FL Studio Tips: Learning to Use Fruity Filters

This tutorial is going to breakdown the basics of using an audio filter in FL Studio along with some tips and trick you can use in your Fruity Loops music projects.

Basically an audio filter is just as the name says; it filters out audio either above or below a certain frequency--called the cutoff frequency. The two we'll learn about in this tutorial are the "low-pass" & "high-pass" filters. A low pass filter allows all the audio below the cutoff frequency through or to "pass", things such as kick drums, bass guitar, and other low end instruments; likewise, a high-pass filter will let all the high frequency audio through; for example, cymbals, high ringing synths, ect... In this lesson we will be working with the Fruity Filter. The best way to learn this is just to open up FL Studio and tweak around with the settings on the filter.

So, start Fruity Loops and either lay down a basic beat or load up a project or one of the demo songs. Try to use something that has a full range of sounds, including kick drums, bass guitar or synth, snare, cymbals, hi-hats, maybe some guitar or samples.

Now pull up the Mixer (either by selecting it in "View" at the top nav-bar, or pressing F9) and select the Master channel in the Mixer. Over in the right hand side in an effects slot, click the little down arrow choose "Select" and stick in a Fruity Filter.

In Fruity Filter you will see 6 controls (Cutoff freq, Resonance, Low Pass, Band Pass, High Pass, and x2). Our main focus here will be on the Cutoff Freq, Low Pass, and High Pass knobs. Start by turning all of them all the way down to the left, now if you press play in Fruity Loops you will probably hear nothing, as the filter is filtering out everything and not allowing any audio to pass through.

First turn up the Low Pass knob all the way, this basically turns it on. Now slowly start to bring up the Cutoff Freq knob. And you should now start hearing the audio come through mainly the low end things like kick drums, bass, ect. As you can see when you turn on a low pass filter everything under the cutoff frequency comes through while blocking everything above that cutoff. This is great for pulling bass-lines out of a song or sample. Also you can use this as a cool frequency based fade in or out effect on your music tracks. Just start either full off or full on and slowly twist the cutoff knob from one extreme to the other.

The High Pass does the same thing, but it only allows sounds higher or above the cutoff freq to pass through. Turn the low pass all the way down and bring the high pass all the way up. Now as you bring the Cutoff freq up you will hear the bass tones drop out and only the high end stuff such as cymbals will be coming through. High pass can be used for many things including giving your tracks that lo-fi played through a radio or tiny phone speaker sound.

You could also automate these filters while recording in Fruity Loops for some great WahWah type of effects. If you turn the x 2 knob On and the Resonance up you will get even more pronounced filter effects on your audio. Now that you know the basics experiment with these filters on your own projects and you'll soon master them and have another weapon in your Fl Studio arsenal. And just about every VST or hardware based filter will have these same control, so you will be able to jump right in and start filtering your music projects. 

Fruity Loops - FL Studio REsource