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.
For all *mobile musicians* playing live - set up Qs
Hey,
As the title goes, the question is the following one: how do you (or would you) play your music live?
In other words, do you prefer a more DJ-like Ableton set up, or you try to do something that is more postrock electronica with live loopers, guitars, other instrumenta hooked, played, sampled on the fly etc.
I have a personal dilema here. I will soon complete a material that has both (or more) elements. DJ, instruments played then sampled, sliced, modulated etc. Most of it I did on my iPad. And I would like to promote this live. Now, perhaps I don’t wanna go on stage, take my glasses out and bury my head in my ipad / or two. I might as well just play the whole track from my iPad and just play with the effects a bit. But somehow I don’t want it to look that boring. How do you guys work around it?
Comments
So yeah, not currently playing live but my approach would be something like 4-8 stems (depends on when soda will come out) with Kick, Base, Percussion, HiHat, Snare, Synth 1, Synth 2, random FX(cuepoints). If you want some more variation take 16-32 bars, loop them and map it out accordingly. What I like to do also is taking my Hats and Snares in one stem and instead having some more variations of those synths. Things that excited me but weren‘t really fitting.
Honestly, I don't care much what people think and would urge you to do whatever you think is your thing. People want to be moved, get moving, be entertained... Your passion or your talent or your dedication will shine through when you nail it!
That said, movement and the immediacy of acoustic instruments usually resonate. It is probably hard wired.
Do you have midi controllers? A laptop perhaps? Also what apps are you mainly using?
The advice you will get will be better quality if we have more info.
Apart from artists like Beardyman, Tim Exile, Suzanne Ciani etc most electronic live sets have had quite a bit of preparation. Those people have been playing live for decades and have their own hardware/software setup that they know inside out.
Invite some talented mates on stage with you.
You did those great videos performing with Impaktor I think? If so you probably have some good advice for @zhoe!
At this point I don’t have a laptop, just a desktop, iPad, some pedals, iRig pad, and one basic keyboard controller. Most of my stuff is happening inside my iPad. Apps like Samplr, now BM3, triqtraq, Blocswave and Borderland I use the most. Also Gadget and now ReSlice. Was interested in Egoist mainly because of that on-the-fly ability to improvise.thanks for the comment, Good stuff.
This is a great comment. And I totally agree with you. I guess, some doubt has crept it because I don’t wanna just sit behind my iPad and have that “check my emails” look, as it were. But I get your point completely.
Cool, thanks.
I once saw Oval live, just one man with a laptop on a table. He stood behind it with one hand in his pocket pretty much the entire set, and would press a few keys, take a few steps backwards, listen for several seconds and step forward again to press some more keys. That's all he did for about 45 minutes. Sounded really great but the lack of 'excitement' turned off all my friends. We joked it was a Sonic Email session. Right?!
I once saw Aphex Twin who spent the entire show lying on his side with his gear in front of him. You could barely see him and had no idea what was happening. There were a few people dressed in big teddy heat costumes dancing. My friends liked the bears.
I'm doing a group show in December and other people want to invite a dancer to join. I don't know them but once you add that kind of non-musical accompaniment they become the visual focus and is what people remember. It's all improv so may work or not but I doubt she will be as entertaining or fun as dancing bears!
Many electronic musicians have videos playing or flashy light shows to enhance their sets. But that's a lot more work!
Even if I'm off stage or obscured somehow I still 'play' the music. I use keyboards and pads and such. Simply pressing buttons and controlling the volume doesn't satisfy me.
Another great idea. Inviting a visual artist, VJ or whatever can immensely enrich the show. Maybe this is exactly what’s needed to give music wings. One of the frequent Audiobus forumites made a video to one of my songs. I had goosebumps when watching it for the first time and obviously the video got loads more views because of it and I never even promoted it.
You could get yourself a costume (i.e: big mouse head, or adult-sized onesie).
You could bring some dancers on stage with you.
You could just wave around your arms and pump your fists, and rock-out really hard so you can press that button at the exact right moment.
You could just strap on a guitar and hold it like you are gonna play something, but don't actually play anything.
You could develop a holographic vocaloid to perform for you.
You could watch some Reggie Watts performances as he is fairly entertaining.
and/or you could just listen to what @lukesleepwalker said above.
