Welcome to Fruity Loops ladies and gentlemen! (Note: The version of FL in this tutorial is 6.0 and later) in this tutorial I will more or less "only" explain everything basic there is to know about initialization, GUI (Graphical user interface) and so on. I Will start with posting a picture of how Fruity Loops looks like. [img=http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/3962/tutorial1pc6.jpg] This is the main GUI of Fruity Loops .. and to get started we will want to tweak Fruity Loops according to how good your computer is, because maybe you've experiencing cracking noises or even lag when running the program a couple of times when there are just too many instruments on screen? let's go to the left uppermost part of FL, and click "Options" -> "Audio settings" In the uppermost box "Output", choose your computer's soundcard instead of the standard option. Moving on to the "Direct Sound Properties": This is what needs most tweaking all of the time. The slider which you see here controls the Buffer length which more or less means the time the computer has to read and play all sounds you are playing in your song. If the song starts to crackle, try to alter the slider more to the right; you also want to click in "Use Polling" and "Use Hardware Buffer" to maximize the Useage of your computer's power driven into FL. Now when we've changed this we are ready to make some music! First we are going to look at the standard GUI and what things actually does. I have marked things on the picture with numbers so you should have no problems to follow me. 1. This is the FL browser.. From here you can find all kinds of samples that's included. Drums and percussion are almost all under "Packs", where you also find other sounds. There isn't really much to say about this, just go through it and see what you find. One thing to say though is that there isn't ONLY sounds in here.. there is also Humanizing presets, effects and stuff, but we will cover that later. 2. This is the "Instrument browser" .. this is where all the instruments in your project goes. The first knob to the left of an instrument controls the instrument volume and the second knob to the left controls the panning of the sound, very useful for stereo effects. If you rightclick on an instrument, then scroll down to Insert-> here you find all the included synths that come with FL.. and if you import your own plugins they are gonna show up there too. There are two ways of playing an instrument: either use the rectangular boxes to the right of the instrument (This is almost ONLY used for drums, as it is very limited, but fast and good for percussion).. If you click a box it becomes highlighted and it will play once you start your song (you will figure out how to do this if you experiment). The second way of playing an instrument is what is used with everything else that isn't drums: Rightclick the instrument and choose "Piano roll". Here you can put out, shorten, lengthen the tunes you want your instrument to play. Rightclick erases a tone, leftclick puts out a tone. this is all you have to know now 3. This is the playlist.. (View -> Playlist) the playlist is your song. To put it simply, you put e.g a drumbeat into a pattern and put out the pattern in the playlist so it will be played when you press the play button (there are two boxes to the left of the Playbutton located in the middle at the top. PAT plays the current pattern you are working in, and SONG plays the whole song.. that is, the patterns you have put into the playlist!) If you press on "pattern 1" in the playlist, all the sequenses you have put into your isntruments there will be showed in the instruments section, this allows fast editing 4. This is the Effect browser. Let's say you want your plain drum to have a slight reverb on it, this is where you set it! fool around with it, there are many cool things to do with it.. as the name says, it applies Effects to an instrument. To apply it to an instrument, first press the instrument you want your effect on. Window 5 (look at the picture) will then open up. at the top right corner is the Effect-box.. when there are no effects binded to that instrument, it says "--" .. If you doubleclick it you get up window 4. The effectbrowser has different "channels" as shown.. the instruments get their own effects by binding them to an effectchannel.. to give an effectchannel to an instrument leftclick the Effectbox and drag up or down with the mouse. If it says "2" all effects in effectchannel 2 is applied to the instrument! 5. This window pops up when you click an instrument.. it's the basic settings for the instruemnt, fool around with it and learn what is what. 6. The snap-window is very good. Try changing from "cell" to "none" and then placing a pattern in the playlist, and try to move it from left to right, notice the difference? I think so! This was "How to get a quick start" with Fruity Loops.. I will merrily take on requests of tutorials to make regarding FL, and if there is anything you need to ask, or if anything is uncertain, just ask! .. next time my tutorial will be a little shorter and it will Cover Automation clips and some little bit more advanced