Sorry for not responding faster guys.. Ok ill deal with steve first as this is a quick one. Yep, i had allready posted it but ill say it again for you. Yes you can move the notes left and right. 2 ways... 1# while in the piano roll editor, left or right arrow will make the notes move 1 pixel left or right. OR 2# select all the notes then switch back to the little pencil icon ( the one for making notes) and if you move over a note your pointer will change to a move pointer, then you can just drag left right up or down and it will move all the selected notes.
And yes it was a pain the first couple of times i used fruity, but i had used fruity a long time before every playing FoF, so when it came to making my first FoF song i allready had the theory behind fruity to know what to do.
OK Now onto DudemanDude. This will take a little longer to explain.
Yes you can create a song from scratch. just load up fruity. By default it will load with 4 channels like this...
If you right click on a channel name you will get options like, piano roll, insert, replace etc. If you choose piano roll, it will come up with a blank piano roll, just the same as if you had imported a midi ( but without all the notes there) Then from within the piano roll, if you select the pencil icon you can then start stamping down notes. the same as any other midi editor. All you have to remember to do is before exporting change the name if the channel to Part guitar or any of the other FoF track names and you MUST also do right click/ Replace/ MIDI OUT on the instrument track, to make sure it saves it as midi. Thats the basic idea about making a midi from scratch.
Ok the reason the mp3 only works from the start and not half way through. I know this has thrown a few people off, ill try and explain as easy as i can.
Fruity isnt actually a midi editor( it has a midi editor built in, but its not the main use of FL ) fruity is actually a loop/pattern maker. what i mean is... Just using the standard 4 instruments ( like in the pic above) if you create a nice little drum loop/ pattern something like . Kick snare kick kick snare, then a second loop/pattern that goes kick snare kick snare. You can then stamp down ( in the playlist editor) those whole loops/patterns in any order to make an entire drum track for a song. so you could do something like, loop 1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1 and so forth. The same applies for any instrument.
So thats what FL is actually for, knowing that will make this next bit a little easier to understand. Those kick,snare samples are .wav files but there only a fraction of a second long, If you was using for example a 5 second sample of somebody saying " OOOOHHH YEAHHH" and you stamped that down at 0:00 and at 0:03 and hit play. The first sample would play then 3 seconds later the other sample would play, but because the sample is 5 seconds long, the second sample would play over the top of the first one ( kinda like 2 people singing the same words but not at the same time) Like this
OOOHH YEAHHHH
OOOHH YEAHHHH
OOOHH YEAHHHH
The note placement , represents the start of a sample not the length. So if we was to play that 3x oh yeah, above but started at 0:001, the start of the first sample has allready happened, so you wont hear that but the second and third sample start times havnt happened yet so as they come past you will hear them. It has to play the start point in order to hear the sample. Now bearing all that in mind, swap the Oh yeah sample for your 5 min long mp3 it will get treated exactly the same as a small sample, so we stamp it down at 0:00, but if you start the music at 0:01 the start point has allready happened, so you wont hear the sample. What you CANT do and some peple think you can, is stamp that 5 min mp3 down at 0:00 then at say 2:00, thinking " if i now play it from 2:00 i can hear the mp3 , yes you could but.. It will start the mp3 from the beggining again not 2:00 into it.
As far as i know the only way around this problem would be to split the mp3 into say 1 min chunks and load each 1 min chunk as a seperate sample, then stamp down chunk 1 at 0:00, chunk 2 at 1:00, chunk 3 at 2:00 and so on. that way you could at least move to any whole minute in the song and you would hear it playing, of course if you moved to say 0:30 you wouldnt hear anything for 30 seconds coz the start of the next sample is at 1:00. (in case your didnt know) to load multiply samples into fruity, do it the same as when you load in just 1 mp3 ( right click/ replace/audio clip) or if you have no more instrument channels left ( right click/ INSERT/ audio clip ) if you cant see all the samples, check that little drop down box that says " ALL " make sure that IS set on " ALL "
* collapses back into his chair. " Phew!" i told you it would be long Lol. Hopefully that explains it. If your still slightly unsure about what i mean, have a look in the browser on the left hand side of the fruity loops screen, You should see a section called Projects/ Cool stuff. In there are some demo songs that are made using FL, they will show you how it all works properly.
Right i now need a coffee and a smoke !
Seeyall later, have fun, and trust, me once you have done it a couple of times, it becomes so easy, to use FL.
Nobby
