Sunday, 10-Jun-12 23:08:00 CEST

FL Studio Digital Audio Workstation

There exists a number of DAWs. I have tried some of these programs and I think that a general feeling to all of them is that they contain an overwhelming quantity of knobs, sliders, numeric LCD look alike controls. It takes some time to get used to the diversity in how the user interface is used. I think that there exist so many different DAWs that it is actually a question of taste what program works the best for you. I am not going to make this into a review of all DAWs available because that is not my intention. On the other hand I will tell you how I got interested in one particular DAW, FL Studio.

It all started with listening to music. At some point maybe 5 years ago I wondered what some of my favorite artists are using to produce the music, It turned out that they use FL Studio among many programs. YouTube did not even exist at that time. These days YouTube has matured and you can find loads of video tutorials, for example those made by ste1438 about FL Studio.

If you follow this blog you know that I have been preparing my knowledge by making the Brief explanation of music theory and Brief summary of drum patterns. Now the fantastic moment had arrived; I decided to buy a license of FL Studio.

Well, first of all I used the demo version of FL Studio for a while now. It works fine. I think that the people making FL Studio are fair people. The demo version is a full version with capability to save the projects but you are not able to open your saved projects. That is clever. In a way I could leave my projects open, never turn off the computer and the program and the music project and then I would have a full working version of FL Studio. It has happened that FL Studio crashed and I have seen at the website that some of the issues are being worked on and fixed. This is fair.

To be able to continue work on the FL Studio projects I decided to buy a license. It turns out that Image-Line has a life time license scheme. That is okay. I decided to buy the Signature bundle. To do this I created an account at Image-Line. When I was logged in I purchased the product. I was a bit annoyed by that the price they mentioned was without VAT but I had to pay VAT. 19% extra! It depends on where you are in the world if you have to pay VAT or not. Ok fine, I had to pay more. The transaction went fine and when it was finished I could download the license code – NOT. An error occurred. This was on a Sunday evening European time. I had no hope for a fix to this issue. I checked with my bank and they succeeded in transferring the money. I was absolutely sure that I would not have my license until the next day but 25 minutes later they had fixed the issue and sent me the license. The problem then was that I did not read my email at that time. Oh well, I have my license now!

Now I can open old projects I made with the demo version. Producer Edition!

I almost forgot to mention this… This was a upcoming birthday present, for me. A little pre present.