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.
Comments
In addition to G2M there is also MIDI Guitar, which does the same sort of thing. It even has a polyphonic mode. No pitch bending though. The app is free to try with internal piano sound, MIDI out is an in-app purchase.
http://itunes.apple.com/app/midi-guitar/id523095780#
@AkaMarko, thanks for the link. Nice video. GM2 Guitar looks very interesting.
@mgmg4871, oops! ;-)
Interesting, thanks for the midi discussion guys. It looks like the main requirements for midi in support is covering the full note range, supporting pitch bend, and ability to receive each string on a separate channel if that's what the sender gives you.
@PhilW Yeah guitarism is currently optimized for performance scenarios rather than composition. I may add a 'composition mode' someday which would be all about putting lots of chord options on screen. WI Guitar's got a neat design for on-the-fly chord building, though to really use it fully sometimes starts to feel like 'finger twister'. OMGuitar also has some clever design for this, though IMO a bit too complicated. Seems like there should be a better way, perhaps leveraging the circle of fifths and/or knowledge of which primary key you want to stay within. Not on my immediate list but hopefully someday
Re the chord muting request: How about making it so that a second touch of a chord button (to the last selected chord) triggers a mute? This would be in 'normal' mode, of course. The current 'muting' mode could stay as is for those who like it that way.
Not the way you'd do it on a real guitar. You lift the chording fingers slightly.
@Rhism Thanks for the reply, I do appreciate you have a lot on your plate at the moment, so no rush! Guitarism is geat for performance and it's very easy to change chords anyway, and with the tilt feature you can have plenty of options. Just one further thought on the iPad version, while it easy to tilt the iPhone it is much more unwieldy to do this on the iPad - and some may have it in a dock or stand. So just an alternative way to access the alternative chord sets would maybe be a good idea?
@PhilW He's working on a better way to do the tilt on iPad as we speak. :-)
@PhilW Yep tilt is the #1 thing to figure out for iPad support, it's completely unusable right now.
@Washboy This would be highly prone to accidents and false positives. Not something you'd want to have happen when you're playing at a gig on stage
Been having a great time with guitarism this week. The more I use it the more I'm feeling a request @ryan made a while back: being able to adjust the length of the mute tone would just about rule and would add a lot of variety to available strumming styles. As it is now, cool as it sounds, it's pretty dictative of playing style. When I mute my actual guitar, there are a lot of sounds to be had based on right hand pressure.
I'm just spit balling here. Maybe instead of thinking of it as 'the muted sound' it could be considered the 'alternate strum style' or something. On iPad it would be very playable if there were a slider control on the main UI that you could adjust in real time, hopefully reachable with your chording hand. Or maybe on the right side of the strings that you'd adjust with your pinky (much like a guitarist uses their pinky to ground their right hand).
Another possibility on ipad might be having vertical zones on the strings. Say on the left is a zone for full ringing out and as you go to the right, the ring gets shorter. That sounds hard to play as I type this but it is essentially how strumming works when there's an actual bridge to the right - sounds are a little brighter and ring a little shorter as you move towards it.
The other guitar muting style is total sound muting with your left hand by releasing your fingers from a fretted chord. On iPad, this could probably work as an area you generally touch to mute whatever's going on (with a little body ring out) - or just a 'blank' chord spot. On iPhone, I like @washboy's solution. It wouldn't change the strings to 'mute' mode in my mind - it would simply mute the current chord. Your point about accidents is well taken but as an option, other than options cruft, I can't see it causing harm. It (or something other way to the same end) would greatly open up the available play styles in guitarism for me.
Longer than I meant, sorry! Cheers for guitarism.
@syrupcore Glad to hear you're enjoying using the app! A couple of different things in there so let me try to unpack a bit.
There are generally two types of muting that one does on a physical guitar: fret muting (fretting hand) and palm muting (strumming / picking hand). Fret muting typically creates unpitched percussive sounds whereas palm muting sounds are pitched and variable length based on palm position / pressure.
The muting in guitarism today is essentially fret muting, except that the sounds are pitched. I made them pitched because I felt that it adds to the expressive possibilities of the instrument... unpitched wasn't better for any scenarios I could think of. In any case, as far as fret muting is concerned I think guitarism does handle any scenario you can throw at it. There is a pending request to make the sounds louder, which I'm going to be looking into soon. But I don't see any new scenarios that are enabled by a separate 'mute now' button which can't be done right now. Cruft is software cancer, so I'm going to avoid it like the plague unless someone shows me a scenario that can't be done without it
Palm muting is the request @Ryan made, and what I think you are asking for. I totally agree that it would be pretty awesome to have that, particularly when running guitarism through JamUp. It's not trivial to add and would require a fair amount of prototyping and experimentation to arrive at something that feels natural and sounds good, but I'm definitely very interested in making this happen.
There is a third variable that you referred to - that of getting brighter or duller sounds when you play closer to the bridge or neck - which I consider separate from muting. The brighter sounds do tend to be a bit shorter but I don't find that to be a significant aspect of this technique. Guitarism does slightly modify the sound based on strumming closer to the neck or bridge - you'll get slightly more 'bite' in the sound when you strum closer to the bridge. It doesn't vary the sound duration since I don't consider that angle very important.
Thanks a lot for the reply. Really, sorry for the ramble! I might be misunderstanding but the muting in guitarism sounds amazingly like palm muting to my ears. I guess the pitching is throwing my brain for a loop.
"Cruft is software cancer, so I'm going to avoid it like the plague unless someone shows me a scenario that can't be done without it
"
Amen. Please, continue to say no.
