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.
How to learn to make electronic music tracks.
I feel like I know just enough to know that I don't know enough. I recently realised that I was just buying stuff and learning how to use it. That's it. I have never made a tune. I don't know how. I don't know the song structure. I don't know... sooooo much that it feels a bit demotivating. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop but I would like to chew the fat with others who understand what I'm talking about. Who have been here and got there.
Do you practice? What does that look like? Do you have a list of achievements that you want to tick off? How will you know when you're 'good enough'. Put your question here and please feel free to answer it too. I would really appreciate your input.
Comments
@michael, what's the reason that Knowledge Base isn't included in View: All, please?
I honestly can't remember. Will now.
Thanks @michael.
This is a good place to be, you will always keep sounding fresh.
Been there, done that, still doing it.
It’s a part of the learning process.
These questions are a course in themselves.
The motivation one is actual the hardest and
easiest to answer and you’ve answered it yourself.
Don’t stop.
Yup.
Everyday on whatever instrument, for whatever genre etc.
Practicing can be boring sometimes pointless for someone
looking on unless they are a part of the process themselves.
Most of this stuff is internal to the musician/artist.
Yup.
There maybe similarities between my list and yours for instance but
they do tend to be dependant upon personality, wants and needs.
You’re always good enough.
There's only one way to master any skill: you have to practice, you have to actually produce stuff.
Set yourself a manageable regular deadline, and stick to it, and just make sure to produce consistently, and you will improve. It's a simple but completely foolproof formula that I've applied many times in the course of my life and it always delivers results.
Back in 2014 I had got back into music after a long break, and a friend of mine suggested that I should aim to write and produce a finished track every month. I put this into practice at the start of 2015 and started the Song Of The Month Club on this forum.
Since then I have written a minimum of one song every month (78 months in total and more than 100 finished tracks, most of them with vocals).
By doing this I've improved in every area: writing, performing, producing, mixing, singing etc...
At the start of this process I was pretty terrible, and I knew it, but now I've improved considerably and the music I create is infinitely better.
Here's a link to my very first SOTMC entry, January 2015, it's awful:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6za53ncfa4yvhjp/auria - You Made A Mistake Mix.wav?dl=0
And here's a link to my latest one, 76 months later. Even if it's not your cup of tea genre-wise you can clearly hear the enormous progress from 2015 to now:
I always had faith in this process because I had used it in other areas of my life previously. Back in 2008 I was working as an illustrator and I wanted to get into storyboard work, but my figure drawing was pretty ropey. So I decided to draw 100 figures from photographic reference to improve, at least one every weekday.
Here is my very first drawing in that series, and as you can see it was pretty bad (and I knew that at the time, it was embarrassing):
But 38 drawings later things had improved:
50:
77:
I also went through a similar process with digital landscape paintings. This was my first effort:
And this was 19 paintings later:
I've applied the same approach to writing, to playing the guitar, to singing, learning the piano, and running my business. It works, every time. Just put the work in and produce stuff consistently - you will get results.
I should add that this is a subject I'm very passionate about, so much so that I've written a book about it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NXRCZX6
Thanks for your input, both. I have had similar advice from others: make tracks. That is my goal, it's why I keep buying stuff but my problem is that I don't know what I don't know until I know it. I have recently subbed to a site called jukeblocks that allows you to download a song structure for whatever DAW. That taught me that I don't know enough Ableton to actually use the file I'd downloaded. This is the usual outcome. This is why I started this thread
Let us know when you release your hundredth book
.
Methodical works for some people but not everyone. If you find what fires you up in music go and listen to it, lots of it. Look up the words if it has any, see if there are chord charts anywhere, and try to create something with same feel (Don't slavishly copy unless you have to). If you have a song or two that really moves you, listen to them again and again until you hate them but you get why they do what they do. Or you might find it's not what you want to do and go and learn Japanese instead.
Either way, have fun and try to break a few eggs.
Currently working on my third
Do you have instruments?
Do you have a DAW?
Have you completed a piece yet?
This is a great thread and I feel better for reading it. Some great, thoughtful replies.
I remember someone saying you should write a piece of music as if you were the last person on earth and there was no way anyone else could possibly ever hear it. That way you can be yourself and remove any consideration of what you’re ‘supposed’ to do.
I am still guilty of writing things I think people would like. Since joining this forum I have totally embraced the knowledge I’ve gained from other members and my writing and production has changed.
I have a bunch of ‘standard’ pieces of music that follow a kind of formula but I also have a growing collection of pieces that are a million miles away from what I did before I discovered the forum. Creating these
has freed me up a little and allows me to experiment more with my ‘standard’ tunes.
What I’m trying to say is make something, anything. Don’t worry about structure or rules. Once you have a track you can say ‘ok, that’s that one but I want the next one to have more this and less that’ etc.
Having said all of this I admit that after a free ticket to a chemical brothers gig I was blown away and tried to write my first electronic track and it was terrible. I think it’s because I was trying to be the chemical brothers instead of trying to be me.
This.
This.
Well said.
Oh great mate. I can see it's also in kindle unlimited, so downloaded already. Thanks for the tip!
When I recently read, in another thread, our very own @LinearLineman 's take on this (something loosely along the lines of "I have been practicing for 40+ years so I'm kind of okay now") I took the time to reflect on my life choices and decided to keep my mouth shut on the subject 😂
Thanks - hope you enjoy it!
@ervin conjured me up. Below is my POV on practicing, but it’s just one way. Doing is practicing, too.
