Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Comments
It was what convinced my to buy an iPad in the first place (back when the iPad 2 was the new model). It got me into iOS music, but I moved away from it pretty quickly once Audiobus came out, and I bought Cubasis.
I had deleted it for the longest time, right until today actually. I was playing around with the Live Loops feature with my two young daughters at an Apple Store, and we've been having a blast playing with that today. I'd never use the included loops in an actual track of my own, but I think that I'll try using the Live Loops to record my own loops from Figure, Thumbjam, and iKaossilator and arrange those into a song. I have Launchpad, but I've never bothered to actually try to use the Load Your Own Samples feature in that. The process seems slightly clunky.
All that said, I don't think GarageBand will ever be fully accepted by iOS musicians until they allow it to be used in the Input slot of Audiobus. The DAW is just too limited compared to others.
I've kicked it from all my devices right after delivery - can't stand the waste of screen estate for that picture bs
aside from that it's a Logic engine in disguise and fine to use
I also prefer not to be confronted with ready-to-go whatever, but if others find it helpful - ok
the 'professional' shrugging as mentioned on the page is pretty unprofessional...
after all it's about tools
cheers, Tom
Well written article...I do find GarageBand to be well designed for composing...even the iPad version is extremely accessible...I would even use it if it weren't for the fact that at least on my system Cubasis is smoking it in real-time performance
it's great. good sounds, easy to use.
Some pretty good tunes put together with very basic set ups over the years.
The song is what matters ..... if you can't do something listenable with garageband then its not in you......and before anyone asks,...it's not in me either and I'm hoping that buying a few hundred more apps will completely disprove my point
This guy remakes a lot of pop songs in GarageBand iOS. I guess it's just what you like and can handle. It would be nice if gb played well with others but it has potential and iCloud capabilities now so your not stuck in a box. Works well with audioshare.
Nice piano roll. Not as nice as Auria.
Loads AU's. So does Cubasis, plus IAA's.
I love garageband for writing, especially since the drummer was introduced. The live loop are cool too. Don't forget, you can play your own loops in too, you don't just have to use the stock loops.
But I love GB because it's fast and not too detailed, easy to lay out song sections, sounds good, and is Universal. I drive a lot for work and write songs in the car constantly.
Anyway, in the end it is correct that these are all just tools and if they build what you're trying to build and are used skilfully, then theyre great tools. I've said so many times now that if you can't make a good sounding recording these days the tools are not to blame.
As for the article, I'm not really sure I got the writer's point, it seems like the view changes every paragraph.
Crap. Really? Now I need to find something else to blame?
I've tried using/having it for the last two years thinking that the sounds may eventually be of value some day. But nope! Just a space waster in the end for a live musician.
You what now? Hopefully not anywhere near Portland, Oregon.
I'm spending today loading in my own loops that I'm making in Figure. I've always wanted to do more with Figure, but the lack of any kind of song mode always kept Figure as a limited use app for me. But with GarageBand's Live Loops, I'm loading in all kinds of beats and melodies, and just live arranging them in GB. It's kind of what I've always wanted from Figure. This is worth it for me alone.
Weird brand snobbery as regards GB. Can only imagine if there wasn't such a thing and then a young indie developer dropped it on us we'd be pretty impressed...BUT as far to one side as I go to play the DA, I can't get over the non-AB-input so sod 'em
Great app. Amazing really. I never use it but other than 'it doesn't do what I need it to do' I can't really imagine how or why anyone would or could slight it. Especially for the price!
I think it has definitely improved with the last update in terms of what you can do. Personally I don't find myself attracted to their loops or built in instruments because it seems too much like putting a puzzle together. I agree with others who have said that you can create good music with it, just not my preference.
In the article, one producer talks about the proliferation of bad music due to how easy it is to make music with GarageBand. I think this perspective ignores the history that before mass media, a lot more people played music in informal ways without any aspirations of gaining fame or validation. There's something to be said for a return to people playing/creating music for its own sake. It doesn't mean that these efforts will be so great, but so long as you're not forced to listen to music which doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't seem so bad. If any thing, I think many people will develop a greater appreciation for talented musicians and their music.
Agree with a lot of this. The family playing poorly around the piano comes to mind...
My 8 year old daughter told me just today that the iPads that they use at their school all have GarageBand installed on them. They have some "free time" to use school-approved apps occasionally, and she says a lot of the kids in her class play with GB during that time.
For that alone, I'm glad that GB is available to a mass market. Imagine the head start that these kids could potentially be getting just by having access to this app.
As a more self-contained app, GB is fun with lots of capability. I hadn't much considered its place in history.
I'm not buying that it's bad for music. I think people will find what they want to listen to, and why should it have to be technically superior? Some talented people who are not technicians need the accessibility.
There was a time, and maybe still in some cultures, where you were supposed to spend your time doing what you were good at. Society couldn't afford dabblers. Now there's much leisure time to fill, and it's better that people be doing something creative than destructive. Paint an ugly picture. Write a crappy novel. Take a thousand photos of your cat. Make some boring noise in Garageband. It's good for you, and better for us all.
The problem that we find over in the iPads in Music Education FB group though Sean is that that's all many ever get to experience - for several reasons:
1.) Teachers are unfamiliar with other iPad music apps (one of the reasons the group exists - to expose them to that).
