What Does it Mean to Quantize in FL Studio? “Quantize” can mean a few different things depending on who you’re talking to. To mathematicians and engineers, quantization is a process that takes continuous data such as an analog electrical signal and converts it to an approximated digital signal comprised of discrete points at set intervals. This is what’s going on inside your Analog-to-Digital (ADC) converter. The estimation results in what we call quantization error, and can differ depending on the quantization method used. Although quantization in signal processing is still very important to understand for anyone involved in digital music production, […]

The FL Studio Piano roll has a neat feature that allows us to save time and add random and subtle variation to the velocity and volume of each MIDI note. This effect will end up making your piece sound more like a human made it, and less like a computer. Let’s check it out. What is Velocity? When a pianist plays the piano, we call the speed at which he or she strikes the keys the velocity. The velocity alters the tone and volume of the key being pressed. Pianists consciously change the velocity of their key strikes while playing […]

Why Worry About My Samples Pitch? Having an awareness of the spectral content and frequencies present in each instrument and sample you use in your track can be very powerful. Part of our goal when mixing is to make sure there is enough room in the frequency spectrum for each instrument and sample at any given time. This helps to create balance in your mix and will make your track sound better overall. To drill down even more, it’s good to know what notes your instruments and samples coincide with. Music theory says that the notes on our keyboard all […]

Shortcuts make everyone’s lives easier, and FL Studio is one DAW that is absolutely full of them. Knowing and applying shortcuts can save you hours of time and allows you to focus on the creative part of music production as opposed to the repetitive and tedious parts. Arguably two of the most important of all of the FL Studio keyboard shortcuts are Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V). This tutorial will show you exactly how to copy and paste in FL Studio, along with some other useful related shortcuts and the specific situations and areas of the program where you can […]

Ghost Notes FL Studio is know for it’s awesomely user-friendly Piano roll functionality, among other things. One way to make your Piano roll workflow more efficient is by using ghost notes. Ghost notes are transparent notes from one channel in the Channel rack that show up in another channel when working in the Piano roll. They make it easy to see what notes another instrument is playing in the same pattern, and can help when layering instruments together. Here we can see two Sytrus channels in the Channel rack. One channel has notes programmed into the Piano Roll, and the […]