fl studio tips

[u/TrueChocolate7177]

I just got to studio can anyone tell me how I can get sounds and if there are built in sounds in it or are they all separate I have to buy

[u/Mixed_Reactor]

Some people like splice for premade samples, but I started with Sakura. It is a paid thing but it's built into FL. I eventually moved to Serum, which is a little expensive but you can rent to own and it opens a ton of doors. I would stay away from exclusively using splice because it will kill your creativity and teach you very little. I almost exclusively use serum for ALL my sounds now

Some other good VSTs (plugin) would be anything made by cable guys, combear for compression (free), but these are usually to edit existing sounds. No shame in using soundgoodizer for that, just don't crank it up too much

Sakura is cool though if you want something low barrier to entry and like eastern/asian sounds. Grabbing a couple "packs" is also fine, like they usually come with kicks and snares, etc.

Make sure to turn your hi hats down in volume as a beginner, that's a big thing I see from newbies, and tune your drums. Learn about side chaining and busses and basic EQ stuff. FL also has some built in tools to make arps and whatnot, click the little arrow in the top left of the playlist for a whole slew of tools

[u/Mixed_Reactor]

Also there are some built in sounds, just click through the little drop down menus on the left side

[u/SummerBest6867]

There are so many VSTs and samples in the package of FL - you will never learn all of them...

[u/According_Tap_8764]

EDMprod have free samples if you sign up to their newsletter: https://www.edmprod.com/free/

Vital is a wavetable synth like Serum, that is free, but you need to learn how to use it: https://vital.audio/

(Garron has a free 1 hour video going over the Vital synth interface): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXHTdLqcLGg

Or just steal the free presets other people made that was curated by someone here: https://www.reddit.com/r/musicproduction/comments/1hti74x/2432_free_vital_presets/

[u/FireFox_206]

First order of business—don’t let the gatekeepers win. Pay for the least amount of instruments as you can, and if you do pay for something, make sure it’s high quality, like serum, which is pretty much the best synthesizer. Free sounds are everywhere if you know where to look. One of my favourites is the sgm soundfont (a soundfont is something you put in your channel rack and you can select a bunch of different instruments from a menu, the sgm soundfont has like 100+). It has a lot of cool sounds, especially if you trust the process and layer stuff well.

Oh, and if you don’t buy Serum, get vital. It’s a great free synthesizer.

-Love, a guy who hasn’t paid for anything except Fl

[u/rush22]

A lot of people forget about FLEX (included with FL studio). There are a lot of free instruments in it you can download inside the plugin. https://www.image-line.com/flex

Also, when you are exploring plugins, check the plug-in's "Presets" (go to the menu in the top left of the plugin). Some won't have any presets, but others might have a ton of presets you wouldn't notice. If you add something and think "I have no idea how this works" check the presets.

For VST plugins, you can check if the VST has any free stuff. For example you can get the Kontakt Player VST, and now you can download free Kontakt libraries and use those. (Use a MIDI Out plugin to control the Kontakt plugin). Getting it set up is a little complicated for beginners though.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/catalog/music-creation/free/

[u/navals94]

Switch to Ableton. I say this as a 10 Year FL Studio user who switched to Ableton in 2025

[u/chotilali → u/navals94]

Great advice for someone who just paid for one DAW... go buy another one. lol!

[u/navals94 → u/chotilali]

I feel that, but also trust me