Using the Piano Roll

The Piano Roll is FL Studio’s internal MIDI keyboard that is used to create chord and melody structures and scoring. The Piano Roll has some incredible features that allow you to use FL Studio’s intuitive software to draw, click, and paint notes into the scoring system. It also contains features that allow you to use algorithmic tools to create base note sequences and leads, as well as edit note lengths in bar sequences.

Now, it’s time to show you how using the Piano Roll with certain frameworks can take you from FL Studio to the Billboard charts. When it comes to creating records, the Piano Roll is where you will create all of your melodies and chord progressions within FL Studio. I will explain how to use Piano Roll with a power user’s mindset to create hypnotic and attention-grabbing melodies and chord progressions. For now, I will walk you through the basics of what it is and how you can get the most out of it as a tool for creative input.

Opening the Piano Roll

To locate and open the Piano Roll, look in the upper right-hand corner of the admin bar at the icon with the piano notes (see the highlighted icon in Figure 2.1):

Figure 2.1: Viewing the Piano Roll from within the Channel Rack

The Piano Roll will open and show piano keys and OPTIONS in its top taskbar:

Figure 2.2: The Piano Roll

In Figure 2.2, middle C is represented by C5 (as highlighted).

How to use the piano roll

The Piano Roll is an integrated tool to click and compose notes to create topline melodies and chord progressions. In addition to clicking on notes, you can connect a MIDI keyboard or simply use your typing keyboard to compose within the Piano Roll.

To sync a MIDI keyboard to FL studio, you will need to have an external keyboard, install its software separately (if any), and click the OPTIONS tab, as shown in Figure 2.3:

Figure 2.3: Settings | OPTIONS

Once you open the OPTIONS tab and click MIDI settings, FL Studio will open a pop-up window where your MIDI keyboard will populate, as shown in Figure 2.4:

Figure 2.4: Settings | OPTIONS | MIDI input / output devices

Simply sync the keyboard, and FL Studio should begin to integrate directly into the Piano Roll.

In Figure 2.4, under the Input window, you can see (generic controller). When you click this, FL Studio will show you a list of MIDI players that can be easily synced to the software.

Figure 2.5: The MIDI input selection window

If you are using a MIDI interface (whether it be a keyboard or drum machine), it’s easy to integrate this into FL Studio. Once synced up, you can now use your preferred MIDI interface directly in the Piano Roll. Using the keyboard, you can simply type when the Piano Roll is open, or when you select a sound or VST within the Channel Rack, it’s simple and easy within the Channel Rack. Once we open the Piano Roll with our preferred sound or VST (also known as virtual software technology), we can start adding notes with your mouse. I will discuss this in greater detail in the Getting started with the Piano Roll section.

During my career, I have used both a MIDI keyboard and a computer keyboard – it’s more of a preference per your understanding of music theory and piano-playing skill set, but for me personally, I use a combo of the computer keyboard to write ideas and then augment notes with the clicking feature. This may seem counter-intuitive, and it does limit your playing ability when trying new things creatively, but it makes your laptop or computer a music-composing powerhouse if you can master it. A lot of “trap” producers simply click in notes and use their ear to find the best melodies and chords they like. There really is no right or wrong way to approach music; after all, it's more about keeping your productions simple and leaving room for the artist to record over the finished product.

Getting started with the Piano Roll

To get started, choose your preferred method to use the Piano Roll (the MIDI keyboard, clicking, or the computer keyboard), and let’s find a VST to play with in it.

To add a VST into your Channel Rack to start composing in with the Piano Roll, right-click in the Channel Rack and you will see a drop-down menu. Click Insert | FL Keys:

Figure 2.6: Insert | Insert Open | VST Plugins | FL Keys

This will bring up another drop-down menu and populate all of FL Studio’s stock VSTs. If you have implemented third-party VSTs into FL Studio, you will see these VST’s populate your VST folder as well. For this example, we will load up the FL Keys VST. This is FL Studio’s stock piano VST.

Now that we have loaded the FL Keys VST, we can begin playing with it in the Piano Roll.

Figure 2.7: FL Keys loaded on screen

To open the Piano Roll for the FL Keys VST, and future VSTs in the Channel Rack, right-click the VST button and click Piano Roll:

Figure 2.8: FL Keys | the Piano Roll open selection

Once we have opened the Piano Roll for this particular VST, we can start to dive into how to use it to create melodies and chord progressions. Let’s open the Piano Roll feature in the selected VST FL Keys:

Figure 2.9: The Piano Roll open selection

Now that we have loaded a VST and opened the Piano Roll, lets walk through all of the amazing things you can do in the Piano Roll to maximize creativity and get rid of writer’s block (or “beat block” as it is known in the producer community).