I've been thinking lately that iOS music is missing the most obvious advantages of the medium. While it obviously won't scale to larger venues (not a problem for me!), why not break down the fourth wall and allow the "audience" to see what you are doing on the screen? Further, apps like KRFT could allow for crowd participation because we can create surfaces with "no wrong notes". To me, this is where the mobility and accessibility of the touch screen could offer a new way of thinking about "performance".
I was thinking something similar about how some Youtube vids that have tight focus on the iPad screen are pretty cool to watch and if you project that behind you in a live scenario it could be engaging to a audience.
Electronic music doesnt need a stage. Just make it a auditory experience for people to enjoy.
https://www.target.com.au/medias/static_content/product/images/large/44/23/A354423.jpg
Good points. You may like LudoWic...
I think the advice others have given about adding some visual element is well worth looking into. Borderlands and Samplr would be interesting for the audience if you could project them on a screen. One possible issue with your setup involving multiple apps would be moving between songs, people don't like silence for too long!
Ableton makes this process so easy. Grab your song, put it on the timeline (arrangemen view) window, select the intro, then "Consolidate Time to New Scene". Repeat for all the sections of your track, verse, chorus etc. Now you press tab and your song looks like a launchpad type setup. You can choose to play in a linear way by triggering scenes but you can also mix and match any individual parts from anywhere, go crazy with effects and jump back to any part of the original by triggering a scene.
Keep us updated on your progress and be sure to to bring a phone/MP3 player to the venue with a prerecorded "live" set in case of emergency!
Excellent stuff! You are absolutely right. In the end it is all about the attitude, concept of one's work, and one's skill and confidence. And as you suggested, the "entertainment" bit (although I hate that word) can be satisfied with some VJ or other collaboration. Great points, thanks!
Brilliant!
Made me laugh! But all true. 
reminded me of this story:
"the big mouse head"
:-D
This is amazing. And probably the way to go (in the future). I was thinking about along these lines. By showing what you do on screen is in essence like playing a guitar in front of someone so they can see what you do. They probably cannot do it themselves, but you are showing them what you do and where you press your fingers on the fret. No magic is lost. Thanks!
Interesting discussion, performing electronic music has the potential to be quite boring to watch, because no one knows what the human is doing, and what the machine is doing. It gets bad, when the machine is just shredding, and the human is just standing there.
There are lots of ways to have a performance come off better. Playing leads on something is great. Dressing in something other than the clothes you wore that day. Looking at the audience occasionally
. Standing up, rather than sitting down. Visual elements, like lights, or props. Someone dancing or being otherwise interesting to watch can take a lot of pressure off you to keep people entertained, while you are tending to the machines.
The video is cool, but that's a can of worms, for sure. Also it can start to feel like watching TV, which can inadvertently blunt some of the intensity of a performance, the rules for what is good to watch at home, and what is good to watch behind performers, are totally different. Projections can end up being really nice and complementary when they are more ambient, like a set in a play (but you didn't have build a set!), than bam bam bam! - really busy and attention grabby and ADD, like a music video. Again- is the technology the star of the show?
Forming a relationship with a projectionist could be really fruitful, because then there isn't just one stressed out person running around, setting up all their music shit, and a projector and screen and stuff. And they can babysit the projections, or even be tweaking them with the music. They could also bring some lights, and get a unique lighting thing going on.
In my situatuion I want to go with my diy keytar+talkbox and backing tracks (from launchpad or GTL) but I still need to practice a lot (music scales and talkboxing). Write some lyrics for my instrumentals and continue building more gear (launchfoot anyone?)
Meanwhile if I found an MC/singer near my area I could go more liveish as track backer with launchcontrol xl...
A little improvised demo (as testing my proposal but not as superenjoyable showcase atm)
Launchfoot? I was just thinking of something similar but my way was trying to make a foot or toe stylus attachment. But then I thought maybe launch pads are too fragile to put on the floor so a beefier one might need to come out. Since they are making a beefier one just make the buttons a little bigger so no stylus needed. Then I see your launchfoot comment and had to laugh.
@CracklePot my idea is cannibalize a launchkey 25 mk2 and fit it into proper footpedal-like case. I have an idea for the “pedal buttons” but I need to check (again) how the leds are soldered inside those keyboards. I was even considering add some extra features far than launch clips, entire row, up, down, enter fx page, in-control switch (to have a page for guitar-fx app)... like add external connector for control volume/filter from another pedal... I was just wondering yesterday so any idea is welcome