Making Music With Flat.io

This is a simple tutorial on how to create a composition on Flat.io. How long this takes you will be dependent on a couple of factors, how good your music theory knowledge is, how passionate you are, and how long you want your composition to be. This instructable should help to guide you in your music-making process!

You only need one thing to make music, your laptop (it is possible on a phone but is made significantly harder)

On your browser of choice search up "flat.io", you will be presented with 2 options click the one that says sign up with google. You should be taken to a screen similar to the one as the image above, from here click sign in with google again and choose the account you would like to login with.

Now on your screen, you will see a bright blue button that says "New score or tab", you should click this as it creates the score that you will be working on.

Once you have clicked the button you will be prompted to create a name for your composition, you should type in a name that describes what you are creating. If later in the project you want to change it you can.

After you have chosen your name, you will be presented with another screen. On this screen you will choose which instruments you will be working with, if this is your first time you should pick an instrument you know how to play, if you do not know how to play any instruments I suggest you pick a piano as it is one of the easiest to start out with.

At the top of your screen, you will now see a long bar with a variety of choices. This is one of the 6 main bars, this one is called "Note", here you can decide things such as, how long a note is and are there any accidentals. This is the bar you will end up using the most while you crate your song/piece. Another very important section is "measure" here you can decide your key and time signature (if you don't have any prior music knowledge don't use this).

On the top right of the screen, there is a small button (look at the image), click this to activate a key board. This makes making music easier.

On one of your instruments try messing around and creating a short main melody (phrase). If you are on the piano try doing it on the top staff. The best way to do this is to mess around with note lengths and the piano (the one at the bottom of the screen). Once you have found a melody you can move on to the next step.

After you have a melody you like try using other instruments to add supporting melodies around the main melody, this helps to add texture to the song. If you are starting out for a supporting melody you can add an instrument playing the first note (or a note from the triad of that note) of the measure, as the baritone sax is doing.

Try using some of the dynamics from the fourth top bar to add more flavor to your song, this will help you to bring out some and emphasize parts of your composition.

Try adding some drums to your song look for examples from other songs to get an idea of what you could do (I'm not very good at this part). The drums will help to add some structure to the song making it sound more complete.

Try rearranging the music to give it a better flow, I like to slowly add instruments so it does not start as a wall of sound. This helps to further add structure to the song, here you might also need to write some new connecting parts for your composition.

After you are done with your rearranging you can try adding more dynamics such as crescendos and decrescendos to add more texture and make it flow and connect better, this also allows you to emphasize different instruments at different parts in the song.

Show off to all your friends until they hate the song