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 Store

Loopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.

Tips for Making Ambient music in Beatmaker 3

ciancian
in General App Discussion

So the thread on this seems to have disappeared, but between the histrionics there were a couple of suggestions that seemed quite sound. So maybe they could be reposted for the benefit of the rest of us.

So any tips that people have? Also willing to steal all ideas that involve harmonic progressions, modulation tricks and that involve Tim Hecker style distortion.

Hit me people.

Comments

  • LucidMusicIncLucidMusicInc
    edited July 2017

    I'll bite...

    • Set a low tempo between 70-110
    • Use slightly out of sync percussion loops but time stretched to fit, layer some rhythms that clash a bit
    • Use a hip hop drum kit to lock the loops in step with a little boom bap
    • Use a lot of reverb and delay on everything
    • Use either a grand piano or an electric piano for some plain chord progressions (BM3 has a great selection of preset chords) and melody
    • The arrangement should be about building up and then breaking down and building up even more than before, the arrangement is equally if not more important than the sounds
  • idexisidexis
    edited July 2017

    @cian great idea.
    @LucidMusicInc
    Disclaimer. Just to make sure, I'm not trying to correct or claim I know something more than the next dude/dudess. Only observation so we are in the same talking/concept zone.

    When we are talking about "ambient" what do we mean?
    Is it typical ambient where beats and percussions are not used to create the flow of the song. Perhaps IDM (bad name for concept but we know what it is). Ambient techno, ambient house and so on, into self generating and over to peculiar random noise making.

    I'm really interested in discussing the subtle differences or great ones. To me, this has always been rather floating concepts and maybe it should be so. Over defining and genre categorizing is at the end of the day maybe not so helpful. But there are of course many approaches with fundamental difference, s.s. use of beats.
    As I say, I would like to strengthen my understanding of this type of music and advice and experience is appreciated.

  • LucidMusicIncLucidMusicInc

    @idexis said:
    @cian great idea.
    @LucidMusicInc
    Disclaimer. Just to make sure, I'm not trying to correct or claim I know something more than the next dude/dudess. Only observation so we are in the same talking/concept zone.

    When we are talking about "ambient" what do we mean?
    Is it typical ambient where beats and percussions are not used to create the flow of the song. Perhaps IDM (bad name for concept but we know what it is). Ambient techno, ambient house and so on, into self generating and over to peculiar random noise making.

    I'm really interested in discussing the subtle differences or great ones. To me, this has always been rather floating concepts and maybe it should be so. Over defining and genre categorizing is at the end of the day maybe not so helpful. But there are of course many approaches with fundamental difference, s.s. use of beats.
    As I say, I would like to strengthen my understanding of this type of music and advice and experience is appreciated.

    Ok ambient dance music then... I find music without a beat not really music but sound, pleasing or otherwise. Maybe I'm getting my ambient mixed up with downtempo.

  • idexisidexis
    edited July 2017

    @LucidMusicInc said:

    @idexis said:
    @cian great idea.
    @LucidMusicInc
    Disclaimer. Just to make sure, I'm not trying to correct or claim I know something more than the next dude/dudess. Only observation so we are in the same talking/concept zone.

    When we are talking about "ambient" what do we mean?
    Is it typical ambient where beats and percussions are not used to create the flow of the song. Perhaps IDM (bad name for concept but we know what it is). Ambient techno, ambient house and so on, into self generating and over to peculiar random noise making.

    I'm really interested in discussing the subtle differences or great ones. To me, this has always been rather floating concepts and maybe it should be so. Over defining and genre categorizing is at the end of the day maybe not so helpful. But there are of course many approaches with fundamental difference, s.s. use of beats.
    As I say, I would like to strengthen my understanding of this type of music and advice and experience is appreciated.

    Ok ambient dance music then... I find music without a beat not really music but sound, pleasing or otherwise. Maybe I'm getting my ambient mixed up with downtempo.

    Thanks for quick answer, I get the feeling you perceived my post as criticism of definition of something. On the contrary, it's not about right or wrong anything. It's just helpful to be in sync.

    I agree, I like to have beats in my music, for ambient it's perhaps the amount (as for classical music). Others are very good at layering strings and synths and I would love to get input on that as well.

  • idexisidexis

    @cian
    Sorry for blabbing, I didn't mean to steal your thread, so I will listen for a while o:)

  • MartinjMartinj

    I've been making something between ambient, downtempo with a touch of (Prog and Post) Rock with BM2 as DAW for quite a while. BM3 offers, as far as I can see after the first day, basically the same functionalities and then some.

