Can a Fruity Loops user help me out?

[Tabasco]

I was wondering if anyone would help me out quick as a brand-new user, while I'm perusing the help?

I opened up a midi I'm tinkering with and changed an instrument, but I can't save it. It reverts back when I play the file or when I save it, and can only be changed mid-play. How do I keep it like this? Is this because it's the demo and not actually being able to do anything is supposed to encourage me to buy instead of choose a different software?

Also, alternatives to FL? I can't even use their help forums as a currently non-paying customer, so all the good talk I heard about FL just went down the toilet.

 

[Bittertooth]

There are MIDI events at the beginning (and sometimes middle) of the song that establish which instruments the channels are set to. If you want to keep it from changing the instrument automatically, you'd delete the events. They're necessary only if you want the instruments to change throughout the song).

To delete the thing that changes the instrument automatically, go to the "patch number" pattern control that corresponds to the channel you want to take care of.
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/2817/flmidi.jpg

Then select the deletion tool (circle with slash in it) and delete all the stuff in the lower panel.
http://img814.imageshack.us/img814/8162/flmidi2.jpg

You gotta do that for each channel.

You'd to the same thing if you want to change the tempo. The tempo gets controlled automatically but you can delete the tempo events if you want to set it to a different tempo. The pattern control for that is Tempo (Coarse).

 

[Tabasco]

I can delete all that blocky white events, but it still resets.

However, if I replace it with a new event, it changes to a new instrument and stays that way. Unfortunately, it seems to be dependent on how high or low it is on the scale, with maybe a millimeter's difference between unlabeled instruments.

I'm really hoping this software is an elaborate joke on me and not real professional and popular software.