Learn About Sean "LiveWire" Smith

This may be confusing to some of you, and anything that you don't understand, just come back and re-read at a later time in your production career. Rather than teaching you HOW to use the piano roll, I'll be teaching you how to use the piano roll to your advantage. There are many factors you have to take into account when you are using the piano roll. Of these, you've got to make sure that you start out with the right sample, that you use the right notes in your head, that the notes you use compliment the other notes, spacing of the notes, the length of the notes, and other things of that nature. Lost yet? Hope not.

First topic to hit on is note selection. I, personally, find myself VERY RARELY using flat notes. I tend to stick to normal notes because they easily compliment one another. A tip in doing such would be that you have to balance the notes around a central point normally. Mostly, you've just got to experiment. For a high note, there are only a few low notes that would sound good with it. The note that you chose could, in turn, determine your entire melody because you get into a chain of complimenting notes. Two good examples of this are "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" and "Get It On The Floor". I cannot tell you what's notes compliment others. That is up to you. As a producer, you have to either have or establish a good ear for things such as complimenting notes. If it sounds "off", change it. That simple. Instinct is a good tool in music production because if it doesn't sound good to you, there is a pretty good chance that it won't sound good to others, and then you've just defeated the purpose of making beats. Good job.

Next is, my favorite, note layering. This is somewhat difficult for people who are not experienced in music or with a musical instrument and I can't really just tell you how to do it, but I can explain the process involved. Note layering is when you play two or more different notes of the same instrument. It is rare that more than three are used, but if you don't make the notes too loud, then more than three could probably be used effectively. Usually the note you are aiming to simulate is between the notes you use, however, you may not be trying to simulate a note, maybe you're just trying to have two different beats playing at once, but with the same instrument. Either way, it works, and, in my opinion it sounds better than regular notes. Well, some of the time. It's all about what kind of beat your making.

Note length is also important. Long notes are normally for long samples, since short samples won't last as long as you want them to. Longer notes can fill up any empty spaces you have in your beat. Empty spaces tend to sound better when filled up with light or soft sounds, such as the hats filling up the empty space in the bassline. Short notes can give a sharpness to a beat. For example, "Never Scared" uses a mix of long and short notes in its main melody to make the beat both full and sharp. When notes are shorter than one step, they can become very sharp. To do this, you would have to change the snapping range of your piano roll. You can make it a half step, fourth step, whatever you wanna do. Then shrink the note to less than a step and viola! There you go, you now have a short note! Good for you.

To understand the need for note length, you have to have sample control. By sample control, I mean that you know how to force a sample to stop when the piano roll tells it to stop, or fade in and out according to the piano roll. To do this you need an envelope. An envelope is a set of controls that tells when the sample starts playing, fades in, fades out, stays playing, and stops playing. You can access a channel's envelope by checking the manual and finding out how. I know that in FruityLoops, you simply left-click the channel to see its channel settings and go to the "INS" tab. There will be many controls here. One of them is Delay. This determines how long until the sample is actually played after the piano roll tells it to be played. I normally leave the delay at zero so the sample plays once played in the piano roll. The next control is Attack. This controls how much time it takes the sample to fade in. Zero is no fade and the sample just plays normally, and anything higher than that is more of a fade, which can make a sample sound softer. Hold is an option that determines how long a sample will be played at full volume level/ After the Hold time is over, the volume will decrease until it reaches the volume that Sustain is set to, and then stay at it until the note is the note is ended in piano roll and then fade down to zero (unless the Hold time is at its maximum value, in which case the sample should begin to reach the sustain level AFTER the piano roll stops it). Decay determines the time over which the volume decreases to the Sustain level. Sustain is the volume level at which it will stop decreasing. Release is the time it will take the volume to decrease to zero from the moment the note is off. If you wish for the sample to be played normally until the piano roll instructs it to stop, make every one of these values equal to zero, except for Hold and Sustain. If you don't use an envelope at all,(by disabling it) then the sample will play completely, regardless of when the piano roll instructs it to stop. It is NOT recommended to make the Release value high because your sample may never end and just keep on overlapping itself.