Tips & Tricks of FPC in FL Studio
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.