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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Comments
Didn't want to put blame on anybody!
And I do think UI design is central to creating expressive instruments, probably just as important as having great samples.
Triggering samples with a keyboard or pads is OK up to a point, but for doing slides or trills or an expressive blast on a horn or harmonica one needs a different kind of interface; the iFretless apps are among the best currently IMHO, and, although a real saxophone player might be puzzled at a stringed interface, it does work fairly well even in that context...I would love to see more attempts at creating expressive playing surfaces like that.
+n for NN-XT!
But what I have been looking for without success is a way to do a drum circle. Not bongos, more like 20 or so hand made drums, hand played, by an ever changing group of ordinary hippies.
That was the first sound I heard as we approched the first Glastonbury Fayre concert site, a throbbing in the distance, gradually resolving over the sounds of nature until we were inside it and sharing the drums. I want to share this experience.
Pedal steel
I'm also very curious about why @Sebastian asked this question
It's the kind of question I'd have asked.
For me, the gap is all about the interface and very little to do with actual samples, although getting the right samples are super-important of course. Think of any instrument and you'll probably find a great set of samples somewhere out there. But you're expected to play them via a midi keyboard. Even if a keyboard lets you get the right kind of sound out of the system, the joy of playing the instrument is lost because it stems from the physical feel and gestures that are native to that instrument.
IMO each unique instrument deserves its own unique interface which naturally follows from and implies the playing style of the original instrument, while still using "smart" instrument techniques where appropriate. And my personal bias: each interface should be playable without looking at the screen, and should allow you to play with intention and repeatability (i.e. not just 'emergent' music).
Today, 99% of music apps we know about are tied to 3 primary interface types: scaled keyboard, chords + strumming and 2D fretboard. This is insufficient to allow musicians to express (and enjoy expressing) the musicality of most instruments out there.
I think a major instrument gap missing from IOS apps is one that could allow people to perform as if they had a Horn section. While there are apps that play individual brass and woodwind instruments there really isn't one that makes it easy to have several different brass instruments (Trumpet, trombone, Baritone, Tuba, etc.) playing together as if it was your own horn section. Thumbjam is very good on this idea with the String Ensemble, but for brass ( or woodwinds) it might need a different interface. Slurs, trills, mutes, gliss, and overhonking all would be realistic. Also a Banjo that could play in a Bluegrass/"BeverlyHillbillies" style instead of just picking like a guitar. Xylophone, Lap steel guitar, Whistling(?), accordion, all of these that could sound realistic alone and not a keyboard that sounds like a ....
@NoiseHorse
I laughed when I read "overhonking", but a quick search on Google leads me to believe it doesn't really exist as a word... are you trying to coin some new musical lingo?
@rhism and others thinking about UI and interface related issues, I started a new thread so this thread can get back to sound sample requests and such.
http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/2229/what-kind-of-music-interface-are-you-missing
@busker I hope everybody knows what sound I'm talking about with "overhonking". And yes I reconfabulate new words on a frequential basis. Lol. I meant to emphasize the fact that it's common to hear a horn sound (or almost any instrument nowadays) on an app, but to get an app to get horns playing like a horn section, or a banjo to play like the Beverly Hillbillies theme song, that currently is missing. PS: I went to school on a Band scholarship playing the Bari Sax, And I overhonked so much I had to bring extra reeds because I would split them during the halftime show!
I'm not sure every soundset needs its own interface but I do think there is a lot of room for innovation in expressive interfaces and meticulous instrument samples sets where different aspects of the sample set can be expressed via innovative UIs.
I need good Chinese instruments badly... Soundfont I get are not decent.....
@noisehorse, don't worry, anyone who's been in a marching band near the sax section will instantly know what overhonking means
. And yes, would be great to have it in an app.
Oh yeah! Goose-Stepping and Overhonking!
Apologies to all marching bands...but couldn't resist... ;-)
I personally don't feel there are a lack of instruments on the ios platform. To my mind it's just the ones that are available haven't been written to incorporate the necessary ability to communicate properly with the outside world. This may be due to ios not having the full functionality that performing musicians require, only the devs can answer that.
