If you want to take your production workflow to the next level in FL Studio 12, then understanding the inter-relationship between the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll will bring you much creative joy.
With FL Studio 12 the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll have been more closely integrated making it a smoother transition when working between these windows. In this article let's take a look at the updates to these two windows and how they interrelate.
Step Sequencer Length
First up, the Step Sequencer window's updates. It’s super easy now to extend the length of the step sequencer notes. You can just drag the bottom right corner out. You’ll see greyed out extra steps. Now click on this grey area and it’ll activate the steps to extend the sequencer length.
And another thing to point out: the Step Sequencer is now called the Channel Rack in FL Studio 12, which makes sense as it houses the different channels in your song. And on each channel you have a sequencer. So that's a bit of history on how the name has evolved. But I'll stick to calling it the Step Sequencer for the remainder of the article, as I'll be explaining the step sequence process that it can provide.
Step Sequencer and Piano Roll Interaction
Now let’s see how the Piano Roll integrates with the Step Sequencer. Make sure both the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll windows are open. You can use the shortcuts to open them, F6 to open the Step Sequencer, and F7 to open the Piano Roll. Now let’s program in a simple pattern on the step sequencer. We'll use the default kick channel. Maybe use the default drums (Kick, Snare, Clap, Hats) as an example. As you program in the pattern notice how they appear in the Piano Roll. Draw in a kick on every fourth beat.
Notice how as your program in the kicks on the step sequencer how they appear in the piano roll now. Previously you had to first program the pattern, and then send the pattern to the piano roll. So now in FL Studio 12 this process is simplified and more streamlined. Now program in a different pattern on the kick channel on the step sequencer. Remove some of the notes, and place extra notes elsewhere on the sequence. See how on the piano roll the notes you removed are muted, and the new notes are placed on the piano roll.
This is a great for testing out different patterns, and the piano roll still retains the previous ideas, if you want to switch back to them.
Fl Studio 20 Channel Rack
Now draw in a Hat hit on every 16th note. In the Piano roll, you can switch between each channel track. Next to the tools on the Piano roll you’ll see a text saying Piano Roll, and then the name of the channel. Click on the name to switch to a different channel.
Visual Markers and Step Sequencer Length
Another way that the step sequencer and piano roll interrelate is with the new time markers and visual markers. Let me show you first how to add a visual marker and then how this affects the step sequencer.
Choose a channel in the piano roll. Then go to the Piano Roll drop-down menu option in the top left, then scroll down to Time Markers, and choose Add one, or you can use the shortcut Alt-T. This will create a Time Marker, and you can give it a name.
Now right-click on this marker and change it to a visual length marker.
Grab this Visual length marker and move it around, and take note how this changes the length of your sequencer in the Channel rack as well. So you can see another way that these two windows are linked. And this works on a global level, so no matter what channel you have chosen, this visual length marker will change the length globally of your song.
Now let’s look at some extra updates to the step sequencer.
Step Sequencer Swing
Before FL Studio 12 you had a global swing parameter that you could add to your channel tracks. But now you can set the swing value per channel track. To do this, you first need to set your global swing value for the channels. So for example let’s set the global swing to 100%.
Now double-click a channel to open up its channel settings window. And click on the Miscellaneous Functions tab.
Here the swing parameter is set by default to 100%. Drag this all the way to 0 and there will be no swing, now dial it up to the right and hear how it introduces swing for that channel track.
So you can set a global swing value and then dial in on each channel track how much you want that track to swing in comparison to the global swing setting. How cool is that?
Interactive Step Sequence / Piano Roll Overview
The last thing I want to look at is how to change the step sequencer so that it shows you an overview of the piano roll. On the Step Sequencer click on the button on the top right. This will change your step patterns to the Piano Roll Overview.
Now when you click on the overview for each channel, it'll switch to that channel in the piano roll window. So this is a simple way to jump between these when your song starts getting quite busy. It's really fast to use.
Conclusion
We've looked at the new updates to the Step Sequencer and Piano Roll and the interactions between the two windows. Getting familiar with these changes can really help your workflow. These new linked windows help you navigate between your step sequencer patterns and the different channel tracks, so really make use of them.
For further FL Studio tips and tricks, check out the following tutorials:
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Posted by2 years ago
Archived
So I'm somewhat new to FL Studio 12. I understand the concept of moving from the channel rack (sequencer) to the playlist and painting/drawing in the patterns.
Fl Studio Channel Rack Volume
The problem I have is that I don't understand why I will have kick on Channel 1 and when I go to paint the pattern for channel 1 in the playlist and play it back, it plays the patterns from the rest of the channels as well. Channel 1 is bass drum- why in playing back the Playlist with only track 1 painted in do the other percussion tracks play along with it?
Ive seen youtube videos where someone will have everything sequenced in 2-4 bar patterns in the Channel Rack right on top of each other, but when they paint in the patterns in the Playlist, the patterns do not all trigger together. What am I overlooking?
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The Piano Roll is one of the most powerful MIDI editing tools in FL Studio. But did you know you can access many of those same tools directly in the channel rack instead?
This feature is called the Graph Editor. It allows you to change you step sequenced MIDI data into editable MIDI notes. There you can change the key, velocity, release time, pitch, panning, filter cutoff/resonance, and timing. To turn graph editing on, simply select the graph icon on the top right of the channel rack. It will highlight in blue when selected.
In the picture above, you can see normal step sequenced blocks entered into the “Hats” channel. Below is the mini piano roll view that loads up as default once you select the Graph Editor with each note labeled by the key it’s playing. Just like in the piano roll, you can move these notes up or down to change the key. You can also change any of these notes into slide notes by left-clicking the triangle at the top of the editor above each note. Right-click the deactivate the slide.
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At the bottom of the Graph Editor, you can select the different editing options. “Vel” will edit the velocity. “Rel” is release, which applies to the settings in your volume envelope in the channel settings. “Fine” controls pitch. “Pan” is stereo panning left to right. “X” and “Y” is filter cutoff/resonance, which applies to the settings you have in your filter in the channel settings. “Shift” will adjust the timing of each note, which is the same tool used in the channel tools section of your channel.
You can reset any changes you’ve made by holding ALT and left clicking inside the Graph Editor. You can also adjust all of the levels together by holding CTRL and dragging the mouse up and down in the editor. You can smoothly draw in the levels just by dragging the mouse across the editor. If you want to only adjust the levels of a single note, hold SHIFT while dragging the mouse after you’ve selected the note.
Overall, this is a way to quickly adjust your notes without going into the full Piano Roll view. Having control over these options might help speed up your workflow if your preference is to work mainly within the step sequencer window.
For more production tips, visit our Tutorials section.
Posted by4 years ago
Archived
I've recently upgraded to FL Studio 12 and it does something that never happened in 11. I've got the channel rack open and whenever I play back a beat, the channel rack auto-scrolls into territory that's not being used. So, for example, if my current patter is 4 beats, it scrolls past those 4 beats and shows the next 2 beats of empty (grayed-out) space.
Fl Studio Channel Rack Not Playing
This behavior doesn't seem to affect the audio (it's still only playing the 4 beats) but it's really annoying visually, especially when I stop playback when it's showing space outside the pattern and I have to manually scroll back to edit the pattern.
Does anyone know how to stop it from auto-scrolling like this? Is this a feature or a bug?
edit: I figured it out. It depends on whether the scroll lock button is engaged. The scroll lock button didn't affect the channel rack in FL Studio 11. I'll leave this post up in case anyone else gets confused.
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