FL Studio Tutorial 1: The Basics |
OK, I am going to try to start a series of FL studio tutorials for those who are struggling with the program or just want to learn it. I'm pretty much just winging it on this tutorial, so there's likely to be lots of editing things in I missed and the like.
Anyways, as any good tutorial series should, I'm starting the first lesson with the basics of fl, where hopefully someone could come in thats never even heard of fl and begin using it.
First let's go over the interface. There are 5 key windows that you should know about, the Step Sequencer, mixer, Playlist, Piano Roll, and the Browser. If you notice, there are icons for each of these at the top of the screen.

you can click any of these to toggle showing the window it corresponds to. Some of these are automatically open when you start a new song, however it all depends on the way you set up your environment. I use two monitors, so I stick the step sequencer, mixer, and playlist on my right monitor, which runs at a considerably lower resolution than the left. Here's what my layout looks like, with the windows labeled.

You can see I pretty much cram everything in there to fill up the monitor. This has really helped me out. On the off chance the theres another dual monitor user out there, you might try a setup similar to this one.
Now, just for you, I'll cram the other two windows on to the screen so you can see what they look like as well.

Note that there are 2 versions of the piano roll. The one on top is a special version that maps out the drums to specific keys. You don't need to worry about messing with this, just know that you may see this when making drum patterns. The one on the bottom is what you are going to be seeing most of the time
So while we're on the topic of the Piano Roll, why not go into to detail on it? Well first we need to create an instrument to use! Go to the trusty step sequencer and right click on any of the instrument names. For this example we'll use the 3x Osc (this instrument will be rather familiar to those that have done any amount of synth programming). after right clicking, go Insert, then 3x Osc

After this you'll see the purple instrument pop up in the step sequencer, and you'll see this window pop up...

This is the main instrument window, you can get to this window for each instrument by clicking it's name in the sequencer. This is your headquarters for the instrument. Some more advanced instruments will actually have seperate windows pop up for special control unique to that instrument. For the simple 3x Osc, all the controls fit nicely in the plugin page itself. There are also other tabs which allow an extrodinary amount of control over the sound of any given instrument. Now I could go into detail on each and every button and knob, but for one thing, there are a few things in there that I still dont have a clue what they do, and for another thing the best way to learn these things is experimentation. Write yourself a little loop, let it go, and tweak away! But - you don't know how to do that yet? Well you must be reading this for the first time! Read on...

