When Are Sample Packs Acceptable?

Yesterday I had an interesting chat with another fellow producer/composer about purchasing loop and sample packs from online stores like Loopmasters. What are sample packs you say? These are digital products that are released and published to the pro audio market by sound design labels,independent music creators, and other third parties. They contain wav samples, loops, midi files, rex2 files, synth presets for popular samplers, one shots, and more. They come in various genres and are usually delivered as a digital download for popular DAWs like Cubase, Logic, Ableton Live, Reason, FL Studio, and others.

Him and I understand there are creative uses for these products, but also feel that the up-and-coming generation of producers, composers, and DJs are abusing its purpose. Many aspiring music creators start on the wrong foot and get comfortable using pre-mixed / pre-mastered music and drum loop samples in their daily production workflow. In long-terms, this can hinder a young musician's creativity, originality, and self-confidence to explore new musical ideas. Still, these are amazing products; just use them wisely. Here are some applications where sample packs come in handy.

1)  I've purchase some of these sample packs myself to help me explore and experiment with a genre I'm not familiar with. However, I do not upload the works or claim it as original content.

2)  Creating demos to pitch to different artists.

3)  Professional Film and TV composers use these sample packs to quickly score music beds in efforts to meet short production deadlines.

My Top 5 Favorite Sample Pack Online Stores:
Loopmasters
Prime Loops
Beatport - Sounds
Industry Kits
Samplephonics

FL Studio Tutorials | VST Plugins

FL Studio Tutorials | VST Plugins

The Formula To A Catchy Pop Song

What's up my good people! Today I'm going to do my best to quickly breakdown the production process that goes into our current pop hits. For those who don't favor Top 40 music, and are already thinking of skipping this, I would stick around for this one. I'm going to have some fun with it and sort of mock particular sections of the process throughout the way, yet keeping it at a professional level at the same time. Just to make it entertaining for both Pop enthusiasts and neglectors. Let's get started!

Drum Beat: First, you're going to want to write a good drum beat over a tempo between 95-128bpm. Something with 808 drums (kicks, snares, and claps) might be the way to go.

Instrumental Hook: Next, you're going to need an instrumental hook. Find an instrument and a catchy hook that will get stuck in people's heads. In some cases you don't want it to sound too good, so playing an instrument that you're not really good at may be ideal. Keep it very simple! When you think you got it, try simplifying it a bit more.

Vocal Hook: Think of a memorable phrase, or sentence, that can be repeated over time and works as the title of the song. Find rhythm words. Something with rhymes is also ideal. 

Lyrics / Verse: This section of the song usually isn't the most memorable, and others would say it's not the most important. Artist can get away with saying whatever they want really, as long as it's generic. Keeping it broad is good, but, don't forget to keep it relevant to the hook.

Arrangement: Get the listener's attention fast! I'd suggest making some variations to the main chorus and adding that as the intro to the song. Oh and thrown in a rap section somewhere; it's pretty popular now a days.

Finally record your lead vocals, layers of backing vocals, add bass, keys, percussion, build-ups, vocal FXs (stutters/chops) and vocal processing (autotune/harmonizers/compression/reverb/delays/stereo-width). Now you got a hit song. Till next time guys!

FL Studio Tutorials | Channel / Step Sequencer

FL Studio Tutorials | Channel / Step Sequencer

FL Tips Tricks | Copy-Paste Custom Effects Settings

Secrete Preset Tip

Say you’re in the mixing stage and you're EQing away on all your channels to manage/separate frequencies. You’re cutting and boosting frequency ranges to achieve a great sounding mix that works for the project you have. But all of a sudden you run into a stopping block because you now want the same EQ settings that is on your snare channel on your tom/percussion channel. Some FL Studio mix engineers will suggest saving your settings by clicking “save preset as”, renaming the preset to something that makes sense, opening another copy of the EQ plugin in the channel you want to use it in, then select the snare EQ preset you just saved. This is great and all, but I don’t feel it’s the best way to do it for a number of reasons. 1) If you are saving an EQ preset it’s to use it again on different projects, but why when the next project will require a different EQ setting. 2) It takes time to properly organize and name these presets the more you use this method. Why if all you want to do is copy the EQ settings temporarily without crowding your EQ presets list? I’m here to tell you that you can, and it’s a lot easier than you think. Follow these steps:

Click on the box at the top left corner of your plugin.

