How to Chop Breaks FAST in FL Studio

How to Chop Breaks FAST in FL Studio

It is not necessary to devote a lot of time for the preparation of the drum break before you can do the creative stuff with it. Slicex is great when you want to have individual slices and detailed routing but sometimes that detailed setup is the reason why you cannot simply just get a beat going.

As a fast solution, FL Studio's Playlist can be accessed to integrate the breaks directly, then by the use of the Slip tool, one can move about the sounds among those chops. Simply adjust your loop to the tempo, slice it, add it automatically, and change the rhythm. That's good.

The great thing is that you can maintain simplicity until a certain hit needs special care. You can still provide a snare its own mixer channel, add reverb to certain hits, and displace your hats a bit off the grid without redoing the whole break.

Table of Contents

• 1. Drop Your Break into the Playlist
• 2. Fit the Break to Tempo Before Chopping
• 3. Use Medium Auto Slicing
• 4. Juggle the Hits with the Slip Tool
• 5. Give One Snare Its Own Effects
• 6. Bypass Snap for Shuffle and Fine Timing
• Keep the Workflow Fast from First Chop to Finished Track

1. Drop Your Break into the Playlist

You need to begin in <strong>Song mode</strong> because audio will be used to work with in the Playlist rather than building a pattern in the Channel Rack.

The illustrative case employs the orthodox Hot Pants break and sets the project tempo to its default. It is not required to adjust the project tempo to that of the original recording before it is imported. Next, you will be the one to sync the audio with your project.

1. Find your break in FL Studio’s Browser.
2. Drag it into the Playlist.
3. For a tidier setup, drop it onto a Playlist track header and choose the Audio Track option when prompted.

By means of a dedicated audio track, you can also do this audio insertion as a mixer, thus saving routing a different job. These are the types of your little shortcuts which help you to create music, instead of operating windows.

Burst in to the continuities and locations in the music by identifying the waveform and barlines clearly. In the illustrated Mac arrangement, the command button in combination with the mouse wheel facilitates the horizontal adjustment of the zoom. The option key plus the wheel is used to adjust the waveform's vertical display.

If you’re choosing source material, these essential drum breaks for drum and bass give you more starting points to explore.

2. Fit the Break to Tempo Before Chopping

The break will not be able to directly drop the imported elastic on the project’s bar lines. You have to take care of that before slicing the break so that your punches start with a useful rhythmic structure.

1. Click the small audio icon at the top left of the clip to open its menu.
2. Choose Fit to tempo.
3. Use the estimated tempo option to let FL Studio calculate the fit.
4. If the result plays too quickly, enable the Playlist’s Stretch control.
5. Drag the clip’s right edge until the break fills the intended length. In this example, that’s one bar.

There is no need to panic if the automatic estimation of the break is too short. The estimation is the first thing to do, after that, just stretching the clip to the right length is what you have to do to complete the job.

Before dragging the edge, check that Stretch is enabled. You are interested in extending the audio's duration, not just changing the part of the clip that is visible.

Listen to the fitted loop first before you progress. When it takes up just a bar and the rhythm fits at your project tempo, you are good to go for chopping.

3. Use Medium Auto Slicing

Access the probe's audio menu again and choose Chop > Medium auto slicing. FL Studio separates the break into new Playlist clips for you.

Right now, listening to playback should be similar to what the original fitted loop would sound like. You have created sections that you can edit, but so far, you have not changed their order or timing.

You can start by selecting all the slices, then holding down the Shift key and dragging the selection to the right by one bar, thus creating a copy. The result is a two-bar phrase: the first bar can be kept as it is whereas the second bar can be modified by you.

This option is particularly helpful as it allows you to test the effects of the difference. You can listen to the extent you have altered the original sound to still contain the groove.

4. Juggle the Hits with the Slip Tool

To choose the Slip tool, simply hit the S button on your keyboard. This is the point of the process where the speed picks up qualitatively.

