Infinite Looper, now on the bus

SecretBaseDesign

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
Sorry to say no joy with selecting the file first for audio export. The export project is fine, but not the export audio. I did reboot, try different files, including the demo, but instacrash I'm afraid....

(For the record: The files don't appear in iTunes; the crash is so fast I don't think anything is being generated...)

Ahhh -- I think I know what's up! To record audio, you need to tap the "record audio" button in the upper right -- and then it starts recording. You can hit play, bang on the keyboard piano, etc. When you tap "record audio" again, whatever happened should appear in a WAV file (given a name that's the date followed by the time -- YYYYMMDD-hhmmss.wav). After that point, you can export, or find it in iTunes file sharing. If there are no WAV files, clicking export audio can cause a crash (I never checked that case, and it looks like it got missed by the beta testers too).

JohnnyGoodyear

@SecretBaseDesign said:

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
Sorry to say no joy with selecting the file first for audio export. The export project is fine, but not the export audio. I did reboot, try different files, including the demo, but instacrash I'm afraid....

(For the record: The files don't appear in iTunes; the crash is so fast I don't think anything is being generated...)

Ahhh -- I think I know what's up! To record audio, you need to tap the "record audio" button in the upper right -- and then it starts recording. You can hit play, bang on the keyboard piano, etc. When you tap "record audio" again, whatever happened should appear in a WAV file (given a name that's the date followed by the time -- YYYYMMDD-hhmmss.wav). After that point, you can export, or find it in iTunes file sharing. If there are no WAV files, clicking export audio can cause a crash (I never checked that case, and it looks like it got missed by the beta testers too).

Thanks for the response. Have several cats to skin, but will give this a try later in the PM and PM you if required

SecretBaseDesign

And just to keep folks in the loop.... iPhone version!

Tones4Christ

Someone mentioned one can create channels in AUM for IL loop outs any tips on how to do that?

Korakios

@Tones4Christ said:
Someone mentioned one can create channels in AUM for IL loop outs any tips on how to do that?

Load synths inside AUM , use InfLooper only for midi.

Tones4Christ

Awesome!
Thanks!
Just re read past posts and saw midi import is coming. That's gonna be really awesome!
For drum midi files they'll have to be according to GM standard correct?

JohnnyGoodyear

@SecretBaseDesign

Well of course the beta-testers missed it! I was trying to export something that wasn't there yet

I'm going to give that non-existent error nine parts user stupidity, but reserve a single point for the developer forgetting that some folks will inevitably press any button their presented with

Thanks for your help.

carol

I like the look of this , and Modstep , but worry I'll have absolutely no idea how to use them lol -

Korakios

The keyboard is nice since it has velocity sensitivity but it seems when sliding it produces max velocity regardless the position.
The internal sounds are better than expected. Maybe in the end of the feature request list could add Soundfont import?(with no GUI ,like the internal ones).Then we could add them to the built in synth categories.
I spend last night jamming with the internal sounds and was lazy to add external synths. Too lazy for swiping around

JohnnyGoodyear

@carol said:
I like the look of this , and Modstep , but worry I'll have absolutely no idea how to use them lol -

As mentioned elsewhere I suspect many of us will end up incorporating both into our flow, but to be clear IL while very clever is much, much more of a jump-in-and-make-music option. Five minutes jabbing at the interface, 10 mins watching his video, and bang, ready to go... (and this from a man who doesn't go bang very often).

carol

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

@carol said:
I like the look of this , and Modstep , but worry I'll have absolutely no idea how to use them lol -

As mentioned elsewhere I suspect many of us will end up incorporating both into our flow, but to be clear IL while very clever is much, much more of a jump-in-and-make-music option. Five minutes jabbing at the interface, 10 mins watching his video, and bang, ready to go... (and this from a man who doesn't go bang very often).

Cool beans Johnny , I'll look into this one then lol

Tones4Christ

It really reminds me of the early Ableton days when it was all about never stopping the flow. Hit record and just keep going from loop to loop. I really love that aspect of this app. Simply put, you hit record and the music just flows!

Salamander69

@Halftone said:

@rhcball said:
The more I get into clip-launching type workflows the less I finish anything. Maybe this is just a temporary adjustment thing.

I'm kinda finding the same thing.., get lots of loops recorded or programmed that fit nicely together - but that's usually where it stays.

I reckon the fact that this has a pattern sequencer thingy will rescue me from that predicament

null____void

@Salamander69 said:

@Halftone said:

@rhcball said:
The more I get into clip-launching type workflows the less I finish anything. Maybe this is just a temporary adjustment thing.

I'm kinda finding the same thing.., get lots of loops recorded or programmed that fit nicely together - but that's usually where it stays.

