If that’s not making sense, it keeps everything quantized in time (to a specific interval) across your music. Underneath, you have a universal snap control (where it says ‘Line’ on the above image), which determines the snapping of the grids across the piano roll and arrangement. This helps you to visualise and time your music, as well as telling you the current load on your computer’s CPU.

You’ll see a variety of buttons and also a time counter alongside a few visual effects. Switching between them allows you to move between sketching out ideas to making a full track, pretty seamlessly.

This allows you to switch between playing what’s in the Channel Rack and what’s in the Arrangement. In this section, you’ll see two options: Pat and Song. In the centre, you’ll find your transport section: play, stop and record buttons for playback. Here you will find the File, Edit, Options and much more up the top left.Ī lot of them are straightforward, or just itemized versions of the various buttons and knobs that lay across the interface already, so don’t get hung up on these. Nothing is fixed, besides the toolbar across the top of the screen, which is what we will look at first. That’s the beauty of this DAW – it’s infinitely customizable, especially in comparison to its arch-nemesis, Ableton Live. The first thing to know about FL Studio is that all the windows can be moved around. For most of you, FL Studio will look something like this when you first load it up.

Beginners guide to fl studio