Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a music community where you can upload your music to.

It's something like Itunes but much more easier. You don't need to pay anything, just sign up for a new account and start adding tracks.

So if you are a music producer, vocalist, a group or a band, and you want the world to hear your music, then bandcamp is the place for you.

It's really easy to setup your own music page. They will ask you to upload wav files because wav is a better quality than mp3. The second thing they need are album arts. For each track or album you need to upload an album art. You can write something in the description field or in about this album/album credits. If you have a nice background and maybe a header graphic, then upload it to your bandcamp.

It really looks more professional on your page when you use all these things

Another cool thing is that you can choose to put your track/album/albums up for free download, setup a price or let the fan name a price. The fan can listen to the tracks on your page and has the option to download an mp3, aac, ogg, alac or flac file. Put tags on each track/album. If you are making rock music, then put rock/band etc etc in your tag. People will find you faster that way. Especially when you have some free music for download on your page. Put that in your tag as well.

Sharing is another way to let people know what you have to offer. With this share button you can post your bandcamp link to facebook, myspace, blogger and many more. I use this button all the time. And it really works!

On the stats page you can view your plays and download per day, week, month, year.

You can see where the traffic comes from and if they play your song all the way, partional or even skipped it. I think it's good to see which tracks the fans like or don't like.

The only thing i'm missing in bandcamp is the forum, i would like to talk to other bandcamp members. It's like you are you are the only one coming to your page, no comments, no feedback on your page. They could have atleast make a seperate page for that, it's always nice read good feedback or to talk about music.

There is enough music to find on bandcamp, lot's of different genre's and lot's of free music.

Have fun on bandcamp!

You can visit my bandcamp @ http://teknalog.bandcamp.com/

MAME

I'm a huge fan of arcade games and i want to share this great program with you.

Mame is a game emulator that plays oldskool arcade games. Mame stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This emulator can be installed on your pc/laptop. In order to play the games in Mame, you need to have the games (roms, cd, hard disc images). Those you can find anywhere on the web. Google is your best friend ;)

You can find games like: pacman, mortal kombat, streetfighter, double dragon, outrun, donkey kong, alien vs predator, wwf arcade, tetris, centipede, nba jam, 19xx, progear, moonwalker, probotector, the simpsons, and many more!

The games can be played with the keyboard or joystick. I hooked up my ps2 joysticks to my pc using a special usb to ps2 converter. You can buy those converters @ ebay.

Maybe you want to use a steering wheel for certain race games, those you can use too!

The program will recognize the hardware, but you will need to input the buttons while you are in the game, that's like 2 min work.

Mame also does support online play. In order to play online, you need this program called kaillera. You can eihter make a game in a server or join one. There are many servers you can find. Mame 117 has that program build in, google it!

So please go check out the Mame emulator if you want to play those cool arcade games again.
This emulator will bring back some great arcade memories.

Direct link to the youtube vid click here!

Photoshop pentool tutorial

Today i am going to show how you can cut out images with the pentool.

I downloaded 2 pictures. One of a beach and one of the beautiful Jessica alba.

The beach wallpaper is going to be the background and Jessica on the foreground.

So let's start with the cutting part.

Open the beach wallpaper and jessica in photoshop. Copy and paste jessica on the beach layer. Now you have 2 layers, background and layer1, rename them if you want. Press P for the pentool and select paths (You will see 3 small squares underneath edit, select the middle one). And also select exclude overlapping path areas (underneath help)

Pick a background spot on the alba wallpaper that you want to erase. Try to make a square with your pentool and erase it. Hold shift if you want to make a perfect square. It's almost like drawing a square, only here you don't need to draw the lines, you will only make the anchor points and connect them, the tool will draw it for you. If you made a mistake press Ctrl+alt+Z to undo it.

So now you have drawn a square with the pentool. Right click on it and choose make selection. Feather radius is 0 px, Anti-aliased and new selection are both checked. Press ok and then delete on your keyboard.

Let's try to make a curve now. Make 2 anchor points and drag the 2nd point without letting go. Move the mouse around and let let go after you got your perfect curve. Now make a 3rd achor point and drag that one as well. So now you know how to make curves.

Start making anchor points from her dress till her elbow and delete that part. I described how you delete parts earlier. If you messed up an anchor point just click Ctrl+Alt+Z to undo it.

