If you look at a classic TR-808 drum machine, it has a 16-step sequencer. But for those coming for the title, here is a full explaination:Ī 'step' is basically just a position in a sequence. Looking at steps and beats will not help you much as that is just an abstraction meant for composers. There are a couple of video tutorials about FL Studio so google away to see if these will assist too.įrom the title, you seem to be asking from a music theory / composition point of view, but looking closer, you're really asking a programming question? If you are just trying to parse the data (which really should be a StackOverflow question), you should just look into how to parse MIDI data. How long is this in real time depends on how you set the tempo. In music, this would be a 16th note, 16 x 16th notes will equal 4 quarter notes, and apparently a whole measure in this software. From this one might conclude that this is the smallest amount of time the measure or bar can be broken down to.

So according to the tutorial a step = 1/16 of a measure. So that's 12 bars, a whole blues song using this might have 12 of these, or 144 bars. Typically a 12 bar blues has the following chord structure: the tonic (I) is played for the first 4 bars, (16 beats), the sub-dominant (VI) plays the next 2 bars, the tonic again for the next 2 bars, then dominant (V) one bar, then sub-dominant one bar, and tonic (I) one bar and the last bar is usually the dominant or can be a tonic. The tempo can very from slow to fast (60 beats per minute to 140 beats per minute). This construct is 12 measures or bars at 4 beats each. For example in American Blues music, the 12 bar blues is used very often. Many musical works use this to keep track of what notes are played when. How much time depends on the 'time signature' and the 'tempo'. Feel free to Google 'Bars in music', 'Measures in Music', 'tempo' or any term I am using that you may not have heard of before.

'Notice all those rows of buttons for each sound? Those are each called 'step' and you looking at a sequence of them each representing 1/16 of a measure or bar of music.'ĭo you understand the concept of a 'bar' also know as a 'measure' in western music?Īssuming you may not understand this I will explain it.

'FL Studio Tutorial - Pattern Window and Step Sequencer Basics' I found the following: I am not familiar with this software but have had sufficient experience with both sequencer and piano roll formats to understand your question.

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