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.
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Is that a threat or a promise? Why and where we start noodling.
It occurs to me that there's a lot of music apps that are phenomenally capable and comprehensive in their feature coverage. There's also a lot of apps that don't appear to do much, and are quite simplistic in what they do. We like to make music, but surely the simplistic ones are 'out-competed' from an evolutionary point of view by the more successful more sophisticated more advanced species. Maybe not, as although butterflies are more advanced and sophisticated than moths, moths nevertheless still exist.
When we initiate the mood to noodle about with half an eye to investing that effort into what may or may not become a song, where do we start? I would suggest that for most of us, and for most of the time, we don't really gravitate to the thing that offers the most capability and power. We probably find ourselves going the other way, looking for something not so simple that it seems a toy or an insult, but not so powerfully encompassing that it could well be the engineering environment for the final song moments before release.
I propose that we tend to drift toward (either consciously or not) an environment that has as few threats to our flow as we can find, that still allows good noodling. I quite like the idea of the synths in Auria Pro, but I'd never start that app up as a blank sheet to just noodle around - it is too threatening to the innocent act of noodling as there's too many things I feel I should be doing all at the same time. This may explain why I might start an idea up in Garageband, even if I basically have to start again somewhere else once I've got something to run with.
As well as seeking the 'low threat' scenarios, we, I think, also gravitate to those situations where there is some 'promise' of benefit, which is why we don't just jump to the simplest possible method all the time. If it is too simple, it won't stimulate as much, and if it is too boring, we might just get, er, bored.
Having said that, I think the profile of how an idea starts has to cross media somewhat. Rough pencil sketches may become proper paintings, photographs or sculptures, and at some point the pencil and paper got left behind or diminished, only acting as a reference and no longer the work focus.
Comments
I concur. It's also why Korg Gadget works so well for me, as it's easy to dive in and noodle, but let's me add depth and details when the time is ready.
My favourite device for noodling is an acoustic guitar, but on the ipad it would be something like a single synth or piano app, so there's definitely something to that. Gadget and GarageBand can do Noodle Plus, because they allow you to quickly put basic arragements together, Loopy is also really good at that.
And despite Auria being my favourite app ever, I would never use it for noodling.
This is one reason I use apps like Auxy or TriqTraq more than any other these days. Even Gadget for me seems too complicated when I just want to get to it
…and Jakob's fondness for Figure.
Sometimes a synth app, sometimes Medly, sometimes Garageband.
Also depends on your level of musical skill. My ears and heart are far more talented than my fingers, so something I can work on quickly, add to, erase, contrast compare, is far more likely to call to me when I'm sat in the parking lot waiting to pick up etc.
Absolutely. I gravitate to apps that sound good and provide a nice interface to making music directly without setting anything up. Like playing a traditional instrument. I think that's where the best initial ideas come from. It's why an app can be so useful even if it doesn't have all the latest technology, conveniences, or connectivity.
Just discovered Dot Melody. Not so sophisticated as many apps, and perhaps below many trained musicians. But for those of us who are not trained, yet still like to dabble this is a fabulous little app.
Why? Because of the control system governing pitch and sustain, which is so much more logical and intutituve than a keyboard, IMHO. It also helps that the app is well connected, and can drive soft synths.
Rotor, which now has my other favorites, iSequence, iElectribe, iMPC Pro, Tabletop, Sunvox, springing up around it on my main page. Because Rotor really captured me, and those others are amazing for making loops to feed it.
The why is harder to explain. They've all captured me at different times, and continue to the way Rotor has, I guess because they've got depth and personality, and for me learning curves are a plus. Special mention of Modstep here, where a "noodle" favorite blurs into the full-on production tool
For me patch building is part of the noodling, and as much of the composition as the composition itself. I have a hard time going about it any other way.