Open your Fl studio. I use Fl studio 7 – this is my favorite version.
First, you need to choose a tempo of the beat you want to produce… (RED). You can change tempo by using left mouse button and moving the mouse up or down, or you can right-click on tempo bar and tap tempo or choose from the list. The Blue color is your sample/loop library. You can export samples there and you them to your advantage. Green is a playlist where you will place all your patterns or samples to arrange your rap instrumental.
Ok, now with your tempo chosen we can start creating a simple drum pattern.
Creating Drum Pattern To Your Rap Beat:
Open your drum pattern panel (YELLOW). It should look like this:
Now choose samples from your sample/loop panel and drag and drop them to drum panel like I did above (RED). Now we can create a simple drum like this:
Ok, now we have the drum pattern to our rap instrumental done.
Creating Basic Melody For Rap Beats:
Let’s build a melody to our rap instrumental. Now right click on “Channel”(RED) in the main menu and select “Add one”(BLUE) and then select a plugin you want to use. For our rap beat, I will use a plugin named “Fl keys”. Check the image below to see how it have to be done:
Now when the plugin will show – right click on it and select piano roll (see image below) (RED). The piano roll will show. I created a simple melody for that rap beat you can copy and use:
If you use a newer version of Fl Studio you won’t have that pattern panel on the bottom of your Fl Studio. You can change pattern like on the picture below (RED). To change pattern just click on (RED) and select pattern. You can also cut (Ctrl+X) the melody and paste it (Ctrl+V) to a different pattern and fill the playlist in a different way like this:
Now let’s add some bass to this rap instrumental, shall we? You can select a sample of 808 or you can choose a bass plugin such as 3osc or BooBass. I will show you my secret method on how to create bass using 808 sample.
Creating Bass Using 808 Sample:
Select a sample from your library (left side). Then drag and drop the selected bass sample on your drum pattern (1)(RED). Now move to pattern 3 (See the previous image with red color to see where you can change patterns). Now click the bass sample on your pattern panel. (2)(YELLOW).
Ok now, see the image below and click “INS” in your 808 window (RED). Then select “VOL” category (LIGHT BLUE). Next is to change parameters from the left box (BLACK) to right box (WHITE). All parameters should look like this (YELLOW):
Ok, now we have more control over our 808 bass sample. We can now select the “Piano Roll” window and create our bass which should look like this:
Remember that the bass needs to fit melody harmony scale. You can read about music scales here :
[ LINK: http://forbidden-fruity.blogspot.com/2009/10/scales-modes-chord-progressions-and.html ]
Ok now with our bass created you can now place your Pattern 3 into a playlist and play your beat:
Ok, so now you know how to create drum pattern, bass, and simple melody. Play with this and try to create 1 more melody to make your rap beat full.
You can also download this project with all the samples I used in a zipped file below. If you use newer version on Fl studio it should work. The newest version of fl studio looks pretty similar so you won’t have any problems in finding tools.
[ LINK: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IC40iZ8YksarloGvRhopHsgCEbcUyqGF ]
Congrats! You just created your first rap instrumental using FL Studio. Hope this was helpful.
Leave some comments and share if you think it was useful.
Paweł Tugeman