There are a number of controllers that have been available for many years that allow users to articulate performance characteristics on there chosen instruments they just need to have a reliable method to input that into an ios based system. There are some big players that are now taking ios music as a serious alternative to mac/PC based systems so in future revisions they may have improved input methods. I think a lot devs are trying to reinvent the wheel when all musicians want is a proven reliable method that works. In my youth there was all these problems with the Newly emerging midi protocol, new technology old problems lol :-)
Most instruments have been catered for on iOS. I'd say what is missing is very high quality sounds. UIs are cool but people don't listen to UIs, they listen to sounds. Added to that would be the absence of an amazing workflow. I love iPad and all it's apps but when I want to get stuff done quickly and with pro grade sounds I inevitably go to my Mac. That is not to say you cannot make pro grade music on iPad. You can but it takes a bit of ingenuity to get there. Audiobus took iOS music workflow to another level because it expanded everyone's workflow. That kind of a magic environment that hosts a multilevel of apps would be most welcomed. IAA is now built into the iOS architecture so the foundations have been laid for that super app that has an open garden and let's you do amazing stuff with your apps in a modular kind of way. That is what is missing. Audiobus Pro.
The UI can mean the difference between a sketch and a performance. People DO listen to a performance. There's still room for improvement in all these areas, frankly.
I agree, the ability to do an expressive performance is critical in most styles of music. It can make or break a song. A great player can still make a bad instrument sound good with expressive playing.
I'm hoping we will see some great innovation and improvements in this area. There are quite a few experiments in soundscape generation that might also benefit implementations for traditional music, sounds and instrument emulations eventually.
Irrespective of a UI one can still do expressive performances. When the ordinary Joe Bloggs listens to a performance on the radio for example, they are not thinking about whether it was played on square or round holes. Hence my reference that people do not listen to your UI. A UI is not going to make a bad muso suddenly becoming a master. I think it is THE FEELING or soul that you put into your performance that can touch people.
@FrankieJay I disagree. The wrong UI can prevent you playing with as much feeling. Compare an organ keyboard type UI with no velocity sensitivity, basically a row of contact switches, with a velocity sensitive UI that allows you to control volume and timbre by how hard you play, vibrato and glisandos with sideways finger movements, and variations in sustained volume and timbre during the note with forward and backward finger movements. The second UI gives you the mechanisms whereby you can put that feeling into your performance, the first UI not so much.
@PaulB It is a matter of perspective. So I am not wrong. In music, anything goes and there is no right or wrong way. Coming from a guitar background, my expression is not dependent on my effects per se. It is more dependent on how I use my vibrato, pull-offs, trills, slides, note choices etc. I can hide behind a ton of effects but it will not mask my ability if my playing doesn't have enough depth to bring a smile. Your above example is akin to an acoustic vs electric guitar scenario. It is like saying you will need an electric guitar to play with expression and that ain't true. You can have all the velocity sensitivity on keys but you still have to play with feeling to make it mean something. An app like Geo can do wonders if you play with real feeling but equally so if you just play an iPad piano. You can throw the kitchen sink at a solo performance but sometimes it is just that one note that you play with passion that has the wow factor.
No, my example is akin to giving you a toy guitar with buttons for the notes which don't allow you to use your vibrato, pull-offs, trills, bends and slides or even differences in volume. You will not be able to play with the same level of expression you do on a normal guitar. Substandard UI, substandard performance.
World instruments , like sampoñas, charangos, didgeridoo, quenas
@FrankieJay you are actually saying the same thing as @PaulB, that it's the expressivity that matters above all else. And the interface matters as it determines whether or not to allow expression from the player. If you play a toy guitar (or a virtual guitar emulation app) which doesn't allow any control over volume, note selection, timing, or "vibrato, pull-offs, trills, slides, note choices etc" then no matter how hard you try you can't create an expressive performance from it. But a virtual guitar emulation app that does expose all those expression choices would be a lot more powerful than the toy guitar.
It also depends on how the interface exposes that expressivity - someone could create a guitar emulation app with a hundred different buttons and sliders on screen which allow you to control "vibrato, pull-offs, trills, slides, note choices etc"... but with the wrong layout it'd be completely unusable and end up being more of a theoretically expressive instrument rather than a practical one.
Shortage of Rhodes. PRO KEYS has one that sounds amazing. Wish that app was on the bus....or even had Audiocopy.
Neo Soul Keys has great Rhodes. Plus it's on the bus and free to try.
I'd like something like Toontrack's EZ Drummer. Good sounding, adjustable drumset with tons of loops.
Still missing a multi sampler!
Stephen
@nytjadens: what features of a multi sampler do you need that BM2 or VoKey or the others are missing? For me it is shaped velocity crossfade between different samples at the same note number.
@nytjadens: what features of a multi sampler do you need that BM2 or VoKey or the others are missing? For me it is shaped velocity crossfade between different samples at the same note number.
Stand alone, I don't need everything in BM. I will take a look at VoKey.
Stephen
I tried VoKey, useless...
Stephen