Frutiy Loops question.

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NLAlston

NLAlston

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Hello all,

It has been a mighty long time since I have visited, and it is good to be back. I would like to know if anyone is familiar with the 'Fruity Loops' program, and would care to share info with me. Going to the appropriate web site did not produce the exact information needed.

I have been informed that this program has ALL the sounds of a number of synths, and that just about any sample can be loaded into the program & played. I have a Yamaha QY700 MIDI music sequencer - which does a nice job for me - but, frankly, I am not bowled over by most of the voices. I am more interested in brass and string sounds, and hope that the above mentioned program will offer what I desire. I don't sequence on my computer, but use CWPA9 to 'line' my music into, and then to record my vocals. Any info on this Fruity Loops program would be deeply appreciated.

Nate
 
Fruity Loops functions as a sampler, letting you choose a wav file and then assign the key and octave for it, and then play it with a midi controller. You can export this to ACID wave, mp3, etc.

It's essentially a loop creator. In my experience it is a mediocre sequencer (although it does have some sequencer functionality, it is very beginner-level, and useful mainly for previewing sequences before actually sequencing them). It works better to use Fruity to "build blocks" for a song at a particular tempo and then sequence them in ACID, or Cakewalk if you want to add midi parts. You can build all the components in the same Fruity Loops document, but export your parts individually if you so desire. It's fantastic for making beats, techno-and hip-hoppish drum tracks especially. In the main interface you are looking at one bar, something like this:

T1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
T4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Where T1 is each track (wave file or plug-in) and the dots are each step in your bar (you can specify the bar length). You click on a dot to trigger that sound at that step. You can change the note of the sound, pitch, volume, pan, etc. You build individual bars and then sequence them together.

If you are recording a melody as opposed to drums you do it in the "piano roll" view which resembles other piano roll views (except it is, I must say, VERY cumbersome in its navigation tools). You can get more nitty-gritty here with note length, starting point (off-beat), etc. But it takes a while.

I went and searched for the best instrument wavs I could and loaded them intro Fruity, and my resultant sound was decent (exported to wave with an SBLive). It was by no means professional quality, but then, I didn't expect that with that equipment. The synths sound really good in my opinion.

Another thing you should look into is soundfonts if you are an SB soundcard user; there are some fantastic brass and string soundfonts available for free (www.personalcopy.com has a great general midi replacement set of soundfonts, where every sound is a very well-recorded sample). You can use soundfonts in Sonar, and PA 9 I think.

Go to Fruity's website, you can download a full-featured demo which won't let you save. It's not an expensive program but it's a hell of a lot of fun, whether it is suited for what you're doing or not. When you install the demo, go into the "Covers" folder and open "Try Again.flp" - the Aaliyah song completely done in Fruity, with killer synth sounds.

Hope this helps.
 
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