How to Sample in FL Studio (6 Ways)

Sampling is taking a clip from an existing musical idea or audio file and then tweaking it in ways which distinguish it from the original. There are a few ways to do it in FL Studio. Let’s start with the easy way.

To sample in FL studio
1) Open FL Studio and import your sample
2) Adjust the project’s BPM to the sample’s BPM
3) Double-click the sample
4) Right-click the waveform and select “Open in SliceX channel”
5) In SliceX, adjust Auto slice options or create manual slices
6) Create a new pattern

6 Ways to Sample in FL Studio [A Step-By-Step Guide]

1) How To Sample With The Playlist

The Playlist itself features several basic options that you can use to edit your samples.

You can use the Playlist tools to slice (create chops) and select a section of the original sample (to remove or use only that part). You can also do time stretching with the playlist.

A) Insert Your Sample

An alternative is to open your computer’s file explorer/manager, go to the folder where your samples are located, and then click and drag the sample to the playlist in FL Studio.

B) Sync Your Sample Tempo To Project Tempo

Samples often come in different tempos. To use a sample in your project, the first thing to do is to get the tempo synced with your project.

Many samples today already come with their tempo information written alongside the name of the sample.

For samples that do not come with tempo information, you can find out the tempo by using the tempo tap function.

Open the tempo tapper, hit play, and tap along with your keyboard/pad/mouse. Some websites perform tempo detection too, so I recommend you search for them.

If the sample is the first element of the project, and you’re fine with the sample’s original tempo, then you need to adjust the project’s BPM to that of the sample.

If you are incorporating the sample at a later time in the project, with other elements involved, and you don’t want to change the project’s BPM, you can adjust the BPM of the sample to that of the project.

The tempo detection window opens. In that window, select “Type in (BPM)”.

C) Create Chops

After selecting the slice tool, move your cursor to a place in the sample where you want to create your chop, hold “shift” and click the start point of the place you want to chop. You can slice the endpoint this way too.

2) How to Use FL Slicer And SliceX

FL Slicer and Slicex are two powerful chopping tools in FL Studio.

They do the same things, but SliceX is more advanced with a lot more functions and ways to slice and chop your samples.

They help to also edit the individual chops in different ways.

A) Insert Your Sample

Drag and drop your sample from the FL browser or your file explorer to the FL Studio playlist. Once you have done that, tempo sync your sample using the method described in 1B above.

B) Open Your Sample In Fruity Slicer/Slicex

Right-click the waveform and select “Open in new Fruity Slicer channel” /”Open in new Slicex channel.”

C) How To Chop

I) Using Fruity Slicer

If you selected Fruity Slicer, it would create automatic chops for you, but you can change the degree to which your sample is sliced/chopped. Click on the Slice button to see the different slice options available.

The “Dull, Medium, and Sharp auto-slicing” modes may not give an adequate result depending on the kind of sample.

They are most effective when used on drums. I find using the tempo-synced options like “1/6 beat, 1/4 beat, Beat” to be a more efficient choice. This is why it is important to sync your sample to the project tempo.

Under slicing options, select “Zero-cross check slices” to remove the clicking sound you hear when the chops get triggered.

You can delete these chops so that you can trigger the chops in your way using your MIDI keyboard/controller or computer keyboard. When you find a pattern you like, record it into the piano roll, or draw it manually.

II) Using Slicex

SliceX is similar to Fruity Slicer but with advanced functions. It also creates automatic chops for you and lays them out in the piano roll.

You can delete the chops laid out for you so that you have an empty slate to create your pattern.

You can create manual slices in SliceX as opposed to Fruity Slicer. First, delete all the markers used to represent the automatic chops by pressing [Ctrl + Shift + Del]. This removes all the slices created by SliceX.

Play through the sample and locate parts of it you’re interested in using to create chops. To create manual chops in Slicex, double-click the start point of the area you want to chop and click the “Add marker” button.

Do this for the end point of where you want to chop also. Also, repeat this step for the other chops you will be creating.

Then trigger each chop individually with your keyboard or controller, and come up with something you like. Record or draw the pattern you discovered into the piano roll and create amazing music.

3) How To Use The Edison Sampler

Edison is a powerful audio recorder and it has built-in effects for the audio you record/load into it.

Edison also performs some advanced functions like noise reduction, time stretching, cutting, pitch shifting, etc. which makes it an exceptional tool for sampling.

Edison is a topic for a separate article on its own. I just want to let you in on the basic sampling capabilities (focusing on making chops).

A) Load Your Sample Into The Project

Drag and drop your sample from the FL browser or your file explorer to the FL Studio playlist.

B) Sync The Tempo Of Your Sample To That Of The Project

Syncing of tempo has been described in 1B above.

C) Open The Sample In Edison

Double-click the audio clip on the playlist and the “Audio channel” window will open up. In the Audio channel window, right-click the waveform and select “Edit in audio editor” or press [Ctrl +E] to open the sample in Edison.

D) Create Your Chops

In Edison, you can create chops using the “Add marker” button. When you’ve found a section of the sample you want to chop, double-click the start point of that section and click “Add marker”.

If you need to zoom in to get an accurate selection, zoom in. After creating all your chops, use your MIDI keyboard to trigger each slice separately. This should only work for those with MIDI keyboards.

So from here, you can record any new pattern you like to the playlist. If you don’t have a MIDI, there’s no need to worry because there’s another way to use the chops you created in Edison.

E) Drag The sample Into The Playlist

Drag your newly chopped sample into the playlist using the “Drag to playlist” button. Click on the button and drag the cursor to the playlist to place your sample there.

Alternatively, click the “Send to playlist” button so you don’t have to drag and drop.

Now that your sample is on the playlist, you can easily begin to slice the sample using the slice tool of the playlist.

This time, you’re not looking for areas to chop, because the markers you made in Edison will be visible in the sample and you can easily slice the sample and rearrange the chops you create.

4) How To Use The Direct Wave Sampler

Direct Wave is a native FL Studio sampler designed to be able to turn various samples into an instrument.

With Direct Wave, you can sample any virtual instrument (whether stock plugins or third-party plugins), so that you can save and share your project files.

Sampling in Direct Wave works by recording every single note of that virtual instrument and bringing all the recorded samples together to form another instrument.

Then you can share the project files with another producer/musician who doesn’t have the virtual instrument you used, but with the sampled instrument in Direct Wave, such a person can work with the “instrument”.

A) Load The Instrument That Will Be Sampled

Load up a virtual instrument by clicking the “Add new channel” [the plus] button in the channel rack. When you click it, the plugin list shows up and you can select the instrument you want.

B) Create A Direct Wave Instrument

After loading the instrument, go to the channel rack and right-click the channel name. Select “Create DirectWave instrument… ” and a Save as window will open.

Give the instrument an appropriate name and save it in a location where you can quickly locate it. I recommend saving it in the default location. Afterwards, click save.

C) How To Render The Instrument

The “Rendering” window will open and in it, you find 4 sections. Sampling options, Quality, Loop, and Miscellaneous. I will not discuss Loop here because we don’t exactly need it now.

I) Sampling Options

Low note and High note determine the level of the lowest and highest note respectively. The more the number of notes you render, the bigger the size of the resulting instrument.

“Velocity layers” determines how many layers of velocity should be added. This also increases the size of the instrument, and in extension uses more RAM when you load the instrument.

So, if the instrument you’re sampling doesn’t need many velocity layers, you don’t need to increase this parameter.

For instruments like piano though, for the instrument to play well, I recommend increasing the velocity layers.

Keys per zone will determine the number of keys that will be sampled. A value of 1 indicates one key for every zone; meaning every key will be recorded.

A value of 5 assigns 5 keys to a zone; meaning one in every 5 keys will be sampled and recorded.

Increasing the keys per zone reduces the number of keys sampled and therefore reduces the size of the instrument. The other keys not sampled will be gotten by pitching up/down the sampled keys.

II) Quality

Resampling quality determines the quality of the rendered samples (self-explanatory).

The resampling quality doesn’t affect the size of the instrument, but the higher the quality, the more time it takes to sample.

Don’t be afraid to go for the best quality.

Sample channels (the button that says Stereo) will allow you to choose whether your samples are mono or stereo.

III) Miscellaneous

Enable master effects. Check this button if you have some effects on the master that you want to be sampled alongside the instrument. If not, leave it unchecked.