OK. If you go back to the Step Sequencer, you should now see a new instrument named "3x osc"!! Exciting! Right click on it and select Piano Roll (the first option). There it is! This pic may look a little scary at first, but that's mostly becasue I'm not much of a graphics designer o_0. Just read along and I'll explain everything. I happen to be a very visual learner myself so I like to provide aids like this to go along.
The piano roll is something you will be seeing a lot. It is used in virtually every DAW*for midi sequencing, and no matter which program you pick or move on to in the future, it's bound to have this little feature in there somewhere. Pay attention to this next part, because this is a very important concept!
The window is laid out on a 2d plane. The x axis (horizontal) is time, while the y axis (vertical) is pitch. Most of the time there is a friendly piano along the y axis to show you what particular pitch you are using. If you don't know where the notes are on a piano, no need to fret, the letter C is marked on each octave with a number indicating it's octave (C0 being the lowest, C10 being the highest). you can see C5 right at the edge of the letter h in Pitch. In most situations, you can click on the keys to trigger them on the affected instrument. Try it out, you can hear our little organ-like instrument. This also works on the keys on the main instrument window from earlier, btw! There is also a tool pallete in the upper left hand corner. The default is the pencil tool, and you aren't going to be changing it much.
To create a note click anywhere in the grid. Notes are represented by bars of any given color (green is the default, try clicking the green box in the upper left corner to change it!). After your note appears try clicking and dragging it up and down and all around!! Wow annoying o_0. But quite fun sometimes when you're stuck and very bored. Anyways, after you finish giving yourself a headache. Try right clicking the note. Ah! where did it go?! Good job, you deleted it. Go ahead and create another by left clicking on the grid again. OK, this is getting old, I know, but bear with me. To resize the note, hover over the right edge until your cursor changes to that familiar icon for resizing windows and such. Click and drag left and right to change the length of your note. This is the equivalent of changing between an 8th note or quarter note on paper (except with a lot less erasing). The grid is divided up along the x axis to help guide you in placing your notes rhythmically. The thickest white lines mark 1 of each measure, the 3 slightly thinner lines between them mark the other beats, 2 3 and 4, and the very tiny lines in between those mark each sixteenth note.
If you try resizing the note all the way over to the left, you should end up with a small green squre, that fits perfectly into any of the small squares on the grid. This is a sixteenth note. Drag it over to two squares. This is an eigth note. Drag it to fully extend from one semi-thick line to the next, and you have a quarter note! Exciting, I know. Now all you have to do is line the note up accross from the corresponding pitch on the keyboard and place it in the right place in the measure, and you're all set! Confused? keep reading...
Look at the example in the picture (yes we are still on that same picture with too much crap written all over it) Notice how each of the notes lines up with the white notes on the keyboard, starting at C3, going up to C4, and then back down. It's the good ol' C Major scale!! ^_^ Notice that the rhythm is straight eight notes until the end where we arrive back on the original note on a quarter note. Hm, the quarter note appears to be twice as long of a bar as the eighth note - go figure! If only those darn italians could've learned to write music this way** ....
then we'd end instead of a page with a bunch of lines and random circles and flags on it to a page with a grid and a bunch of random stupid bars on it. Wonderful.
Anyways, so there we go, now hopefully you have an idea of how to write out a musical idea into this sequencer and hear it played. Note that sometimes complex rhthyms take several tries to put down, it's not always simple sometimes you may find yourself counting on your fingers to see on the upbeat of what count something happens. But here's the beauty! Go ahead and punch in the piano roll our example from the image here. Now hit the spacebar. Wow, muzak!! You'll notice that much to your annoyance it continually loops over and over until you hit the spacebar again. This looping is automatic (lucky you!) and will always play through the last measure containing notes - I know that sounds confusing, but say you through a note in there way on the right edge of the screen, in measure 6. When you hit spacebar, FL would play all the way through to that note, finish measure 6, then loop back to the beginning. Try it!
