Fruity Loops to Midi Conversion

by Steve Taylor

Anyone who's used FruityLoops will know that it's great for sketching out beats and song patterns using step sequencers.  You can export as audio for further processing in other programs, but a somewhat "hidden" feature is exporting patterns and songs as MIDI.  There's very little about this in the manual, or the on-line help, but it’s possible to get the best of both worlds, with the ease of FruityLoops and the power of your sequencer for more hardcore tweaking.

The best way I've found to set this up is to create a Midi Out "preset" in FruityLoops for each instrument you're using, so that the MIDI tracks are named sensibly and the notes appear on the correct line.

 1:  Open the Sample Browser, and find FX Presets and then Midi Out.  Right-click "Basic" which should bring up the Midi Out module.

 2:  You can set the midi channel here if you like - select 10 if it's a drum channel. 

 3:  Now, you'll have to set the root note so that the desired instrument sounds when you open the MIDI file.  Again I'm assuming we're doing drums, so consult the table below for the correct root note.  e.g. a General Midi Kick Drum sounds on note C3 (note no. 36).  Selecting this as your target note in the table, means you have to set the root note to C7.  Do this by right-clicking the C7 note on the little keyboard.

 4:  Click the squiggle at the top-left of the channel settings window and choose "Save Channel Preset As..."  You could make a folder here called MIDI Out and save the file inside, naming it e.g. "Kick Drum".

 Do the same for all the instruments you're using.  You only have to set this up once though as the presets are available for all projects.  The presets should appear at the top of the Sample Browser now, under Channel Presets > Midi Out.  Drag each of the presets on top of the relevant channel pad.  Now choose File > Export MIDI and save.  Open in a MIDI host, and with any luck you should have one track per instrument, notes mapped correctly.

p.s. If you're using SONAR, the DEFAULT.INS file contains mappings of MIDI notes to patches, which you may find useful when using the "Root Notes" table.

Fruity Loops Midi Conversion Table