1Knob Series Patcher FX Presets in FL Studio

Mar 19, 2023

Welcome to the FL Studio Patcher Presets Series, where we will explore the often overlooked effects and instrument presets installed with FL Studio. Here, they are waiting to be unleashed.

How to Load Patcher

To open Patcher, press F8 and type "p-a-t". Then, drag and drop Patcher onto your mixer track. You can also drop it on the channel rack, but we're going to use the mixer here because we want the effects version, not the instrument version.

How to Use Patcher

First, a little info about Patcher. Patcher has two tabs or panels. The Map tab is a modular playground where you can load any number of instruments and effects in simple or complex chains. The real power comes from the fact that there is also a Surface tab where you can build your own user interface to control all the goodness on the Map tab.

Patcher can be used as an instrument channel including effects or as an effects plugin. In this series, we will focus on the effects presets. To add plugins inside Patcher, simply right-click inside the Map view and select the one you want from the menu. Alternatively, you can use the plugin picker. You can also drop plugins onto existing connections to make a serial chain.

There are three types of nodes: audio, notes or events, and internal controllers. This makes it easier to wrap your head around complex routing situations as you can select what is shown here. Let's turn our attention to the Surface tab, the user interface of Patcher. You can make a user interface for your Patcher patch here using built-in controls or make your own using Control Creator. These will then show up as internal controller nodes on the right side of the Surface module in the Map view.

Now that you know all this, you'll understand what makes this effect series tick. You can open the Map tab at any time to see what's behind the curtain of these effects.

Where to Find Patcher Presets

To open patches presets, right-click the patches preset selector. There is a whole library of ready-made effects here, but for this video, we will look at the One Knob series, hence 1K. This includes the One Knob 1K compressor, 1K filter, 1K doubler, and 1K distortion.

1K Compressor

We'll start with 1k Compressor. This is a one-knob leveling patch built on Fruity Limiter. Notice as I move the knob, the threshold, knee, ratio, attack, and release settings of Fruity Limiter move to intensify the compression effect. You can bypass it with the button in the middle of the knob. The 1k series patches have a help tab explaining what they do. Here, this is simply another surface module in the Map view. Notice the surface tab is now called "Controls." You can rename any surface module in the Map view. Lovely! The main knob on the Controls tab is essentially a macro, modifying several plug-in parameters at once. You can change what it does by opening the XYZ controller's title mapper here and tweaking the mappings.

1K Filter

Let's move on to a different patch. 1k Filter. This is a low pass and high pass macro based on Parametric EQ2. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out our Parametric EQ2 video.

The main knob lets you tweak the cutoff of a low pass and high pass filter. Go below 50 to move the low pass, and above 50 to move the high pass. The selector in the middle lets you choose between three preset resonance values. Change these controls to edit the slope of the filters.

Both filters can also react to incoming audio using the envelope followers. Drag the sliders up from 50 for normal modulation, down for inverted modulation. The smoothing controls introduce inertia in the modulation, smoothing out the response.

1K Doubler

Next on the list is 1k doubler. This is a straightforward vocal doubling effect or chorus, allowing for a thick, stacked sound.

This works great on synths and keys, as well.

1K Distortion

And finally, we have 1k distortion. This patch combines Fruity Blood Overdrive, Fruity Fast Distortion, and Fruity Wave Shaper to give you a ton of color in no time.

C switches on Fast Distortions alternative mode, and Boost activates the times 100 control on Blood Overdrive's preamp knob. Be careful with this; it can get hairy quickly.

Outro

And that's all you need to know about these four patches in the 1k series to understand how they work and use them in your projects. And hey, with this new knowledge, maybe some of you will feel inspired to create your own patches. Please check out the video information for links to the relevant manual pages, and as always, the projects used in this video.