I reckon the fact that this has a pattern sequencer thingy will rescue me from that predicament

Yeah I was thinking the same thing.

Judochopjames

@rhcball said:
The more I get into clip-launching type workflows the less I finish anything. Maybe this is just a temporary adjustment thing.

This is a very good point, I suspect lots of people have the same experience. I think it's because with clip based workflows you naturally tend to focus on piecing together a bunch of short clips and not focusing on the bigger picture. As a result you often have a cool sounding 8 bar loop with all the pieces but it's harder to flesh that out into a song because you need to think about fleshing all the pieces out at the same time. It's much easier to write a full piece of music with one instrument first and add accompaniment after. I bet many of us come up with a cool loop and then start adding instruments to it, but I think if you shift your workflow to building a full song of loops with one instrument first it might fix this problem.

An analogy could be building a house, instead of building the frame first and then adding the drywall and flooring and eventually painting and so on it would be like building one finished wall completely first with all the paint and trim and then trying to build the next wall the same way. Probably not the most efficient strategy.

null____void

@Judochopjames that makes a lot of sense, I will try to remember that.

JohnnyGoodyear

I always build my house like this though....

lukesleepwalker

@Judochopjames said:

@rhcball said:
The more I get into clip-launching type workflows the less I finish anything. Maybe this is just a temporary adjustment thing.

This is a very good point, I suspect lots of people have the same experience. I think it's because with clip based workflows you naturally tend to focus on piecing together a bunch of short clips and not focusing on the bigger picture. As a result you often have a cool sounding 8 bar loop with all the pieces but it's harder to flesh that out into a song because you need to think about fleshing all the pieces out at the same time. It's much easier to write a full piece of music with one instrument first and add accompaniment after. I bet many of us come up with a cool loop and then start adding instruments to it, but I think if you shift your workflow to building a full song of loops with one instrument first it might fix this problem.

An analogy could be building a house, instead of building the frame first and then adding the drywall and flooring and eventually painting and so on it would be like building one finished wall completely first with all the paint and trim and then trying to build the next wall the same way. Probably not the most efficient strategy.

This is why I always try to start with a melody and a basic lyrical motif.

It's really fun and easy these days to create great tracks, but as you conclude, it can also be a trap.

Tones4Christ

Great tip. I noticed that that is the main reason why I loved the arranger keyboards cause they allowed me to write a song from start to finish in a matter of minutes not hours or days. But, the problem was that after a while, the styles all started to sound the same. So that is why I really love this app. It allows me to concentrate on letting the music flow and not get fancy on effects, this or that, but just get the song out of my mind and on the iPad.

My English teacher once told me, when you're writing your essay, just write whatever comes to your mind, let it flow. Do all the editing afterwards. I applied this and was able to finish lots of papers. Now I'm applying this to music and just get rid of all the extra unneeded stuff via edits later.

@Judochopjames said:

@rhcball said:
The more I get into clip-launching type workflows the less I finish anything. Maybe this is just a temporary adjustment thing.

This is a very good point, I suspect lots of people have the same experience. I think it's because with clip based workflows you naturally tend to focus on piecing together a bunch of short clips and not focusing on the bigger picture. As a result you often have a cool sounding 8 bar loop with all the pieces but it's harder to flesh that out into a song because you need to think about fleshing all the pieces out at the same time. It's much easier to write a full piece of music with one instrument first and add accompaniment after. I bet many of us come up with a cool loop and then start adding instruments to it, but I think if you shift your workflow to building a full song of loops with one instrument first it might fix this problem.

An analogy could be building a house, instead of building the frame first and then adding the drywall and flooring and eventually painting and so on it would be like building one finished wall completely first with all the paint and trim and then trying to build the next wall the same way. Probably not the most efficient strategy.

Ben

So, just bought this one. Looks like a winner. Time will tell I guess. However, only available in the AB input slot?! Can that be right?

Ben

Sorry for the bump. @SecretBaseDesign. Is that correct. Input slot only in AB?

Tones4Christ

AB is for audio only.

@Ben said:

Sorry for the bump. @SecretBaseDesign. Is that correct. Input slot only in AB?

SecretBaseDesign

@Ben said:
So, just bought this one. Looks like a winner. Time will tell I guess. However, only available in the AB input slot?! Can that be right?

Yes -- the (mixed) output of IL is available for the AB input slot, and that's the limits of AB connectivity. For bringing in synth sounds to the app, I've got things set up to use IAA directly; this lets me save the synths along with a project, and have them load automatically (rather than having to do a combination of AB session saving, and a lot of fiddling that way).

