CREATING a SONG IN FL STUDIO

In this tutorial, I will guide you through the process of creating a song in FL Studio, a popular music production software. Just as renowned producers like Martin Garrix, Avicii, and others have done, this DAW offers a versatile platform to bring your musical ideas to life. However, remember that music is a form of creative expression, and the choice of your DAW is personal. You can use the software you feel most comfortable with your production style.

Step 1: "KNOWING THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF a SONG"

Drums:

Drum elements include the kick (bass drum), snare, hi-hats, cymbals, toms, and other percussion instruments. Drums set the rhythm and groove of the song, providing the essential rhythmic structure.

Leads (Main Melodies):

Leads are the main melodies of a song. They can be played by instruments like synthesizers, guitars, or other melodic instruments. Leads often contain the song's main hook.

Bass:

Bass provides the bassline, responsible for the energy of the song. Bass can be played by instruments such as electric bass guitars or synthesizers.

Vocals:

Refer to the parts of a song that are singed, including vocals, chorus, and harmonies. They add emotion to the song.

FX (Effects):

Includes elements like transitions, risers, drops, and other sound effects that add emotion.

BPM (Beats Per Minute):

BPM indicates the speed or tempo of a song. It's the number of beats or pulses per minute. It defines the speed at which the song plays and can vary by music genre. For example, techno tends to have a high BPM like 140 or 130, while hip-hop may have a more moderate BPM, 70-80.

Genre:

The music genre refers to the category or style a song belongs to. There are numerous music genres such as pop, rock, hip-hop, electronic and more. Each genre has its distinctive characteristics in terms of rhythm, harmony, instrumentation...

These elements are fundamental in creating a song. The combination of these elements varies based on the music genre and the creative vision of the song's producer.

Step 2: "CHOOSE THE MUSICAL GENRE"

The key thing before creating a song is to focus on what musical genre we want to develop it in. This will influence the elements to choose from it. In my case, I am going to create an electronic music song with hints of House and Dance music, as well as Breakbeat.

Once the genre is chosen, we will take various references from artists we like and try to create our song based on that, adding our own touch. In my case, I will take as references the music of Tiësto, Martin Garrix, Avicii, and Fred Again.

Next, we will highlight the key points of each artist in their tracks:

Tiësto:

Energetic Melodies: Tiësto's songs often feature catchy and energetic melodies that are perfect for the dance floor, with synthesizer sounds.

Use of Vocals: Tiësto frequently includes emotive vocals into his songs, adding an additional dimension to his music.

Fred Again:

Creative Sampling: Fred Again is known for his ability to creatively sample classic recordings and vocals from various genres, creating new sounds from them.

Experimental Production: His songs often showcase experimental and eclectic production, blending a variety of genres and styles.

Unique Sound Effects: He uses unusual and creative sound effects to add interesting layers to his productions.

Avicii:

Melodies: Avicii was known for his melancholic melodies.

Genre Fusion: His songs often fused elements of music with a blend of different genres.

Step 3: "TAKE a REFERENCE TRACK"

Having a reference track is crucial, especially when you're just starting to produce music. It helps you progress more rapidly because you can try to mimic your reference track, but it will never turn out exactly the same. This will aid in gaining better control of your DAW, learning how to choose sounds effectively, and later on, in the mixing of your track.

For this occasion, we will take the tracks as a reference: "Tiësto - Drifting" and "Fred again.. x Swedish House Mafia - Turn On The Lights again.. (feat. Future)"

Step 4: "ARRANGEMENT"

Arrangement refers to the organization and sequence of musical elements in a song. It is the way verses, choruses, bridges, instruments, vocals... The arrangement determines how the song unfolds over time, including the introduction, development, climax, and ultimately, the conclusion.

These are the main parts of a song:

Intro (Introduction):

The introduction is the initial section of a song that sets the tone and atmosphere. It is generally instrumental and is used to prepare the listener for what will come next. In electronic music, the introduction often contains soft and progressive elements that build anticipation.

Build-Up:

The build-up is a section of the song designed to increase energy and tension before reaching the climax. It typically builds gradually over several bars and may include the addition of musical elements such as drums and effects to heighten excitement. The build-up creates anticipation in the listener, preparing them for the song's climax.

Drop:

The drop is the peak of a song, characterized by a sudden and dramatic surge in energy. This is where the main melody, rhythm, and percussion become more intense, and the track reaches its maximum energy level. In electronic music, the drop is the moment when the track is often most danceable and exciting.

Break:

The break is a section of the song used to break tension and vary the dynamics. It may include a reduction in intensity and often features instrumental or vocal elements that provide a sense of pause or change. The break serves to refresh the track before moving on to the next intro, build-up and drop.

