Creating a Sitcom styled intro song in FL-Studio.

The Idea

I had just recently acquired a license for FL Studio Producer Edition and wanted to make a piece of music. I decided to make a Sitcom styled intro as my very first composition. Here’s how I created it.

Chord progression and main melody.

I begun by adding a piano in the FL Studio Channel Rack as the foundation for the score. I then researched popular Sitcom chord progressions and decided I would use the chord progression I – V – vi – IV (C – G – Am – F) in the C Major scale.

In order to make the progression different I editing the highest notes to play an ascending and descending pattern in the progression. (Figure 1)

Then using the chords as a base, I moved notes around and changed their length to create a simple melody for the score. (Figure 2)

The bass and drums.

With the melody complete, I started working on the bass line. I used the lowest notes in the melody and shortened them to create a basic bass line. I then cloned the track in the DAW and edited the first bass line slightly to create a second similar bass line to accompany the first one. By using the highest notes in the melody I created a hi-hat beat to accompany the bass lines. I also added a simple drum beat to play partway through the melody.

Adding instruments.

At this stage, all tracks were played using the FL Keys default piano, which sounded underwhelming. In order to achieve a better sounding score I listened to other Sitcom themes such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and The Office.

Whilst listening to these themes (and others) multiple times, I identified key instruments used in these themes and replicated them using FL Studio’s plugins FLEX and Sytrus, and applied these instruments to their respective tracks. (Figure 4)

Polish and Mixing

In order to get the best sounding score I listened to the score multiple times whilst tweaking the mixers volume sliders to make everything sounded how I wanted it to and didn’t drown out any other tracks, I had to move some tracks around, cut them in places, and made sure that they sounded good together.

Conclusion

In conclusion creating a Sitcom styled intro involved many steps such as creating a chord progression, creating a bass line, adding drums, adding instruments, and finally polishing and mixing the piece. The full score can be viewed below.