How do you guys arrange your songs in FLS?

[Will_Bender]

So I am looking at the step sequencer, playlist and mixer... and I am saying to myself... where to begin?

I mean, I lay down a lot of tracks in the all these things, but there's a serious lack of self-control going on here... jamming out five hundred measures of guitar solos and piano midi is generating a lot of ideas... But, then, I'm like saying to myself - "Dude, it's simple - I just want to hear a basic A-B-A-B-A structure..."

Improvising a million measures is great, but I think it might be a sort of overcompensation... because I havent really figured out how to organize everything into small, cogent cadences, periods and sections... that would fit into like an A-B-A-B-A setup...

So, when you have a million tracks and patterns laid down, what techniques can I use to kind of put everything into some sort of organizational context?

Thanks in advance!

WB

P.S. I wonder if this question has no one right answer, so it is seeking more of a discussion topic than an absolute response... so chip in as you wish...

 

[Ddream]

Hello there!

I'm also a FL Studio user, and here's how I make things (keep in mind that I produce Drum and bass, so the structure is different):

- I normally start by choosing the drum sounds I want: A nice meaty kick, 3-4 snares, 2-3 different closed hats, 2 crashes, a ride, 1-2 open hat and a tambourine.

- I start working on the processing of the snares, by layering them, choosing which will be the snappy, which will have the body, which will have the high end. Then EQ. Then add a little distortion (very little), and then compress it too. After that, I use some reverb, and there you go.

- After that, I mess around with the kick.

- Then I make a simple drum and bass pattern (based on the amen break) and leave that for a moment (in the step sequencer).

- Now, I start the sound design (pads, bass etc) and put some ideas of melodies down (in the piano roll) and place the patterns of both the sounds and drums on the playlist.

- Dnb has a structure of: intro, verse, build up/drop, chorus, breakdown, build up/drop, verse, chorus, outro. Of course, this is up to the producer. You can do as you wish.

- After I have placed all those parts into the playlist, I start messing around with the transitions: reverse crashes, filter sweeps, etc.

- After that, I go back to that drum pattern I made first, and start tweaking it to make a good accompainment to the others elements of the song, specially the bass.

- After the drum breaks are good enough, I send all the individual hits to the piano roll, so I'll be able to edit the velocities and placement of the notes, to make it more "human".

- After that, I listen to the whole song over and over again, and see if there's any empty spaces i need to fill with percussion or FX.

- Then I proceed to the proper mixing of the sounds.

Well, this is a brief view of what I do when producing. Of course, it's something that is time consuming, specially the sound design and mixing parts.

 

[mycbeats]

The key to arrangement in FL is to split the channels into different patterns. Don't follow the idiotic youtube tutorial method of putting all drums in one pattern, all of verse in another, all of hook etc.
With the patterns split up, you can try different layering combinations on the fly without having to "make unique" patterns every time.

To anybody thinking about disagreeing with me, I ask you this, what happens when you export the stems? you get one track one sound, why not track like that with midi?

 

[Ametrine]

I also separate all of channels into different patterns. I then dump everything into the playlist so that each channel has its own line in the playlist. Percussive elements are at the top. I then usually have three different automation clips on three different muted kicks that automate sidechains.

After those clips, I usually have my synths below all of that with their respective automation clips. (As you can see, I live and die by these things lol. My playlist grid ends up much larger than the average because it's full of them).

I pretty much have most of this set up in a template, so I don't have to worry too much about structure every time I open up FL. Once the skeleton is set up, it's just a matter of laying down patterns. It's easy enough to add in layers once the monotonous stuff is taken care of.

When I add automation clips, I add them under the channel that they're affecting and I do not cut them. (They run the entire length of the track).
If you can imagine that, my playlist pretty much ends up looking like a giant colorful box once I'm finished.

If you can get the basic organization such as that down, working on the track structure becomes really easy. All you have to do is pull stuff out, makae unique patterns, etc.

 

[Will_Bender]

Hmmm...

Amertine - I like your response because it gives me an idea I hadnt even considered - VERTICAL organization... and using templates to keep all of that organized...

My original query was more about how to keep things organized in a HORIZONTAL manner... I was thinking something like the following - which may not be the optimal way to do things, but it should illustrate what I mean...

Assume you have a simple A-B-A-B-A horizontal structure for a piece... each A or B section is two cadences long... I find myself wanting to tweak almost every cadence somehow... This would mean I would mean my number of pattern tweaks would be the sections times two, so 5*2=10... for a total of ten different patterns, which I might label something like the following (and this is where I wonder if there is an easier way)...

A1.1
A1.2
B1.1
B1.2
A2.1
A2.2
B2.1
B2.2
A3.1
A3.2
(These are listed vertically (as they would appear in the step sequencer), but note again that they would follow a horizontal flow from top to bottom).

This "list of coordinates" as pattern names seems to have some drawbacks. It's very clinical sounding, and it could get extremely long if you had a more complex song structure involving C and D sections or additional numbers of cadences. You'd end up with a pattern list that would seem to get pretty cumbersome.

So I was wondering if there is an easier way to organize the patterns in a cadence, section and even an entire period (in a horizontal sense)... because once one starts making all those tweaks (and then adds in vertical harmonies)... my thought is... it's going to get too complex to manage...