Introduction
What is FruityLoops?
First, 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.
Second, 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.
About User Interface
1. Panels
2. Menu Panel
3. Transport Panel
4. Pattern Panel
5. Output Monitor Panel
6. Time Panel
7. Browser
8. Step Sequencer
9. Playlist
1. Panels
FruityLoops panels are located at the top of the screen, and provide you with quick access to many commands and options, many of which are available also in FruityLoops menus and windows. The panels behave much like standard Windows coolbar controls - they can be reordered in any way, undocked and docked to the top and the bottom of the screen by dragging a special handle located in the left side of each panel. If you right-click the empty area at the top of the screen, a menu will pop up that contains a list of all panels. Those that are visible are preceded by a check mark, the hidden ones do not have a check mark. By selecting panels from this menu you can hide and unhide selectively each panel in FruityLoops, except the main panel (which always remains visible).
2. Main Panel
The Main panel contains some essential controls for each application - the title bar(3), the main menu bar(1), a hint panel(2) and the minimize(4), maximize/restore(5) and close(6) buttons. It also contains the global volume(9) and pitch(10) controls.
3. Transport Panel
The Transport panel contains controls for playing, recording, setting song's position and tempo.
4. Pattern Panel
The Pattern panel contains controls for choosing the current pattern.
5. Output Monitor Panel
The Output Monitor panel contains controls for monitoring the audio output of FruityLoops.
6. Time Panel
The Time panel displays the song time in various formats (bars, minutes).
7. Browser
The Browser is a convenient way to browse your sample collections, presets and projects directly inside FruityLoops, without wasting time to browse files through standard Windows dialog boxes. It can be docked on the left or right sides of the main window (just dragit to either side of the screen).
8. Step Sequencer
The Step Sequencer is the main part of FruityLoops' interface. It contains a button for each channel in your song, from which you can call its Channels Settings, Piano Roll etc. It also contains a pattern grid, where you can create drum loops and simple melodies.
Each line in the Step Sequencer represents a single channel with its pattern dots. Each dot represents a 16-th note. The default pattern length is 16 dots, but you may change this setting from the Song Settings window. Left-clicking a dot turns it on; right-clicking turns it off. Note that if you have turned off Use Both Mouse Keys option in the General Settings page, left-clicking turns both on and off a dot. You can also set the pitch of dots using the Keyboard Editor view. Each note has some additional properties (panning, volume etc.) that you can set using the Graph Editor view. Right-clicking the Channel Button (10) brings up a menu that provides some commands for managing channels (see Channel Menu). This menu also provides access to the Piano Roll window that lets you create much more complex melodies than using the Step Sequencer's grid. The main Edit menu also contains commands for working with Step Sequencer.
Channel Filtering
Having too much channels makes working in the Step Sequencer slow and tedious. In FruityLoops 3.4 and later you can combine several channels in a group and set the Step Sequencer to display only specific group of channels (for example percussion group or lead synth group). To control which channels should be visible you can use the Channel Display Filter control (6). Left-click to open the channel filter menu. Selecting "All" shows all channels at once, no matter if they are part of any group or unassigned. Selecting "Unsorted" displayed only the unassigned channels. Also, if you have made any channel groups, you can select them for display from this menu. To add empty group, right-click and select Add Filter Group. With the group displayed, right-click the Channel Display Filter control to see commands for renaming and deleting a group (deleting a group won't delete the channels in it, but make them unassigned). To add all selected channels to a group, use the Group Selected command from the Channels menu.
When adding new channels, they go in the currently selected group.
9. Playlist
The Playlist allows you to set a sequence of patterns to be played by FruityLoops. You can set several patterns to play at the same time, but note that you should not combine patterns that both contain notes for the same TS404 channel - since TS404 is monophonic, only one of the patterns will play.
Each line in the Playlist represents one pattern. The names of the patterns are displayed on the left side in the Playlist (6). You can right-click a name to change it.
Each column in the Playlist represents one bar. Bars are used as a unit of time in the Playlist. Current playing position is displayed by the playing position marker (3). Left-clicking in the grid puts a pattern in the Playlist, right-clicking it removes it - it acts much like the Step Sequencer, but the Playlist triggers patterns instead of samples. That is why when you create a loop longer than a bar using the Piano Roll, for example, you don't need to draw in the Playlist several successive bars - you should put just one and it will trigger the whole Piano Roll sequence.
FruityLoops--
More & More
B90901004 黃群翔
Outline
l Adding melody
l Keyboard Editor
l Graph Editor
l Piano Roll
l Arpeggiator
l Funny stuff
l Speech
l Scratcher
Keyboard Editor
The Keyboard Editor view lets you set the pitch of notes in the Step Sequencer. It is a set of piano keyboards (all of them rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise) - one for each dot in the Step Sequencer. Note that actions you do in the Keyboard Editor have effect on ALL selected channels.
1. Keyboard Editor button - Shows/hides the Keyboard Editor.
2. Slide/Portamento Line - Used to apply a slide/portamento effect to the notes in the Step Sequencer. Note that although this line appears for all generators, some of them might not support the portamento feature (the VSTi and DXi instruments and some Fruity Plugin generators do NOT support portamento). Left-click to set slide/portamento on, right-click to set it off.
3. Active Note - This orange button shows that the dot it belongs to is active, and also shows its pitch. Left-click to set another pitch for the dot (also if it was turned off, this makes the dot active).