You can do it in sections or all in once, that's up to you. When you are done you will probably see parts you are not happy with. You can use the hard brush eraser to fix the parts or the pentool. I use them both most of the time.

Use the burntool to cover the light hair parts. Put the exposure low (15/25%) and the range you can decide. I think shadows will be good. Start burning the light parts with a soft small brush. If you burned too much then you can undo it with the dodge tool.

The burntool is also good to make her skin darker. That's what i did in my design.

Please check out the video below. You can see how i used the pentool, eraser and burn/dodge tools. Have fun!!

Direct link to the youtube video click here

Photoshop blending, fusing

This time i'm going to teach you guys how to fuse pictures.

All you need is a softbrush and the eraser tool.

I downloaded 4 pictures. A picture of a sandy landscape, a picture of clouds, a picture of a sandy road and a picture of a bridge. Click on the links to download the pictures.

The sandy landscape is my background layer. Open the cloud picture, ctrl+A to select the whole pic and copy paste it on the background layer. It will make a new layer automatically. The picture is going to be large, so you need to crop it with the rectangular tool. I only covered the right side with the clouds, but feel free to put the clouds wherever you want.

Now we are going to select the eraser and a soft brush around the 130 px. Put the flow and opacity on 25%. Start brushing away the corners and make the clouds blend in nicely.

Not only blend the corners but also in the middle a bit. Play with the flow and opacity too.

After you are done brushing you can play with the layers fill and opacity. See what works for you.

We are going to do the same with the road and bridge pictures.

Copy a selection and paste it on your clouds layer. It will make another new layer automatically.

Rename it if you want. Again start brushing away the corners with the soft brush on a low flow and opacity. Use big and small soft brushes too!

It's all about the soft brush and eraser tool. It's fun to do and it's not that hard!

The design was done in 25 min.

Check out the video i made at the end of the post.

Direct link to the youtube video click here!

Split second : Velocity review (PC)

Split second is an arcade race game made by Blackrock studio. They also made the arcade racer Pure. I think Blackrock studio watched this movie Death race because like in Death race, you play in a tv show.

The first time i played Split second i didn't like it because the cars felt rusty. You need a car that reacts really fast because you don't want to get crushed or blown up. But after a while i got used to the car handlings. I'm still not loving it but i guess it's ok.

The cars in this game are not the real deal cars, so you won't see Bmw's and Audi's taking each other out. It didn't bother me because the cars they designed look really smooth and futuristic.

In this game you have to take out opponents and dodging exploding objects while you are racing for the nr 1 spot. Something like burnout paradise but different. This time you have to take them out by making buildings, tunnels, cars, planes, bridges etc etc explode. You have to drift and draft for powerplay (explosions). There are 3 levels of power play. The 1st one is a small explosion, the 2nd one is a medium and the last one (red) can make huge objects like buildings, ships explode. You have to time your powerplays, otherwise you will blow up yourself too!

The visuals are outstanding. Shiny cars, spectacular explosions, nice crashes, really well designed beautiful tracks.

Some of the tracks reminded me of Burnout paradise. The tracks are wide and full with interactive objects. You will race in down town central, plane graveyards, construction site, airport terminal etc etc. There are alternate routes and shortcuts you can take. I don't really know how much tracks Split second has but i've seen 10 so far.

There are 5 different modes in this game. Season, Quickplay, Online, Lan, Splitscreen.

Season is like the career mode. Complete races and you will unlock new cars, new tracks, new decals.

In quickplay you can do races, survival, airstrike, elimination and more. I like the survival and airstrike the most because you have to dodge explosive barrels or rockets while you are trying to finish on the first place.

Online i didn't try yet, but i bet it's alot of fun!
I think this mode is going to be played alot. As soon as i have my high speed internet back, i will be playing this non stop, no doubt!

Splitscreen is for people who don't or can't play online and have atleast a 42 inch LCD. Trust me you want to see everything on your screen, and a small tv is not going to work.

The music and special effect sounds are top notch!

I hooked up my sony monitors to my pc and it blew me away.

It gave me that arcade feeling, i haven't been in a aracde for a long time but this took me back.

I would recommend this game to everyone that are into arcade racing games or even never played an arcade racer. This game is lot's of fun, it's like you are in a roller coaster, really great feeling!

I hope that in the future Blackrock studio is going to release some DLC. Well i'm pretty sure they will release some DLC this year, but when? I don't want to wait till dec 2010, so hopefully we can have a DLC somewhere in aug/sep?

