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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I like to think that ios music is growing into multiple directions at once. Even now the ios platform can hold pretty much as many different workflows as there are people using these devices. I dont really see the focus moving more into modular approach, but i see that side of ios platform growing and developing as well. Ios daws are also being developing and bm3 has been pushing those boundaries even further and i see more development happening to this direction as well. Especially now with there starting to be more AU midi plugins and i only see the integration of them to "real" daws improve as well. A lot of users are also dedicating their ipads to a single task. I also see people dedicating ipads to their setup just to serve some single really specific function, like just to be used as a sequencer for a modular synth. Possibilities are growing and i think ios is still pretty new platform that only has started to find its way to big audience only recently and awareness of how great ios can be in different setups will only grow with new cheaper ipads and older ipads(that can still serve well in many setups) getting cheaper and cheaper.
Rozetta and the Makers
>
Great name for a band.
That's nothing but the good old jamming. This is where a lot of ideas that end up on albums have come from. The only difference is that one of the members in the collective (computer) does most of the handling/automation. So basically the only thing that's new is the technology that in some cases satisfies the need to be in absolute control over the environment. The 'many families sitting around one radio in the 40's' versus a man in his house full of gadgets, spending more and more time in the cave.
On a less dramatic note, I think there's always been different ways of making music and technology only amplifies that. In the pre-software era only the privileged few with their furniture-sized machines and serpentines of cables could afford the electronic jamming. Now that we’ve all gone software, which liberated the electronic jamming to the poor, there’s the flood of cheep analog boxes flooding the market. We’re really blessed with the number of options available these days to make music. I’m actually quite surprised by the high percentage of guitar only bands here in the UK, which totally doesn’t reflect the technological advances in music making.
As for iOS, the fragmentation has naturally driven folks towards modularity as if there was Ableton for IOS surely a vast majority of electronic musicians would settle for that as the obvious and trouble free option. I actually love this DIY state even if it does cause me enourmous amount of pain and disappointment. I guess at the moment the iOS is still for the DIY tinkerers and experimenters more than anyone else. I hope the state of things improve but I also wish that the freshness and the excitement of this relatively new platform remains.
Sorry for this rather clumsy stream of consciousness bundle of stuff.
""Audiobus... repurpose[d] an obscure networking protocol" Which one?
I think I found my answer regarding the repurposed Network Protocol via Googling:
"the MIDI standard defines support for 'System Exclusive' messages (SysEx), which lets devices send anything they want over the MIDI channel. Usually, it’s used for sending manufacturer-specific information like patch configurations or firmware updates.
But it occurred to me that a wide-open standard like this, essentially a 'dumb pipe' — one of my favorite terms which means it doesn’t know or care about what you pump through it — a dumb pipe with the ability to communicate app-to-app has enormous potential."
As you were.
It's definitely an interesting perspective, although far from being the only one. I personally still need a timeline (and I'm not looking for Ableton on iOS either) so I do my composing either in GarageBand or Gadget, and do my mixing in Auria.
The modular approach is great for jamming, writing, noodling, but it's much harder to put together a tight and focused end product with that approach. I like to try and make tracks with no unnecessary parts in them, and for that you need a timeline to flesh out the structure.
Agreed. Really confused as to how proper song construction with verse chorus middle eight etc are put together on iOS without a timeline / daw scenario. I don’t see how this is ever going to change. Live jamming is something completely different.
Not sure But I recall that original audiobus was based on sending over mach ports (or something like that). Before they had to change it over to IAA...
Simple to build song structure into AUM or Apematrix. You prepare several sections, hit play, and you bring sections/mixes in and out at the right time.
So I have been making music forever but I just moved to Ios in the last two weeks and loving it. The only app I haven't bought yet is a DAW and i don't want to. AUM is amazing and i want to follow a more modular work flow, however I have come across a issue. I can't find a simple solution to recording midi. I can capture all my audio ideas and jams via audio share but recording midi? Is there no midishare?
You will need to route midi with AUM routing matrix, and record midi in a sequencer app like Xequence, or Aleph/Infinite Looper.
You can also record all your AUM audio stuff, using midi or not, in Blocs Wave though Audiobus using sections for chorus/verses..., and then use Launchpad to create your song structure in real time.
I record tons of snippets or 'jams' via Audioshare/AUM, but they all (without exception) end on some desktop timeline.
As a hint for the importance:
My favourite DSP environment (Creamware Scope for more than 15 years) is even more 'modular' than IOS - but it never became a major success... for the lack of a timeline.
