I made this using FL Studio!
I woke up early, picked up the bass, and started messing around. After some time gaming, running through Kill the Crows, I came back to the session and the song started taking shape.
The video for this one uses footage from the game, which ended up fitting the energy of the track better than anything I could have planned.
Finding the Sound
Everything on this is played. I did not use samples, just live instruments run through effects and arranged in FL Studio. The bass was the starting point and the track kind of built outward from there.
The Bass
The bass line came first, before I even had a drum pattern or any real direction. Playing the bass early in the morning when your head is still half-asleep is weirdly a good time to do so.
You end up landing on lines you wouldn’t find otherwise. I kept it pretty raw and let the low end breathe instead of burying it in processing.
Building the Track in FL Studio
The structure grew around that bass line:
- Drums: a custom pattern that doesn’t follow the obvious grid, which was intentional. I wanted it to feel like it was pushing against the bass rather than just sitting under it.
- Bass guitar: the anchor for the whole track. Kept it direct with effects to give it some color without losing the attack.
- Effects and EQ: spent time shaping the frequencies so nothing was fighting. The low mids especially needed some carving to let the bass and drums share space.
- Rising perc: this comes in during the drum break and was one of the last things I added. It climbs in a way that sets up the shift into the second half of the track.
The Drum Break
The transition is probably my favorite part of this one. The custom drum pattern drops into a break, the perc starts rising, and then the hi-hats come back in moving every two steps instead of the custom pattern from earlier. It opens the track up and gives it a different feel in the back half without losing the thread of what came before.
The game footage lines up with that shift in a way that worked out.
The pacing of Kill the Crows has its own rhythm to it and the cut in the music kind of mirrors that.
The song, Crows, is available to stream for free on YouTube or the Music page.
Interested in licensing or collaboration? Email me at nickstambaugh@proton.me