Click + Hold the "Save preset as..."

Drag and drop the preset to the desired channel. And that's it!

Wasn’t that so much faster and easy? I find it so cool that it also automatically opens a copy of the EQ plugin. Till next time guys!

Beat Session Video #1 | POP-RnB

This is a quick beat-making video to demonstrate how I use FL Studio on a regular day. These will only be demos and not tutorials. However, stay tune for upcoming tutorials!

Oh and I apologize for the annoying fan noise. I will turn it off next time.

Beat Session #1 | POP-RnB

FL Studio | Organization Pt.2

Color Coding

Welcome back! and boy do I have a special one this week. As some may know, I posted Organization Pt.1 last week so I'll be moving forward to Pt.2 right now. I'm going to show you all how to use all color coding options available on FL Studio. There are three main sections where color coding is important. One exists within your Playlist window on the left, which is your track list column. Next you have your Channel / Sequencer window, where we will be color coding our audio samples / vsts. Finally, there is the Mixer window, where we color code our active channels. If you rename / label your samples, vsts, tracks, and channels you probably have easily missed the color coding tool located right next to it. Here's a picture to show this:

It's pretty hidden huh? specially with the default grey colored box. A couple of years back, I had no idea this tool was available to me. What you do first is select rename (Shift + Left Click on track or channel). Then click the color box and a color grid will display. Select your color between tints and shadows, hit Enter on your keyboard, and your done.

Easy! I would suggest labeling your music elements with a specific color: e.g. Drums (Red), Instruments (Blue), Vox (Yellow), SFX (Violet), Bass (Green), or however you choose to identify them. The process of color coding remains the same for all three windows I mentioned earlier (Playlist Tracks, Channel / Sequencer, and Mixer). It's up to you to explore what you like and how you choose to label things within your session. Hope this was helpful. Till next time.

FL Studio | Organization Pt.1

I remember when I first started using FL Studio and how unorganized I was about everything. I never used the color coding tools, I never properly named my patterns, I never renamed any of my sounds or samples to something that makes sense; I didn't even separate each pattern to its own individual tracks. Oh, not to mention my patches on the browser section were utterly confusing and thus wasted loads of time finding that one kick drum I liked to use. But the one thing that killed me the most was the lack of attention and detail to naming my project files. All of this nonsense led to several things. For one, a sloppy workflow. I can't stress enough how much production time one can actually save with a little attention to organization. Another was lack a of file management, in other words, understanding where the files were being stored. Last but not least, it led to a bad habit. Like they say--it's hard to break a bad habit. Well mine was no easy challenge, and of course, took some time to adapt to a better one. 

My message to early FL Studio users is to become accustomed to a workflow that will result a clean layout of all your tracks, proper file naming, and well, better time management. It's about taking that one step forward to calling yourself a real professional.

Try This: How I Name My Project Files

For Untitled Songs / Instrumentals - 

(Project Type)_(Genre or Similar Artist)_(Key)_(BPM)_(Date)

Example: Song_Dance-Pop_G#major_128bpm_01_31_2014
Example: Instrumental_Jason Darulo_Eminor_104bpm_02_22_2014

For Titled Songs / Instrumentals - 

(Project Type)_(Title)_ (Genre or Similar Artist)_(Key)_(BPM)_(Date)

Example: Collab_Start Again x Yez Beats_R&B_Amajor_75bpm_05_03_2014

Pause The Music!... Megan Nicole's "Electrified" Releases In 3 Days!

Megan Nicole Official Website

I know I'm usually posting content about FL Studio and beat-making, but I need to put a pause on that for a minute. Why? Well I just found out that Megan Nicole will be releasing another single (making it her third official release) from her upcoming first-studio album. If you don't know who she is, and you love pop music, I recommend you check her out.