The only element missing from the 'virtual studio' - everything else is covered nicely.
(physical input/output of audio and midi, Asio and multimedia drivers for DAWs, soundgenerators and processors, mixers... all can be wired by virtual cables, latency for direct streams about 5 samples, Asio down to 6 ms roundtrip... since y2k)
Leaving out the 'timeline part' made this system an option (to extend a DAW) and not the core of production.
An iOS-dedicated controller keyboard-style app would be great. Thumbjam, Geoshred, TC data and others come close, but I think there is still mileage in using every aspect of the touch screen to simulate a ROLI-keys MPE setup in an original way. The other aspect the app would need is control over harmonies and arpeggios, using ideas from chordpolypad, chordion, chordbot, arpeggionome pro and navichord. Integrate the best features of each, with an expressive one-screen interface and encapsulate the unique strengths of the iOS music-making experience
Left hand control
Largish Chord pads have control over dynamics, inversions, arpeggiation depending on where they are touched
Big chord vocab, with extended harmonies, and customisation with own voicings
Right hand
Melody linked to right hand harmony, modulation and pitch controls dynamics, velocity, vibrato, slurs and articulation integrated into the melody keys
The app would need convex or shallow learning curve, so a novice gets pretty good results quickly, but it has enough depth and complexity to be amenable to highly expressive playing.
Typically when you're mixing a song you are going to play it back a lot of times as you refine the mix, having to manually launch sections as you play them back is going to get old really fast, compared to just pressing play in a DAW.
AUM is one of the best apps ever made for iOS, and IMO it completely superseded AudioBus in every way, it's the most stable AU host, and a beautifully designed and well crafted mixer app. But it's not really suitable as the final stage in creating a polished and focused track because a DAW with a timeline is always going to be a lot more convenient for that purpose.
I recognise the modular jamming environment described by @brambos and I use myself when I'm writing and jamming, but I don't think it's an end-to-end solution as of yet. For a finished product a DAW is still the best way IMO. Luckily we have a few excellent ones available.
That was a great read. I pretty much abandoned the idea of recreating the desktop DAW experience on iPad and have tried to embrace it as an entirely different animal. My feeling is that if iOS were to represent the next paradigm shift in music making, it would have to expand the capabilities beyond the desktop or be completely different while still offering some major advantage. If my feeling is right, then the former would be pretty far off. At the moment, the idea that it’s a branch off the main vein of music making makes the most sense.
I was going to reply to this but then @richardyot described exactly the reason why it’s not suitable a few posts later:
Typically when you're mixing a song you are going to play it back a lot of times as you refine the mix, having to manually launch sections as you play them back is going to get old really fast, compared to just pressing play in a DAW.
AUM is one of the best apps ever made for iOS, and IMO it completely superseded AudioBus in every way, it's the most stable AU host, and a beautifully designed and well crafted mixer app. But it's not really suitable as the final stage in creating a polished and focused track because a DAW with a timeline is always going to be a lot more convenient for that purpose.
I recognise the modular jamming environment described by @brambos and I use myself when I'm writing and jamming, but I don't think it's an end-to-end solution as of yet. For a finished product a DAW is still the best way IMO. Luckily we have a few excellent ones available.
I started on the iPad because I travel so much and couldn’t lug synths with me constantly. Initially I didn’t think much of ios production cause it was really lacking in the earlier days. Really I didn’t take it seriously until AUM and AUv3 came out and changed the landscape for me. I’ve since abandoned even the laptop and just work through AUM- and now, apeMatrix.
iPad daws always seemed pointless to me as it’s really just trying to recreate what’s on the computer and I’d rather just use the computer for daw work. But I’ve always hated working in daws.
Dawless snd modular is the way forward for me. Developers are releasing some amazing stuff these days, Bram, AudioDamage, Apesoft, and many other are really pushing this ship forward and I now take iOS production somewhat seriously because of it. Whether it be jamming, producing for a commercial gig or making an album, my current set up is ideal for all of that and while it’s not always straightforward it is mobile and I can take it anywhere which I just love.
What would be cool if iOS DAW´s would offer a capture option like most major DAW´s.
Indeed even on my notebook with Logic 90% of the time i´m just jamming around and try out things and play without record anything. But if i think after some minutes wow, that was a good one i just can hit a button and everything i played is saved as midi f.e. without i have actually to enable record.
This is something i use very often now.
So to the topic i actually really like this live non DAW like approach but i really needs a place to save these jams if i want....otherwise no one ever would hear it...and i´m not sure if i ever could replicate some happy accidents.
