At Playtronica, all the devices we offer are MIDI controllers. As such, their setup is fairly easy. Below we have some tips on how to set up a MIDI controller with different software. Feel free to reach out if you still have problems, we are happy to help.
- Logic Pro
- GarageBand
- Fruity Loops Studio
- Setting up a drum rack using sound samples.
- Using several controllers with Fruity loops
Logic Pro
Logic Pro is pretty similar to GarageBand. It is known as the “more professional version” of Apple music-making software. You will need only 4 steps to start making music using Logic Pro and your Playtronica device:
1st: Connect your Playtronica device to your computer using the USB cable;
2nd: Open Logic Pro and create a new project by selecting “Software Instrument”;
3rd: Select you instrument from the list;
4rd: You are ready to go! Simply interact with your Playtronica device and get inspired for your new song;
If you want to try Logic, download it here. Note: Logic is only available for MacOS
GarageBand
1st: Connect your Playtronica device to your computer, iPad or iPhone using the USB cable (on iPad and iPhone you will require an adapter);
2nd: Open GarageBand and create an empty project;
3rd: select the green keyboard icon under software instrument;
4rd: automatically it will create a new session with an Electric Piano loaded on a track. You are ready to play now;
Extra step: if you want to change the instrument, just click on the track and select another instrument from the list on the left of your screen;
Garage Band is a free software and app that works only on MacOS and iOS devices. If you don't have it installed download it here.
Fruity Loops Studio
FL Studio is one of the most popular DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) out there. Particularly famous among EDM, Hip-Hop, Rap producers, and beatmakers, FL Studio (previously known as Fruity Loops) is also one of the oldest DAWs in the market. Previously only working on Windows machines, since its version 20, FL Studio became available also for macOS. With other cool tools provided by Image-Line (developers of FL Studio) such as IL Remote (a mobile application that allows you to remotely control FL Studio from your smartphone or tablet) or FL Studio Mobile (a version of the DAW for mobile devices), FL Studio is not just one of the most popular, but also one of the most interesting software to make music.
For those reasons and because we want you to create music freely we produced this simple tutorial to help you get your Playtronica devices setup on FL Studio. All you need to do is to follow these 5 simple steps and you will be ready to start making beats with fruits, vegetables, or any other conductive materials. Let's get started!
1st: Connect your Playtronica device to your computer and launch FL Studio;
2nd: Go to Options -> MIDI Settings
3rd: On the MIDI Settings, go to the Inputs list, select your Playtronica device (on this example we are using the Playtron) and click “Enable”
The “Enable” button will turn green and in front of your Playtronica device on the list you will also have a green standby logo, as you can see on the image below:
4th: Load an instrument to your “Channel Rack” window and click on the little vertical rectangle next to the name of the instrument you just loaded (on our example “Fruity DX10”). A green frame will appear next to this rectangle which means that the track is armed.
5th: Now just interact with your objects and they will trigger the sounds. It’s time to have fun!
Setting up a drum rack using sound samples.
One of the coolest tricks on FL Studio is to load samples on your Channel Rack and then trigger them separately.
By default, FL Studio opens with a Channel Rack already loaded with Kick, Clap, Hat, and Snare samples. To keep things simple let’s use those to build our Drum Rack.
1st: Click on the little “+” signal on the bottom of your Channel Rack and add the “Layer” plug-in
2nd: Click on “Layer” in your Channel rack and in the window that opens select the first note that you want to use to trigger samples (we want to use the first note of Playtron which is a C3).
Do it by right-clicking the note on the piano roll.
Note: if you don’t know which note is the device sending, interact with it, and check the top left corner of your FL Studio window. Under the menu, FL Studio will report you the note.
3rd: On Channel Rack arm all the tracks with samples that you want to trigger. You can do it in two ways: holding shift and clicking on the little rectangle on the right of the sample name for all the samples or click and drag on top of all these rectangles.
In order to have the tracks armed, your Channel Rack must look like this:
4th: Go back to your Layer window and click on “Set Children”
5th: Click on the little triangle on the left side of “Layering” and on the drop-down menu that pops up, click on “Split Children”
Note this way FL Studio is already triggering your samples, but it’s pitching them. In order to trigger the original samples, you need to fix again the root note on the piano roll that appears inside your layer window. With Playtron you must select back C5.
Do it by right-clicking the note on the piano roll.
6th: Go back to the Channel Rack and this time arm only the Layer track
7th: If you did everything right up until now, you must be able to listen to the different samples according to the object that you interact with. Now it’s time to have fun!
If you need to download FL Studio follow this link and try it for free.
Using several controllers with Fruity loops
You can use more than one of our devices with FL, here is a tutorial that describes it.