Sooo...I think we are all excited for Megan Nicole's upcoming single "Electrified" being released August 19th, or maybe it's just me. I've been a fan of her music since the first video she uploaded on YouTube, and now look how far she has come. You really do feel somewhat like a proud parent. She has definitely been improving the artistry of her music and performance, not to mention pushing herself as an artist even further with the support of her record label Bad Boy/Interscope Records. She has successfully reached the likes of several Radio Disney's 1.41 million followers, which all in itself is a great market to promote her music and artistic appearance. I'm excited for her upcoming release and will definitely be supporting the song. She posted a sneak peak of what the single sounds like... I digs it. It ties well with her energy-driven, fun-and-good-times pop with a slap of modern beats and slick guitar grooves from her last single "Never Have I Ever". Oh let's not forget the dash of quirkiness she likes to add to her uplifting songs. 

It hits me right in the feels that the release date was so close to being on the date of my 21st birthday (August 18), but it's not like I can change that... oh well. Catch you guys later!

FL Studio 12 | What's To Come?

Recently I was asked about FL Studio 12 and its release date. Unfortunately it hasn't been announced yet, but I'm definitely keeping an eye out for it. For those that don't know, FL Studio 12 is being developed and currently being tested. The first FL Studio 12 Alpha-Preview was announced and available to download in April 15, 2014 for users with an Image-Line registration account. However, this was not the official beta version for FL Studio 12. A disclaimer was made saying...

"This is not a finished version of the program, it's not even a beta version of FL Studio 12. It's a pre-beta, still under construction, so it's likely to change significantly prior to release and projects made in it may not be compatible with the final version." - Image-Line

I'm excited! let me tell you why. For a long time now I've been wanting an update of FL Studio's mixer. Just recently I looked at the FL Studio 12 Alpha Victorial Mixer Preview on YouTube and that thing is a beauty. We're talking about a new slick design with dark greys, blacks and lime greens; not to mention the new chrome metallic faders. Improvements on its functionality have also been taken to account. FINALLY, it'll be easy as 1...2...3 to select multiple active faders and simultaneously attenuate audio signal. This being similar to making group channels in Pro Tools. The mixer just got a new 'Extra Wide' view mode that allows per-track FX to be displayed. Speaking of display and layout improvements, we will now have a better visual of our audio signal flow within each channel via virtual patch cables (similar to Reason). Many new features on the mixer are soon to come, but for the sake of keeping this short, that's all I have for today.  

That sorta wraps up this blog, but I'll leave you guys with links to more FL Studio 12 New Features and the Victorial Mixer Preview video on YouTube. Stay tune for my first beat-making video tutorial!!

News - FL Studio 12 Alpha Preview

Video - FL Studio 12 Alpha | Victorial Mixer Preview

Must Know: FL Studio Hotkeys

There's some joy and excitement about finding hotkeys within your DAW by accidentally hitting a key, or multiple keys, at once. So yesterday I was messing around with a new beat in progress, right. I was playing around with my recorded MIDI notes in FL Studio's piano roll window. I was trying to find a way to bring up the velocity of all the selected notes simultaneously when all of a sudden... BOOM I literally got it by trying random stuff. You want to know how I did it? Watch out foo's here comes the mastermind trick:

Go to your piano roll window and select all the notes (ctrl+a) you just programmed. 

Take your mouse and hover over any note currently being selected.  

Now press "alt" and scroll your mouse wheel up or down and... MAGIC! 

YES!! workflow improvement 100%... Can I hear a WOOP WOOP

To celebrate this week's "biggest accomplishment", I decided to lay down some of my favorite hotkeys that you may or may not already know.

F4 - Auto find next empty pattern

F5 - Open / Hide Playlist (Edit Window)
F6 - Open / Hide Channel Window & Step Sequencer
F7 - Open / Hide Piano Roll
F8 - Open / Hide Browser
F9 - Open / Hide Mixer
F10 - Open / Hide MIDI settings

Double Click Current Background Image - To change background image

Shift + Click Audio or MIDI Clip - Duplicate clip

Click and Hold Scroll Wheel - Quickly move left and right across playlist window

Ctrl + L - Toggle between PAT and SONG mode

Click Scroll Wheel On BG Image - Open / Close Plugin Picker Window