If you’re an FL Studio user, the FPC plugin is an essential tool for building custom drum kits, finger drumming, and adding creative percussion to your tracks. Here are some practical tips and lesser-known tricks to help you make the most out of FPC for faster workflow, punchier beats, and greater creative control.
Getting Started & Organizing Your Kits
- Drag-and-Drop Simplicity: You can drag any audio sample straight from the FL browser onto an FPC pad to instantly load it. This makes customizing your kit a breeze, whether you’re layering snares or swapping out a kick on the fly.
- Pad Renaming & Coloring: Rename and color-code each FPC pad (e.g., “Kick,” “Snare,” “Hat”) to keep your drums neatly organized, especially useful for large kits and live performance setups.
Workflow Boosters
- Build Templates: Once you’ve created your go-to drum kit layout, save it as a project template (.flp) in FL Studio. You’ll start each new beat with your favorite sounds already loaded and routed.
- Chop Samples Fast: Use SliceX or another slicer to chop a breakbeat, then drag your chopped samples directly onto FPC pads. This shortcut speeds up sample-based beat making.
Sound Design & Layering
- Multi-Layer Pads: Each FPC pad supports multi-layer samples. Load soft, medium, and loud hits to different velocity layers within the same pad for realistic “humanized” drum performances.
- Envelopes & Tuning: Adjust envelopes (ADSR) for individual pads to tighten up drums or add snap. Use tuning controls to pitch drums up or down for creative effects or better mix placement.
Mixing & Routing for Pro Results
- Pad-to-Mixer Routing: Right-click a pad and set its output to a unique mixer channel. This allows you to EQ, compress, or add effects to individual drums instead of processing the whole kit at once.
- Group Processing: After routing each drum to its own mixer track, group those tracks to a “Drums” bus for easy parallel processing and group effects like glue compression or reverb sends.
Performance and MIDI Control
- Velocity Modes: Toggle “Scale volume with velocity” for velocity-sensitive pads—great for finger drumming dynamics. Switching it off makes every hit play at max volume, ensuring consistent power for programmed beats.
- Custom MIDI Mapping: Remap pads to any MIDI note to match your hardware controller, or create custom pad layouts for specific live performance workflows.
- MIDI Groove Libraries: In the FL Browser, navigate to Scores > FPC Drum Loops for a huge variety of MIDI drum patterns you can drag onto patterns for instant groove inspiration.
Advanced Tricks
- Sidechaining: Use FPC in combination with a peak controller and gain plugin to duck other instruments whenever a kick or snare hits, giving your beats more clarity in the mix.
- Layering Drums for Impact: Stack multiple kicks, snares, and hats by loading several samples onto a single pad as layers, then tweak their gain, panning, or envelope settings to sculpt your ideal sound.
Final Thoughts
FPC is more than just a simple drum machine—it’s a flexible powerhouse for beatmakers, whether you’re producing hip-hop, EDM, or experimental music. Use these tips to develop lightning-fast workflows, mix and shape your drums with surgical precision, and unleash new creative possibilities in your tracks.