I use FL studio to make electronic music, but my stuff has always missed something, and I never really had any training, I just got it one day and started to mess around with it. I've gotten better at it, but I still don't understand the foundation of making music like mixing, mastering, and layering and things like that. Are there any books or articles I can read about it that would lay it out in plain English? Or any advice you could give me? Thank you

What instrument do you play?

 Hi nochmusic, try checking out the post I started entitled Mixing & Mastering Tutorials and see if that helps; it definitely helped me!

Mixing, mastering and layering are all crafts, which you learn by doing, making mistakes and figuring out how to correct said mistakes.  It helps, of course, to watch or read from pros how they do it.  Like all crafts, there are techniques and "bag of tricks" one uses.

If you are doing "all electronic" dance music, I don't know of any books to help.  FL Studio has some on-line demo stuff, I'm sure, but you'll have to research that (thank google).

For recording techniquies, there are plenty of books - do a search on this Forum for lots of suggestion.  Also, many colleges have music classes you could sign up for.

As for here, it is probably best to search more constrained targets and then ask.  There is actually a lot of info on the Techniques forum here.  It might not be organized, but it is there.  A lot of opinions, but some solid working methods and tricks.

@

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio by Mike Senior is worth the money.