I was going through a bunch of old music I made over the years, and I have to say the most interesting stuff I created was not with a bunch of expensive MIDI and audio gear or polished pro audio apps and plug-ins, but with old versions of Fruity Loops.

That is, versions 1.0 through to 2.7. After that, it became “FL Studio” and it evolved into some full on DAW. Great for most users I guess, but not for me. Its new features offered nothing I needed and it started to interfere with my work flow. Eventually I gave up on FL and moved on to other ‘pro’ audio applications like Cubase, Logic, Live, etc.

These other tools were much more powerful and versatile, but I’ve never been able to get that (for lack of a better word) magic back that I had with the original Fruity. Old FL was so simple and fun to just pick up and play around with. Upon launching the app I’d immediately be putting down a track, whereas with modern apps it seems I have to spend most of my time configuring different environments for different songs. Also, Fruity’s limitations seemed to work for me; I always figured out a workaround for whatever it was that I wanted to accomplish, so the application never really got in the way of what I wanted to do.

Unfortunately, now it’s almost impossible to get a legacy FL install going. Support for older versions was dropped years ago, so good luck finding a copy. I was lucky enough to find one only to find out that it doesn’t support Windows XP. As much as I loved FL, I have to draw the line at installing Windows 98 for it, even if it is just in a VM.

The search for a decent and simple audio tracker (ideally for OS X) continues…