If you want to move the source audio under your existing clip boundaries to a different place in the Playlist, rather than doing so, you make it inside your existing. The rhythmic slot remains the same place, just that it continues playing a part of the break that is different.

For instance, you hit a hi-hat in a section, but because of the overlapping the hi-hat actually brings in another sound from the source break. You are reprogramming that particular slot to play different audio without the need to create a new sampler instrument for that case.

Always have snapping turned on at the beginning. The demonstration remains on the current grid adjustment; however, various snap divisions offer you different rhythmic options.

• Swap a hat for another hit: Slip the audio inside that section until a different sound appears.
• Double the snare: Change an adjacent section to repeat a snare and create a quick fill.
• Change the kick sequence: Start with a softer kick and bring the heavier one in later.
• Add a double kick: Slip neighboring sections to introduce another kick at the beginning.
• Change the snare placement: Experiment with where the snare appears within the phrase.

Let the loop continue its journey and introduce slight alterations. You will directly know if the new version has a higher bounce or if you have gone too far.

In addition to drum breaks, you can try this approach on other samples as well. The method is also applicable to other samples; however, breaks are particularly effective because they are particular samples that have numerous different hits that are to be rearranged.

For more on keeping technical setup out of the way of creative decisions, these mix workflow improvements follow the same practical approach. You can also check the official FL Studio Playlist manual for reference on its editing tools.

5. Give One Snare Its Own Effects

In the end, you may need to deal with a specific sound differently. There can be a situation where only a certain snare requires reverb while the kick and hats remain unaffected.

Не обязательно маршрутизировать каждый срез отдельно с самого начала. Просто отделяйте удар, когда это необходимо.

1. Open the menu on the snare clip you want to process.
2. Choose Make unique.
3. Double-click that unique clip to open its channel settings.
4. Assign it to a different mixer insert. The demonstrated Mac shortcut is Command + L.
5. Add a reverb to that mixer insert.

If you make this clip unique it automatically assigns a separate channel instance that will not affect the whole program with its processing. So, for instance, you could put a specific reverb setting just for this snare without it being on the entire break.

When you find the effect satisfactory, you can return to the Pencil tool and apply the specific snare clip to replace the other snare hits that require the same treatment. Do not change the rest of the beats.

Initially create the rhythm, and then add routing solely where it is justified. With this, you use playlist chopping for the speed, but without abandoning selective processing.

6. Bypass Snap for Shuffle and Fine Timing

Grid snapping is considered a very useful tool that is helpful in making fast edits but is not the only function that users need to operate this software.

While dragging, you can press \Alt on Windows or Option on Mac\ to temporarily avoid snapping. You are able to do a minor adjustment without altering the global snap setting.

You can use those small adjustments to:

• Push a hi-hat slightly forward.
• Pull a hat back for a different shuffle.
• Delay the timing of a snare slightly for a more laid-back feel.
• Fine-tune an edit around a zero crossing in the waveform.

In this case, delaying the snare is not the same as adding a delay plugin but rather is changing its timing. Slight variations in timing can transform the overall groove without altering the original sound.

Be sure to check the waveform around the edits you made and the rhythm as well. A zero crossing is where the waveform intersects its central line, and placing an edit at this point can be a solution to the very abrupt cut that is being brought about.

Keep the Workflow Fast from First Chop to Finished Track

The entire technique is really just a handful of steps: import the break, tumble it to a bar, auto-slice it, duplicate it, and use Slip to create variations. Make one-off hits different only when you require separate effects, then use Alt or Option for fine timing.

Think of it this way: you throw an Slicex break into your project and it is configured to your liking right after that. You are sparing your creative energy since you are not preparing a full Slicex setup.

When your track is ready for release, distribution is the next step. DistroKid, the sponsor associated with this tutorial, offers unlimited music distribution on an annual plan to services including Spotify and Apple Music. You can find more context in this DistroKid explanation.

In your next, production session keep the setup lean and the edits playful. A couple of slipped hits, a selective snare reverb, and a slight hat shuffle can place the same source break to a completely different location.