And then, we will repeat the same structure.

Intro: between 8-16 bars.

Buildup: 8 bars.

Drop: variable between 16-24-32 bars (32 bars, 1 phrase).

Break: 8 bars, and again the intro and drop.

Usually 4/4 time bars in electronic genres.

Anyway, the arrangement is very variable, depending on the producer's preferences and what they want to convey.

Step 5: "CREATE YOUR ARRANGEMENT"

Once the arrangement is understood, we will proceed to structure our own. We will use the arrangement of the previously mentioned songs. For the intro, I will follow the structure of "Fred again.. x Swedish House Mafia - Turn On The Lights again.. (feat. Future)", and for the drop, I will follow the structure of "Tiësto - Drifting". I decided to use 128 BPM, it´s the most BPM uses in electronic music.

In the first image, we can see the first song intro, it has 16 bars. The quickest way to check the number of bars is looking the little number in red. Then, we reproduce this process with de drop of the other song. I will use time markers to establish my arrangement. You can create a new time marker by clicking in the arrow like in the third picture, add one, and selecting the bar.

Step 6: "STARTING THE SONG"

Normally, I let myself flow when starting a song. Sometimes I start with the drums, other times, when I feel more inspired, I begin with melodies, and on other occasions, I develop an idea based on a vocal I like. This time, I decided to use artificial intelligence for chord creation to demonstrate to people who don't understand music theory that they can still make music. We opened ChatGPT and I gave it the following prompt: 'First, let's focus on the House style. I need to create a harmonically perfect and catchy melody that invites the listener to a sense of epicness and party, with the main note being B.' It suggested several combinations, and I settled on the last one after trying them out on the piano.

Step 7: "WHERE TO FIND SAMPLES?"

Well, first of all, let's define what a sample is. A sample in a song is a portion or fragment of a recorded audio that we incorporate into a song. It can come from any source, such as old songs, nature sounds, digitally created ones, or practically anything that can be recorded. Samples are used to add specific sound elements to a song, like vocals, rhythms, sound effects, melodies...

There are several ways to download samples, through free libraries that you can find on platforms like YouTube, by purchasing paid libraries, and the one I prefer, as it saves you time, money, and computer memory space, is using platforms like 'Splice' and 'Loopcloud.' With them, you pay a monthly fee and have access to a wide variety of sounds. This way, you can search for specific sounds more precisely without the need to download an entire library.

Step 8: "CREATING THE INTRO"

In this case, I will look for a vocal that meets the criteria I'm looking for: house style, with the main note being B minor, and preferably a female voice. Sometimes you'll find what you're looking for quickly, and other times, it may feel like an eternity; it's a matter of patience. Once the vocal is chosen, I will use a synthesizer to create a melody that complements the vocal's rhythm, aiming for it to be catchy. Sometimes it's trial and error, and other times, the voice itself guides you. In electronic music, as well as in other genres, the 'question-answer' formula is often used in the chorus, which in our case will be the drop. This involves creating an initial melody that is musically unresolved, leaving it for the next melody to resolve. This makes the overall melody more catchy. For this, you can create a simple initial melody, and have the response follow the same structure with simple variations in some notes, or you can create a completely different melody. To create a greater intro effect, we can automate the volume or apply a low-pass filter that performs a frequency sweep, gradually increasing the range of frequencies we hear, usually without the vocal or with a pitch variation in it to avoid repetitiveness. This is typically done over a duration of 8 bars. Next, we would showcase our melodies alongside the vocal, without any filter, usually lasting for 8-16 bars, and then proceed to the build-up.

Step 9: "THE BUILD-UP"

For the build-up, we need to create excitement for the listener. We achieve this by repeating elements like claps or snares, accompanied by white noise effects that progressively increase in volume. Some accompaniments heard in the intro may also disappear so that when the drop arrives, the track is musically completed, creating that sense of excitement. For the percussive elements, we'll increase their frequency of repetition. In the initial bars, we can place a clap on every beat of the metronome and then double it. This would be one of the most basic structures, and once we're familiar with it, we can make different variations to suit our preferences.It also usually comes with a vocal just before the drop, thus creating an even greater sense of epicness.

Step 10: "CREATING EPICNESS: THE DROP"

As we mentioned earlier, the drop is the highest point of the song, where the emotion built up in the listener just before with the build-up is resolved. It's crucial for it to be full of energy to convey to the audience and have a strong rhythm to make it catchy and resonate with people. We will use Tïesto's song 'Drifting' as a reference for our drums. Analyzing them, we come to the idea that they follow the structure of the breakbeat genre.