So to combine a kind of modular and DAWless workflow but still have a place to save all the work (yes, in a DAW) would be the best way for me.
When i started with making my own music i just recorded and played everything in real-time as audio tracks and then just overdub that with the next take. I often needed 20 or more takes to get a session right. That was no joy sometimes if it was several minutes long or so. But then it also was fun and i didn´t care about some incorrect notes and faulty timings. At the end it was just a nit humanizing the tracks.
Now i´m often to focused on getting things right and have so much half backed projects i never finish because there is always something i want to add, remove or change. If i have 20 audio tracks i can´t change i just go along and think "it´s freaking finished"...next one.
While i think the pure sound output quality is still much higher on my mac with much better tools and FX and just more massive sounding synths which you don´t need to EQ or have to do much mix/master afterwards (only Model D can hold a candle here on iOS.....Zeeon maybe too) and especially if i listen trough better headphones which are well powered (which an iOS device can´t without an audio interface or proper headphone amp) i don´t think of course that the creativity and the music itself isn´t as good on iOS.
I really would consider to go even an iOS only route again if i had some more of my favorite tools on an iPad and a stable and powerful place to get that all together without any use of i-tunes and other workarounds.
I don´t know how Apple could ever fit a full Logic on an iPad and thought this wouldn´t work anyway but when i think about it it could make me jump ship again to iOS mainly if it also had AUv3 support.
I just would need a few synths and a really good reverb and delay for creative FX and very high quality which doesn´t exist yet on iOS. As well as much better saturation without sounding just unpleasing distorted.
My problem is that i really need at least a DAW where i think i could bring that all together, even if i jam just around 90% of the time.
Now since i lost NanoStudio due to iOS 11 and things get a bit more unstable for me and i really don´t like any other DAW on iOS to work with i just could imagine that NanoStudio 2 is the only DAW i want to use, until Apple would find a way for a good multi-touch Logic Pro X.
From the look it can do all the kind of modular approach since it has midi, audio (but later via IAP as it seems), midi FX and you can save FX chains, create groups of tracks (like Logic stacked tracks) and the included synth looks like the best thing on iOS i saw yet for all kind of genres (beside Alchemy).
The things which are missing could be added via AUv3 then.
Audiobus just don´t work stable for me and AUM looks great but i need a timeline to fit thing together at the end.
Live jamming can be completely different. However a song played using electronic instruments can be also played just as effectively as by a person with a guitar, voice and say, harmonica. The parts of the composition can be presequenced and played at appropriate times. There can be ‘verses and choruses’, build ups and drops, intros and definite endings. I guess the timeline is in your head.
I guess we’re talking live vs recorded composition/composing but since live can be captured in real time in a multitrack audio application then the only difference is whether it’s done bit by bit or all in one go. Clearly different folks prefer different approaches depending on their skill set or what they find more comfortable or creatively stimulating.
Edit: There’s cons and pros to both ways of doing it but to me live has the upper hand in the fact that it can be actually played directly to the person who wants to listen.
I’m sure the accessibility of iOS music-making is allowing some musicians (new and old) to discover new ways of working, but other than being more mobile, I think the same basic compositional capabilities are available on desktop/laptop systems. IOW, I don’t see that iOS is offering a unique paradigm for making music, but it’s probably allowing more people to discover what they didn’t know was possible. It still takes the same skills, so it’s just a matter of what tools you want to use to get your job done.
I think iOS devices are great instruments and controllers. The idea of an iPad being a modular instrument that can be MIDI/audio connected internally to create something larger than the sum of its parts is true. It should become easier and more reliable as the platform evolves.
We can’t discount the fact that the art and craft of making music exists as a product of a long and deeply meaningful past. We musicians love new instruments to play, but many are not going to abandon the ways and forms of the music we know. DAWs will likely evolve with fresh ideas and new technology, but we’ll still need a clear, reliable and efficient way of composing and arranging linear organized, repeatable and non arbitrary music.
Here’s the answer to the timeline question from many. You simply don’t need to move away from the modular to have the same linear workflow available, it just won’t be the dominant part of the modular DAW:
The timeline is after all mostly just seperate blocks of either midi or audio being triggered, is it not? This can be handled by one app or many. Simply put, take many AU midi recorders and Au audio recorders that can be sequenced by another AU Midi app - this becomes the ‘timeline’. The difference is that it’s modular nature allows more to be achieved.