I'll ask a how-to and see if I'm missing something technique wise: how would I go about playing staccato guitar chords? Like chords an 1/8 note long on 1/4 note beats. Think "London Calling" by the Clash.
Thanks again.
@syrupcore I do short staccato chords the same way as on a normal guitar. I lift my chording fingers, or left thumb in this case, to truncate the chord.
@Rhism I don't know how far you are down the custom chord design route, but I do a lot of strange chords with combinations of open strings and stopped frets high up the neck. The kind of thing that would appeal to me would be a scrollable fretboard showing about 6 frets at a time, where I could just tap a string at a certain fret and a dot will appear. That sets the pitch for that string. Any string without a dot is open tuning, a dot can be removed by touching it again, or moved by touching a different fret on the same string. At one edge of the iDevice, a non scrolling area could contain an audition button to hear the current setting and a bank of preset slots. Once a chord is set up, tapping a preset slot would save the chord configuration and make it available for selection for the performance screen.
@Rhism, okay so I thought more about MY mute request and realise that all I'm asking for is a way to silences all sound from the app at any given time. This could easily be done if when setting up the chords, you choose 'none'. Right now that blank chord area plays the same chord as last played but what if that was audio mute when selected? And even if you have a song using 6 chords, you could assign a tilt chord as 'none.'
@syrupcore Exactly what @PaulB said - you can play London Calling by always lifting up your chording finger/thumb, just like you'd do on a physical guitar. I find this to be the only usable mechanism for playing songs like that on an iOS guitar. If you have used any other apps that have done this better do let me know.
@AkaMarko Can you describe a performance situation (or send me a video link to a song) that can't be done on guitarism right now but would be possible with a separate mute button? I'm having trouble seeing the usefulness of this option. When muting is on, lifting your finger off the chord does silence all sounds from the app exactly like you're describing. BTW the (none) option is intended to reduce number of active buttons from the screen in order to increase player accuracy and confidence. So, the opposite goal
@PaulB My thinking right now is to let you specify 0-12 or X (no sound) as the fret for each of the six strings. This matches the way we describe chords in tablature. So yes with that you should be able to create any crazy chord you want. Haven't finalized the actual workflow yet but it'd definitely include some way to audition as you go.
@Rhism. I guess as a player when strumming individual strings one at a time I like to lift my finger off the chord button and get it ready above the next chord. This is necessary if playing an intricate arpeggio. I'm concentrating on hitting the right strings in the right order and not worrying if I'll be able to slide the chord finger to the right chord in time. if I did this with the mute setting on I wouldn't hear ringing notes in between so it,s better to play with the mute setting off. But as mention in previous posts, then you can't instantly mute the audio if needed. Sometimes a sudden mute (all instruments ) can create a great accent effect. Haha, I might have to do a video afterall.
@AkaMarko Are you playing on an iPhone or iPad? A video would definitely be very helpful to see!
BTW in the next update I'll be making chord selection multi-touch enabled so you can keep your first finger on the first chord and ready your second finger on the second chord without any accidental muting happening. And then if you lift your second finger off it'll automatically snap back to the first one.
Id also like to say, on the iPad it's not much of an issue but quick chord slide changes and intricate string arpeggios are quite tricky on the my iPhone. Since I'll mostly be using it with my iPad it,s workable as is.
@Rhism, multi touched would help in this scenario.
One other thing. On iPad I use my finger to strum and accuracy on arpeggios is much better (finger thinner than thumbs) as with the iPhone where thumb strumming is more the norm.
Got it. Was just confusing the technique - which is just like a guitar. The pitched notes had me lost in palm muting land. Sorry for the noise and thanks for the help @rhism and @paulb. Just played London Calling with the default chord setup!
@AkaMarko totally agree that intricate arpeggios are not easy to do on the iPhone. Smart strings helps but ultimately the device is too small to really make things as big as you'd want them to be. However I believe that fast chord changes are significantly easier to do on the iPhone vs iPad, because of the way the chord buttons anchor against physical device edges. Maneuvering the chord buttons without looking at the screen is much easier on the iPhone than the iPad. Multi-touch chords should help balance that out a bit.
@syrupcore Awesome!
@Rhism Re custom chords. That will work too.
Re touch mute. If it HAS to happen, how about a mute chord available in the chord list?
That way a player can select it for just the songs that require it in default playing mode and it will make one of the chord buttons do the job. Anyone who doesn't need the feature can ignore it entirely.
@PaulB Agreed that that would be the cleanest way to do it, though I still think the feature itself isn't completely necessary especially after I make chord selection multi-touch. Too many other fish to fry right now
BTW a quick scan through the charts last night tells me that guitarism is one of the highest-grossing virtual guitar apps on the iPhone App Store right now. The only ones higher are Garageband (of course) and "Guitar Complete With 500+ Songs" (which is a totally different kind of app). Any guesses as to how much money guitarism is making per day?
Is this a trick question?
Can I buy stock?
No tricks - you guys are some of the most intelligent, knowledgeable and sane people I've ever met on the internet, and I'm genuinely curious to know how much you guys think guitarism is making.
I like it. I'm going to go with a vague 'not much'. Being number one in a tiny sliver of the market doesn't generally amount to cash - it amounts to market dominance. That's worth something for sure but it in and of itself isn't a monetization strategy. But now that you have the eyeballs and the cred and the existing customers, I hope you come up with one!
Here's the part where I thank you for all the care and work anyway. Thank you! Also, congrats.
^^^^
What he said. :-)