OK, I know you're ready to be done with this god-forsaken window, but there's one more thing to talk about - that pane on the bottom. yes can you believe I wrote more crap on there for that too. This is where various data for each note is shown. The data is shown in the form of a bar directly under the note to which it corresponds. The default form of data for this section is velocity, and you wont' use much else very often. If you aren't familiar with midi data, values such as velocity are always a number between 0 and 127. When you create a note by the previous methods, it automatically gives it a preset velocity, 100 I believe (not entirely positive). Its about 3/4 of the way up, so you have some headroom. you can easily change the values for any note by simply clicking over the bar at the approximate velocity you want. In other words, let's say you wanted the C in the middle to be half as loud as the rest of the notes (dunno why, but oh well, it's possible!). Notice that the note is on the upbeat of 4 in the first meausre. You can also think of it as the 8th note, or the last note before the 1 bar for measure two - whatever works for you. Anyways, find the bar in the lower pane corresponding to that note, and click on the bar, about half way up. The bar shrinks to the size. Hit spacebar again to see how it sounds. You can also move the bars by clicking the white squares at the top and dragging them up and down.
Anyways, as any good tutorial series should, I'm starting the first lesson with the basics of fl, where hopefully someone could come in thats never even heard of fl and begin using it.
First let's go over the interface. There are 5 key windows that you should know about, the Step Sequencer, mixer, Playlist, Piano Roll, and the Browser. If you notice, there are icons for each of these at the top of the screen.
you can click any of these to toggle showing the window it corresponds to. Some of these are automatically open when you start a new song, however it all depends on the way you set up your environment. I use two monitors, so I stick the step sequencer, mixer, and playlist on my right monitor, which runs at a considerably lower resolution than the left. Here's what my layout looks like, with the windows labeled.
You can see I pretty much cram everything in there to fill up the monitor. This has really helped me out. On the off chance the theres another dual monitor user out there, you might try a setup similar to this one.
Now, just for you, I'll cram the other two windows on to the screen so you can see what they look like as well.
Note that there are 2 versions of the piano roll. The one on top is a special version that maps out the drums to specific keys. You don't need to worry about messing with this, just know that you may see this when making drum patterns. The one on the bottom is what you are going to be seeing most of the time
So while we're on the topic of the Piano Roll, why not go into to detail on it? Well first we need to create an instrument to use! Go to the trusty step sequencer and right click on any of the instrument names. For this example we'll use the 3x Osc (this instrument will be rather familiar to those that have done any amount of synth programming). after right clicking, go Insert, then 3x Osc
After this you'll see the purple instrument pop up in the step sequencer, and you'll see this window pop up...
This is the main instrument window, you can get to this window for each instrument by clicking it's name in the sequencer. This is your headquarters for the instrument. Some more advanced instruments will actually have seperate windows pop up for special control unique to that instrument. For the simple 3x Osc, all the controls fit nicely in the plugin page itself. There are also other tabs which allow an extrodinary amount of control over the sound of any given instrument. Now I could go into detail on each and every button and knob, but for one thing, there are a few things in there that I still dont have a clue what they do, and for another thing the best way to learn these things is experimentation. Write yourself a little loop, let it go, and tweak away! But - you don't know how to do that yet? Well you must be reading this for the first time! Read on...
OK. If you go back to the Step Sequencer, you should now see a new instrument named "3x osc"!! Exciting! Right click on it and select Piano Roll (the first option). There it is! This pic may look a little scary at first, but that's mostly becasue I'm not much of a graphics designer o_0. Just read along and I'll explain everything. I happen to be a very visual learner myself so I like to provide aids like this to go along.
The piano roll is something you will be seeing a lot. It is used in virtually every DAW*for midi sequencing, and no matter which program you pick or move on to in the future, it's bound to have this little feature in there somewhere. Pay attention to this next part, because this is a very important concept!
