Using FL Studio to increase your workflow arrangement

When it comes to using FL Studio to arrange your productions, the main tool of focus is the Playlist tool.

The FL Studio’s Playlist tool is where we sketch out our arrangements. The Playlist tool enables you to quickly and effectively arrange your patterns and create dynamic musical structures, thanks to its drag-and-drop interface and simple controls. Getting familiar with the Playlist tool will assist you to better understand the organization of songs and how the various components of a track work together to form a coherent track. The Playlist tool also gives you more creative freedom and enables you to experiment with new concepts and sounds by making it simple to automate your effects and create intricate arrangements. Mastering FL Studio’s Playlist tool is crucial for developing your skill set and music production abilities.

As we have discussed in Chapter 1, the Channel Rack in FL Studio is used to arrange and program musical instruments, patterns, and sounds. When writing and arranging music in FL Studio, you will devote a significant amount of time to it. It is a crucial part of the FL Studio workflow, and how you use it will affect how quickly you can organize music in the Playlist tool. As a key element of the Playlist tool in FL Studio, mastering your workflow when using the Channel Rack is necessary to create professional arrangements. In the Channel Rack, you can create, edit, and manage your various MIDI and audio channels, instrument, and effects. This makes it quick and easy to add and switch out different sounds, instruments, and effects.

You can create complex arrangements with a variety of instrument layers quickly by assigning patterns to different channels using the Channel Rack. Learning about FL Studio’s Channel Rack is essential for honing your musical composition skills and creating songs that are compelling and dynamic, whether you’re a beginning or seasoned producer. Now, let’s discuss how we should approach using the Channel Rack from my point of view to maximize and give flexibility to your ability to arrange your full songs in the Playlist tool.

One way is to make all of the drum sounds in one Channel Rack channel when making drum patterns, which is fine when you are composing ideas. However, I advise you to separate each loop pattern into a different channel so that you can arrange them in the Playlist tool separately, which will give you an easier option to add and remove sounds as needed to build tension in your arrangement.

When we separate each drum sound and drag it into the Playlist tool, it will appear as shown in Figure 6.2:

Figure 6.2: Playlist | drum sequences

Let’s see how we can separate each drum sound:

1. Go to the Playlist window by clicking on the Playlist button on the toolbar or by pressing the F5 key on your keyboard, as shown in the red highlighted box in Figure 6.3:

Figure 6.3: Playlist

2. In the Playlist window, a new pattern identified as Pattern 1 will populate. To create a new pattern, simply right-click on Pattern 1 in the playlist and select Insert one from the context menu, as shown in Figure 6.4:

Figure 6.4: Playlist | Insert one

3. Create a drum pattern for your kick, naming it Drum Kick. Then, add another pattern for your snare or clap and then a pattern for your hi-hat, naming it Clap (as I have done in this instance). Select the drum pattern you created earlier from the list of available patterns, as shown in Figure 6.5:

Figure 6.5: Playlist | Channel Rack | Drum Kick

4. Drag each pattern to the desired location in the playlist using your mouse, as shown in Figure 6.6:

Figure 6.6: Playlist | Drum arrangement

This framework of separating each pattern by individual layer is an important concept that you should follow with every instrument, as it will give you the flexibility to properly arrange layers and augment your production throughout.

Let’s look at how to separate patterns with a two-layer keyboard loop. Using the Piano Roll, I have created a basic chord progression. We will follow the same steps as described for the drum pattern layers:

Figure 6.7: Playlist | Arrangement

Now, let’s add the second keyboard layer to the Playlist tool:

Figure 6.8: Playlist | Arrangement | Piano 2

Voila!

Now let’s talk about how to follow the billboard charting formula when arranging productions in FL Studio, which you can use as a template and start making records that work for charts!