What To Do When the Volume Changes Itself in FL Studio

If you’re new to FL Studio, it can be a very overwhelming experience. There are seemingly endless knobs, buttons, sliders, and everything in between. One of the most common questions asked is why the volume changes itself. The problem is due to accidental or hidden volume automation controls in FL Studio, and it’s easy to fix. This article will give you insight on FL Studio volume automation and how to fix your problems. Let’s take a look.

Internal Controllers & Volume Automation

In FL Studio, there are a few ways to automatically control the huge number of knobs, sliders, buttons, and even individual notes. One of them is by using what’s called an automation clip. Another is by using the Event Editor. And a third way is by editing the channel volume control and note velocity in the Piano roll.

Is It An Automation Clip?

Automation clips are basically graphs that control a parameter’s level as time moves forward. Here is how to tell if you have accidentally created an automation clip that is changing the volume of something by itself in your mix:

1. Go to the Channel rack
2. Change channel display filter to “Automation”
3. See if there is a volume automation clip for whatever you’re having problems with
   1. Channel volume – volume of a channel in Channel rack
   2. To Master – volume being sent from the Mixer track to the Master bus
   3. Volume – Mixer track volume slider

These are the three main culprits when FL Studio volume automation goes haywire.

If any of these three are present and linked to whatever volume changes itself, you can confirm by looking at the playlist for the same automation clip.

An automation clip controlling the Mixer track volume of the kick.

The Fix

To fix this, just go back to the Channel rack, right-click on the automation clip channel that is changing the volume, and click “Delete” from the drop-down menu. Easy! Now the automation clip that was controlling the volume is gone.

Is It An Event?

An event is very similar to an automation clip, but is usually used to record live automation. For instance, rather than designing an automation clip, you could record one in the form of an event as you move a slider or knob.

Accidentally creating events is very easy to do. The following things must happen to record an event:

1. Automation in the recording filter was checked
2. First you clicked Record and Play
3. Then you moved a volume slider or knob
4. Finally you stopped recording

An event that changes the Kick track volume being created.

If this is the case, you may see a pattern in the Playlist that is causing the volume to change by itself. If you’ve deleted it from the playlist, another way to find it is in the Browser/plugin picker, under Current projects.

Remember, it doesn’t always have to be the Mixer volume. Creating an event for the Channel volume or To Master volume will give you the same type of problem.

The Fix

To fix this type of problem, go to the Browser. Click “Current Projects” and “Patterns.” If you see a pattern under “Initialized controls” this may be the culprit. Just right-click and delete it.

Do this if you want to get rid of the whole pattern.

If you recorded or programmed a volume event over a pattern with notes that you want to keep and you don’t want to get rid of the whole pattern, you’ll have a few more options under “Pattern 1.” Just right-click the volume event, and click “Edit events”. The Event Editor will open. Click inside the Event Editor window, hit CTRL+A to select all, and then hit Delete. Your notes will stay, but the event is gone. You should be good to go!

Do this if you recorded an event over a pattern you want to keep.

Is it the Note Velocity or Channel Control in Piano Roll?

OK, if the previous two fixes did not work, this is the last resort. There is an option to control note velocity and channel volume directly in the Piano roll. If you accidentally changed these, it could be making FL Studio change volume by itself.

Velocity

Note velocity is simply the volume of an individual note in the Piano roll. To change a notes velocity, just go to the Piano roll, click Control at the bottom left, and in the drop down menu, click “Note velocity.” The lines and markers you see are the velocities (volumes) of each individual note. If you’ve messed with these by accident, it may be what’s makes the volume change itself.

How to access note velocity and channel volume control in the Piano roll. Both note velocity and channel volume are causing trouble in this example.

The Fix

If your note velocities are out of wack, hold down ALT, click in the velocity window, and drag across to reset the note velocities to their default positions.

Channel Volume Control

We can program Channel volume control in this window too. It’s just another way to create a volume control event that shares the same pattern as your notes. You can see the pink columns above are making the channel volume knob move.

We can fix this just like we did earlier and treat it like we would any other event. Just find it in the Browser, right-click, and click Edit events. Hit CTRL-A and Delete to delete all of the event information.

It’s Still Changing Itself!

OK, if you’ve done all of the above and are finding that the volume is still changing itself during the track, there is one last thing to try.

First, either reset the volume slider or knob that’s giving you trouble, or set it to whatever level you want it to stay at. To reset it, you can either right-click and then click Reset or just center-click (click with the scroll wheel on your mouse) the button or slider.

Then, right-click it again and select Init song with this position. Now when you restart your song, the volume starts at that position, and it should stay there.