Breakbeat, like other genres of electronic music, often relies on a 4/4 time signature. In this time signature, there are four beats per measure. However, what distinguishes breakbeat is the manipulation of drum patterns within this time signature.

Instead of having a conventional drum structure with kick drums on every beat and snares on beats 2 and 4, breakbeat introduces variations and syncopation into the drum patterns. It is characterized by the use of drum breaks, which are snippets of funk or soul drum recordings manipulated to create unique rhythms.

In the first picture you can see a typical structure for the drums of breakbeat songs. It's a very simple structure. You can also add some hats, other sample drums to fill in the full drums. You can add House Hats loops, vintage hiphop drums, and everything you can think of.

Once we have the drum created, it's time to start our bassline. For this track, I decided to use a reese-type bass, commonly used in genres like Drum and Bass, but applying a low-pass filter to create a prolonged sub-bass effect. You can find these types of basses in built-in plugins like Harmor, Sawer, and also in external alternatives like Serum, widely used in electronic music genres.

To start, we'll create a line on the same note all the time (B in this case), and then we can experiment with different melody combinations. Sometimes, simplicity works best.

Additionally, to fill in, we can add the intro's own voice, an octave higher, and create cuts in it to give it Fred Again's drop style. This cutting effect on the voice can be done with FL Studio's native plugin called GrossBeat.

Step 11: "THE BREAK: STOP DANCING"

Takes a break." The drop ends, which is the most complete part musically, and now only the rhythmic pulse is maintained, along with some other element, to later recover the intro.

Step 12: "MIXING"

According to the artificial intelligence company "MOISES," which has revolutionized the industry with its song track exporter, mixing is the process of balancing the various tracks in the session to make them sound pleasant and cohesive when played together. It reduces clashes between instruments, vocals, and different elements of the song.To carry out this process, we will mainly use equalization, compression, and panning, following the reference image.

Step 13: "MIXING: EQ"

Equalization is a process in which we adjust the gain of different frequencies. This allows us to eliminate unnecessary frequencies in various sounds, minimizing frequency masking as much as possible.

Principally, we distinguish between two types of equalizers:

Graphic Equalizers: Adjust the overall tone of the sound. The frequency bands of a graphic equalizer are perfectly divided, and sliders are used to boost or cut each frequency range.

Parametric Equalizers: Allow control over multiple independent frequency bands. Additionally, we can vary their center frequency, gain, and bandwidth.

Step 14: "MIXING: COMPRESSION"

A compressor is an effect used to reduce the dynamic range. Dynamic range is the volume difference between loud and soft parts of a song, and we can reduce it by compressing the sound.

There are three main parameters in a compressor:

1. threslhold (the volume at which the compressor operates)
2. ratio (the compression ratio)
3. output gain (volume increase).

Compressing louder sounds to reduce the volume difference between loud and soft can make the music easier to mix.

Step 15: "mIXING: PANORAMA"

Panorama is to place each sound in the soundfield. To understand panorama we must first understand the stereo sound system: two separate audio channels, each with its own speaker, R and L. Panning can create movement to the track and can add some clarity to an instrument, so you can solve some frequenzy clash.

Step 16: "MASTERING: PRINCIPLES "

According to the LANDR platform, Mastering is the final step in audio post-production. The purpose of mastering is to balance the sonic elements of a stereo mix and optimize playback across all systems and formats. Traditionally, mastering is done using tools such as equalization, compression, limiting, and stereo expansion.

Knowing this, we will proceed to carry out this series of processes. In my case, the order I usually follow is as follows:

Equalization.

(You can make a second equalization if necessary to control any frequency range)

Enhancement equalization.

Compression.

Harmonic Excitation.

Noise reduction.

Clipping.

Limiting.

Step 17: "MASTERING: EQ"

First of all, in my mastering channel, I use to open a Parametric EQ2,a fl studio native plugin, this way, we can save CPU resources, as we simply want to perform an equalization to limit the frequencies. With this plugin we can eliminate inaudible frequencies; remember that the human hearing range is between 20Hz and 20KHz. It has a preset that limit the eq between 20Hz and 18KHz, so we can choose this.

Step 18: "MASTERING: ENHANCEMENT EQUALIZATION"

For this section, we will use the emulation of a tube equalizer (PULTEC RARE). This incorporates electronic tubes in its design to provide a warm and vintage sonic coloration. These tubes add harmonic saturation, enhance frequencies, and contribute to a distinctive sound. In this plugin, we select a low frequenzy like 100Hz, and we can rise it gain with the "boost", and also attenuate a little bit this range of frequencies. We replicate this on high frequenzy, around 10/12 KHz.

