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.
Let's help the developers help us. Which app(s) best suit your workflow?
I know we all get into different stuff. Some of us find all we need in GarageBand, Gadget, or (gulp!) the Tabletop environment. Others have a laundry list of apps chained together with Audiobus/IAA/AU/hardware and hacks. I am occasionally mystified by the apps people abandon because they don't get along with them, yet I know that no app is for everyone.
Which app(s) do you feel offer the greatest potential for creating audio, manipulating audio, recording audio, and "sharing" that audio with other apps/people? Do you find apps with the best workflow have a common thread?
Comments
Well i use ipad nowadays just for its synths(and drum machines) with/triggered by ableton(using ableton push), and also using touchable occasionally. Been thinking of getting into some apps that mirror the computers screen to ipad, tried dual display, but its just too laggy/shitty for it to be any more use than to piss me off trying to use it. I have an impression that duet display would be better, but dont feel like dropping money on it now, and ill most likely just get disappointed with it as well.
I think that doing even some simple stuff on ipad is just too much hassle compared to computer
But when it comes to greatest potential, i would say modstep, impc pro(if that thing wouldnt crash all the time and losing your work when it does that) and auria pro. But to get to that potential, apple would have to introduce at least a mouse. Finger on a touch screen simply isnt accurate enough, unless ofc you keep zooming in and out like hell for simple stuff like making a midi note just a tiny bit longer. And even then failing 50% of the time, in which case its just more hassle(in most cases) since you can just simply push cmd + z..
I think the biggest thing hindering the potential for ipad to be REALLY great would require too much work from apples side(including opening up things that are closed due to safety against malware and figuring out work arounds for malware not to be able to get all over the place like it can on android) for it to happen.
Not saying that ipad music production is crappy, just that its still in too early phases for me to move on to ipad completely(tried that already and got disappointed). Maybe ill figure out more uses for using ipad in the future, but till now it seems like everytime i figure out a great way to use it, it either doesent work or i find a better way to do the same thing on computer.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I think the opposite can also be said, at least in regards to some things being easier (or just more fun) to do on a touch screen. I find that a cheapo stylus is helpful for those fiddly apps with small controls. I know the old Steve Jobs axiom about the stylus, but hey, it works for me. I wonder how many here use the Apple Pencil?
Oh yea, apple pencil could help a lot with that. I think a stylus would need a fine tip for it to be useful, and at least where i live, all of those cost A LOT, and apple pencil only works with ipad pro
and also costs a lot.
What sort of things you find easier on a touch screen? Im trying to find more use for ipad in my music production, and all sorts of things to make things at least a bit easier that i havent thought of are welcome.
Oh yea and i have been thinking of getting some arpeggiator app as well. But not sure yet if i should go for it, or which app to get.
I go for apps like ThumbJam, Orphion, Gestrument, TC-11, and SoundPrism apps, for example. Also, midi stuff like Lemur and MIDI Designer.
Check out StepPolyArp, ThumbJam, and Chordian.
http://audiob.us/get/199/StepPolyArp-Midi-Step-Polyphonic-Arpeggiator
http://audiob.us/get/34/ThumbJam
http://audiob.us/get/108/Chordion
I guess I'm not supposed to post in this thread but just quietly read, because I'm a developer and I just recently landed in iOS music land. But for me the iOS music world in general is a big eye opener.
I've been trying to keep my Mac as far away as possible from my hardware music setup. It felt like the big glary screen and the mouse/keyboard paradigm were sucking the creativity out through my eyeballs. I wanted to go back to the physical experience of just touching knobs and looking at rows of blinking leds - hearing what I am doing rather than seeing it visualized in graphics.
Adding the iPad to this setup is a great middle ground for me. It allows me to record and play back and add some nice sonic touches without distracting from the hardware experience going on around it (I can tolerate an 8" screen without a mouse because it's small enough to not demand to be looked at all the time).
I guess a lot of this is highly subjective... but for me it seems to be working.
Disclaimer: I rarely produce 'finished tracks' any more like I did 15 years ago, but mostly spend my music-time combining lots of synced sequencers and jamming in real time.
Don't be silly.
Synth apps like Model 15, Gadget, Addictive Pro, iVCS3 etc. are just so good (and cheap) I'd rather use them than a soft synth on the Mac, and it's so much easier opening iMS20 on the iPad than rummaging around for leads and desk space for my old hardware MS20.
Then there's the wonderful weird shit - iDensity, Borderlands, Soundscaper etc. which can be routed through mind bending FX like Moebius and Turnado.
Rhythm from Patterning and Egoist complemented by realistic instruments via Thumbjam and iFretless add some acoustic joy to the mix.
