Re-centralised

It doesn’t seem that long ago I was banging out Low-Fi quasi-embarrassing sample based tunes with FLStudio 2 & 3 (note: It would have still been called FruityLoops at this point see- history) on my Pentium 2 with 128 MB of ram. Through the years I have slowly upgraded. Better Equipment. Better Computers. More Ram. More Hard drive. FLstudio. Well. Not so much FLstudio until this morning.

Eli and I were in the mood to make some music, and seeing as how this machine has multiple cores and oodles of ram – we politely passed over LMSS and went straight to FLStudio. Back then (and even today!) they were offering “lifetime upgrades”. The problem was that FLStudios System Requirements went up significantly every release, so I soon found myself hovering around 4.5 / 5.x. Anything more killed my computer at the time, and was honestly a bit excessive for my needs. So, I stopped following development. Imagine my surprise when I dutifly punched in flstudio.com and was greeted with a “Welcome to FLStudio 8” screen.

Crazy.

So we downloaded it (thankfully the installer hasn’t gotten bloated) and installed it. It ran great – even without a special Audio card. It even installed ASIO4ALL! Thank god. I don’t know how many people I helped in collab with lack-of-ASIO-problems.

But I digress.

Eli & I had a good jam session, and it hit me that this is a demo and I can’t save. Bummer. We exported to wav, and I began the hunt for my .reg with my login information. Thankfully i’m a packrat, and I found it pretty quickly. FLStudio used to have a convoluted registration / license system. It appears they have done away with it to something more intuitive. I went through the legacy user migration process (ha!) and everything went flawless. Downloaded my registration key, imported it and bish bash job done.

I just went from FLStudio 5 to FLStudio 8. Looks like the lifetime upgrade was for real!

Really though, If your into audio stuff its hard to go wrong with FLStudio. It can do it all From recording in and overdubs and digital multitracking (producer edition!) to Tracking MIDI, Exporting MIDI, VST, ReWire, and even be used as a VST itself inside your host (Like, Ableton Live or Vegas). If you buy 1 peice of kit, FLStudio Producer Edition would serve you well. And if your worried its just for Techno & Rap – fear not. It can do anything you want to: Eli & I’s creation today was a 3/4 Waltz!!

Oh, and it turns out now the FLStudio guys have an Affiliate program. Help Support this blog AND your musical interests by getting 10% off any order HERE! I bought it some 7 years ago and I am STILL getting updates! The price of 1 ProTools Update would get you lifetime FLStudio updates.

This walk down memory lane about FruityLoops in 2003!

I discovered Fruityloops on a CD-R I borrowed from a friends older brother. I had used Drum Machines and ReBrith 1.4** 24/7 prior to that so the layout and system was pretty familiar – except it ran on windows and I could finally use samples .

ReBirths repacking never worked for me.

Fruityloops opened up so much of the spectrum. I had already been building my vinyl collection – and even had a notebook where i kept things I wanted to use…when I finally could sample. I ditched the BSR turntable I had for the “broken” one of my Pops, found a stylus for it, and started to use it.

Yah, there was that issue with wow & flutter – as the belt was loose – but no bother. It’s sad – I can still remember the model number off the top of my head (Technics st-210 btw).

I raided my Vinyl Collection (and kept adding to it) armed with the shitty turntable, and a copy of Sound Forge 4. I used to have to render the loops out to use in ACID 1 (ha!) because at the time I coudnt record vocals into FLStudio. Oh, those were the days.

Lets look at some pictures of the FruityLoops\”Weedeater***” days:

I made some of my favorite things here. Yes thats a fan cooling the computer. And worth noting: I would eventually own that Technics 1200!

I am wearing a blanket in the middle of summer. They kept the AC THAT COLD in there. When I would go outside to smoke, my glasses would fog up.

It used to get so hot up there. Not much material made, but lots of good times!

A heavyduty rig needs heavy duty cooling.

8” Radio Shack Sub!

You can see the old Shure Mixer, the Sansui, and the Actual DJ Mixer here. Oh, and my old SE30

My only monitor was an old Guitar Practice Amp (again).

Another setup in the livingroom. Fairly Ambitious!

This is how it was until I moved out.

I did get a sampler – Yamaha A3000 – and its a beast. I will write more about it later. It worked well with FLStudio though. (and theres that goddam RS drummachine!)

Part 2 we will go over FLstudio \ My New computer

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** Yes. ReBirth without the 909. For Macintosh. I know.

*** The Pentium 2 was called the weedeater because the PSU fan failed, and at any point would get off ballance and go “BRRRRRRAAAAHHHHH” indefinatly…like someone running a weedeater. It was actually so loud it would often wake people up..who to make it stop, would have to go stick their hand inside the case and tap on the PSU fan to straighten it out. Real ghetto.