It’s almost universally agreed upon that drums were the first instrument to be invented. Drums are the most fundamental form of keeping rhythm and making a beat, but don’t let there deceptive simplicity fool you. In most forms of modern music drums are present, I like to think of drums as building a solid base for the rest of your track. So it’s really important to get them right.
Let’s talk about samples Real Quick!
It’s entirely possible to simply use loops from sample packs, but programming your drums by yourself gives you much more creative freedom to express yourself. Also making your own samples is possible, I know friends who use the sounds of pots and pans in their tracks.
Now there are many different ways to program drums in FL Studio! In this tutorial we’ll use the step sequencer.
The Step Sequencer
FL Studio has multiple ways to do drums, but I think the most simple/intuitive way in the beginning is using the step sequencer.
First find the channel rack. It looks like this.
If you can’t find it click this Icon.
Locating A Sample
Let’s find what sort of sound we want to put in our song. If you’ve been following along you should have some samples saved and located in your library browser which will be displayed on the left.
If you can’t see it look for this icon towards the top and click on it.
Find the sample that you want in your folders. Clicking a sample will play a preview of it so you know what it sounds like. Once you’ve found one you want simply click and drag it into the step sequencer. I like to start with the kick drum.
Your channel rack should look something like this now.
Keep Things Organized
It’s really important to keep things organized. Luckily Fl Studio makes this really easy. Simply right click on the square with your sample in it and hit Rename, color, and icon.
I like to give all my channels labels, colors, and icons but do what works for you.
Routing
In FL you have to route all your channels by yourself, which is great because FL is really visual, and it gives you the control. So before we start making sounds let’s route our kick drum to a mixer track.
Make sure the little square next to your Kick is highlighted green.
Next go to the Mixer.
If you can’t see it click here
Right click an unused mixer channel, scroll to Routing, Channel Routing, and Route Selected Channel to this Track. (You Can Start to Use Shortcuts if you wish too.)
You can see that FL Automatically names, colors, and icons our mixer track. You can also use separators to help organize things together.
We still need to do some more routing. Setting up a Side Chain Control Channel is essential for modern music production. Grouping things before they go out to the master channel will save you a lot of headaches later.
With your Kick Track still selected go to another empty track and right-click the upwards facing arrow towards the bottom of the mixer. Click Route to This Track Only.
Now label this track drums and right click towards the top of the track and click the option that says dock to right.
This will create a drum bus on the right side of the mixer.
Now select the Kick drum again and route it to another unused track by simply left clicking the arrow at the bottom.
Label this track Side Chain Controller or (SC Controller) and then unroute this track from the master channel by clicking the top of the arrow on the master channel.
Now we have the kick routed it will show which mixer track it is assigned to on the channel rack with a little number.
Following the same steps as above add a snare sample in.
This time it will be slightly different as you already have the sidechain and drum bus set up.
Other common drum samples include Open/Closed High-Hats, Clap Samples, crashes, and rides. You can include anything that makes a percussive like sound like gunshots. . . I’ve even used video game samples in this drop here listen for Falco Noises. The other sounds are not usually routed into the sidechain controller so you can skip that part. But make sure to route them all into the drum bus.
The small extra step you have to perform with high hats is making sure they each other if they are the same cymbal. To do that
Click on your sample in the channel rack to bring up this interface.
Click the wrench icon.
And then go into the group section and assign the same number to both cymbals. This will prevent them from playing over each other.
Creating a Pattern
With everything routed, it’s time to start placing the sounds in the song. First remember how important labeling is. Right click on one of the timeline tracks. Rename, color, and icon this track Kick.
Now with the pencil or brush tool selected click in the empty space. A New Pattern will appear.
Double click the pattern. This will open up the channel rack. Every box represents 1/16th notes, so every four boxes is one beat.
Start to fill out where you want your kick drum to hit.
You’ll have a basic pattern that you can place every 4 bars
Next right click the spot on the left of the track. Hit the option that says auto name all clips.
That will make your pattern have the kick drum name.
Repeat this sequence for the other drum samples you’d like to use.
You should have something that looks a little like this when you’re done.
Humanizing the Rhythm
Now you’ll have a pretty solid beat at this point and it will be able to be recognized as drums. But the samples will sound awfully robotic unless you used a launchpad or a drum machine to time things. Here are some ways you can make things sound less robotic.
Vary The Volume
No human alive can play the drum at the exact same volume twice in a row so vary up the volume. You can do this in two ways if you’ve used this method.
First up is the graph editor which can be accessed by clicking the small graph here simply mess with the levels.
Or you can right click the sample and hit piano roll.
This will bring you here.
Where you can mess with the levels at the bottom of the piano roll.
You can altar things like pitch, cut off frequency, and pitch experiment.
Adding Variation
No matter how good your drum loop is people will get annoyed if they listen to it for a minute straight. Add some variation by changing up patterns, removing the drums from certain parts, really listen to your favorite tracks for inspiration here.
To make a new pattern right click an existing pattern and say make unique.
Now the changes you make to that pattern will only stay in that pattern. Remember to have fun. Next lesson will be on mixing the drums!!