I'm trying to keep my audio code, and the app as whole, simple enough for average users. The folks who are here on the AB forums are the serious power users -- but that's not my primary target with Infinite Looper. My hope is that running the app is easy enough that ordinary people (who likely have never heard of AB, or IAA for that matter) can get things routed and working.

For the power users -- you can host apps in something like AUM, route all the audio you want there in any crazy configuration, and just use MIDI out of Infinite Looper to drive things.

Harro

Hello @SecretBaseDesign, I bought Infinite Looper, tried it out and ran into all kinds of troubles and shortcomings... (I'm on Air 1, IOS 9.3.) To sum them up:

In File/project-management:

• you can't save a project;
• you can't 'save as' a project;
• you can't rename a project;
• App-crash when you hit Play or Export Audio when nothing selected (this is mentioned before).

In Keyboard:

• when first opened, it starts with C0 (or C1?) -> always too low, so you always have to use the slider for a more audible octave (better start with C4).

In Note/Chord:

• the dialog for notes or chords (and for naming them) has no Ok/Cancel-buttons, so when you're changing something, and want to cancel, you're lost...

In the mainscreen:

• when you use one or more IAA instrument(s) or when IF is hosted by AUM, there's this special statusbar on top of the screen (white or red) that takes you back to Aum/AB or it says 'Back to FM4' (or whatever IAA-instrument that you use in IF); my pointerfinger regularly hits this statusbar in stead of one of the buttons for Play, Record and Metronome (very annoying); while there's space enough to make this buttons bigger and place the quantize-buttons next to the Play, etc-buttons (and leave less space for the project-title);
• changing instruments for one of the six 'tracks' caused regularly (mostly when changing from an IAA-instrument to an 'Internal synth' an app-crash! And here also: the dialog for choosing instruments has no Ok/Cancel-buttons (so when you change your mind, you're lost again);
• when the Keyboard, etc.-screen is pulled down and you hit on the Midi-learn-button, or the Filemanagement-button, etc., you expect that screen to auto come up, but no, you have to manuallly pull it up first...
• the Info-button (little circle with 'i') takes you right to secretbasedesign.com; it's better to first dialog-ask if you want to open a browser... Hopefully this opens an in-app-manual in 1.1. (?);
• when you 'kill' IAA-instruments used by IF outside of IF, IF doesn't notice that! It still shows the IAA-instrument-icon, but chooses (at random it seems) an internal synth-sound to play the midi-clip for the former IAA-instrument... (???)

In the pianoroll:

• I find this important tool very primitive designed: there's no (running) playhead, it shows G8 (!!!) when you open it, it has no solo-button, you can't change the pattern-length, the measure-slider gives no indication of how many measures there are, you have to use four buttons for simple input and editing (no 'hit and drag, etc.), no zooming, no undo (specially when you want to scroll the view and you forgot to use the note-names-column and you hit all kind of wrong notes and all you can do is hit 'Done'!).

The Tempo-dialog:

• when Link is disabled and you have set a tempo for IF other then 120 (f.e. 80bpm), after enabling Link, the tempo becomes 120 (and not 80!) (when no other Link-app is running).

Record Audio

• After recording some audio from some running clips, the recorded file showed up in the Filemanagement-screen. Selected that file and hit Play (which changed into Stop). It was a short recording (600 K), but the Stop-button never showed Play again; I deleted the recorded file, but after a crash it's name showed up again (very strange).

I hope this helps to make IF a better midi-looper; I'm an average user and I like simple but well designed apps.

funjunkie27

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but on drum tracks, I would prefer drum pads to replace the keyboard view, or at least abbreviated drum names on the side bar.

Edit - disregard, as I now see that can be done in the chords panel.

Tones4Christ

Another feature request; undo option would be nice if your recording in a loop and added hi hats etc but want to undo that instead of having to delete entire loop and start from scratch. Any chance of this in update?

GovernorSilver

Didn't realize the $9.99 (US) price is an intro price. May pick this up soon.

What I don't get is the comparison to Modstep. One is a looper and the other is a step sequencer - two very different paradigms for music-making.

Korakios

Nope. Modstep is also a looper, does way much more and it's not only a step sequencer. InfLooper is only focused on midi looping, user friendly and it's simplicity helps a lot.
As pure midi loopers they have different workflow, so I don't find any competition. @SecretBaseDesign is working on an iphone version too which is great!

aaronpc

@Harro That's a good list there. Thanks for taking the time, and saving me the same, as I was about to pen that very thing. The amount of interest the app has generated despite these shortcomings show that they're definitely on to something, so I hope whipping it into shape doesn't take too long.

GovernorSilver

@Korakios said:
Nope. Modstep is also a looper, does way much more and it's not only a step sequencer.

So you can play something on a MIDI keyboard in real time and have Modstep loop it, without having to stop the ModStep sequence?