I'll use Aum for live recording, and Auria for a bit of spit and polish and the essential Audioshare for organising and uploading finished work to Dropbox.
I love making noises on the iPad, it's a proper thing - let's hope Apple doesn't screw it up.
Workflow is important
It's easy for developers to get lost in their own creations
I think it's important that someone else looks over it with different ideas about how to use things, so the user gets a "middle of the road" thing in the end
What suits my workflow best is usually from people I am talking to
For me- having a manual/ tutorial is a good starting point with any of them. I have deleted several apps as frustration bites when I find myself blindly poking and prodding and all the rest of it to get the thing working. So quite often it's no guide=no workflow.
I find it hard to believe that so much effort can be put into making an app- and very little into showing people how to use it. It is an invitation to failure and desolation- and I would have thought a bit of a risk- not to mention a complete deficiency in customer care.
I prefer apps that offer a more performance oriented experience, in a clever way that enables just about anyone who uses the app to express themselves musically whether they were previously inclined to or not., I see that as a very important contribution IOS apps can make to musical experience in general. Apps like Soundprism, Thumbjam, Figure, IKaossilator, any of your synth apps that go the extra mile performance interface wise: Animoog, TC-11, etc. Anyone can pick these apps up and make pleasing music for their own enjoyment, whether you sequence a track, jam on the presets, or whatever. A big part of this is performance interfaces that can be restricted to chosen scales/notes and harmonies ala soundprism, navichord, chordion. It may seem like a small thing, but it makes a huge difference opening music to everyone and is bottom line...FUN. Where I see room for improvement, are apps that, in the same way they offer a fun and fluid perfomance/jamming interface, offer a similar fluid, musical experience when it comes to the nitty gritty of production and arranging. I think an interface could be designed where, just as easily as it is to flick your fingers around and play harmonies and melodies, its similarly fluid to change the sound/mix/sound design, and try out different arrangements on the fly. It would have to forgo a lot of traditional design though. Think Ikaossilator with mixing and automation functions able to be performed on their own xy pad and easily accesible. Thats the closet thing I can think of.
TLDR: The name of the game should be designing interfaces that continue to shorten the time between initial music idea and full production in such a that feels fluid and musical all the way through, utilizing carefully selected limitations. But I may be dreaming. Anyways,
Any reliable iOS Daw that supports AU is what I'm after. Apple Pencil is excellent for editing, but they are easy to lose while traveling (I've lost 3 so far)
The smaller screen helps brings the focus back to music-making...iPad feels more like an instrument/appliance while qwerty keyboards have always felt bizarre to me when in music mode.
Ab3 with miditrickery will be superfun
Press a single chord to play the "midi opera"
U can do it now too but it doesn't save and recreate
So it's not much fun
I used to connect sunrizer and whatever to soundprism and lemur
This stuff will become fun and not the nerdy exercise it is now
^ mind reader. Very much samesies here.
For 'workflow' entirely within the device, and not so much for "creating audio, manipulating audio, recording audio, and "sharing" that audio with other apps/people" but for actually getting close to fully fleshed out tunes, NanoStudio's buttery workflow remains the most productive for me.
For capturing parts-of-a-song style audio, AB->Loopy wins.
For capturing what's going on 'right now' AB->Audioshare.
Are you capturing multi-track live recordings into AUM instead of Auria these days?
Gadget's midi inputing with finger is the best yet for me. Adding and removing notes is spot on.
Yeah, I love the way I can recall a setup of apps, jam about and record it live - I can stick a bit of external audio (guitar, bass etc.) into the mix too. A lot quicker than doing it in Auria, but it's nice then to take the files into Auria for editing and more overdubs.
Only issue I have with Aum is that sometimes it doesn't save the recording - say 1 in every 20 sessions - it just isn't there, which is a bummer if you've just done a particularly good performance, though not usually an issue in my case.
Almost everything I've recorded on the iPad in the last 6 months has been played live into Aum.
Perhaps I could have worded it better, but the intent was to be as broad as possible since most of our apps do all that stuff. It was not meant to be restrictive, and I hope no one reads it that way.
With that said, it's always nice when the creation and production fit nicely together.
Wonderful replies, so far. I thank you all.
Cheers Mr. Monzo. I love that same thing about AUM but I'm specifically wondering about mult-track capture. Do you set up recording for each channel in AUM as a discreet audio file and then bring the lot into Auria via open-in or something? I've only messed about a tiny bit with multi-tracking within AUM. Keep meaning to give it a proper go but it initially seemed a pain to manage all of the separate files and I haven't really tried to challenge that initial impression/assumption. Within AUM itself, I'm usually just capturing the entire mix like I would with Audioshare or similar.