Recording in the Piano Roll

There are two definitive ways to input notes into the Piano Roll – mouse-clicking and recording from a MIDI interface or using the computer keyboard.

In order to use a MIDI interface or computer keyboard, go to the top of the FL Studio window and find the red record button. Left-click this icon, and you will be prompted by FL Studio to ask where to record the notes. Now, click the Everything menu option so that we can start recording the Piano Roll right away:

Figure 2.10: The recording selection

When you click Everything, you can use the record button when the Piano Roll is open. I recommend using the 3-2-1 feature to introduce the four-count metronome to prompt you before live recording kicks in. Although Figure 2.11 says 3.2.1, but the recording will start on a four count for the avoidance of doubt – plus, when you get into in-studio sessions, this is jargon that you and the engineer will throw back and forth at each other. The following screenshot shows the Rec in 3-2-1 prompt:

Figure 2.11: The menu bar and recording option

You can now play and input notes directly into the piano by using your MIDI interface and computer keyboard, for example:

Figure 2.12: The Piano Roll note selection

Now, let’s go over the top taskbar with the Piano Roll.

Figure 2.13: The Piano Roll top task bar menu

Within the Piano Roll, the taskbar gives you different tools that allow you to add and edit notes, create riffs, randomize notes, quantize, and work within your Piano Roll composition. There’ll be more on this in the Quantizing notes section. To keep things simple, the main buttons you need to master are the draw, paint, slice, and zoom buttons, which are discussed next:

• The drawing tool allows you to place a single note when clicking a corresponding Piano Roll keynote:

Figure 2.14: The Piano Roll short note input

To lengthen a note, simply hover over the end (or edge) of the green key, and by clicking it, you can drag the note to the desired length:

Figure 2.15: The Piano Roll long note input

When scoring using the Piano Roll, a note can be scored as short or shorter notes (staccato notes) or longer notes (legato notes), depending on your preference when creating chord or melody leads.

• The paint tool(s) have two selections and work in a similar fashion to the drawing tool; however, the highlighted Paint Brush allows you to add additional notes when holding the left mouse key on the desired keynote:

Figure 2.16: The long Piano Roll note input

• The slice tool within the Piano Roll allows you to cut off note lengths, similar to hovering over the desired note, by left-clicking the mouse and dragging the length left or right to find the desired note length:

Figure 2.17: The slicer tool on the long Piano Roll note input

• The zoom feature comes in handy when you compose loops over a four-bar or eight-bar length. Rarely will you need to do this, unless you create complex loops, and this is pretty self-explanatory, as it is a tool that simply allows you to zoom in and out of the window screen. A trick when using the zoom tool is to simply hold down the Ctrl button on your keyboard and use your mouse wheel up or down to zoom in and out.

Now that we have described the basics of painting, drawing, slicing, and zooming in and out, let’s discuss some of the additional features that FL Studio within the Piano Roll tool can bring to your production workflow.

Some useful features of FL Studio

When you click the right arrow at the beginning of the taskbar, as shown in Figure 2.13, there are many different options and selection tools. To keep things simple, you can experiment with all of them as you spend more time in FL studio, but in my almost 20 years of using the software, the most important two drop-down items in its menu are the Tools and Snap tabs.

Within the Tools tab, the key selections that we will use are Riff machine…, the Chop… selection, and the Quantize… tab.

Figure 2.18: The Piano Roll menu | Tools

First, we will discuss the riff machine.

The riff machine

This tool will help you randomize piano notes to create potential melodies, chords, and rhythms when you have writer’s block. When you select this option, the Piano Roll will randomize notes within itself, based upon a pre-selection tool, as shown in Figure 2.19. This will allow you to randomize notes, chords, or progressions.

Figure 2.19: Piano Roll – riff machine

Because the riff machine will randomize notes, it is important to remember that you should customize these notes once they have been implemented, as they are typically useful for creating a starting point rather than a Billboard-charting loop.

When you use the Piano Roll, notes will automatically be quantized to the lines within the Piano Roll window.

Figure 2.20: The menu bar | Line selection

This is great for drum programming and finding perfect placement of notes per music theory timing, but there may be times when you want to move notes off grid for a creative approach (for example, when you traditionally recorded piano players in big studios, not all notes would be quantized, as is done in software-based recording and production techniques). The Line button can be altered by simply hitting the Backspace button on your keyboard.

The Chop feature

In FL Studio, the Chop feature in the Piano Roll allows you to split a MIDI pattern into smaller, individual notes or groups of notes, making it easier to edit and arrange your melody or rhythm.

