3
(note: I just realized that there's no easy way for me to upload the sped up versions of these slices, so just keep in mind that these are at 84bpm, not 89bpm. The important thing is to check out where the slices are sliced, anyways)
Now you can just delete the rest of the sample that we're not using.
And now we're ready to use the samples - there are a number of ways of putting a song together using this method, but I usually find it easiest just to use the playlist itself. This would be a good time to switch the playlist grid back from "none" to "line".
Now, in Nas's song, there are, for the most part, just two different two-measure loops; both are very similar but each end differently. Let's start by placing Slice 1 at the beginning of the song:
Then we place down Slice 2 twice in the second measure:
And that completes the first loop! Now, do the same thing for Slice 1 at the start of the second loop:
Then we just put down Slice 2 once:
And finish with Slice 3:
The playlist also features a Select tool (looks like a lasso), but there really isn't any easy way for me to describe how to use this with just pictures. Just know that you just need to highlight a slice, press Control+C to copy it, then Control+V to paste it.Â
Sometimes it's hard to find the pasted slice since this thing sometimes pastes the pasted slice over the original ... just expirment with it, because once you get the hang of it, it's very useful, and the two loops we created above pretty much play for the entirety of Nas's song.
Well, that's all there is to it! A little EQ to boost the low end (the bass) would help, and there is also some strings in Nas's version; I'll try add those and the drums to this tutorial later on, but right now there's so much going on in the house that I can't hear my own ******* music :evil:.
Hopefully this helps you with your sampling game; let me know if you have any questions about it or if there's anything I didn't cover. I'm also thinking of trying my hand at a couple other Nas songs from the samples posted at Palmsout ...
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