This is really easy to do, and a lot of people ask about it, so here’s the deal. To make a snare roll in FL Studio (Fruity Loops) or any sequencer with a piano roll, you need to use 1/16 notes or 1/32 notes. Most of the time when making a beat you’ll be using ¼ notes - that is, in the piano roll you can fit one snare hit in one of the squares. When doing a roll, you’ll want to fit more than just one hit in each square. In this tutorial I’m going to give you step by step instructions for a while, and then let you do your thing on it (originality = hip hop.)

1. Load up a snare
2. Right click on the snares name in the Step Sequencer and click “Piano roll”*
3. Click on Snap to Grid and set it to None.
4. Select the Paint Brush tool.
5. Draw a note as small or as big as you feel, making sure you can fit more than one in each square in the piano roll.
6. Drag this as long as you want.
7. Change the velocity how you see fit.
8. Practice and mess around and see what you come up with it.

Hopefully now you can make a snare roll. This was done using FL Studio but as I said, you can adapt the principals to any sequencer with a piano roll. Keep making them beats.

*Note: If you want to add the roll after a pre-existing drum pattern right click the snare and hit “Send to piano roll” instead, and then go from there.