FL Studio 7: Electronic Music Unleashed!

Aspiring musicians or even closet artists do not have to worry anymore about investing in expensive studio equipment. They don’t even need a basic mixer now. Fruity Loops now re-christened FL Studio is back. Produced by Image-Line softwares, this is a complete package; a delight for the electronic musicians, both hobbyists and professionals.

A user friendly graphical interface greets the user at startup. A self explanatory pattern editor makes creating new and funky beats, all at the drop of a hat. The piano roll that each pattern offers makes easy, the ‘in-detail’ editing for the real professionals. Also, the play list window is the easiest looping interface I have come across, offering infinite number of separate tracks. Looping has never been as easy as this, both in snap mode and non-snap mode.

The software allows the user to export the created track as mp3, WAV, mid, zip and flp.

Recording from an external source:

Though FL Studio is an all in all complete package to make excellent music, there is always room to connect the software to an external source to record live; be it audio input or MIDI interface. But smooth audio recording (without any time lags) requires an ASIO driver.

Drawbacks:

As mentioned earlier, FL Studio is a complete studio. But, when it comes to exporting the created loop to other applications for creating further music, the only possible solution is to save it as a MP3 or WAV file and import the file in the other application. The trouble doesn’t end here as there is a small time lag between the loop time in FL Studio and the popular multi recording software, Sony Acid Xpress.

Also, the file browser is too cluttered and can be very confusing at times, though with regular use, one can minimize the confusion. However these drawbacks are negligible, considering that the software is one of its kind and has got a huge fan following all around the world.

Software version & other info :

Version: FL Studio 7 XXL Producer Edition
License: Free to try
Homepage: FL Studio
Requirements : Windows Me/2000/XP/Vista, DirectX drivers

Final Word:

It would be silly on my part to give the verdict on one of the most trusted music softwares, but for the music lovers who love to tweak their own music, this is one must-use software.

Note : This post has been written by Sathyanarain M and you’ll see more and more blog posts coming from him.