Exploring the Browser, Playlist, and Channel Rack

It would take a very long time to create a song if you had to learn how to play every single instrument in a band from scratch. Thankfully, FL Studio has some tools you can reuse in every song you make regardless what genre or style.

In the following pages, we will learn about the main features of the browser, channel rack, and playlist. These, along with the piano roll and mixer, are the core tools of FL Studio. These are the fundamental key components of using FL Studio and you will use them continually from now onward in your journey through FL Studio. We will be reusing these tools throughout the book. Learning about these tools is a continual learning process and you’ll find yourself discovering new features and techniques years into using FL Studio.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Introducing the FL Studio workbench
• Getting the most out of your samples
• Using the browser...

Introducing the FL Studio workbench

In the pages ahead, we’ll explore the browser, channel rack, and playlist and highlight the most useful features. If you are new to FL Studio, this may seem like a lot of information to process all at once. Don’t fear, you don’t need to know everything about these tools. You can just have a quick skim through this chapter to get the basics. Once you’ve got a few songs under your belt, you can come back and examine these tools in greater detail.

Let’s start off with some theme customization to make FL Studio visually interesting for you and then we’ll dive into the core controls. Let’s select a color theme for your FL Studio interface. The theme will color the tools you use in FL Studio. It won’t change how the tools work, but it can make your FL Studio experience more enjoyable. Sometimes, you need inspiration, and a different color theme may be all you need to get your creative juices...

Using the browser

The browser organizes your samples and instruments and provides convenient access to easily insert and swap them in and out of your project. Using the browser, you can easily swap out instruments and samples, add MIDI notes to instruments, load presets, and add effects. It’s an excellent way to explore the different sounds available to you. Simply by swapping items with the browser, you can stumble across new sounds you wouldn’t expect.

In this chapter, we’ll keep things simple and focus just on how to use the browser to swap samples. But you can use the same technique to swap elements in the browser using a similar approach.

Let’s explore the browser features:

1. Open the browser by selecting the browser icon:

   Figure 2.8 – Browser button

   The browser window will open up with a list of folder names. You can see a list of various samples, instruments, and effects organized by folder name. You can...

Using the channel rack

The channel rack contains the instruments and samples you are currently using in a music pattern. It’s here in the channel rack that you’ll add and remove instruments, create percussive rhythms, and flip between music patterns. A music pattern is a group of notes that are played by instruments on the channel rack. Multiple instruments can play notes at the same time in a single pattern. Audio from each channel on the channel rack is then routed to the mixer.

Open up the channel rack by selecting the channel rack icon on the main toolbar:

Figure 2.22 – Channel rack in the toolbar

The channel rack will open up and show the currently selected music pattern. The following screenshot shows the channel rack:

Figure 2.23 – Channel rack pattern

Moving from left to right on the channel rack, first, you see a green light to indicate whether the instrument is on or muted (deactivated). Instruments can be turned...

Using the playlist

The playlist is where you arrange the timing of all elements for your song. It’s what you’ll spend most of your time looking at from a high-level perspective. This is where you’ll sit back and watch your song when it’s playing. It holds patterns, audio clips, and the automation of effects. You can open the playlist by selecting the playlist icon:

Figure 2.39 – Playlist icon in the toolbar

The playlist will open up and you will see a window similar to the following:

Figure 2.40 – Playlist

On the left-hand side, you can see the pattern, audio, or automation that is currently selected. In the preceding screenshot, we can see that Pattern 1 is currently selected. We can left-click on patterns and drag them into the playlist.

To the right of the patterns, you can see the name Track 1 and a light to indicate that the track is active (not muted). You can mute the track by left-clicking on the light...

Using the main header toolbar features

Now that we understand some of the main workbench tools, let’s take a look at some of the features offered in the main toolbar at the top of the screen:

Figure 2.45 – The main toolbar

There are lots of features available in the main toolbar. Let’s discuss some of the most important ones, such as version control.

Version control

As when coding, it’s a good idea to create your project in stages so that you can go back to an earlier stage if you need. It’s good practice to save your project often. FL Studio has an option that will do this for you under FILE | Save new version:

Figure 2.46 – Save new version

This will save your file as a new copy of the project. If you even need to go back, you can simply open up the original project.

Revert to last backup

Sometimes, your computer might crash while you are working. In these cases, there is a way to go to the last...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to use the browser, channel rack, and playlist. You will use these tools again and again with every song you make. The browser allows you to navigate through your samples and swap them in and out of your playlist with ease. The channel rack lets you load up your instruments, navigate through them, and create percussive rhythms. The playlist allows you to arrange the timing of your music patterns, samples, and automation.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at the piano roll tool so that you can compose melodies for your instruments.