Fruity Loops Studio 10 Producer Edition

Although originally designed as a program for creating sample-based dance music, Fruity Loops has developed over the years into a fully fledged home recording studio capable of producing many different styles of music.

That means it comes with a selection of instruments you can play using a Midi keyboard if (you have one attached to your computer), plenty of sampled loops to add to projects, and the ability to record real instruments and vocals and then mix the lot together.

There are four versions that range in price from £30 to £200, and each is available as a free download to test – but only the Producer edition we are reviewing here and higher-priced editions can record and edit ‘real' audio. Handily, though, if you buy any Fruity Loops edition you get free updates for life.

The working area is divided into several areas: the Channel Windows and Step Sequencer are used to create bite-size chunks, while the Playlist allows you to arrange the elements of a song. The Piano Roll can edit individual notes to correct them or add effects such as glssando or portamento and the Mixer is where you balance all the track, add master effects and more.

All of this makes for a busy workspace, but we found that perseverance paid off: once you've got to grips with the way Fruity Loops works, it's one of the quickest ways we have come across to create original music. The quality of the instruments, sounds and effects were first class.

Fruity Loops works well with other music programs too: it's able to use industry-standard VST plugins to add synthesisers and effects to your tracks, and it's also compatible with Propellerhead Rewire, which means it can be used seamlessly alongside a number of other music programs which are used for other parts of the process.

The Producer Edition has decent audio-editing features including pitch correction, harmonisation and time-stretching, and can save finished songs in Wav, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis formats.

New features in this edition include a long-overdue auto-save function, better scrolling within individual editing windows and several small improvements to the playlist and piano roll (including a clever 'save as sheet music' option to export the contents of the piano roll as a printable PDF file). The new mixer is also larger.

The interface can be strange: it thumbs its nose at the design conventions used by most Windows programs and even after years of using different versions we still found there were navigational quirks that drove us mad.

The way Apple organises instruments, loops and effects in its Garageband software for Mac computers is better, but nevertheless Fruity Loops Studio 10 Producer makes an excellent home studio, especially for creating electronic music.