Creating bass slides using Fl Studio's Arpeggiator

Today, I'm going to share a cool different way to do slides and tricks with your sub bass. First things first, you need to load up a bass sample and set it up so that you have complete control over the sample. You can do this by slightly moving the CRF knob so that it uses loop points, or you can go into the INS tab and set the envelope to do the same thing.

Ok, now you want to go to the FUNC tab in the sampler and mess around with the arpeggiator settings.

I recommend turning the slide setting on, so you get a smoother sound out of the arpeggiator and set the gat knob to the middle or all the way to the left.

You can now play around with the arpeggiator's time knob, up and down options, range/repeat values, and chord options. 

If you right click the time knob and go to set, the knob has preset values to help keep things on tempo too.

So, that's pretty much it! Have fun playing around with this and hopefully you come up with some interested slides and sounds. Also, here is a link to a mini pack of slides I came up with - http://www.mediafire.com/download/wk32ao9gx9m7y2f/free_bass_slides.7z

How To Fine Tune Music Samples

Oddly enough, there's not much about fine tuning music samples on the internet, so I decided to share how I go about fine tuning samples in Fl Studio. This should apply to all other DAWs, since they should all have a fine tuning option.

First, you have to figure out if the sample is actually out of tune and obviously you have to add other sounds to hear that. I suggest to start with a piano sound and try to play along with the sample. Pianos have a nice strong sound and make it easier to hear if the sample is out of tune. If the sample is out of tune, you want to go to the misc tab in the Fl channel sampler.

Once you're in the misc tab, there will be a fine tune knob at the bottom right hand corner.

Then you can adjust the the fine tune knob to what you hear is best. This is where your ears come into play. There really is no correct value to set it at, but I recommend to start adjusting the knob between 0 -50 cents down or 0 +50 cents up. That's usually a good range to find the proper tune to match up with other sounds. It usually never ends up a 100% in tune, but it'll be good enough to not clash with other sounds. Also, if you're wondering where to look to see how many cents you're tuning the sample to, it should show up right above the Fl browser.

You could also do the opposite and fine tune your instruments to the sample. Most vst plugins have a fine tune knob, so that might help if you're still having problems with the sample's tune.













In the end, fine tuning samples really comes down to using your ears. If you aren't comfortable trusting your ears, it never hurts to do a little ear training. There are plenty of online free resources that can help with ear training.


Hope that has helped some of you guys out and I'll be sharing some more tips soon!