More cars, more tracks, more modes, and some car tweaking please!

Pros: fast gameplay, powerplay explosions are never done before and are lots of fun, nice graphics, good audio,beautiful tracks, lot's of modes, lan for pc.

Cons: no turbo boost, cars don't react fast enough, no points for takedowns, no replays, no bikes, no ramps, no traffic mode, only 2 camera views.

Proline MP18 - 8 GB Media Player

Today i bought the Proline MP18. I needed another mp3 player because my ipod touch got stolen, and i always listen to music when i'm outside. So i needed one fast, yes i'm a music addict ;)

Anyways i bought this one for 39.95 EUR. Not expensive for a 8 GB mediaplayer. It comes with a small usb cable, earplugs and a software cd. You can transfer videos, photo's, ebooks and music to it. It has a build in voice recorder and radio. The screen is in my opinion too small to watch videos and photos on it (1.8 inch). The power source is an internal battery.

The design is nice, nothing too fancy. The shiny glass on the front makes it look nice and expensive. The buttons are not too big and not too small, and they make soft clicking noises when u push them, I like that.

The MP18 is a small device : Height 7.9 cm, Width 4.1 cm, Weight 40g, Depth 0.8 cm. It's smaller than a credit card.

I uploaded some mp3's and i liked the quality. It's easy to do, just use the usb cable, hook it onto your computer and drag and drop your music to your mp3 folder.

The volume was not that great. Even when i tweaked the EQ in the player, it still was not going louder. The earplugs are not so great. I used my philips headphones and the sound came out a lil bit better. So if you want to listen to loud music, then don't buy this player!

This player is just a temporarely replacement for my ipod, untill i have enough money to buy another Ipod touch. Cause we all know Ipod is the KING!

Basketball training (shooting,dribbling)

I have some fun basketball practise drills i want to share with all the basketball trainers out there.

The first one is the shooting drill. You need 2 baskets, 2 teams (4 or more people per team) 10 markers and some basketballs. Put 5 markers on the bucket line. 1 in the left corner near the basket, 1 in the right corner near the basket, 1 on the free throw line, 1 in the left corner next to the free throw line and the other one on the right side. And do the same on the other side of the court.

Every team needs to make 50 baskets, so 10 per marker. First one shoots and rebounds and then the next one shoots. They start from one of the corners near the basket.

Let them practice for a while. I usually tell them to make 100 baskets. After that i'll do a team vs team shootout, see which team can make 50 baskets faster. The losers team will do a suicide. It's really fun to do!

You can do this drill too with the little ones, but instead of 50 baskets make it 3 or 5 per marker. And ofcourse the baskets have to be much lower.

Download example here!

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Another drill is the crossover drill.

You need a full court, 4 markers, 1 defender under the basket in the bucket, 1 offender and some people waiting on the baseline to go next.

Let the offender start with a step fake (jab) from the right side near the 3 point line.

The player must do the jab with the right feet to the right and pull it back to the left and start dribbling with the left hand towards marker nr2 (see jpg example at the end of the post).

From marker 2 the player does a crossover. Now he dribbles with the right hand towards marker 3.

From marker 3 the players does another crossover. Now he dribbles with left towards marker 4.

From marker 4 he dribbles towards the defender and makes another single or double crossover and tries to score. The defender has to try to stop him ofcourse. If the offender misses he has to do 1 push up. And when he scores the defender has to do 1 push up

Now the offender stays in the bucket and becomes the defender. The next person can start from marker 1.

Download example here!

Vsti programs

(Note: these vsti's are all installed in FL studio 9)

Welcome to part 4

Vsti's (virtual instruments) are the digital versions of real instruments. They sound the same and they only take your harddrive space.

Good vsti programs i use are: Native instruments (Komplete 6) , Spectrasonics (Trilogy, Omnisphere & Athmosphere), Edirol orchestral, Cakewalk (Sonar 8.5), Steinberg (Hypersonic 2), Toontrack (EZ drummer), Eastwest samples ( Symphonic orchestra gold), plus some more.

Komplete 6 from Native instruments has 7 synthesizers, virtual guitar studio, drum sampler and more. This program is around 60 GB, pretty big vsti.

I used to have Komplete 5 but i upgraded recently. It's a really good program for people who are looking for lots of different instruments.