The Chop tool can be used for many different creative approaches, but in modern music production, it is mostly used for hi-hat and rhythmic augmentation. As an example, in modern trap or pop music, most hi-hat patterns will have a triplet roll – we will use the Chop tool inside FL Studio’s Piano Roll to manipulate our MIDI patterns to create triplet rolls. Let’s discuss how to do this now.

First, open the Piano Roll for the pattern you want to chop by clicking on the small icon that looks like a piano keyboard on the left side of the pattern. Now, select the Chop tool in the Piano Roll toolbar or by pressing the C key on your keyboard:

Figure 2.21: The Piano Roll | Tools | Chop…

This will bring up the Chop tool interface. You can use the Chop tool to split MIDI notes by time lengths, using its Time mul knob. You can also adjust the width of the chop by dragging the edges of the selection of the green MIDI note, as shown in Figure 2.23. Let’s look at the Chop tool in Figure 2.22:

Figure 2.22: The Chop tool

You can now edit and separate a MIDI pattern into smaller pieces and arrange them in any order you desire by using the Chopper feature in the Piano Roll, as shown in Figure 2.23. For this example, I have highlighted the chopped sequence in red:

Figure 2.23: The Piano Roll | a chopped sequence

This can be helpful to write intricate rhythms or melodies with intricate patterns.

Now, let’s talk about using the Quantize tool to space MIDI patterns within FL Studio’s Piano Roll tool.

Quantizing notes

Let’s discuss the basics of quantizing. Quantizing is what allows the software to properly align each note to the closest bar within the Piano Roll. To do this, let’s look at a generic note progression unquantized and recognize how each note is slightly off the bar points in Figure 2.24:

Figure 2.24: The Piano Roll | note inputs

To quantize these notes so they fit the bar sequence perfectly, click the top taskbar arrow, and select the Tools | Quantize… option:

Figure 2.25: The Piano Roll | Tools | Quantize…

When we click the Quantize… option, it will give us the option to use the Start time sliding button (highlighted in red in Figure 2.26) meter to bring each note to the closest bar point:

Figure 2.26: The Piano Roll | the Quantizer tool | notes fully quantized

We have now quantized each note to successfully bring them on to perfect bar alignment.

Tip

Quantizing is great to align notes, but there are some occasions when you may opt out of using this tool for the sake of having a creative approach to where notes land on a bar sequence – ultimately, it’s up to you to figure out what you think sounds best.

Now, it’s time to share with you some secrets on how to use the Piano Roll at a high level.

Piano Roll hacks – the Billboard producer’s template

Now that we have discussed the basic overview of the Piano Roll, you should be able to load a VST and a drum sound into the Channel Rack, be aware of how to click and record in the Piano Roll, and understand quantizing. What I have described so far is just simplifying your approach to FL Studio – you can do a lot more with the Piano Roll, but I don’t recommend trying to master every single facet of the software to get the most out of your productions. I could easily extrapolate out each feature of the software into its own book – the key to mastery is mastering the basics. To be honest, I’ve never needed to go farther than what I have described in this chapter, simply because FL Studio is a tool to input creativity into. It is not about how in depth you are with every single tool in FL studio but understanding the basics of how to use the software. With that being said, I’m going to give you some real secrets now.

Producing records from a perspective of Billboard framework is the key to creating productions in FL Studio that actually work in the marketplace. The first thing we need to discuss is that most producers tend to over-complicate records. Remember, unless you are scoring for a film or advert, commercial records are created with the intent that an artist or songwriter is going to record verses and chorus (or “hooks”) over your production. This means, we need to leave the track open, yet hypnotizing and ear-catching. Here’s the key – you have great sound design, great mixing, and a vibe and feel that is unique to you, but we are all use the same notes and chords. Always remember that when it comes to music, there is nothing new under the sun. It’s how you approach records that makes the difference.

Modern pop music typically follows a formula. Creating workflow efficiently when creating records every day needs to follow this formula. As we discussed in Chapter 1, over the last decade, music arrangements have changed. The typical intro-verse-hook-verse-hook-verse is becoming less and less popular. This equates to a 4–8 bar intro, a 16-bar verse, and an 8-bar hook, which is repeated. Songs nowadays in the rap genre are less than 2:30 seconds long, sometimes shorter. The new formula is a four-bar intro – a 12-bar verse, an 8-bar hook, a 12-bar verse, and an 8-bar hook. Keep this in mind when you are creating underlying loops and progressions.

For now, I want to provide you with some secrets to create loops in the Piano Roll, what progressions work time after time, and what you can do to start creating records that will chart on the Billboard charts.