The window is laid out on a 2d plane. The x axis (horizontal) is time, while the y axis (vertical) is pitch. Most of the time there is a friendly piano along the y axis to show you what particular pitch you are using. If you don't know where the notes are on a piano, no need to fret, the letter C is marked on each octave with a number indicating it's octave (C0 being the lowest, C10 being the highest). you can see C5 right at the edge of the letter h in Pitch. In most situations, you can click on the keys to trigger them on the affected instrument. Try it out, you can hear our little organ-like instrument. This also works on the keys on the main instrument window from earlier, btw! There is also a tool pallete in the upper left hand corner. The default is the pencil tool, and you aren't going to be changing it much.
To create a note click anywhere in the grid. Notes are represented by bars of any given color (green is the default, try clicking the green box in the upper left corner to change it!). After your note appears try clicking and dragging it up and down and all around!! Wow annoying o_0. But quite fun sometimes when you're stuck and very bored. Anyways, after you finish giving yourself a headache. Try right clicking the note. Ah! where did it go?! Good job, you deleted it. Go ahead and create another by left clicking on the grid again. OK, this is getting old, I know, but bear with me. To resize the note, hover over the right edge until your cursor changes to that familiar icon for resizing windows and such. Click and drag left and right to change the length of your note. This is the equivalent of changing between an 8th note or quarter note on paper (except with a lot less erasing). The grid is divided up along the x axis to help guide you in placing your notes rhythmically. The thickest white lines mark 1 of each measure, the 3 slightly thinner lines between them mark the other beats, 2 3 and 4, and the very tiny lines in between those mark each sixteenth note.
If you try resizing the note all the way over to the left, you should end up with a small green squre, that fits perfectly into any of the small squares on the grid. This is a sixteenth note. Drag it over to two squares. This is an eigth note. Drag it to fully extend from one semi-thick line to the next, and you have a quarter note! Exciting, I know. Now all you have to do is line the note up accross from the corresponding pitch on the keyboard and place it in the right place in the measure, and you're all set! Confused? keep reading...
Look at the example in the picture (yes we are still on that same picture with too much crap written all over it) Notice how each of the notes lines up with the white notes on the keyboard, starting at C3, going up to C4, and then back down. It's the good ol' C Major scale!! ^_^ Notice that the rhythm is straight eight notes until the end where we arrive back on the original note on a quarter note. Hm, the quarter note appears to be twice as long of a bar as the eighth note - go figure! If only those darn italians could've learned to write music this way** ....
then we'd end instead of a page with a bunch of lines and random circles and flags on it to a page with a grid and a bunch of random stupid bars on it. Wonderful.
Anyways, so there we go, now hopefully you have an idea of how to write out a musical idea into this sequencer and hear it played. Note that sometimes complex rhthyms take several tries to put down, it's not always simple sometimes you may find yourself counting on your fingers to see on the upbeat of what count something happens. But here's the beauty! Go ahead and punch in the piano roll our example from the image here. Now hit the spacebar. Wow, muzak!! You'll notice that much to your annoyance it continually loops over and over until you hit the spacebar again. This looping is automatic (lucky you!) and will always play through the last measure containing notes - I know that sounds confusing, but say you through a note in there way on the right edge of the screen, in measure 6. When you hit spacebar, FL would play all the way through to that note, finish measure 6, then loop back to the beginning. Try it!
OK, I know you're ready to be done with this god-forsaken window, but there's one more thing to talk about - that pane on the bottom. yes can you believe I wrote more crap on there for that too. This is where various data for each note is shown. The data is shown in the form of a bar directly under the note to which it corresponds. The default form of data for this section is velocity, and you wont' use much else very often. If you aren't familiar with midi data, values such as velocity are always a number between 0 and 127. When you create a note by the previous methods, it automatically gives it a preset velocity, 100 I believe (not entirely positive). Its about 3/4 of the way up, so you have some headroom. you can easily change the values for any note by simply clicking over the bar at the approximate velocity you want. In other words, let's say you wanted the C in the middle to be half as loud as the rest of the notes (dunno why, but oh well, it's possible!). Notice that the note is on the upbeat of 4 in the first meausre. You can also think of it as the 8th note, or the last note before the 1 bar for measure two - whatever works for you. Anyways, find the bar in the lower pane corresponding to that note, and click on the bar, about half way up. The bar shrinks to the size. Hit spacebar again to see how it sounds. You can also move the bars by clicking the white squares at the top and dragging them up and down.
