Delving into the FL Studio Mindset and Workflow

I’d like to congratulate you on buying this book, for it is a manifestation of your dedication to taking an important step in mastering your skill set as it relates to leveraging FL Studio. It has been said that when the student is ready, the master will appear. In everything you pursue in life, be it related to professional or personal development, you can only build as high as your foundation is deep. This book will provide you with that strong foundation on which you may build. I hope that once you have completed its lessons, you will use it to continue your growth as an FL Studio user, and ultimately, reach the level of a masterful power user.

I hope you are excited to take this journey with me, as I’m excited to share with you the key aspects of its software system, which I have learned over almost two decades, and the experiences it brought to me. I will discuss these topics briefly in the following pages, but I need you to be willing to learn and willing to take action and understand that it is your why that will drive your motivation to take action on its contents.

Although this is a book of technical frameworks of the how to use FL Studio to create records that work within a Billboard charting framework, we need to ascertain the why of your desire to master FL Studio before I can impart the secrets of its formulas to you.

I have broken this book into three parts that represent the keystones in mastering FL Studio. The first part of this book will impart upon you the first key philosophy that must be addressed. This is the most important framework that will set the tone of what you will do with this book, and that is the mindset, or the reason why you want to master FL Studio. In the second and third parts of this book, I will teach you the how. With the proper mental framework coupled with the technical know-how, only then will you be ready to become a true power user. Ask yourself, is record production simply a hobby you enjoy in your downtime, or is becoming a world-renowned record producer a dream you have a burning desire for? This is a question you must contemplate in your own time.

The how is about the actual technical aspects of using FL Studio to get the most out of its powerful work systems.

From my perspective, and the perspective shared with me by some of the most legendary producers in the industry, if you are to truly master FL Studio, you need to have a strong why – without this, this book will still impart practical knowledge, but I fear you may not use it to its full potential.

This chapter will focus on sharing my own experiences using FL Studio in the music industry to help you to capture the mindset and absorption of knowledge required to master the software program. You will benefit from the stories and personal experiences I have had using the program, learn about practical frameworks for absorbing knowledge, and how I leverage the software capabilities to complete productions that are selected and used by major recording artists. You will also be introduced to the basic concepts within FL Studio and how they relate to creating an optimal workflow framework within the software UI. You will be introduced to how you should use the foregoing skillsets in sequence when using FL Studio to create productions in an advanced framework.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Perfect practice makes practice perfect
• Mindset and using FL Studio
• Making hits that work for the masses
• Using and organizing the Browser and Channel Rack
• Understanding the Arrangement tool (the Playlist)
• FL Studio’s Mixer and plugins