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Fruity Loops 3 - By 'Jesus J' (Contributor) - 14 March 2001 Whoa planet internet! I really hope you're familiar with Fruityloops. If not, the go get the demo, or better yet, buy it instantly from their website. http://www.fruityloos.com
What is FruityLoops? FruityLoops is full-featured sequencer for creating songs and drum loops with internal mixing and advanced MIDI support. The resulting song/loop can be exported to a MIDI file or rendered to a WAV/MP3 file. = SHITLOADS OF FUN! FruityLoops is a pattern based sequencer, which means you create your songs in pieces (patterns) using the Step Sequencer and the Piano Roll view and then weld those pieces together using the Playlist window. Then you can add a wide range of effects to your instruments, such as reverb, phaser, flanger etc. Main Features:
Who is it for? Well I think, and my friends (who are right now sitting around me sipping on some beer) think, that it is suitable for almost all kind of modern music. I personally do Hip Hop and RNB and some Soul producing with FruityLoops and find it very handy and intuitive to work with! I've seen people do techno, ambient and house with it and I believe that it is much faster to work with the Fruity interface and GUI than working with a 'too complex' interface like Cubase VST or Logic. Also the 'learning curve' should be easy with fruity. You'd be instantly making beats and learning while you play... Using FruityLoops Getting used with the FruityLoops interface and GUI is quite easy: All wheels and LCD-s in FruityLoops are instances of the same type graphic control. To set the value of any of them you can left-click them and drag up/down. To fine-tune a wheel knob, hold Ctrl key while dragging. Holding Alt and left-clicking a control resets it to its default value. Scrollbars in FruityLoops have one special feature - drag them with your right mouse button (instead of using the left one as usual) to enter in a special scrolling mode, which allows you to drag the view simultaneously in all directions. New things from FruityLoops 2.x to 3.x The first thing you will notice is that the interface in FruityLoops 3 is completely rebuilt. The Step Sequencer is now a separate window that can be freely resized (no more separate skins for 32 and 64 notes!). The sample browser (now just called Browser) is also a separate window. You can dock it to the left or right side of the screen. The main control deck functionality, as well as many options that were only visible when you open the settings windows, are now easily accessed though the new FruityLoops' panels. The new Piano Roll view allows you unprecedented power when creating complex melodies - creating polyphonic patterns and slides is easier than ever. Effects system in FruityLoops has changed a lot too. Now you have 16 FX tracks instead of 8. Two FX send tracks were also added, so you can distribute "weighted" effects in the other tracks. The new Smart Disable option disables the plugins when there are not used during the song, thus lowering the CPU usage of your projects. MIDI support has been removed from the Sampler. But now FruityLoops comes with the MIDI out generator, which has much more advanced MIDI support than his predecessor. Events in FruityLoops are pattern based now. This means there is no more one global automation track, as in FruityLoops 2.x - events are saved locally to each pattern. Older FruityLoops 2.x projects are imported by creating one additional pattern called "Main Automation" which replaces the global events tracks from FruityLoops 2.x. More controls can be automated in FruityLoops 3 - the mute/unmute switch and the FX selector in Main Channel Settings are now automatable too. DrumSynth's renderer has been updated. You can now edit some DrumSynth preset properties directly in FruityLoops About the Effects included... In FruityLoops the wave output of generators can be filtered by various effects to add a final touch to your songs. FruityLoops comes with many included effects, so you can add reverb, phaser, flange, delay line and many other filters in your project having only the standard installation. FruityLoops also supports several standards for third party effects. All effects are combined in effects tracks, and each channel that outputs audio data can be linked to an effects track. Conclusion: FruityLoops is a full-featured tool, and in my opinion, with the version 3 features, fully competiting with the big-boys, Steinberg and Logic. It is my first choice tool, even if I have access to Cubase VST and Logic Audio... When you get a melody or beat ringing in your head, you want it quickly down, before it is forgotten, this is really the numero uno best thing abut fruity loops. Just click on the icon, and it starts up with some basic sounds (althou boring ones) so you can use it like a first-aid post-it note for musical notes. When you get the melody or drumline down, you can start tweaking the samples, import different ones, change instruments, add new ones etc etc. Theres tons of features and even if I've being using fruity for a few years now, I'm still finding new features. What I'm still missing is some faders for 'channels' and a mixer-type of screen with sub-groups... Because of the lack of this, I export groups to Cubase and do final Mixing there, but than again I would anyway, because you can't record vocals with fruity... Good work overall Fryityloop team!!! I give it five stars and six thumbs up!! |