Trilogy from Spectrasonics is a bassmodule vsti. From acoustic to electric to synth basses. It's over 3 GB. I always use this one to make dope basslines.

Omisphere from Spectrasonics is a synthesizer vsti. This one has the best sounds in my opinion. It has categories like : disortion, electro perc, human voices, pads, psychoacoustic, retro underground and alot more. You can combine the sounds or tweak them, whatever you want to do. This program is over 42 GB.

Ez drummer from Toonrack is a multi microphone drum sampler. This one looks really cool. The interface is a drumkit construction, it's like you are really behind a drumset playing. There are many different drumsounds. You can play jazz, rock, funk and much more, over 7000 drumsounds. The size of this program is 1.5 GB

Symphonic orchestra gold from east west quantum leap is a orchestra library vsti. You can find strings, piano's, percussions, choirs and more. This program is 32 GB. The strings, flutes and choirs sound really good. Those are the only 3 i use, but i guess the rest must be good as well.

You can download demo's or buy them. I changed the names into links. So click on it and it will direct you to the website.

It's really easy to install a vsti program. Open the setup, enter the serial code, install the files in the vsti folder (FL studio makes one for you automatically) and that's it.

To open them in FL studio go to Channel>add one>more. Click on refresh at the bottom and look for the vsti name. Check the box when you see it in your list and double click on it. So next time you can find that vsti in your channels.

Survival of the fittest

Another cool beat i made for you guys ;)

I'm a huge Street fighter fan, since the 1st street fighter came out on the snes.

Now 17 years later they released SF4, a mad dope game!

So i'm following all the great players worldwide and i found this guy named gootecks.

He organizes SF tournaments every month in the states, and he records his footage and puts it on youtube and piratebay.

So while i'm watching this tournament online, a beat pops up in my head (yes that happens alot to me)

I rushed to my computer and started to make that beat. I found the perfect sound, again in Hypersonice 2 (one of my fav vsti programs) and the rest are dilla and 9th wonder snares, kicks etc etc.

So survival of the fittest was born.

Enjoy

Survival of the fittest download!

Direct link to the youtube video click here!

Feel the love my dove Prod by TekNaloG

I just wanted to share some of my beats i made in FL studio. This beat was made last year Oct 2009. I felt like making something crazy and smooth, so i came up with feel the love my dove.

One day i was watching warptime, a show on discovery channel. They make bullet time videos (slowmotion) with special camera's.

They do stuff like poppin a water balloon or shooting a bullet through a banana, it looks really cool in bullet time! And while i was watching it a sound came up in my head. I immidiatly went to my computer and started looking for that sound.

The dreamy bells you hear in the background are from Hypersonic 2 and the bassline is from spectrasonics Trilogy...really nice vsti programs! I used no samples.

It has this dreamy vibe but you can still bob your head to it, and it collabs great with the video.

So check out the vid and leave me a note if you liked the track or not.

Download the track here: Feel the love my dove download!

Direct link to the youtube video click here!

Photoshop for beginners coloring

(Note: photoshop is needed!)

Hey i am back with another great tutorial. This time i'm going to talk about photoshop.

Were you always wondering how designers make such cool designs, and you wish you could make some nice designs too!? Alright no more worries, i am going to teach you a thing or two about photoshop.

Ofcourse i am going to start with the easy basic things, but later on it's going to be a lil bit more difficult.

We start with changing the colors in digital photo's. Sometimes you see designs that are black and white but the Tshirt is red, i will teach you how to do that.

First we need a picture. I downloaded a picture of this native american girl with blue war paint over her face. Now i want to change the color into red and make the rest black and white.

Open photoshop and go to File>open and select the picture. Now you will see the picture on your screen and as a small thumbnail in your layers palette (on the right side) called background.

Right click on that and choose duplicate layer. Now you have 2 layers. On the bottom of your layers palette you will see a square with a circle in it, click on it. Next to the background copy layer a blank frame appeared, we are going to work in that frame so select that frame.

Now press B on your keyboard and your arrow turns into a brush. Under edit you will see the word brush and a number, next to the number is a small triangle, click on it. Choose a soft brush, start with a normal size like 35 or 45. Make sure black is your foreground color (the black and white squares in the toolbar).

Click on the eye next to the original background layer to make that background disappear. Now only the background copy has the eye. Start brushing the parts that you want to alter. You will see that the parts you brush will go blank and that's good. Don't be affraid to go overboard a lil bit, you can fix that later with the white paintbrush.

