 I've owned it since version 5 and now I think they're around v.8*. Basic upgrades are free for life, but they'll tease you and taunt you with a ton of plug-ins and enhancements that you can have for just a few extra paychecks. It's a very involved program with a ton of tutorials and lots of community support but when I first bought it, I was having trouble getting my sound card drivers to function while I was connected to the internet so I got tired of the hassles and disconnected from it. I just recently dusted it off and updated it. I hope to get more involved with it now that my connection issues have been resolved. The tunes that are here were made with FL Producer Edition v.6, my old collection of SoundFonts (using their sound font player) and some free VST softsynths like those you can find at Krakli.com and some VST support sites.  Run time - (3:50) A.K.A. "The Arm Pit Song" as the first thing I wrote was that chunky part in a JX softsynth. It had some interesting artifacts that I pulled for a counter-line, threw in a flute part and then added the weird whale songs.  Run time - (4:18) It's got some of my favorite old Aureal Vortex choir soundfonts that I pulled from my old audio card and a bass fall near the end because I always liked the one Sting pulled when he was with The Police.  Run time - (3:03) There's a FL plug-in called Slayer that emulates guitar synth sounds. Since this was easier than trying to figure out how to plug in a real guitar, I took the low road. I also took the low road on the percussion because I always meant to add a better drum track and just lost interest in it. You may have noticed that there's a lot of flute parts in my songs. It isn't just because I used to play, but also because it is one of the better acoustic instrument samples I was able to find at the time.  Run time - (2:09) Fun, "Bleak Future," tune where I played with FL's various vocal synths where you type in some words and they vocalize it. It's somewhere between the alarm going off in the morning transitioning into a social commentary. The phrases are: Time to Wake Up The world is in chaos See what you're missing (My Mom's favorite, "drag me out of bed," phrase.) If not now, then when? Yeah, yeah... we're all doomed - whatever. Be forewarned that I used to the "random arpeggiator" setting to a fault but hey, I had fun. *An interesting thing happened on the way to editing this page. I went to the Image-Line website and they have just released FL Studio v.9. Now, I'm not a big affiliate person, but it turns out that I am an eligible affiliate because of all of the dough I've paid to them and the length of time I've been a customer. This usually doesn't affect me one way or another but they sweetened the pot by saying if you, as a visitor, visit Image-Line using one of my links and decide to purchase their product, not only do I get paid, but you will also get a 10% discount off of your purchase price. Here's the Catch - This is a Google Sites site which means while I can sell my own products to my heart's content, I can't put in an affiliate link to any third party. So here's what I'm going to do. If you go to the My Other Sites page and go to my blog called Elicit Substance, I have an affiliate link in the sidebar that will give you the same discount. Sorry about the run-around but I figure if you really want the program, the 10% is worth a couple extra clicks. |