Hello, It’s your friendly neighbourhood early-intermediate guitarist friend here. The last 3 years, I’ve worked hard at building up my guitar skills so I could bring my childhood band dream to life. Thankfully, I got to do just that in the later half of 2022 (More about that on my Band Project page).
My Secret Santa of the band gifted me FL Studio for Christmas 2022. Their main reason was so I’d have something to record guitar with, but it truly opened a world of possibilities to me. Now, I never thought about becoming an artist or releasing music as I was happy just performing covers, but now that I have this tool…why not? By January 11th, with only 4 days of work, I released my first single “Be Courageous” on all music platforms:
This isn’t the first time I touched a producing software though. Back in Grade 11 (over a decade ago), since band class wasn’t available, I opted for music/computers. Back then, we played around with Fruity Loops which was the old version of FL Studio. I don’t remember making anything that fancy or cool back then. I definitely just remade some songs since I didn’t know much theory to be original and express myself.
While I played a handful of instruments, I was only taught how to read sheet music. I could play melodies and basic chords by ear, but I didn’t know how to create or improvise anything. It was all a guessing game. When I tried, I would just hit bad notes or it would sound like a song I knew. I even retired from music after graduating high school because I figured I didn’t have any ‘innate natural talent’, nor had a future in music anyways…
But with new found motivation with Guitar Hero, and the dream to bring my band dream to life, I decided to pick up guitar. Since I didn’t want to be in that box again, I made sure to dig deeper into theory so I could create and improvise freely, and also understand why Japanese music sounded the way it did. I’ve been sharing a lot of my discoveries on this blog over the years.
Now that I’m producing, I’m looking around at the buttons and packs and the playlist/arrangement station, and it’s all so clear to me. I have taken a Youtube and Udemy course to learn how to use and navigate the program, but otherwise, all the words and terminology are something I’ve heard before.
I can certainly imagine someone with 0 music knowledge, someone who hasn’t taken a class nor played an instrument before, would certainly be quite overwhelmed at the variety of options and tools available in this software. While they could learn as they go along, I can definitely see the huge benefits musicians would have when they want to start producing, and today I wanted to go over some of those things.
1. Names & Types of Instruments
As often as people may have seen instruments, the names are not common knowledge. People regularly mistake a bass for a guitar, or viola for a violin. For some instruments, they may never see up close enough to notice a difference, like a clarinet vs an oboe, or they may have assumed there’s only one kind of instrument but there’s variations, such as a sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophone.
I remember in Grade 1, we would have tests where we had to match the names with the image of the instrument. It’s very easy to mix up a tuba from a french horn if you never paid attention before. My schools may have taught music as part of the curriculum, but according to a survey I did, a good 50% of people never took music in school. Some may have taken choir, but they’ll miss out on the insight for instruments and the dynamics of sheet music.
While it may not seem like the biggest deal, knowing not just the names of instruments, the kinds of instruments (ie alto vs tenor saxophone, xylophone vs marimba), and the sounds they each produce will make it soooo much easier when you have a list of 200+ instruments and electronic sounds at your disposal. Even for someone who is focused more on beats, they will benefit from knowing the parts of a drum kit, ie. crash, cymbal, open vs closed hi-hat, bass drum, snare, toms etc.
For me, I’ve played around with piano, keyboard, clarinet, viola, harmonica, ocarina, and guitar. I took band class for 5 years in school, so I’ve gotten to hear instruments like saxophones, trumpets, flutes, trombones and tubas everyday. I was in drumline for 2 years, so it was easy to remember the sounds of the snares, toms, and bass as we all had different roles, etc etc.
So now as I’m writing music, while there are many packs and samples at my disposal, I don’t have to waste as much time clicking on everything to try to find the sound I have in mind. I knew for the last chorus I wanted something triumphant to add more dimension, and I automatically knew I wanted trumpets. Yes, there will be new synth sounds and more unique or foreign instruments, but it’s less of a guessing game.
2. Beats, Bars & Timing
As much as people want to say ‘music is how you feel’ and ‘they don’t want theory to get in the way of their creativity’, let’s not kid ourselves. The only way people can write down music so others could play it as intended is with a music staff and the mathematical aspect of timing. While my schools didn’t really teach us how to make music, they did teach us how to read sheet music, and timing was a vital part of that.
Music has terms such as Time Signatures, BPM, Metronomes, Bars, etc and notes/rests can be organized similar to measuring cups with whole, half, quarter, eighth, etc. Every song can be arranged on sheet music or tabs thanks to these symbols. It’s honestly pretty easy to learn, but I know non-musicians be intimidated or just not see the need for it.
However, when using a producing software like FL Studio, the lines and numbers you see are representative of what you would see in sheet music. Since you have to arrange the instrument samples separately from the playlist/arrangement section, it’s important to keep an eye on the length of your notes and also the bar you are in to ensure everything lines up perfectly later.
When I was dabbling with my first song ideas, I wanted to incorporate a Soca or Calpyso beat for one of them. This is a style I’ve heard (being black and all), but never played, so I wasn’t sure how to replicate the beat groove. Youtubers glanced over the beat and didn’t explain it at all, so I sought out drum tabs. Being familiar with drum tabs for my band, it was easy to convert the rhythm into FL studio.