Now put the eye back on the original background and select that layer (it has a blue stroke when it's selected). Click on the black and white circle (it's next to the mask tool we used earlier) and choose hue/saturation. Above the layer palette the hue/saturation adjustments appeared. Select the box colorize. Now you can play around with the colors.

When you are done and you still see lines or spots, go back to the background copy and select the blank frame again. Now you can start fixing those spots or lines you missed with the same black brush. Maybe this time you need a smaller brush size. If you made some mistakes you can correct them with the white color. Just switch the white colored square in your toolbar to the front by pressing X on your keyboard. Black is for adding color and white is for erasing. And don't forget to work alot with the zoom tool, some parts are hard to brush and for those parts you need to zoom in.

So now we are almost done. Let's add some black and white. But first select the thumbnail next to the blank frame. Press shift+ctrl+U and voila, now you have your black and white design with colored parts

Don't forget to safe your file as pdf and jpeg. Maybe you want to brush some more later.

In my next blog i will teach you guys how to fuse pictures and make cool designs.

So please stay tuned for the next tutorial......

Direct link to the youtube video click here!

Flingstress

I have another great artist that needs some shine.

Her name is Flingstress, she is a vocalist/songwriter and she lives in The Netherlands. In the past she has worked with Big boy caprice, Too tall and some other dutch artists. She was always busy writing and recording in the studio, but she has never released a single unfortunately.

I asked her why she calls herself Flingstress and she told me this :

I have some flings with different styles and sounds....sometimes giving me stress.
But without it, i wouldn't be the same!
That's why my username.

I've been friends with this talented lady for over a few months now and i really really like her.
She likes and makes any type of music and that is what i love about her. Her voice is soft and powerfull, she will give you goose bumps when you hear her sing! She is the kind of person that likes to work with unknown people that are good in what they do. It doesnt matter if you are 16 or 46 years old, graduated from music school or not, if you can make beats that she diggs then she will ask you personally if she can use it.

You can find her vids on youtube in the upload section, i will leave a link to her youtube channel at the end of my post.

Please support this talented beautiful lady to make her dream come true.
Go to her youtube, comment/subscribe/fav etc etc.

Now she is currently busy working on a few singles and her first album. And this time she is going to release them!

I know this because i am one of her producers ;)

http://www.youtube.com/user/flingstress

I

Eric lau E.P

I found this artist a few weeks ago named Eric lau. This neo soul/hiphop producer is from the UK. Some of the artists he works with are : Oddisee, Muhsinah & Kaidi Tatham,Guilty simpson and more. I really liked the neo soul vibe tracks, i think i've played always, no regrets and understanding 100 times no joke!

I like music that gives you that good feeling and this guy knows how to make that kind of music.

So for your hiphop/neo soul lovers out there, please cop that album, it's worth the money!

You can buy his tracks @

http://kilawattmusic.bandcamp.com/album/eric-lau-kilawatt-v2-2

FL 9 More mastering part 3

welcome to part 3.

(Note: cool edit pro is needed!)

In part 2 i promised you guys i would tell you some more about the mastering. In the previous blog we produced a decent quality track. Now i am going to show you how to upgrade the quality some more. Open your music project in FL studio and go to Options>audio settings. In the Mixer tab, set the interpolation to 64 point sinc. If it makes your computer slow during the the track rendering, then u can set it back to 6 point hermite.

Now we are going to export the track to a wave file. Go to File>export>wave file. Give it a name and click on save. A grey box with options pops up. Highlight the wav box in the output format. Set the wav depth to 32bit float and the quality sampler interpolation to 64 point sinc, plus all the boxes beneath must be highlighted, except for dithering. Click on start and wait till it's done.

Now we have a pretty big wave file, but it's way too big to upload it to your website or to send it through email. Cool edit pro is the program to help you fix this problem.

Open cool edit pro, go to File>open and select your wav file. The control panel is in the down left corner. Press play and see if the green bar on the bottom doesn't reach the red zone. You want your track to be as loud as possible but you don't want to have a distorted track.

