Fruitful Songwriting (Fruityloops 3)

Member Name: Whitehorse

Product:	Fruityloops 3
Date:	08/06/01 (970 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: wonderful range of samples, simple interface, good end results

Disadvantages: help files awful, need a little musical background

I first discovered Fruity Loops a couple of years ago after purchasing my old computer. Feeling a bit stuck on err…just about everything to do with computing, I decided to wander over to the local community computing place and see if I could get some help. As I walked in, I heard music coming from one of the computers – a dancy track that was quite good. Edging my way over and trying not to look so obviously “non-techie” I peered over the shoulder of the guy at the screen where the music was coming from. Abruptly the music stopped and he peered back.

“Ooooohh a music program – cool!” I said.
“Uh huh”
He looked back at the screen and started pressing buttons.
I watched fascinated as he built up lines of drums, guitar and various odd sounds until more music blared out from the speakers.

I think it took him about 10 minutes to figure out I really wasn’t going to go away so he started “explaining” what he was doing. It was very nice of him to do so but unfortunately the only words I understood were ones such as “microphone”, “track” and “drum”. Everything else was pretty much lost on me. Dejected, I set about my original task of finding out how on earth I switched my new computer on *grin but didn’t forget the name of the program he had been using which was Fruity Loops.
Up until then my inspiration to learn how to use a computer had been to be able to use programs like Word to do my writing but it had never really crossed my mind that this little beige box could also satisfy my burning desire to write music.

So after a year of getting to grips with the world of computing and realising the box wasn’t going to break every time I pressed something, I decided to get hold of Fruityloops. I had been told about other programs that could be used but I just wanted to try this one as it looked so simple.

Well
it wasn't exactly simple but I got there in the end...

After installing the program I set about pressing buttons and seeing what happened. This can be quite a good way to learn sometimes but also possibly the most infuriating so I don’t recommend it to everyone!

The fruityloops interface is quite user friendly. Upon opening you will see a list on the left hand side of the screen which is all the samples of musical instruments, sounds and drums you can use which come with the program. There is a HUGE variety of sounds here. Even better is that they actually sound like the instrument they are supposed to be and there are some sounds that are just bizarre and beautiful. Perhaps the only people who might be disappointed are those who play guitar as there are fewer guitar samples. This however can be remedied by finding samples on the web or importing your own (more of that later).

The middle of your screen is where your “tracks” are. A track is one line of a piece of music. It is rather like singling out the violin or trumpet in an orchestra and writing just the part they place in a whole composition. The longest a track can be is 64 notes. Once this track of 64 notes is played Fruity will “loop” back to the beginning of whatever pattern you have defined it to loop back to.

That brings me to “patterns”. The pattern is basically a series of tracks put together to play a certain pattern of notes. Press play whilst on pattern one and you’ll hear the same tune over and over again. Clicking on pattern 2 however will give you a new canvass to work on so you can create the next bar of your song.

Writing a melody is simple – so simple in fact that I didn’t discover it for about 2 months. I kept thinking that the whole thing seemed rather limited if you couldn’t change the pitch of the piano for example. Anyway – an accidental click on the button under “
;play” (which looks like piano keys) brings up a little window where you can write melodies to your hearts content. Again this window looks like piano keys which you press until you reach the correct pitch.

If you want to put your own voice into your song you can use your system sound recorder (most computers seem to have this if they’re running Microsoft) and then stick the file in the “wav” section on fruity loops. However this is quite limiting as you can only record 30 seconds of material on sound recorder – not very much if you are considering singing the whole song!
My solution to this is to write all my music for my songs in fruityloops then export the whole thing as a wav file and insert it into another music program called Cakewalk. That way I can then happily add my singing. Cakewalk by the way is a whole other story – I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand that one!

A couple of other things that took me a while to work out were adding effects and changing the time signature of the piece. Afterall – banging dance tunes are cool for a while but it’s nice to be able to write the odd ballad too. These changes are made by going to options then song settings.

So here’s a brief step by step guide to using fruityloops
1) Start at pattern one. Choose instruments, time signature and length of pattern and write this pattern
2) Create the second (and further) pattern/s in the same way
3) Right click on “loop” and this will bring up a box where you can bring together your creation. You will see a list on numbers down one side which are the pattern numbers. The boxes beside each of the pattern numbers represent bars. So if you want pattern 1 to play 4 bars you click 4 boxes alongside pattern one. Then two on pattern two, three on pattern three and so on until you have fully written piece of music.
4) Go to song settings and add whatever effect
s you want (for example I like the one where you sound like you’re inside a cave – but then I am weird that way!)
5) Voila! You have a song which you can then export as an MP3 (or wav file).

Simple huh?
Well mostly!

The help files in my opinion are terrible for fruityloops. I basically figured all the above out myself by pressing buttons, swearing a lot and hoping for the best. Like I said before – the actual program itself IS quite user friendly and once you have got the hang of it is a breeze to use. Also – I am lucky that I have some musical knowledge because without that I think I would have been completely lost. I think it would be a much more accessible program if they wrote the help files with a complete beginner in mind who really doesn't understand musical or computer terminology.

Also if you are used to writing music acoustically this is a very different way of working and it takes some times to get a feel for what is happening and relinquishing some of that composers control to the computer. Occasionally when I’m tired or feeling uninspired I just pick out a few instruments or drums and starting clicking away on the tracks. I don’t try to write anything in particular – then I hit play. Sometimes the noise is bad enough to make the dog run howling from the room. At other times I’ve discovered a sound or rhythm that I may not have discovered otherwise and that inspires me to work on it.

Generally I love this program. I used to say that the computer age takes away from “real” musicians but I have to say that moving into composing in this way has only broadened my musical abilities. With this program, I have access to all kinds of instruments I cannot play yet I can incorporate them into my songs. Finally I am able to create the sounds I hear in my head when a song springs to mind.

Even those who are less into being a muso like me can get a gre
at deal of enjoyment out of this program. Just being able to sit back and listen to some funky beats that you created by pressing any ol’ button on the screen just gives you a sense of satisfaction. Now you can’t do that in Word can you :-)

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