    The internal sounds are not that perfect for ambient, so you will have to get some additional synths. LayR and SynthScaper are quite perfect, I also really like MitoSynth and SynthManster. Reverb and delay help a lot, also Chorus and other stuff. To start a track, I record loops in a tempo between 55 and 80 bpm and use them to build an arrangement. Sometimes I use internal drum machines, sometimes IAA, sometimes no drums at all. Then I overdub guitar processed with ToneStack also with some delay and reverb.

    I mix in BM2 and Master in AudioMastering.

    If you want to have a listen, feel free to do so, here:

    https://martinneuhold.bandcamp.com

  • idexisidexis

    @Martinj
    Thanks for this Martin.
    Many really good songs and I already have some favorites. Going to revisit and spend more time.
    I must mention that the sound was really good, at least in my headphones.
    Good stuff.

  • MartinjMartinj

    @idexis said:
    @Martinj
    Thanks for this Martin.
    Many really good songs and I already have some favorites. Going to revisit and spend more time.
    I must mention that the sound was really good, at least in my headphones.
    Good stuff.

    Thanks a lot! :smiley:

  • ciancian

    @5pinlink said:
    Grab a crappy old sample of some tit you don't like making a speech, use the timestretch to slow it down in to a tone, wash it with reverb/modulation effects, render it out as an audio file, start grabbing sections to use as strings and pads (detune against themselves for phatening)
    Wash them all in effects and filters (Don't be shy of distortion and overdrive too)

    How do you spot that a sample is suitable for strings, rather than a pad?

    And by wash it with modulation you really just mean play around until you hear something you like with movement, right? I had some success with a crappy sample of a piano doing just this earlier.

    I've never been able to get into sampling (more of a synthesis guy), but I'm starting to see some possibilities and also cross fertilization.

    live smug in the fact that you are using the speech of some tit you hate and not paying them ;)

    Yeah I can think of a few people...

  • ciancian

    @LucidMusicInc said:
    I'll bite...

    • Set a low tempo between 70-110
    • Use slightly out of sync percussion loops but time stretched to fit, layer some rhythms that clash a bit

    Interesting. So the idea is that they're locked in sync (because of the timestretch), but vary within the loop?

    • Use a hip hop drum kit to lock the loops in step with a little boom bap

    Think that's downtempo, not that it really matters.

    • Use a lot of reverb and delay on everything

    Always... And maybe some phasing.

    • The arrangement should be about building up and then breaking down and building up even more than before, the arrangement is equally if not more important than the sounds

    It feels like ambient should probably not really have a sense of melodic, or harmonic progression. Maybe I should play around with some minor 13ths, or something, that just sit there and cycle through inversions.

  • ciancian

    Just struck by the thought that BM3's sampler would make a great source for Synthscaper. Hmm...

  • ciancian

    Okay another idea, based on the whole Steve Reich/Brian Eno idea. Take some audio - pretty much any loop. Time stretch it some random amount. Take another loop. Time stretch it a different amount. Do this some times. Then put them in different audio tracks and just stretch them out on the timeline. Then for each loop put some kind of processing on it with modulation (filters at a minimum - not echo though). Phase looping for the win.

  • MartinjMartinj

    Took a while for me to figure out how I can port my usual workflow to BM3. I'm not entirely happy yet, but I am able to do what I want to do...this is my first track with BM3:

  • jwmmakerofmusicjwmmakerofmusic

    @5pinlink said:
    Grab a crappy old sample of some tit you don't like making a speech, use the timestretch to slow it down in to a tone, wash it with reverb/modulation effects, render it out as an audio file, start grabbing sections to use as strings and pads (detune against themselves for phatening)
    Wash them all in effects and filters (Don't be shy of distortion and overdrive too)

    live smug in the fact that you are using the speech of some tit you hate and not paying them ;)

    (By far the best thing I've read all week. :D )

    I'll add by saying if you want to make a profit (CASH), be sure to come up with either a laundry list of why you did what you did like this music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/MFA-txt.html , or a load of random bollocks like "And so, after spending the day watching the grass grow an entire half of a millimetre and reflecting on God's incredible design for the universe, I created this piece". ALL of the people who like the "unsettling" musique concrete-styled ambient will more than likely buy it up. At $10/unit, that's a $40 profit.

Sign In or Register to comment.

© Vanilla Keystone Theme 2025