In this article we will look at the basics of creating a rap minus, and also find out what it is beats And bars in Fl Studio and why you need to adhere to a certain pattern or pattern in music.

First of all, there must be a pattern or pattern in music, and you can notice this in many famous rappers and other performers. Listen to the music and you will hear the sequence of actions.

Let's first look at what is used to create rap minus Well, at the end of the article we’ll look at the template.

On a note:

There are no boundaries when writing music as it is a creative process. And therefore, remember that there are no rules and you don’t need to listen to everyone (something like you did something wrong or you should have done it differently) except for the key of the notes. Creating music, as I wrote above, is a creative process and it is different for everyone. But this also does not mean that by drawing a bunch of inharmonious notes and placing them in you will create a masterpiece.

Instruments used in rap style:

The creation of a rap minus is based on instruments. This is the basic set of tools that we will now look at. But first, be sure to download this fl project. For a visual example.

• Bit– in any music, the beat plays an important role in creating the rhythmic picture of your backing track. We hear the beat throughout the music and therefore we need to pay attention to it. The beat is based on Kick, Clap or Snare, Hat. Can also be used as additions to Shaker, Cymbals, Percussions. They are mainly used to diversify the beat.

• Bass– gives a large amount of low frequencies from which your rap minus breaks. A necessary element in rap music.

• Pad– needed to create volume for your minus. But not in large quantities. They usually play with a long, extended sound.

• Lead or Instrument– this is the main instrument that will play for you throughout the entire composition. You can choose absolutely any instrument you like.

• Strings or Instrument 2,3,4- these are melodies that will complement the main melody. They will play on the backing track, in the chorus, at the beginning of the main melody. This is necessary so that the minus becomes more diverse and does not quickly bore the listener.

Select instruments by ear, as I don’t know any other method.

I want to tell you right away that you should not limit yourself to this list. Just keep in mind that this set of tools can grow. It all depends on your imagination and your creativity.

This is what the rap minus template looks like. It may be slightly different. It all depends on the author's idea.

I didn’t include Vocal since we are only considering rap minus, but of course it should be there. It is written down after the minus itself has been compiled.

Also, when recording vocals, they do backing vocals, where each rapper uses his own tricks and sounds. Backing vocals are an addition to the main vocals.

In general, rap minus is most often used as a basis samples. Samples are excerpts of various instrument sounds cut from songs. Here, in essence, everything is simple and the template of the tools can be said to be the same. It’s just that here you won’t have to think about how to compose chords, but if you add additional instruments, you will need to find out in what key the sample is playing in order to play a melody under it. Next, you just need to competently trim the audio track and prepare several samples to scatter them in .

Minus rap template.

I think not everyone knows what a rap minus template should look like. And so let's look at it. But I want to warn you right away that this example, which is presented below, is the most common in the rap style and it may differ from the disadvantages of other genres since each genre has its own layouts.

What are beats and bars in Fl Studio? Beats and bars is a musical time interval in a track. Without them it would be hard to write negative comments. And therefore they are needed for the convenience of creating music in general.

The figure below shows in detail the division into bits and bars, as well as the rap minus template itself.

Remember, in order for your rap minus to be catchy and the listener after listening to it wants to listen to it again and again, you need to do it.

Once, having returned home, having listened to all kinds of electronic music that was on the player, you decided that it was time to give this world a couple of hits too. Naturally, before you buy expensive equipment and plunge headlong into the field of professional music production, you just want, for fun, to try and “feel” what it is like to create electronic music on a computer...

In this series of articles I want to highlight the process of creating music in FL Studio.

I ask everyone who is interested in how to please their friends and acquaintances with a new work of your art under the cat.

Introduction

First, you will need a demo version of the FL Studio program, which you can download from here (97.6 MB), an average-performance computer, some free time and headphones so as not to kill your neighbors with your experiments with sound.

A music track in FL Studio is composed of fragments called pattern (patterns And). Each such pattern consists of sequences of notes assigned to one or more channels ( channels). The pattern size is a multiple of quarters, the minimum pattern size is one quarter. Beats in FL Studio have a default time signature 4/4 (the size can be changed in the project settings) and in the pattern editor, the measures are separated by lighter grid lines and labeled at the top with numbers in order. The pattern consists of notes whose pitch lies within 10 octaves, the minimum note duration is one hundred and twenty-eighth.

The general rule is to change the position of any knob, you need to click on it with the left mouse button and, without releasing the button, move the mouse down to decrease or up to increase. You can also change the position with the mouse roller when the cursor is over the controller.

The interface looks like this (only the most important things are commented on at the first stage of development).

Contains a list of channels and is used to edit patterns. The number of the edited pattern is displayed at the top (see the first screenshot), and it is also highlighted in orange in the playlist.

Each line is one channel, this channel can be either a synthesizer (a channel that generates sound based on given notes) or a sampler (a channel that uses ready-made sounds (samples)).

