Fruity Tunes! (Fruityloops 3)

Member Name: andycharger

Product:	Fruityloops 3
Date:	15/05/03 (1505 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good fun, Great sounds

Disadvantages: Lots to learn, Gets a bit dodgy when lots of tracks playing

I have to say, from time to time I like to think of myself as the next Fatboy Slim. Not from eating too much but from the tunes I muster up on my Fruityloops 3 Music making package.For years now, I have tried a few of the top brand trackers and samplers for the PC market and soon get bored with it.
However, Fruityloops keeps me coming back for more.

What is it?
Basically, it is a great studio for making dance music. You simply add samples and beats as well as synth sounding tunes together is a big mixer and produce a fantastic sound.
If you have some idea about music, it does not really mater. All you need is timing, a slight tuneful bone somewhere in your body and a bit of basic maths to work out the figures that are the tracks and sequences.

What the hell does that mean?
Well, all music is made in a studio and made up of layers or tracks. Each instrument normally goes on a separate track. So say the drums go on one, a piano on another and a vocal on another. These are then all played at the same time to make a song.
The benefit of this is that you can control each instrument in your song then. Raise th evolume of the voice here, drop the drums down a bit there.....
And so on.
Fruityloops does this too with various layers and tracks for you to add your sounds to. It gives great flexibility as to your music.
It is all put together is a very simple window that makes a "pattern" the song is then just made up of different patterns in a playlist. So its like piecing a big jigsaw together.
The playlist is easy to modify and control and so are the tracks.
You add sounds to a pattern that is 16 beats long. Common to any sequencer device. You then turn the instrument on at the specific point of the sequence with the mouse. Left button on, Right button off. Simple!

What does it have in the way of sounds?
Well, you can just about make any sound on this package thanks to the many synths and effe
cts you can overlay. Fancy a bit of reverb here to extend the not or a little dit of delay. It has it all.

There are also some very crude voice effects too. However, we seem to have evolved from the days of computer generated voices so this is a bit of a daf option.

The synths too are very basic so if you are considering using it profesionally, get some decent synth packages.

If you have your own mp3 samples or WAV files, you can bring these into fruityloops to use in your song. Great if you have some singing you want to overlay.

What I like about this is that ANYONE can make music with it. Its not over complicated and even a absolute novice can be making great music within minutes. It seems very daunting with all the effects but it really isn't. You soon learn the navigation and how to get around the various windows and menus.

The help section is perhaps a little bit too technical for tha absolute beginner but you should not need it. If you do, there are plenty of websites to look at with information and even demo songs for you to download that other people have made.

Installation is very quick and comprises of a self extracting file. Its over before you know it so there is very little involvement from you.

Performance?
Well, i do sometimes have a few soundcard difficulties when playing lots of tracks at once. It starts to get very jumpy but this may be down to a memory sharing problem. Too much sound information for it to handle.
It never shuts down without a reason though which makes it pretty stable.

Price?
You can by the full version now for about $49 online and even download a trial version without the save functionality. Worth a go to get the hang of it?

Overall?
I think it gives Cubase a stiff run for its money and with the use of rebirth, can add some serious music to the world!

Summary: