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.
StepPolyArp as a MIDI Filter
I've just updated our database to show that StepPolyArp is also compatible with our MIDI system in Audiobus 3. I just wanted to point out that it's really awesome to use in combination with Fugue Machine.
It doesn't support multiple instances like the Midiflow apps but it's very versatile useful in app based setups as well as as a filter for external midi hardware.
Comments
Would love to see a video of SPA and FM together...
Would love to have iPhone versions.
Would love to see SPA as an AU.
Great tip! Thanks Sebastian!
I had a great MIDI filter prior to Audiobus 3. I worked so well that no MIDI made it through!
Good to know for people on recent iPads. Wish these were available on iPhone.
lol
So what exactly is, um, a midifilter?
So how do I play a midi track on my daw (either cubasis or Music Studio mainly) and then record it back onto another channel on said daw having been filtered in the middle?
Bing. Please.
Just been noodling with one FM head driving SPA and the others routed to some random synths (Magellan, FM4, Galileo). Very good combination indeed, much room for happy accidents.
I was also driving iWavestation using SPA with interesting results for a hour (would have been more but the train insisted on stopping). It was less a planned session and more a case of "that's sounds cool ... I wonder what I'm/its doing". Just randomly adding some sustained steps here and there was great for "self backing" the arp.
The selective randomisation is also great for lazy fecks like me.
Alas I'm too time poor right now to produce videos but suffice to say there is much to like here.
Would love to see any new SPA vids or hear examples. Somehow I missed this app and AB3 seems to have made it something I should have...
Yes, definitely a classic in my book. It's really reliable and now even easier to connect.
StepPolyArp is a subtly powerful music making thing. It strays into step sequencer territory in a playable way. Great usability as well.
Recently spent a little more time with it, and was getting into making patterns, taking the trouble to enter in the note numbers (of the chord you are holding down) into the sequencer, so like, rather than arping the notes, in a basic order, like 1-2-3-1-2-3, it would play patterns like 1...1-1-1-2, 1...1-1-1-3, and you could interact with it by the type of chord you could hold down. Especially good for bass lines, which are mostly repetitive, but have variations on a certain note in the pattern.
Also It's really cool that the pattern bank has a basic song mode, where it can play a pattern a certain number of times, then go on to the next pattern. It's layed out nice too, where it counts down visually, so you can tell when it is going to switch. Even something like a A,A,A,B pattern switch can spice up the arping. That's one of Carol Kaye's tips on bass playing, "If you do something 3 times, do something different the 4th."
Such a great synth accessory!
Too bad it seems to have lost its ability to route each row to a different midi channel while in the AB3 MIDI environment though. Bad news for me
You can still just load it as an audio input, not MIDI Input or filter, and load your target instruments as inputs as well (avoiding the Midi page altogether). It defeats the purpose of AB3 Midi features, but does work.
Cream is another arp capable of sending to different midi channels. Could these apps implement a selection mechanism similar to how Fugue lets you choose the playhead when setting up the midi pipeline, or is there some AB3 restriction in the midi filter slot? It would be nice to have arps there, allowing for further limiter/scaler/randomizer filters next in the pipeline, after the arp.
Quality post, screen-capped!
I'm not sure how you'd record one track directly into another track in the same DAW. What if you rendered the audio output as a WAV, then imported that WAV back into the DAW?
Is anyone else getting sync issues with SPA? Please see this thread: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/18167/step-poly-arp-sync-issue-help#latest
Good post. I am particularly pleased/fond of the pattern/song mode. Wish Xynth had the same....really helps song development (read: getting past just 16 pretty bars).
@Processaurus could you expand on how you're doing this?
enter in the note numbers (of the chord you are holding down) into the sequencer, so like, rather than arping the notes, in a basic order, like 1-2-3-1-2-3, it would play patterns like 1...1-1-1-2, 1...1-1-1-3, and you could interact with it by the type of chord you could hold down.
@Artefact2001 something like this, just forcing the arp into the order you want, rather than using the automatic note order (1,2,3,1,2,3, etc.). With something like this you can hold the low note, and move around the higher note you're holding down, and get some variation on the pattern, while keeping the root note steady.
This video got the wheels turning, about using SPA as a bassline assistant:
https://youtu.be/7vh_5RDi1e4
@JohnnyGoodyear Me too, really appreciating apps that have usable song modes, which is so often a dusty, forgotten corner in these little loop makers. "Hmmm, I think there was one of those around here... maybe check up in the attic?"
Would be overjoyed to have a song mode with Xynthesizer, as well. That one is as similarly well crafted for the touch screen as SPA.
@Artefact2001 I wrote you a thing with pictures but it said that the moderator has to approve it?
So one has to do this ahead of time ? Can it be done in realtime?
You can do it in realtime. just might not sound great lol.
@Processaurus I feel like I'm waiting for the map to the holy grail!
How MIDI works in AB3 pipelines is more clear now; the Midiflow apps and Fugue Machine can exist as multiple instances not because they are AUs (they are not), but because they implement and expose multiple MIDI ports.
This means that apps like StepPolyArp and Cream need to let the user select different MIDI ports per row (for SPA), instead of different channels for the output. That should be doable, but the fact that SPA has not done so, yet still updated for AB3, is perhaps a sign that going from channels to multiple ports has other consequences? I hope not, because then the AB3 MIDI framework would be great for easy and quick setups (their expressed desire, fair enough), but unfortunately not for more involved MIDI handling. I'm hoping the latter can also find its way as a standard for AB3 apps, like we see with Fugue Machine.
(AUs can't send MIDI with Apple's current limitations, so no need to wish for SPA becoming an AU yet - I take that back)
need a standardised midi implementation across apps, so far this doesn't appear to be it.
just tried Fugue into SPA, yes great fun that