FL Studio Drum Guide

Make Bangin' Drum Patterns

 All Rights Reserved ® by Carmine Mastropierro.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording,
or other without the prior written permission of the author.

Book catalogue: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0784LSY2Q

 Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Bass
Part 2: Kick
Part 3: Snare
Part 4: Hihats
Part 5: Percussion
Putting it all together
 Introduction
Thank you for buying my FL Studio drum guide. I know it will
improve the drum patterns, bounce and rhythm of your tracks. I've been
producing daily on Fruity Loops for the past 2-3 years and have built up a
great amount of knowledge around the software.
One of the most important parts of your songs are the drums, especially
for hip hop which is what I specialize in. I've figured out how to make
banging drum patterns that drive tracks forward and sound interesting. You're
going to learn techniques to get your drums slapping, common patterns to use
and more. Enjoy!
 Part 1: The Kick
The kick in just about any song will make up a majority of the bounce
or rhythm. This is the most apparent in hip hop and a lot of club style music.
It is very commonly layered over a bass or bass drum which you'll be
learning about later.
In my opinion, kicks should be hard and square. In sound design terms,
this means the sample has no attack, a long hold and no decay. The result is a
kick that can punch through other elements of the song and can keep the
rhythm going.
Lets load up a drum sample into FL and see how we can do this
ourselves.

By opening the sample on the channel rack by clicking it, I go to the

envelope tab. I then take these steps:
1. I drag the attack(ATT), decay(DEC), and release(REL) the way back.
2. I extend the hold all the way along with the sustain.
3. I change the waveform shape to pulse, increase the amount and lower
the attack.
 If you do this and play your kick again, it should sound much louder
and hit harder. When it comes to music there are no cookie cutter ways to do
things. Some beats might sound better with a lighter kick, one with more high
end frequencies, or similar. This is just one way to make your kicks punch
which I know can be a common sore spot for new producers.
When you're mixing your kicks on a mixer insert, the first thing you
want to do is change its stereo separation to mono. “Separated” means stereo
and “Merged” means mono. Mono will centre your kick which is what you'll
also do to your bass later.
Turning the small knob under the channel swap allows you to
manipulate its stereo separation. Moving it to the right(purple) is mono and
left(blue) is stereo. You can even remember based off of the colours.
 Part 2: The Snare
Kicks and snares go hand in hand to make a majority of the groove in
many songs. You'll notice especially in hip hop that snare bounces don't tend
to variate too much. We can throw in some rolls and unique patterns but they
tend to stay linear. Once you get the basic snare patterns down you can begin
to add in your own flavour.
Just like with the kick, I love having my snares envelope squared so
they're fuller and hit harder.

The following are common snare patterns you can use in your song. If
you lower your BPM it may not sound right but anything above 100 should
sound fine.
 Part 3: Hi Hats
This part is going to cover closed hi hats specifically since they add a
great amount of texture and direction to your songs. Open hats on the other
hand tend to be used as a percussion which I'll get into later.
If you turn on your favourite hip hop, pop, or RnB song I bet you'll hear
a lot of dancing hi hats, especially if it's newer. Older tracks tend to have live
drums while today it's mostly computerized. I'm going to show you how to
make awesome hi hat patterns, rolls and make them more realistic
To make the most basic hi hat pattern, simply right click your sample
on the channel rack and select “Fill each 2 steps”. It should look like this:

Some songs just have this and no variation because less is more
sometimes. If you're into hip hop, I recommend listening to 'Mask Off' by
Future for an example of this. It was produced by Metro Boomin but has a
surprisingly simple beat for a huge hit.
Many songs you hear nowadays feature a 2 step hi hat along with rolls.
These rolls are very easy to make in FL Studio and can add a lot of bounce to
your tracks. To begin, make sure you have a 2 step pattern laid out like above
and enter the piano roll.

Hold control+L and this will extend all of the notes. You may have to
drag the very last note manually to make it into neat blocks.
 Now this is where the power of FL Studio steps in as usual. Holding the
control key, select one of the hi hat notes and press alt+U. The chopper tool
should be opened in your window. Dragging the time multiplicator knob to
the left will create tighter and tighter rolls. It's very common to use rolls of 2,
4(like below) or 8.

Good spots to include your rolls are:

Before or after a snare hits.
Before or after a kick hits.
Around your percussion.
On kick or snare hits for more texture.
Like many things in music production, there are no cookie cutter ways
to do things. You can break the rules and it might end up sounding even
better so go with your ear.
 Part 4: Bass
It's very common to have out of tune bass drums or ones that are poorly
mixed. If you can consistently get good bass in your tracks, it will make a
world of a difference in quality. Here are some of the steps I take to get
slapping bass that sounds correct musically.

Before anything our bass drums needs to be in the proper key or they
will sound off. To figure out what key a bass sample is in, right click the
waveform and select “Edit”. This will open the stock Edison plugin. It has a
lot of useful functions including detecting BPM, slicing, equalizing and more.
The one we want to use is “Detect pitch regions”. This will display what key
the sample is in and in my case, it's C2.
 With this new information, you can now change the root note of your
sample from the miscellaneous functions tab. Find the key that Edison gave
you and right click it. It should be highlighted blue afterwards.

A good rule of thumb is that your bassline should follow the notes of
your harmonics. I did this in the following example with ghost notes enabled.
I begin on the root note of the melody I laid out and place the bass notes in
similar spots.
 Part 5: Percussion
Since I personally focus on making hip hop production, percussion is a
very important element. The drums are always in the forefront and leading
the track. Once you practice making enough drum patterns, placing
percussion becomes natural to you. Percussion includes instruments such as:
Snares.
Rimshots.
Hi hats.
Bongos.
Chants.
Cymbals/Rides/Crashes.
Triangles.
Shakers.
Claps.
One of the best ways to teach you how to use percussion properly in FL
Studio is with examples. The following are patterns you should recreate in a
new project to hear how they sound. They are quite common in modern
music and you will be able to implement them into your own tracks.
 If I were to build a kick pattern, throw some hihats in along with a
melody, this would sound great. You should try to avoid elements
overlapping though some times it actually sounds good. For example you
traditionally wouldn't want your kick and snare to be hitting at the same time
because you lose that bounce. When creating patterns on the channel rack,
also be on the look out to see if it's stacking with another instrument.
You'll notice a lot of percussion tends to be placed on the third marker
of each step on the channel rack. Above, the snare and rimshot are an
example of this. Placing them in those positions adds more bounce and
rhythm.
 Putting it all Together
Making bangin' drum patterns isn't that hard once you get the basic
patterns down. Pair that with some good mixing and your drums will never
sound better. I recommend that you try implementing the drum patterns and
tips in this book on future tracks. Experiment, switch up the samples and
you'll learn from experience.