4. Inactive Note - This light orange button shows that the step it belongs to is inactive. Right-click to set another pitch for the dot (also if it was turned on, this makes the dot inactive). Inactive notes are not used by the generators, they are just notification for the default note pitch used when activating the step.
Graph Editor
The Graph Editor lets you set additional properties of notes in the Step Sequencer. You can set each note's panning (Pan), velocity (i.e. note's volume - Velocity), cutoff (Filter cut), resonance (Filter res), pitch (Pitch) and shifting (Shift). Shifting creates delay between the timing of a note event and the time it is actually triggered. 100% shift means one 16-th time delay. The pitch property sets note's pitch, but is more intended for use with drum channels and effects - if you want to enter a melody, use the Keyboard Editor instead.
1. Graph Editor button - Shows/hides the Graph Editor view.
2. Property Selector slider - Lets you select what property to edit. With all generators you can set panning, velocity, cutoff, resonance, pitch and shifting. However, some external generators may not support all those properties (for instance, a mono generator may ignore the panning property).
Left-click a column and drag up/down to adjust the property. You can drag all values at once - hold Ctrl and adjust one, the others will follow. You can also create "lines" with values in the Graph Editor - right-click a value and drag to another, FruityLoops will automatically interpolate the in-between values.
It is important that you understand in the Graph Editor you set note's properties - these are not separate events. So, although you can set all panning values, only those that correspond to active dots will be used.
Instruments
Piano Roll
The Piano Roll is a major enhancement in FruityLoops 3. It lets you construct songs with unlimited complexity, never possible before using only the Step Sequencer.
- Piano Roll Menu Button
- Draw Mode Button
- Erase Mode Button
- Interpolate Mode Button
- Select Mode Button
- Time (Horizontal) Zoom
- Vertical Maximize/Minimize
- Slide Event
- Note Events
- Integrated Event Editor
- Slide Toggle
- Color Group Selector
- Preview Keyboard
- Property/Event Selector
Basics
Notes in Piano Roll are displayed as horizontal bars (9) and slides are shown as horizontal bars with a small triangle drawn in the left side (8). You can preview tones by left-clicking the Preview Keyboard keys (13). Pitch is mapped from bottom to top. Horizontal dimension represents time and each number in Piano Roll's ruler represents single bar.
Click channel's name in the title bar to select another channel to display in the Piano Roll.
Operating with Notes
Each note in the Piano Roll has its own length, as a difference from the Step Sequencer, where the only way to turn off a note is to cut it off using another one. Switching to draw mode (2) lets you draw, edit and delete notes. Left-click in Piano Roll's grid to draw a note. After that you can drag its left side to move it vertically and horizontally. Dragging its right side horizontally changes note's length. You can right-click a note to erase it (you may instead switch to erase mode to erase with left-clicks (3) ).
You can select several notes, so you can move and resize them all at once. Press and hold Ctrl key and either click a note to select it, or drag a rectangle to select all notes in enclosed area.
You can also Ctrl+click or double-click the time ruler and drag along it to select all notes in a specified time range, or Ctrl+click the Preview Keyboard (13) to select a range of notes with the same pitch.
Press Shift key together with Ctrl to add to the current selection. To deselect all notes, while holding Ctrl key, click empty space in Piano Roll's grid. Instead of holding Ctrl key, you can also switch Piano Roll to select mode by clicking the select mode button (5).
You can also draw complete chords at once instead of single notes. Right-click the draw mode button (2) and from the menu select a chord type. Now when you draw in the Piano Roll, FruityLoops automatically creates a chord. To draw single notes again, right-click the draw mode button and select None (Shift+N).
Understanding Slides
In the Piano Roll you can make group of notes slide gradually from one pitch to another. For this purpose, you draw special slide events, which "tell" FruityLoops how notes should be slid. Slides look exactly as note events, but they have a small white rectangle drawn in their left side (8). To draw slides, click the slide toggle button (11). Then you can click it again to draw note events. Note that slides do NOT produce a sound themselves (although they preview when created/moved). Instead they make existing notes slide. When you draw a slide event, FruityLoops will start sliding existing notes towards pitch where the slide is positioned. If several notes are slid simultaneously, the topmost is taken as a reference for the pitch offset (see picture below). At the end of the slide event, all notes are slid, so the topmost note has the pitch of the slide event. After the slide event ends, notes still remain offset from their original pitch.
This image shows how pitch changes with the slide event.
Note that the slide events have all usual properties of a note - velocity (note volume), panning, cutoff and resonance, so during pitch sliding, it also "slides" all properties from those of the playing notes to those of the slide.
Integrated Event Editor
The Piano Roll includes an integrated event editor (10), which lets you quickly edit channel's volume, panning and pitch right inside the Piano Roll. However, the event editor in Piano Roll has one extension - you can also edit notes properties. Notes properties behave similar to the normal events, and are displayed in the event editor as lines with a small square at the top. Using this extension you can edit note's velocity (local note volume), panning, cutoff and resonance - these are exactly the same properties you can edit using the Graph Editor if you were entering notes in the Step Sequencer. Note that since note's properties are part of the actual note, you can not move, delete or interpolate any of them. When you move a note horizontally (thus changing its start position), its properties also move with it. To choose what property or event type to edit, click the property/event selector (14) and choose property/event type from the menu that appears.