Enable Insert effects. Check this button if you have effects on the mixer track that the instrument channel is routed to, and you want to sample them too. If not, leave it unchecked.

This method is an alternative to sharing audio (wave) files when collaborating with other producers.

The advantage of sampling with Direct Wave is that the person you are sharing the project with will be able to come up with their musical ideas using the instrument you sampled.

This is opposed to just sending audio with limited ways to edit.

5) How To Use Harmor

In FL Studio, Harmor is a synthesizer rather than a sampler and lacks integrated sampling features. Instead of transforming already-existing samples, it is intended to produce sounds through additive synthesis.

However, several features in Harmor let you modify samples in distinctive ways that you can’t achieve by slicing samples up with a sampler like Slicex for example.

Do note that harmor only comes activated with the All-Plugins Edition of FL Studio. But if you don’t have the All-Plugins Edition, you can still use Harmor, but as a demo.

The demo version doesn’t allow you to reopen Harmor when you open a project again.

So, you can use it and save your work, but when you go back to your project again, you won’t be able to use Harmor.

The only way around this is that when you are done with your sampling in Harmor, make sure you bounce your track out to audio, and you are free to close Harmor.

A) Insert Harmor On The Channel Rack

Insert Harmor by clicking the “Add new channel” [the plus] button in the channel rack. When you click it, the plugin list shows up, and then select Harmor.

B) Select The Default Preset In Harmor

Click the plugin options (top left corner), hover your mouse over Presets, and select “Default”.

C) Open The Image Page

D) Load Your Sample Into Harmor

E) Experiment With Your Sample

Now your sample is playable with your controllers/keyboard. Experiment with the additive synthesis functions in Harmor.

6) How To Use Fruity Granulizer

Fruity Granulizer is another one of FL Studio’s powerful but often overlooked plugins.

It is a granular sampler, meaning, it takes whatever audio sample you load into it and plays it back in small slices called grains, hence the name “Granulizer“. Every processing done by the plugin emphasizes the grains.

To load a sample into Fruity Granulizer, drag and drop that sample onto the playlist. Double-click the audio clip and the “Audio channel” window will open.

In the Audio channel window, right-click the waveform and select “Open in new Fruity Granulizer channel”.

It has 3 sections: Grains, Effects, Transients, and Time. It also has a waveform visualizer which shows the position of the play head as you play the sample.

The visualizer helps to understand how the settings affect the sample, so do pay attention to it.

A) Grains Section

This is the most important part of the interface because it is here you have the controls that affect how the grains are played.

Attack sets the volume at which the beginning of each grain is. The lower the attack, the higher the volume. Use this knob to control the transition between grains.

Hold determines how long the grains are in milliseconds. This means that the higher the hold time, the longer the sample plays.

Grain spacing adds silence between each grain.

Wave spacing. This one controls how quickly the play head moves through the sample. If the value is less than 50% the sample begins to play in reverse. It also has an LFO which is controlled by the depth knob in the Effects section.

B) Effects Section

Pan separates the alternating grains by panning them right and left. The higher the amount of this, the more stereo-separated the sample sounds.

Depth controls the amount of the LFO that modulates the wave spacing and Speed controls the speed.

Rand (for Random) randomizes the order in which the grains are played.

C) Transients Section

This section is used to either Auto detect the transients in the sample (and uses this info to create the grains) or use the transient info in the sample.

Detect is for auto-detection, while “Use regions” is for transient info in the sample.

The Hold knob ensures that the grains are aligned to the transients and don’t cross transients. It gives a new length to each grain, ensuring they stay within the borders of the transients.

D) Time Section

The Start knob moves the start time of the sample. Enable Loop to keep the sample playing if you hold the key down.

Click and hold the Hold button while playing, to hold the current grain being played.

Do you have any thoughts or concerns? Let me know in the comments section below.

Other Articles You May Be Interested In

• How to Sample in FL Studio Mobile [Chop, Slice, & Reverse]
• How to Reset A Time-Stretched Sample in FL Studio (EASY)
• Why You Shouldn’t Look Down on Loops & Samples
• The EASY Way to Quantize in FL Studio + (6 Tips)