An Introduction to FL Studio 12: The Tool Bar
In FL Studio, the top section, known as the Tool bar, is used to dictate the track’s components and contains the majority of FL’s processes.
Quick access master pitch and volume faders
To the right of the Menu Bar, there are two vertical faders: one for the Master Volume, and one for the Master Pitch. Generally, I don’t like touching either of these unless I need to quickly test out how something sounds with a different pitch or volume.
Midi/Controller device section
This section with the button with the knob on it is the Midi/Controller device section. This has 7 functions: “Typing keyboard to piano keyboard”, “Scrolls to reach time markers”, “Step editing mode”, “Quantization”, “Enable note/Clip groups”, “Quick tweak master pitch”, and “Multilink to controllers“. First off, “Typing keyboard to piano keyboard” enables you to be able to play and record MIDI notes through any synths and VSTs. Disabling this feature will render most of your keys on the keyboard useless. The “Scrolls to reach time markers” button will follow your time marker as you play through the song so you don’t have to scroll with the marker manually while playing it. “Step editing mode” allows you to edit and slice your recorded midi inputs to an exact spot on the piano roll. “Quantization” will open up the quantization settings, allowing you make every midi note you’ve recorded stay on beat to whatever setting and exactness you please. “Quick tweak master pitch” is a tool to tweak the master pitch (no duh). Lastly, “Multilink to controllers“ allows you to chose which devices you want to record with and set as your inputs for a specific recording.
The Recording and General Project settings
The next section is, again, very important, and you will use this with every project you work on in FL Studio 12. The Recording and General Project settings contain crucial bits of information and settings in regards to the BPM (beats per minute) or pace of the song, the metronome, looping and repeating patterns. On the bottom of this section, the horizontal bar represents the whole song with the marker being the bar. Use this to scroll through your track and play certain sections.
When making a pattern and recording through a midi device, make sure to press the “Loop recording“ button located on the top right so that you can play over your pattern and record multiple instruments.
Pattern selector
The section where you will probably be spending a significant amount of your time will be within the pattern selector. This small section holds all of your step-sequenced patterns that you’ve created in a dropdown menu here you can edit, clone, and create new patterns. A great tip that I like to give with this section is that if you are using a pattern throughout a whole song but forgot to put your instruments on separate patterns/tracks, there is a button on the bottom of the pattern selector dropdown menu which splits a selected pattern by channel.