Allright, wow look at how much we've learned!! Okay, maybe you haven't learned anything. But this tutorial was for the basics, and I've covered some. I'll try to keep this series up and post more in the near future - enough to cover the rest of the basic concepts in FL so that you can take off making your own music.
In the meantime, why don't you go back to what I mentioned earlier: Make yourself a short loop and tweak those knobs on the main instrument window!!
Footnotes:
*fl studio is a DAW. Other programs include ableton live 5, propellerhead reason 3, cubase, pro tools le, etc. It stand for Digital Audio Workstation
**DISCLAIMER: I am not a music scholar, I have no clue who invented the traditional music writing system, but there's always stupid words in italian we have to learn, so I figured they're prolly a better bet than anyone
Next - Patterns and using the Playlist
In the meantime, why don't you go back to what I mentioned earlier: Make yourself a short loop and tweak those knobs on the main instrument window!!
Footnotes:
*fl studio is a DAW. Other programs include ableton live 5, propellerhead reason 3, cubase, pro tools le, etc. It stand for Digital Audio Workstation
**DISCLAIMER: I am not a music scholar, I have no clue who invented the traditional music writing system, but there's always stupid words in italian we have to learn, so I figured they're prolly a better bet than anyone
Next - Patterns and using the Playlist
Wow how many people can say they exceeded the 10,000 character limit for posts?
Well I'm exhausted, it's been about 2 1/2 hours since I started, and it's almost 1 am now. I'm going to bed. I'll try to cover working with patterns and the playlist tommorrow. And the third will be working with the mixer and FX.
I sincerely hope this helps somebody.
Goodnight all,
David
Well I'm exhausted, it's been about 2 1/2 hours since I started, and it's almost 1 am now. I'm going to bed. I'll try to cover working with patterns and the playlist tommorrow. And the third will be working with the mixer and FX.
I sincerely hope this helps somebody.
Goodnight all,
David
Well it's great that you put effort in writing this tutorial, a mighty load of thanks for that!
I'd like to suggest to resize the screenshots though, they're so big they don't fit in 1 screen, and this makes it kindof hard to read the text and examine the screenshots at the same time.
I'd like to suggest to resize the screenshots though, they're so big they don't fit in 1 screen, and this makes it kindof hard to read the text and examine the screenshots at the same time.
haha stick in there!
As of now I'm planning for tutorial 2 to be on Patterns and the playlist, which will allow you to get an arrangement going. And 3 will be over using the mixer and FX.
EDIT: screens are resized now, they should fit into the window just nicely.
As of now I'm planning for tutorial 2 to be on Patterns and the playlist, which will allow you to get an arrangement going. And 3 will be over using the mixer and FX.
EDIT: screens are resized now, they should fit into the window just nicely.
this is an excellent tutorial...iv only started using FL or any music software for that matter about a week ago and iv already learned most of this but there was still a couple of things i didnt so thanx for the time u put in to do this...its appreciated...im lookin forward to part 2 coz i know absolutly nothin bout the playlist
Thanks |
This is going to be a lot of help for all of us!
I never even knew about this...
Jimk
I never even knew about this...
Jimk
hey... |
Don't forget that you guys can always use samples preferably using ones that are on c... by clicking on the instrument. I believe you can find it also if you do the same thing to get to the second to last picture and then hit smp. You can get alot of realistic drum sounds if you go to a program path similar to this c:programfiles/imagline/fl(whatever#you are using)/data/patches/misc/files_used_by_demo_projects but check your computer because I'm a terrible speller.
Well, a few days ago I started on FL, just discovering and experimenting, I had little idea as to how to work the piano roll, and have used the apparently primitive step sequencer, thanks for your know how, and as a reward for your 2 1/2 hours of sleep deprivation and 10,000 character tutorial, you shall be kknighted this evening. 

