StoneVisage wrote:A couple weeks ago, I took the plunge and picked up FL Studio 11.
...Only to discover that, despite my previous musical knowledge, I have no idea what I'm doing with FL 11. Every time I think I've learned or figured out something incredibly useful or vital, I soon hear about things like 'engineering at 24bit' and 'waveform modulation.' Is this a case of needing to throw caution to the wind and just mess with sounds for hours to get a better feel of the program, or am I missing something integral to using this software? The sheer variety of filters, mastering, mixing, even the preset VSTs - it's overwhelming!
Yeah, it is overwhelming when you first plunge into the world of music production! Everyone went through this and, unfortunately, it is indeed a case of needing to just mess with your program for hours and weeks until you get a better feel for the program and figure everything out. But you're not completely alone! There are tons of tutorials on youtube that can teach you pretty much everything you need to know, as well as tutorials by the makers of FL Studio themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/user/imagelineWe're here to teach you stuff too, if you ever need help on anything specific, but most of the stuff you might have questions about will most likely have been answered on this forum already or can be discovered by tutorials and stuff.
Anytime you want to learn something, experimentation is something that I highly recommend, and there are ALWAYS tutorials and lessons on youtube if you ever get stuck and can't figure things out. It happens to all of us.
Also, I encourage you to read the manual. It really does help and make things go faster!
Just remember to be patient; you will not figure things out immediately and it will take time to learn stuff, especially things that are super complicated like synthesis, compression, ect. It took me like two whole months when I got my first program before I was able to make my first little song on the computer. It depends!