The screenshot shows that in order to make a particular note sound, you need to click on the rectangle corresponding to it, in order to determine the tone of the note, you should open a window with the keys and select the desired one, you can also change the parameters of the note.

In order to add a new channel, follow the menu item Channels – Add one..., then select the desired channel from the drop-down list.

You can also clone or delete selected channels. The selection is made by right-clicking on the gray rectangle to the right of the channel name. Left click selects/deselects all channels at once.

To move a channel higher/lower, hold down the ALT UP/DOWN arrow key. You can also move several selected channels at the same time.

Selected channels can be combined into a group; there is a menu item for this Channels – Group selected.

The playlist is used to edit the track as a whole. It consists of two parts, the first contains a list of patterns for this project, the second contains Automation Clips and Audio Clips, and you can also insert patterns here.

To draw a pattern, you need to left-click on the desired place (in pencil or brush mode, of course); to delete a pattern, you need to right-click on it.

To select, you don’t have to switch the tool, just hold down the CTRL key, and you can also hold down the SHIFT key to trim something.

Patterns, like a channel, can be moved, cloned and deleted. One at a time or several at once (commands for this are in the context menu of the pattern or the playlist menu in the item, Patterns).

To combine several patterns into one, you need to select them and select in the context menu Merge selected.

To combine several “rectangles” of one pattern into one, you need to select in the context menu Flatten selected.

To select the entire line of a given pattern, just click on the small rectangle to the right of its name.

About the snap to grid mode, if enabled, the movement of elements will be snapped to the grid. It could be like this:

• Main– binding is carried out in accordance with the global binding selected from above;
• Line– snapping to grid lines;
• Cell– snapping to grid cells;
• (none)– disable binding;
• 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 step– snapping to 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 of the grid step, respectively;
• Step– snapping to a whole grid step
• 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 beat– binding to 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 of a bit (a bit is one quarter), respectively;
• Beat– binding to an integer bit.
• Bar– binding to the beat.

Direct melody editor. The window consists of a toolbar similar to the one in the playlist, a staff on the left, a note input window in the center, and a parameters window at the bottom.

The logic is simple, one rectangle is one note, the length of the rectangle is the duration of the note.
Most operations are performed in the same way as in a playlist, only to copy and move a selection you need to hold SHIFT.

To increase the duration, just pull the right edge of the note, but if CAPSLOCK is enabled on the keyboard, you can also change the size by the right edge.

In addition, in CAPSLOCK mode, when you change the size of the selected area, it will change entirely, but when turned off, only the sizes of notes individually will change.

Snap to a grid works the same way as in a playlist.

Mixer

The main tool for mixing in “fruits”.
Consists mainly of channels. Each mixer channel has a stack that can include up to 8 effects. Effects only transform the sound without affecting the sound path in any way.
You can conveniently use the keyboard to control the mixer. Show/hide mixer: . In mixer mode: S – solo the channel. Snap an instrument to a free mixer channel: CTRL+L.

There are 3 types of channels:

• Master– A common channel, all send and insert tracks pass through it and only then to the output.
• Insert– Regular channels (there are 64 of these on the mixer), usually connected to some kind of generator or sampler.
• Send– reduced channels (4 pcs).

In order to better understand the principle of sound routing, you should look at the figure below.

Each regular channel receives either sound from a synthesizer/sampler or from another channel (the volume level at the input is selected by the control on this channel), the output goes to a common line to the master channel. The Send channel differs from a regular channel only in that it receives only outputs from other channels as input.

To bind a channel to a mixer track, you should select the number of the desired track in the FX window of the Channel Settings window, or in the mixer, by right-clicking on the desired track, execute Link Selected Channels - To this track(Or CTRL+L on your keyboard). In the latter case, all selected channels will be linked to this track. If you do Link Selected Channels - Starting from this track(SHIFT+CTRL+L), then the selected channels will be linked in order to each track starting with the selected one.

Browser

Local browser everything. Yes, I was not mistaken, this window contains everything that is in FL and in your project in particular. The most interesting branches:

• Channel presets– saved channel settings. You can find a bunch of customized generators here.
• Current Project– section of the current project. Here the history of actions is stored and what the project consists of, clips, effects channels.
• Mixer Presets– mixer track settings.
• Packs– sample banks.
• Projects– projects.

Channel Settings

Channel settings. To begin with, it’s enough to know that in the upper part there are volume, balance and pitch controls, next to which you can adjust the pitch control segment in octaves. To the right is the FX window, the number in which corresponds to the mixer track to which this channel is assigned.

Below are several tabs. I will try to explain their purpose in part two.

Right off the bat

So. Having read enough and seen enough pictures, I want to write something.
Let's create a new project using a ready-made trance template. To do this we perform File – New from template – Genere - Trance.

In the first pattern we will make a drum part:

Set the playback mode to pat (yellow square at the top) and press Play or spacebar. Let's listen. Stop playback by pressing Spacebar or Stop at the top again.