The whole point of the modular ideal is having as many parts split as possible - this does not mean that the central host can not arrange these separates into one cohesive whole. In essence, if the host and the separates are done well, you won’t really notice that it’s not all one big DAW, until you want to change a part - then it will shine!
We are not there yet - so much is possible if developers can get together and think outside the box. Also the many small AU app and small host approach lends itself well to the low cost app approach of iOS.
I’m finding something interesting: that the creative stuff for me happens on my iPhone (and previously my iPad) whereas all the ‘production line’ stuff seems best on the Mac. When doing a song I find that there must be a boundary between when it is creatively finished (no more compositional decisions) and when production starts (the arrangement, mixing, mastering etc). They are quite different, and if they’re not, they should be. The environments and tools are different, and that is acceptable.
** If you accidentally remember / rehearse any of it you’re in danger of remembering an older version
** Your task now is adjusting the presentation of it using appropriate packaging tooling
Mhhh, yeah but you can do all this in most DAW´s these days if they offer midi and audio.
Further you can simply put one of these big sessions together and just change the smallest part of the lowest layer of it or the whole thing (so maybe like LayR but in a bigger dimension).
Then you also could just copy the whole thing or parts of it and so on.
As great as it is....it´s still just a workaround at the end.
The low cost? Yes and no. The sum of it´s part can make it much more expensive as one major DAW which includes much more stuff.
Very few DAWs have the ability to switch out anything except for the sound generators. Most of the DAWs parts are built in and not modular. I think you may have miss understood what I am describing.
The low cost parts certainly add up. The cost of iOS music making has far exceeded what I’ve spent on one PC DAW + Sound generators before. This is missing the point though, the iOS market place is biased towards low cost apps - this works well with the modular approach. How many times have people said they want these big DAWs, but they want them at iOS app prices - it’s not going to happen unless Apple do it to promote hardware sales.
It’s not a workaround, it’s just a different approach that has slightly different possibilities.
live jamming interactivity is for sure a strong point of IOS and may fit whatever stage.
(doesn't matter much in a caffee or pub and on bigger venues you may have a sound engineer)
But raw output is not what most listeners would prefer later in their own environment.
Proof is posted time and again on this forum... and comparing the list of apps involved to the audible result makes me frown equally often
As suggested a general 'print to Audioshare' feature would be a big improvement.
Most apps do that for a mix, but few on single tracks - and in that case it's one track after the other with endless tap/choice/confirm messages, a pain in the back.
(zipped collections of files are at least a remedy in some cases)
Another constant nag is the auto-naming and not-know-where-to-put-it of apps writing to Audioshare.
Why not agree on a 'current destination' attribute marking the target folder and exposing that instead of the top level ?
(we're talking about a rather specific use of 'open in...' here, not general app behavior)
The 'exporting app' might provide a 'use original file name' option in preferences and either overwrite or rename if the target exists.
Imho such features would streamline workflow quite a lot.
(worth mentioning: I really like Audioshare's auto naming while edit-processing and the way it multi-selelects and moves files)
DAW is a rather vague classification. To be precise 'modern DAWs' in Cubase/Logic style (overcrowded) aren't my cup of tea at all, for various reasons.
If I'm pro-timeline, then for a heavily reduced kind of app.
In that sense I expected indeed that IOS might offer an alternative way, deduced from the very early, yet simple and powerful Multitrack DAW.
Why does everything have to be in one single app ?
Have a recording/tracking section (optimized on that part) and an edit/arrange section.
There is limited screen estate on a tablet, and multi-screen setups aren't mobile anyway.
Yes, you CAN overdub your original guitar solo in the control room on a Pro Tools workstation during the final mixdown - but is that something even essential ?
I agree with you that in the end i want all my jams on my desktop daw but I need midi recorded file also.> @Janosax said:
so if i have 4 tracks in AUM producing midi I can record separate midi files for each of them in Xequence or do i get one midi file with all 4 tracks merged? The latter is not what I would like.
Can Xequence record separate midi tracks from AUM? Say I wanted to record 4 midi tracks and 4 audio tracks in AUM, audioshare will record the audio tracks but will Xequence record the 4 midi track separately or merged them into one midi file. The latter is not what I need.
Say i want to record 4 audio tracks and 4 midi tracks from AUM , Audioshare will record the audio tracks but will Xequence record the 4 midi tracks or will it merge the 4 tracks into one midi file?
But then what you describe isn´t modular at all. There is no different at all in combining plug-ins and FX inside a DAW.
That is not what I’m describing.