When using 808’s from samplepacks you’ll often find that they’re a bit out of tune. Let’s take a look at how we can quickly fix this using stock FL studio plugins.

Before changing the pitch

Before actually changing the pitch of the 808, I’d like to change the envelope of the 808 so that we can adjust the sustain of the 808 by changing the length of our midi notes.

Changing the envelope to the picture above will result in an 808 that will only sustain as long as the length of your midi notes. Note that the envelope also has 0 attack, which is often what you want when triggering an 808 sample.

Cut itself

When it comes to 808s you often don’t want to have two different pitched 808’s playing at the same time.

By going to the ‘miscellaneous functions’ tab (see green arrow), you can click on the ‘cut self’ button. This will do literally do what it says; it will cut itself when e.g. you have two overlapping midi notes.

Tip: You can also (as seen in the picture above) right click on a channel in the channel rack and then click on ‘cut itself’.

Tuning your 808s

Click on your 808 channel in your channel rack to open up the following window:

Right click on the wavform and select edit. You can also use the hotkey: CMD + E.

This will open up the Edison window. We can use Edison to detect the current pitch of our 808 sample by clicking on the flag icon and then on detect pitch regions.

This will give you the pitch of your 808:

Changing the root note

So now that you know the pitch of your 808, go back to the ‘miscellaneous functions’ of your sample and change the root note of the sample by right click on the piano roll. So in my case the original sample was a D2 and therefore I’ll right click D2 on the piano.

Tip: If your 808 still sounds a little off, you can use any pitch detection plugin and fine tune the pitch of your 808 by adjusting the pitch knob.

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