In the second pattern we will make a bass line. Open Piano Roll for the Trance Bass channel (right click on the name of the Trance Bass channel - Piano roll). We draw it something like this:

The third pattern will also have a bass line. Open the Piano Roll for the Trance Bass channel and draw:

In the third and fourth patterns we will create a small melody:

Now let's open the Playlist and arrange the patterns something like this.

Set the playback mode to song (the whole song). Let's listen. We rejoice.
We take what I got here.

Briefly:

1. Setting up a template (what we will use and upload first)
2. Save (specify the save directory correctly)
3. We correctly design and describe the template (for adequate and correct display, we create a .nfo file)

Create a Template:

To create, you just need to design everything you want to see when you start the program.
Add some VSTs to the Channel rack, mixer, design and root tracks on the mixer.
The main things you can do:

BPM - We set the speed of the track depending on the genre: Electro House 126-130 | Deep House 120-125 | DubStep 55-90

Adding synthesizers to the Channel Rack, for example, you use Sylenth1 and Massive more often, add them right away.

Mixer - Here you can immediately install all the necessary plugins for processing or monitoring. For example: In the additional slots Insert 100-104 you can add Reverb plug-ins, the ones you like, immediately with presets, create a grouping of some synthesizers or loops.

Playlist - You can also build a track skeleton, either a complete one or a sketch in a few bars for development.

Depending on your preference, you can make a minimal template with several VSTs and processing in a mixer, or create a massive Template with the most loaded plugins and processing.
In each case, you can choose your own settings to suit your style of music.

After the customized template there will be something like this

Here's what was done:

1. Changed BPM to 128
2. Added Sylenth1 for quick launch when opening FL Studio
3. Grouped all the drums in the mixer
4. Reverb, which we use, has been added to Insert 100
5. dBlue TapeStop was loaded into Insert 101 to create effects

Saving a Template / Temaplate

To save the template, you just need to save the completed project in the folder with templates (Templates)
The folder location is here:
Also, the location may be different depending on where you installed FL Studio.

It should look something like this.

A few points about conservation.
If you save the project directly to the Templates folder, it will be displayed in the New from template tab. If you place it in a subfolder, there will be a path with a multi-level menu.

It is not necessary to create a .nfo file. It is used for design, additional description and display of an icon next to the name. Without this file, the name of the project you saved will be displayed.

The .nfo file must have the same name as the template project file, otherwise FL Studio will not display the description and icon.

To organize it, create another folder in the folder with templates (..\Project\Templates), you can give it any name. It is not necessary to create your own folder; you can save it to existing ones.
It turns out this way:
We save all our templates in this folder.

After you have saved the project, you need to formalize it.
For registration, a file with the extension .nfo is required; a description and number of the icon to be displayed are entered in it.

The .nfo file must have the same name as the project file:

TPL.flp > TPL.nfo - Correct
TPL.flp > tpl.nfo - Correct
TPL.flp > tpl .nfo - Incorrect (there is a space after the name)

Afterwards you need to edit it and enter your information about the template file.

Example text:

Description=Dub Project 80 BPM
MenuIconIndex=-108

Description=Description of the project or any other text, supports Cyrillic.
MenuIconIndex=-108 number of the icon available in FL Studio (see list of icons below)

After all the manipulations it should be displayed like this: (depending on the nesting of your folders)

You can also group files and place them in separate folders. FL Studio will recognize them and display them without submenus in the program menu.

How projects will be displayed

Have you ever wondered how much time we spend preparing a template for . I think the answer is negative, because until that moment I myself had not thought about it at all and then it just dawned on me. Yes, it dawned on me. that I can quickly start creating backing tracks by simply making a ready-made template and stamping backing tracks using it.

In fact, we spend a certain amount of time preparing in Fl Studio. It doesn’t matter how much, but the very fact that time is running out speaks for itself. In general, I believe that time should be saved and spent usefully. And therefore, it’s better to create your own template for rap or another style, it doesn’t matter, the main thing is that you have it and don’t need to create it again and again, but simply open it and adjust it to your needs and continue to create, create and perform.

Maybe for some this is not a particularly important point, but for me it is important and I share this advice with other beatmakers. Well, now let's create a template for the turnip so as not to put it off until later, since this can be done now.

First of all, open Fl Studio.

Advice: When creating a channel for tools, change their colors and rename them to make them easier to distinguish. For the Drum part, create three channels at once so that your minus is more diverse.

In the mixer, you can add main effects plugins to the Send channels. Such as , etc.

In general, you can prepare a template for yourself and therefore you can set everything up right away, namely, throw in the main instruments and scatter them across the mixer channels, loading them with the necessary plugins, and then place them on the channels in the playlist.

You can download it from me and customize it for yourself with your own tools and plugins.

If you have any questions, ask them in the comments.

And finally, I wish you creative success!

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