AUTOMATION & RECORDING
Recording sessions allow you to record audio, control changes and melodies you play on your MIDI keyboard in real-time. To start a recording session, turn on the Record button in the Transport panel. Now press the Play button (located in the Transport panel too). FL Studio will play the song as usual, but will also record the MIDI events coming from your MIDI keyboard. You can select whether you want the melody recorded in the Piano Roll score of the channel or the Step Sequencer (see the MIDI settings page).
However, this is not all you can record during recording session. Except notes, patterns in FL Studio can hold the value changes in time of any control that can be automated (for example, turning up the volume wheel of a channel, tweaking the cutoff of TS404 etc.). During recording sessions, FL Studio records all changes you make in those automatable parameters (wheels, sliders, LCD-s, switches).
If you want to use one global events track for recording automation events (FL Studio 2.x style), you can create a special pattern to hold only automation events. Then place an instance of it in the first bar of the Playlist, select it (so it shows in the Step Sequencer) and make your recording session. FL Studio 2.x projects are imported using this solution - special pattern called "Main Automation" is automatically created and all events are placed in it.
During a recording session, FL Studio will record any armed tracks to audio files on the disk and can optionally insert the audio as audio clips in the playlist.
To learn more about this process visit the following links:
You can cancel a recording session (so it does not apply the recorded notes and automation events) in two ways. The first one is to choose Cancel Current Recording command from Help menu, but note that you should do this while recording, BEFORE pressing the Stop button. If you press it, you can still undo the whole recording session by choosing Undo from the Edit Menu. If you had recorded mixer tracks during the last session, you will be prompted if you agree that the files are erased (i.e. undone). Be careful, because once you undo audio recording, the files can not be restored and you will have to record them again if needed.