So let's say your track reaches the red zone and that is not good. Select the full track ctrl+a and go to Effects>amplitude>amplify. In the amplifcation we want to reduce the DB. Simply drag the top block (L) to the left and you will see the db change into a negative - number. I usally cut it to -0.68 or -1.00 db. Sometimes i do less, sometimes i do more. Play with it and hear for yourself. Everytime you are not happy with it or the green bar still reaches the red zone, you can undo the amplify by doing the command ctrl+z or go to the edit and click on undo amplify. Now you can try anoter amplify cut or boost.

Ok now we have a nice loud track and no redzone. The next step is to convert the wav file into a 16 bit resolution. Press F11 and set the resolution to 16 bit. The sample rate should be on 44100. Press ok. it's ready to be saved.

Go to File>save copy as, give it a file name and click on options. The mp3 encoder options pops up. Select the CBR and MP3 and set it on 128 Kbps 44100HZ Stereo. Set the codec to High quality codec, press ok and then save.

The mp3 has the quality of a wave file but the size of an mp3. Pretty cool huh?
I will post the vsti (virtual instrument) tutorial on my next blog.


Stay tuned for the vsti tutorial....

Direct link to the youtube video click here!

FL9 Mixer - Master part 2

Welcome to part 2

So we know how to insert and record the sounds in FL. Now i am going to show you how i quantize the recordings in the layers and which filters and effects i use in the mixer to make the beat sound better.

When you don't quantize your recordings, your beat will probably sound off-beat, that's not what you want. Let's try to make a kick and a snare pattern on a 96 tempo. Don't forget to turn on the metronome cause that will help you press the keys on the right time.

I just recorded 4 kicks and 4 snares (4 second loop). When i play it back it sounds really off-beat, the kick and snare are not in line with the metronome. Stop it and let's go to the kick piano roll. You will see 4 green bars but not recorded right. Click on the the magnet. Now choose the 1/6 step. More grids (blocks) appeared. I select the 1/6 step because sometimes i like to make off-beat tracks, and on the 1/6 you can change it slightly. If you can't count 32 grids between the 1st and 2nd bar, then select the magnifier in the toolbar and click in the piano roll to zoom in.

Now we are going to quantize the kicks manually. I like to do it manually because the quantize tool doesn't always works great for me. But if you want to use it, that's fine with me.

Click on the pencil tool and press play again. Drag the 4 kicks to the lines where the metronome hits and do exactly the same for the snares. You won't even hear the metronome anymore if you did it right (kick, snare, kick, snare). But maybe the beat doesn't loop perfect. You can fix that by stretching all the 4 snares. Use the pencil tool again and go with your mouse over the end of the green snare bar. Hold the left mouse button and stretch it 8 grids (blocks). Do the same for the other 3 green bars. Now they are all 8 grids long. Press ctrl+a to highlight everything in the snare piano roll and press play again. Your loop is perfect now! You can do the same for the kicks if you want, stretch or make them smaller.

To make your loop longer, let's say 1 min, you simply copy paste the recordings and put them on the right spots.(ctrl+a/ctrl+c/ctrl+v)


Ok let's check out the mixer. In the mix master track (the 1st one with the yellow FX block) are 8 effects slots. On nr 8 you can see the fruity limiter. It's a band compressor and i always leave it on default, but feel free to check out the other presets.
Now i'm going to tell you one of my mixer - master secrets, which effects/filters i use. On nr 1: the EQUO. On nr 2: the Fruity Bass Boost. On nr 3: the Fruity Blood Overdrive. On nr 4: Fruity Parametric EQ2. On nr 8 i leave the Fruity limiter.

So now there are 5 effects you have to tweak. Ofcourse you can do it your way but i will tell you how i do it my way, since it's my blog ;). In the EQUO i select the curve mode (bell shape) and i start dragging the left middle part (bass) a little bit up with my mouse. I do the same for the treble, it's on the right side.

The Fruity Bass Boost gives the bass in your beat a real boost so you might wan to lower it down. Turn the knob next to the FBB to the left. I always turn it down to 25/30%.

For the Blood Overdrive i do the same, 25/30%. Gives the beat more volume.

In the Fruity Parametric EQ 2 i tweak all the sliders, just a little bit.

Last but not least, the Fruity Limiter. I always use the default settings, but feel free to check out the other compressions.

Do all these things while the beat is playing. But be warned! The sound you hear in FL studio is way different than the actual mp3. Because the data you are playing in FL is raw and when you save it as wav or mp3 it comes out clean. Most of the time you think that you didn't put enough treble or bass on your beat so you going wild on the EQ or Bass Boost.