Speaking of workflow, I've probably built up my Loopy 3(?) expectations too high in that I imagine it's going to be the sort of ultimate ease-of-capture + arrange into a song workflow on the iPad.
I've had a couple of fun sessions with it in the last couple of nights yet found myself wishing for things that I know are going to be in Loopy 3 like track groups, sections and 'just one more track'.
I also always seems to want a switchable LPF/HPF on each track to get random stuff to sit together more easily. Can fan the tracks out to AUM for that but having it within Loopy would be ideal. Anyone tracking Loopy 3 close enough to know if that sort of minimal audio processing is a part of the initial release?
I don't think I have ever made two tracks in the exact same way. My workflow is constantly morphing and shifting. A lot of the time I will continue working on a track after a couple months away from it and not even remember how it got to where it did but just pick up and keep going in a different way.
This.
What are you usually picking up from in this case? In a DAW? All-in-one like Gadget? AB preset?
On iOS if I am picking something up again it would be from blocs wave, gadget, cubasis, egoist, Modstep, borderlands, patterning, fugue machine. One common thing is that i number the tracks so #072 in gadget relates to #072 in patterning. So if something tickles me enough I can investigate its roots but i ussualy just keep adding. In the end if something is working it will eventually get on the PC laptop as wav files where I have numbered folders that contain the iOS recordings. I guess that is the common worflow thread on the successful iOS tracks, they make it to PC and eventualy get mixed (Often tracks will mash together there too).
Thanks, @AudioGus. Even if there is no common thread, it's still interesting to me to learn how others approach making music.
Step 1 - Make audio loops
a. Synth loops: Animoog, Z3ta, isem, driven by fugue machine, modstep, xynthesizr
b. Drum loops: patterning, dm1, dm2
Loops captured in AUM and mangled in real time with insert and bus effects
Step 2 - Modify audio loops
Take audio loops from step 1 and mangle them more - Launchpad, Sector, Turnado , Egoist
Step 3-Make a song
Take mangled loops into Ableton Live for further mangling,
Add additional parts in Ableton Live
Arrange, mix, master
Yep. Same here. I'll lose interest in a session in Loopy because it never lived up to my expectations. Then stumble back to it a couple of months later with a different attitude and results.
My version of state saving for Loopy is 12 circles drawn on a sheet of paper in a notebook with the parameters written (in pencil) for each loop. Like our friend @AudioGus I would never remember how I got there so that works for me.
If I get froggy I'll mix a song down to GarageBand in AB, export to iTunes and burn it to cd so I can hear it on my car and home stereo. Only to discover that the levels are all shite then go back to the song etc...
I suspect @Michael is going to address the label issue in Loopy3 so I won't have to have my notebook in front of me in order to locate everything. Or, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.
Yea i have been looking into steppolyarp, didnt know thumbjam had arpeggiator, need to look into that more. But i was looking at yamahas synth arp & dr pad app(which is free and i downloaded it ages ago, but never looked much into it), and it has a lot of nice arpeggiator shapes(or what ever they are called), but not sure yet if i can use it the way i want to, triggering notes from push to it, and it arpeggiating the notes on other synths on the ipad.
I did try the separate track recording - like you say it was a bit of a faff, but still a good way of working.
Usually though I record into one live track. I like that, as it means I can't fiddle with the mix or redo parts, and forces me to work quickly. It wouldn't do for everyone, but for my odd, improvised mush it's just the job.
If I'm doing something a bit more structured, then I might record a bunch of rhythm apps live for a drum track, edit the file in Auria, bring it back into Aum via a file-player track, and overdub instruments on top of that - again to a single live file.
From a listeners perspective, I like music that has the odd mistake or unexpected turn in it, so the semi-live approach works for me.
@MonzoPro gotcha. Thanks for the breakdown.
Big fan of live to two track as well. Have you listened to much Frank Black and the Catholics? Last I checked in anyway, all of their records were recorded direct to 2" 2-track tape. They practice the shit out of it and the engineers mix it all live. They sound like proper fucking rock and roll records to my ears. Not in a garage rock sorta way (like, say, The Oblivians who also recorded direct to two-track)—they're big thick sounding rock recordings.
Haven't heard that band, but familiar with his other stuff - will have to check them out
It really depends what type of music you're doing, what it's purpose is - my noise and approach isn't going to work for most people, but as I'm pushed for time and do this for 'fun', the live recording process provides me with a way to actually get stuff finished and 'out there'.
That's the beauty of the iPad - I can work this way, or spend months fiddling with a track in Auria. It covers most basses.
This is just my personal muck though, for band stuff that all goes through a big desk and into desktop DAW gubbins, though we do record parts of it live.