There’s other features of course, like the metronome which makes an audible click so you know where the beat is, perfect for if you’re recording if you’re comfortable with keeping time. There’s the magnet feature so when you click to add a note, you can decide if you want it to stick to the ‘bar’ or the ‘line’, if you want 1/2 or 1/4 beat, etc.
So I’m sure most musicians would know what these terms are and how to time their music, as they have either used sheets in their field, have played with a metronome, or had to stay in time with other musicians…all except some lead guitarists who are so used to just feeling and playing when they like (The shade, I know XD I wrote articles on why guitarists who neglect rhythm may regret it later as this has been a big trend and concern in the community).
3. Styles of Music & Their Common Traits
One other thing that is really useful if you want to really make it big as a producer, especially if you plan to sell your services to other musicians and artists, is understanding styles of music. More recently, I realized, while I mostly listen to Japanese music, I’ve been exposed to gospel, calypso, and hip hop from family members, pop, rock and musical numbers on TV, classical in school, blues and jazz as I studied guitar etc.
The reason why we can differentiate between different genres of music is because they all have unique features and this is important to note for when you start to write. Blues tends to have a simple I-IV-V progression, Rock utilizes electric guitar and solos the most, Classical mostly uses an orchestra and is more creative with volumes and timing, Reggae focuses more on up-beat rhythms and groove, Math Rock combines extended chords with odd time signatures, etc.
If you ever feel like you’re in a rut with your writing, this may be because you’ve only listened to a couple genres and thus you tend to use the same kinds of instruments, rhythms, and progressions when you write your own music. Listening to other genres and breaking down their elements is how fusion genres are made and why some producers seem to never run out of ideas.
4. Understanding Of Chord Progressions
While singers and lead guitarists may get the spotlight on stage, let’s not ignore the chords that make up these songs. For producers who don’t know or understand chords at all, it’s going to very intimidating trying to make and create with them.
Hip Hop or Reggae tracks may not need them much as they stay on one chord or are focused more percussion/beats, but in almost every other genre, the chords are the heart of the song. Being able to combine chords at will and create any song you had in mind is certainly a huge benefit.
As I said in my intro, I was pretty clueless about chords, and that made songwriting impossible and improvising a guessing game. Yeah, you could just copy chords from the next song, or use 1 of the 10 most common ones, but you’re music is going to sound like the majority of songs out there.
You’re also missing out on all the possibilities that are out there. The video below is a great example of just how overused some progressions are, but we don’t even notice or care.
Maybe I’m just a little biased having listened to Japanese music since my teenage days. I don’t usually understand the lyrics, but I can understand the feelings they want to convey thanks to their long chord progressions. They experiment a lot with diminished and borrowed chords, they’ll modulate (key change) unexpectedly and so on. Here a couple songs with some of my favourite progressions:
In FL Studio, members are lucky that they don’t have to create all chords from scratch as there you can just choose what kind of chord you want (major, minor, suspended, diminished, 7th, etc) and click the root note in the piano roll.
However, without music theory or instrument experience, you wouldn’t know about keys or chords to begin with to even attempt to create a progression from scratch. If this is all new to you, I’ve written a super beginner series on scales, chords, and progressions starting with this article.
5. Mixer & FX Features (For Guitarists)
Now, even the most experienced musicians may not be familiar with these, but if you are a rock musician or have played on some kind of stage, you may have at least touched or hooked up to a mixer and had a general idea of how that stuff works. Or maybe you even got to operate one for events at school or church like I have.
If you’re an electric guitarist, you’ll definitely have the biggest advantage as we are plugged in to mixers, amps, pre-amps, interfaces and so on for practice and all our gigs.
Not only that, but we utilize pedals which can change our basic guitar sound into something cooler or more psychedelic. Guitarists who have gotten this far deep in their hobby will be familiar with words like compression, distortion, overdrive, reverb, delay, chorus, etc because we have or have seen pedals with these exact terms and sought to understand what it does and if we need it.
Since I’m still a pretty new guitarist, I remember being so lost and confused on what they are and what they do. I was scared to adjust settings once I found something useable, but as you get more comfortable and start experimenting, you learn the terms of the trade, and that will also help you greatly as you mix and master your songs when producing.
Conclusion
All in all, the reason I was able to pick up this new software and make an album with various concepts in so little time is thanks to the years of studying instruments, music, and progressions, knowing theory and terminology, timing and more.
I’m not saying my first song is perfect by any means, but it was comforting being able to laydown the frame of it in just a day, and then have more fun looking around and playing with other features, or replacing certain sounds because I have a pretty good idea of what everything is.
If you’re a new producer, or you’ve been producing for a short while but you find yourself sticking to certain sounds or features since the rest is a bit intimidating, I’d say it’s totally worth digging into music theory, or hey, why not pick up an instrument like keyboard, bass, or guitar?
Trust me, your world will open up so much as you learn to read music, understand theory, and hear the difference between acoustic and electronically-made music. You can even record them directly with a midi keyboard or interface, and that’ll also add possibilities to your creations!