Step 19: "MASTERING: COMPRESSION"

In this section, we will reduce some parts that exceed the volume slightly, as we will perform limiting later. We aim to compress around 1 dB. This depends a bit on the song and the level of compression you want to achieve. To do this, we will set a threshold close to 0 and a ratio close to unity.

Step 20: "MASTERING: HARMONIC EXCITATION"

Process in which harmonics are enhanced or created in an audio signal to enrich and modify the character of the signal. There are some vst that can make this, one of this is "FRESH AIR", free option, and other is "SPECTRE". This way, we will add brightness and presence to those frequencies that need it.

Step 21: "MASTERING: NOISE REDUCTION"

Next, we will eliminate possible unwanted noises that may have been increased in our tracks due to equalization and distortion. We can use any noise gate for this. These function similarly to compression, as they follow the same parameters. We will adjust the threshold value, testing it until we find an acceptable level to the ear.

Step 22: "MASTERING: CLIPPING"

Applying Soft Clipping as the penultimate process in mastering to gain a few more LUFS and RMS for our track. When finishing the mastering process, you might want your track to sound more powerful so that it can be played by artists in your genre and not sound quieter than the song played before. To win this volume war, we use the optional trick of Clipping, which involves clipping peaks in our signal to increase its gain, creating a sense of higher volume while maintaining dynamic range.

Step 23: "MASTERING: LIMITING"

It is used to control the peak level of an audio signal. A limiter is applied to ensure that the signal's amplitude does not exceed a certain predefined threshold. It's a variation of a compressor, with many similar values.

When the audio signal reaches the threshold, it reduces the signal's gain. This helps avoid distortion and ensures that the final mix does not exceed the limits. There are many limiters, in Fl Studio, I recommend you to use Maximus, so you can save CPU resources.

Step 24: "MASTERING WITH ONLY ONE PLUGIN"

There is a plugin that allows you to create a complete mastering chain, as it has different functions that you can chain together, just like the mastering channel. It includes both equalizers, harmonic exciters, distortions, limiting, compression, among many others, without the need to use additional plugins. This plugin is Izotope Ozone, in any of its versions, although the most updated one is usually the most optimal. It also comes with a large number of default presets that can help if you are not yet clear on the concept of mastering.

Step 25: "EXPORT YOUR SONG: PARAMETERS"

To export your song, you can do it in different formats. I recommend the WAV format, which maintains the highest quality, and MP3 at 320kbps, which is the maximum quality available in this format. As for the sample depth, it is advisable to use 24-bit int to ensure that there are plenty of samples. To finish, we only have to export our song.

Step 26: "DISTRIBUTING THE SONG"

There are two ways you can release your music: through a record label or through distribution platforms such as DistroKid, Amuse, CD Baby, among others. If you are an artist who is not yet established in the music world, it is often more recommended to use record labels related to the genre you create to gain greater visibility. The downside is that you don't receive 100% of what your song generates; they keep a certain percentage. On the other hand, with platforms like the ones mentioned, you receive 100% of what it generates in exchange for paying a monthly fee. You have to assess what is more worthwhile for you, but in summary, distribute your music to the public.

Step 27: "SOME BIBLIOGRAPHY"

I recommend you some books. These are so interesting in mixing and mastering tips.

The first one is "The mixing engineer's handbook" by Bobby Owsinski. I like this book because explain alla bout mixing, with examples and plugins.

Oher interesting book from Bobby Owsinski is "The mastering engineer's handbook".

If you are spanish, I recommend you "Ingeniería de Sonido" by Julián Zafra. It talks about everything of sound, mixing, and mastering.

You can also check these Youtube channels about differents types of music production:

-Dilby: it talks about house music, like tech house.

-Toolroom Academy: tech house techniques.

-Thomas Heredia: genres like rock.

-Sam Smyers: house music. He also talk about sound design.

-Oscar Calmaestra: all about sound.

Another good way to learn about the audio topic is by searching forums and websites. Here are some that have helped me with this instructable:

https://emastered.com/es/blog/equalizer-music

https://es.yamaha.com/es/products/contents/proaudio/musicianspa/

https://ingenieriamusical.net/mezcla-y-masterizacion/ultima-fase-del-mastering-limitacion-y-soft-clipping/

https://www.peak-studios.de/es/clipping/#:~:text=Hace%20referencia%20a%20un%20efecto,del%20sonido%20inc%C3%B3moda%20y%20molesta.

https://www.acson.com/que-es-un-limitador-de-sonido-y-para-que-sirve/#:~:text=Un%20limitador%20de%20sonido%2C%20tambi%C3%A9n,no%20sobrepasar%20los%20niveles%20establecidos.