Just convert the beat to mp3 or wav, listen to it and if it doesn't sound right, go back to the mixer - master and redo some of your tweakings. That's how i did it and still do it.

You also can tweak your layers separately. Maybe you only want your kick or melody to have more bass.
Click on the kick layer and then select the insert 1 track (next to the master track). Do Ctrl+L and now you have a stand alone kick track.

In part 3 i will be talking about some more mixing and mastering and Vsti's (virtual instruments) How to install and how to use them.

So please stay tuned for part 3....

Here you can watch the video tutorial

Direct link to the youtube video click here!

FL9 beatmaking tutorial part 1

Hello fellow beat makers,

My name is Tek and I will be posting some blogs about how to make beats in FL studio. It's for all the beginners out there. I will begin with the basics and easy stuff. Later on it will be more difficult, but no worries, i am here to help you guys.

FL can be used for all genres. I've been working in FL for over 4 years now and i still love it.

First of all you want to have your midi/usb keyboard plugged into your pc. Open FL studio and test if the keyboard works, it should play the kick sample when u press a key. If it doesn't work then you can go to the options tab and click on the midi settings. Find the keyboard brand you are using in the input list, click on it and select the enable button, the box becomes orange. Now it should work, press x to close it.

In the FL mainscreen, on the left side you will see a browser with channel presets, clipboard files, collected etc etc. There you can find all the FL stock sounds. Let's say you want to use a channel presets sound. Click on it and it will show you a drop down menu with 3x Osc, Automation clips etc etc.
Click on the 3x Osc and it will show you another drop down menu with lots of sounds.
Now you can drag and drop one of the sounds onto your kick layer of the channel window. The channel window is the big grey block with the kick, clap, hat, snare layers in it. Simply drag and drop, let's say accordeon to your kick layer, the name will change into accordeon. Now you can play the sound on your keyboard.

If you are looking for another kick or snare sample, go to the packs folder in the browser and it will show you 8 drum kits and some more stuff. Just drag and drop it like explained earlier. Another way to insert sounds in your layers is by doing a right click on one of the layers, left click on insert and it will show you all the vsti’s (virtual instruments) and other stuff.

Let’s try sytrus, that is a FL vsti with lots of different instruments and sounds build in. Now you see the sytrus keyboard. If you want to use another sound in the sytrus, simply click on the left or right triangle next to the x button. Or you click on the white triangle on the left side, go to presets and all the instruments will pop up.

Ok let’s try to record something. On the FL transport panel, you will see the play, stop record buttons. The tempo is on 140. You might want to slow it down to 106 or 96. You can decide for yourself, but since you are a beginner, I would recommend you to put it much slower.

The metronome (stick with a swoosh) and the countdown (321) boxes should be on (orange) On the time bar it shows 1:01:000. That too you can change. Just click on the 2^nd small block on the time bar that says BM it’s really small. Now it’s set to 0:00:00, much better right?

Press the record button and then the play button. It will count down from 4 to 1. Now you can play something while it’s recording. Press the stop button when you are done playing. You will see some green bars in the piano roll, that means that FL recorded your play, congrats ;)

Click again on the record button to uncheck the recording. Now you can listen to what you have recorded by pressing the play button. If you don’t like it then you can right click on the green bars and that way you can delete them one by one. Or maybe you want to delete everything all in once. Make sure the piano roll is selected, ctrl+ a to highlight everything and then press del. A pink bar appears, do the ctrl+ a again to remove it. You want to remove it because maybe you want to record something longer or shorter.

Yes so we recorded a melody or a drum pattern on the 1^st layer.

Now we can do some more recording on the other layers. Just do the same things i explained earlier.

So let’s say you have recorded in 4 layers. 1:kick pattern, 2:snare pattern, 3:melody, 4:bassline, and you want to save your work and play it in winamp or whatever music player you are using.

Go to file>save as, give it a file name and the save type should be on Fruity loops (flp). Now you just saved your music project, maybe you want to edit it later.

Go back to file>export and click on mp3 file. Give it a file name and the save type should be on MPEG layer 3 (mp3). Click on save, a grey box appears with lots of options.

Later I will explain how to produce better quality beats. Click on the start button and wait till it says 100%. Now you can go listen to your 1^st home made beat.

On my next blog i will be going a little bit deeper on the recording and talk about mixer - master.

Stay tuned for part 2….

Direct link to the youtube video click here!