Fruity Loops Basics

Labelled on the diagram above are 3 main aspects of Fruity Loops, 1 the arranger, 2 the Step Sequencer and 3 the Piano Roll. Lets begin with 2 the step Sequencer.

2.2 Clicking the segments of a channel enable the marking of note on activity. Here the drum has been selected so the bass drum will sound at every marked position.

2.3 Right Clicking the channel with the mouse and selecting the menu option 'send to piano roll' will copy the note sequence to a piano roll grid for more detailed editing.

This is the piano roll, where notes can be dragged to lower or higher notes or to have their timing altered finely.

Also the bottom part allows the fine adjustment of controllers such as filters, as shown on the menu obtained from a right mouse click

Once the controller has been chosen the filter can be adjusted with a drag of the mouse for each note on off event, as shown below.There are other better ways of maintaining continuous controller variation though, which will be demonstrated in a more advanced tutorial.

Also the bottom part allows the fine adjustment of controllers such as filters, as shown on the menu obtained from a right mouse click

The Arranger or playlist allows the mouse to be used to 'paint' with the mouse an existing pattern or create a new empty one, which happens if a pattern has not been chosen. A right mouse click will bring the menu shown below which allows the pattern for painting to be chosen.

Simply drag the mouse over the area you wish to paint repeat of the pattern. It will fill a minimum area of bars that the pattern last for. Anything longer than the pattern length has to be in multiples of that length. For example you can have a one bar pattern filling up two, three or more bars but you cannot have a two bar pattern filling three.

In this example pattern 1 of length one bar has been dragged for four bars.