lol, i schrewed up Patterns, Using The Playlist, but i am a little tired. i,am gonna go play some games and get back to u on it. theese tut's are very nice
resizeing photos |
i want to tkank WillyDavidK for the tutorial because he began with the basics and then i hope he will write a tutorial about how to create a song start to finish if it's not too much to ask. As for resizeing i want the photo as large as the first ones were because if you want to learn must see the settings(IF THEY DON'T FIT IN THE SCREEN YOU CAN SCROLL UP/DOWN) other tutorial have low quality photos so you can't make much of what is there so photo is more intuitive than text.....hope i didn't make anyone mad
Xaiir, you can also go to Options then to project general settings and change the bar setting by clicking and dragging the box located there. This will set the default bar length for the whole track.
Thanks |
I just started using FL Studio like everyone here :P and i must say this is the most useful tutorial i have found so far. I live in Miami bit I'm from Dominican Republic, where the electronic music is in the hearts of most young people(at least the cool ones) and with FL I will start my producers career. I will write u a check once i get famous 

heh, sounds good romocito. I'll hold you to that ^_^
FL Studio is one of many programs that fall under the category of DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. Programs like Pro Tools, Sonar, Cubase, Logic Pro, Reason, Digital Performer, Ableton Live, etc, etc, are all referred to as 'DAW's.
In layman's terms, it is a program for creating/composing/recording/editing music. FL is mostly geared towards creating computer generated music. You won't find any links on this site about getting your hands on a copy of FL, as probably 90% or more of us have attained it illegally, but do a little googling and a lot of anti-virus scanning and you should be headed in the right direction (hint: torrents) You can, however, get a free demo from flstudio.com. I'm not sure what the limitations of the demo would be. Once you've got the program running, feel free to dive into this tutorial, and hopefully you'll be on your way.
And if you're wondering why this is relevant to bandamp, it's because a lot of the users posting songs here write them in FL.
Hope this helps some! Drop me a line at willydavidk@gmail.com for more info if you're still lost.
Peace,
-David
In layman's terms, it is a program for creating/composing/recording/editing music. FL is mostly geared towards creating computer generated music. You won't find any links on this site about getting your hands on a copy of FL, as probably 90% or more of us have attained it illegally, but do a little googling and a lot of anti-virus scanning and you should be headed in the right direction (hint: torrents) You can, however, get a free demo from flstudio.com. I'm not sure what the limitations of the demo would be. Once you've got the program running, feel free to dive into this tutorial, and hopefully you'll be on your way.
And if you're wondering why this is relevant to bandamp, it's because a lot of the users posting songs here write them in FL.
Hope this helps some! Drop me a line at willydavidk@gmail.com for more info if you're still lost.
Peace,
-David
hey man, GREAT tutorial! I was wondering though, when I put a note into the piano roll, it plays for a while, even after the next note in the sequence. How can i get the first note to stop playing once the "time bar" hits the next note? Thanks! And if you could reply at sam_i_amurai@yahoo.com, it'd be appreciated
Edortizr6, he's actually talking about samples to be used within FL, through the use of a 'sampler' instrument. Go to insert a new instrument and insert either 'Audio Clip' or 'Sampler' then look in the instrument window under the smp tab I believe it is, and you should see a file path and a folder icon. If you click on the folder icon, it should allow you to locate the samples in question here.
For more information about audio clips, see this tutorial:
https://forum.bandamp.org/Lessons/37190.html
Hope this helps!
-David
For more information about audio clips, see this tutorial:
https://forum.bandamp.org/Lessons/37190.html
Hope this helps!
-David
Hey guys! I just wanted to make a quick post here...
It's now been over 2 years since I first posted this tutorial, which is just crazy to me! I am still getting hundreds of hits daily on this tutorial (it makes up almost 50% of the hits on my server each month!) and I am so glad that I've been able to help as many people as I have. Has anyone googled 'fl studio tutorial' lately?
Anyways, just wanted to say thanks again to bandamp, and everyone involved here, and just let you guys know that a lot of people are still reading these things every day!
Peace,
-David
ps- just wondering, is this the most viewed thread on the forums? I couldn't believe it the other day when I was checking in and saw it had gotten >100,000 views!!
It's now been over 2 years since I first posted this tutorial, which is just crazy to me! I am still getting hundreds of hits daily on this tutorial (it makes up almost 50% of the hits on my server each month!) and I am so glad that I've been able to help as many people as I have. Has anyone googled 'fl studio tutorial' lately?

Anyways, just wanted to say thanks again to bandamp, and everyone involved here, and just let you guys know that a lot of people are still reading these things every day!
Peace,
-David
ps- just wondering, is this the most viewed thread on the forums? I couldn't believe it the other day when I was checking in and saw it had gotten >100,000 views!!
FL Studio 8 |
Hey man, I know you said you posted this basic FL tutorial a good while back, but I just want to thank you for your effort. Your post made the basics much easier to understand. I will continue to review the rest of your post on this particular subject.
Charlierock
Charlierock
Nice post, keep up the good work!
======================
Free FL Studio Wav Sample Packs
http://rcamileshigh.110mb.com
======================
Free FL Studio Wav Sample Packs
http://rcamileshigh.110mb.com
much appreciated... |
i've had fl studio since version 3 but never bothered learning how to use it..thanks to you, i can channel my passion for music into other channels other than mp3 hoarding.. thank you so much...
awesome tutorial! |
i just got fl studio and didn't have a clue on how to use it. this tutorial looks amazing!
no wonder it got so many hits. it's one of the first results on google!

Thanks! I love hearing how many people I've been able to help. 
Oh, and it was the number 1 result on Google for a long time, until Google bought youtube. Now its the second result after a youtube video - go figure >_

Oh, and it was the number 1 result on Google for a long time, until Google bought youtube. Now its the second result after a youtube video - go figure >_
Thanks for this. Please do more, especially the mixer =]
Thanks |
Hey man THANK YOU for putting it into laymans terms or for dummies because this program is sooooo complex which is good but you really need to learn what is what and where is this and how do I do this, or my personal one that i always say WTF? lol
This tutorial has helped me a lot
DJ Pinocchio
This tutorial has helped me a lot
DJ Pinocchio
I learned a lot from that small tutorial. One problem though, I'm using FL Studio 9 (demo) and I've got a whackload of extra buttons on the top bar... Also, the piano roll input doesn't work for me; when I "draw" in a little green box, it only lets me stack on more bars on that same note - is there something that I have to change in order to remove that kind of lock? (I want to input more green bars instead of just the small one or "stacking"...)
Sorry, I had a really "gradeschool" vocabulary choice in asking my question. Anyways, thanks for the quick guide!
--XFactor--
Sorry, I had a really "gradeschool" vocabulary choice in asking my question. Anyways, thanks for the quick guide!

--XFactor--
Wow, I guess FL Studio has changed quite a bit over the pst 3 years... o.0
Anyways, I don't really fully understand the problem you're describing, but my best suggestion would be to toy with the different tools (selected in the upper left corner.... unless that's changed too!) and see if any of them give you the desired results.
Anyways, I don't really fully understand the problem you're describing, but my best suggestion would be to toy with the different tools (selected in the upper left corner.... unless that's changed too!) and see if any of them give you the desired results.
Went looking for a screen shot, found this one :
http://www.sound-unsound.com/forums/news-reviews/3342-fl-studio-9-arrives-better-performance-more-toys-more-editing.html
It seams the buttons on the pianoroll are still there
Like WDK says ... play with the buttons ot the top top right of the piano roll; draw, delete, select etc, and try Ctrl+click or Alt+click / drag , this works in Cubase and Wavelab. You can also hover over a block or 'red selection' of more than one block, the icon will change depending where you hover, and you should be able to drag the block longer or shorter.
And dont forget the 'note properties': velocity, pan, release etc by clicking the gray 'empty' space bottom left of the piano roll.
http://www.sound-unsound.com/forums/news-reviews/3342-fl-studio-9-arrives-better-performance-more-toys-more-editing.html
It seams the buttons on the pianoroll are still there
XFactor wrote…
I learned a lot from that small tutorial. One problem though, I'm using FL Studio 9 (demo) and I've got a whackload of extra buttons on the top bar... Also, the piano roll input doesn't work for me; when I "draw" in a little green box, it only lets me stack on more bars on that same note - is there something that I have to change in order to remove that kind of lock? (I want to input more green bars instead of just the small one or "stacking"...)
Sorry, I had a really "gradeschool" vocabulary choice in asking my question. Anyways, thanks for the quick guide!
--XFactor--
Like WDK says ... play with the buttons ot the top top right of the piano roll; draw, delete, select etc, and try Ctrl+click or Alt+click / drag , this works in Cubase and Wavelab. You can also hover over a block or 'red selection' of more than one block, the icon will change depending where you hover, and you should be able to drag the block longer or shorter.
And dont forget the 'note properties': velocity, pan, release etc by clicking the gray 'empty' space bottom left of the piano roll.

awww thank you kings! This is the first time I've had someone mention my birthday on here before over the years, I really appreciate it! 
Also it's crazy to think that I'm 20 now, and when I wrote this tutorial I was 16! hahaha. I still love hearing that people are still using this even though it is woefully out of date.

Also it's crazy to think that I'm 20 now, and when I wrote this tutorial I was 16! hahaha. I still love hearing that people are still using this even though it is woefully out of date.
Time for an update?
WDK you're a lifesaver....this little forum has restored my sanity. I've been in and around music most of my life but have only recently discovered the wonders of working with a DAW. Before I read this it was as if FL Studio was this box full of amazing stuff but I'd lost the key (no muical pun intended)...this has opened the box, and it's sooooo simple, can't think why I didn't "get it before", thanks mate, you've made an ageing Aussie very happy.
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