2.) School budgets for music on iPads in some parts of the world is bizarre. Many teachers have been given 1:1 iPads - at, what, $300 each per seat - and then ZERO - read my lips carefully - ZERO budget for apps. So, even if they do want to expose learners to other music apps, they can't
3.) Many music teachers have grown in and been educated in traditional music teaching. Nothing wrong with that, but many regard iPads as an adjunct to that, and want to know if it can be used as a tuner, or a metronome. (One can get a tuner or a metronome for less than $300 per student... ) And/or, sometimes, they are, sadly, unwilling to consider music production on anything other than traditional instruments.
4.) Many teachers simply are not "allowed" to step outside the curriculum. Unless Johnny (not you @JohnnyGoodyear
), learns his solfege by the end of term 1, their jobs are on the line. They are simply not allowed to think outside the box by the system in some places. Sigh.
There have been some helps to this situation from Apple - in device sharing and discounts for education, but it's minimal impact given the above constraints.
Thankfully, there are wonderful initiatives (a good number in Germany as it happens, some in Australia, a smattering elsewhere in the world and (it seems) just a small handful in the US or UK) that introduce even young learners to other iPad music apps - the ones we here in the group are familiar with and love.
Some good feedback there. Perhaps I should have been clear, but these iPads are being used in their home room classes as a supplement to general learning, and not in their music classes or as a substitute for music classes. Some kids choose to play Minecraft, while others make music during this "free time".
I know that Adam Kumpf made a specific effort to get Fiddlewax Pro into schools, making the app free for awhile and encouraging schools to use it. It would be nice if more developers reached out to schools to further expose students to creating music.
Given how superior most kids are at grasping technology over us old farts, it's probably us that should stick to Garage Band and leave the Midi routing, transport controls, zillion parameter synths, IAA and AU hosting to the kids. Most likely none of that crap would even make them blink.
Even though my primary DAW's have been MultiTrack DAW and later MultiTrackStudio (well, and a lot of Gadget if that counts), I'm often surprised how GarageBand gets dismissed in these parts despite having a pretty good wealth of features for basically free (some people paid for a $5 IAP to unlock some sounds). There are DAW favorites like the original Auria and MTDAW that had zero MIDI capability, whereas GarageBand has full piano roll editing with quantization that largely works.
Since it was an Apple development, GarageBand also supported IAA and AU long before many other DAW's did and still do. Oh, and it's a universal DAW, which was absolutely huge for iPhone users until we've recently started to get some more options. I've dabbled with both Music Studio and Beatmaker 2, but don't think I'd trade GarageBand for either of them.
I think a lot of the problem with how people view GarageBand is that they still think of it as it was in 2008 or whenever they first deleted it. Some of the new features like the loops and automated drummer really are quite useful, even if they feel like "music by numbers" at times. There's a "smart drum" rhythm generator similar to the one in DrumJam, yet nobody talks about it. Definitely underappreciated.
Ha! Only vocals into my headset while actually driving. The rest I pull over generally. Although since I'm in NJ about 12 miles from Manhattan, there's plenty of times I'm "driving" 0 mph...
I'm a social worker and I think that statement is awesome. I'll be stealing it. Especially in the wake of some terrible events in the world in the past few weeks. In addition to all of the events that make world and national news, My wife's best friend just had her cousin and her cousin's husband involved in a murder suicide this week, sadly he was battling mental illness for most of his life. I knew them a little bit from being at her friend's parties through the years, but my wife knew her quite well.
I think life is becoming much more stressful for everyone (or at least many, including me) these days and having a positive outlet is so important.
Sorry to derail a little but that struck a chord with me (pardon the pun) and the worst attempt at making music is still better than so many other things that people choose to do. if GarageBand, or any other iOS app can be a help with that, that can only be a good thing.
Back to lighter side of the discussion, but thanks for the opening to express that.
Witnessed.
Lol @ 'generally'!
....and committed to memory.
We are the choir you are preaching to, for sure, but it still needs to be said...
I think the newer version of GarageBand does offer many options for how people can use a DAW. It has both linear timeline based approaches, looping, and playing an individual instrument as a focus plus it can incorporate other apps. So people can definitely start off with GarageBand and follow where their interest's lead them which at some point may mean leaving GarageBand behind. It would be sad if they felt the need to revise their own music history to make it match up with their current preferences for making music rather than appreciating how they got there.
Not every person plays sports because they aspire to be a professional athlete, not every painter expects to be hung in a museum, nor does every musician play to fill concert halls. The degree to which these activities enrich our lives has as much to do with our motivations for doing so and how they change us in the process as the tangible products of our efforts.
I read elsewhere someone calling the new iOS Garageband is essentially a simplified Ableton Live for iOS just like Cubasis is simplified Cubase for iOS. Nothing can be farther from the truth: first, obviously, because Ableton has absolutely nothing to do with Apple. Second, and more important, because Garageband seemed to have drawn inspiration from good ideas from other iOS loop players, and yet it kept being timeline-centric and studio focused, whereas Ableton Live is more fit to "Live Performances" (okay, more often than not "a man in the DJ booth that rises his left hand while triggering a loop on his laptop with his right hand") despite also having a timeline and traditional DAW tools.
For me, two things stand out: first, it's the first time a new Garageband feature comes to iOS first (oh, I have absolutely no doubt it will come to the Desktop version and also to Logic). Second, by keeping the timeline as the center of its experience, Apple does it right IMO, and that's great news: knowing that this feature will eventually be available for Logic, I'd hate it becomes anything like Ableton Live.
Hilarious!!