You can forget about not knowing. You know you don’t, but don’t carry it with you. That can be a hindrance as much of a help.
Pretend you know. Like the woman who lifts a car when her kid is under it. Or the mean, ugly dude who wears a handsome mask to get the chick he wants. 20 yrs later, forced to unmask, his face is transformed and his actions noble.
You can do a lot with sheer willpower and tossing away self judgement. Make a track start to finish in three hours. Force us to listen to it here (like I do 🤔😳😉😎) Do that at least once a week, but twice is twice as good. No rules. No form...other than beginning, middle and end.., tho if you do ambient you can forget about that, too.
Practice if you want, or just make stuff up. Neither of us will make a dime and neither will be on SNL as the featured guest musician.
When you make a track listen to it a bunch. Enjoy it, if possible.... if that’s difficult find something in it to like. Affirm yourself for doing the job. Then move on. Analyze, don’t analyze. That’s up to you. Investigate your “will to create”. What stops you? How can you trick yourself into making the next track?
Like @richardyot implies.... it will always get better.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/45471/the-essence-of-creativity-pt-2-openness-to-practice
@ashh I got a trick (maybe it's a cheat... don't care
) which made me more productive lately.
I guess you can make the famous 8 bar loops and get stuck where you go from there. You could copy for more bars and subtract parts, but then feel it's still repetitive. Then you can try the cheat.
Grab a song you like. Can be any genre. Drop it into your daw of choice. Make empty midi clips for sections (Intro - Verse - Chorus) and/or for the instruments (Synth bass from Bar 1 to 4, Guitars for 1-2, 5-6, etc.)
Then ignore/delete/mute the original track, change the tempo to whatever you want, drop some chords (grab a progression from https://autochords.com/, it's app, chordbot, chordjam, etc.) and start doing it your way.
I guess working with a skeleton instead of blank canvas can help you.
(I just checked and jukeblocks delivers something like that for you - but I guess if you put a bit of effort building the skeleton, you can start learning what makes the song you like cool)
😅👌
You have to connect to the mainframe in your Dweams man.
Then hum it out through fieldscaper. You devices will latch to you and almost pull you in but dont be scared. Its just static ( I think )
I'm not too worried about only making music that I think is right for others. How will I know? I'm not a mind reader. My thing like that is making music that I think will be popular in whatever genre, music as a means to an end. Tbh, chance would be a fine thing. If I knew enough for that to actually be an issue then I'd be fine with it.
I think I'm trying to find a way, a workflow that chimes with me before I make a track but that's kind of ass backwards. I need to just get on with it.
Knowledge Base was intended to be a place to gather stuff for the wiki -- in the months leading up to the wiki going live. It was intended for temporary life -- and hopefully everything there has migrated to the wiki -- but I don't know that for sure.
There is no way to know when your music is ready. You just keep making it -- and letting other people hear it when you think it is ready and keep going. There are amazing musicians who never feel like the music is good enough to share and terrible musicians who are sure that it is -- so that internal feeling of satisfaction or 'good enough' doesn't tell one much.
One tried and true method of getting things together is to learn songs you like and try to make your own version -- and to also write songs in imitation of what you like (which you might choose to never play anyone).
It is a pretty valuable thing to take songs you like and analyze their structure (you can do this whether or not you understand music theory). If a song is verse chorus verse chorus etc -- pay attention to what they do to make the verses not be the same every time through.
Be patient. Getting good at songwriting takes a lot of practice -- you have to put up with not being very good for a long time.
Honestly you won't find what's right for you until you do the work. It's by doing the work that you find your own voice, because you will stumble on things that resonate with you. It's by exploring and creating that your voice emerges.
This is a great way to learn music in general. It is of course possible to make music without conventional instruments, but learning a real instrument gives you greater flexibility to explore and experiment (and become more proficient on that instrument if you want).
You can obviously make music using a sound design and sequencing approach, but it tends to be more time-consuming, so you do need to have more patience.
Agreed.
I found it the reverse actually.
The physical demands of an instrument requires constant
attention much akin to an athlete training for say the olympics.
For instance I used to be a pro drummer, practicing, playing and gigging everyday.
If I were to play drums now?
I wouldn't hire me.
I don't have that precision anymore.
If I were to practice and play again regularly then I would say differently.
Goodness……. Are we talking about music or spirituality here?? 😁. Some very very very good advice in here!
It's the work that's eluding me. I get that, for you, time was or is the magic ingredient. That's not it for me. I do not know what I need to know. I have been circling the same things without moving on for a while now. I feel like I'm stuck. For example, using the piano roll in a DAW just does not work for me.
ACTUALLY! I think I might just have worked it out! I think it might be that I'm trying to find a way to make, say, Techno that involves as little screen time as possible. I trust myself when it comes to knowing me and yet I have spent quite a lot of time wondering why I am buying drum machines and pedals and sequencers and synths? Why not just do it all on a laptop? I don't know enough to know which way is better for me, so why all the gear? I think that writing this post has helped me to understand why. I want to play them well enough to make music like that, not via a DAW. Don't get me wrong, I love the iPad and the apps I have for it but I do not want to shoehorn their sounds and patterns into a DAW.
So how do I do that? Do I need an 8 track or whatever?
I would say "Yeah... the 8 track will make you happy"
Because I recall how I used to record on a 4 track and being more productive with my gear.
But before you shell out any money, treat your ipad as a multitrack recorder.
Record your gear and instruments into a DAW of your choice (or maybe AUM to make it simple) and see if it clicks with you, mate
Forget editing/arranging, putting effects and other apps. Focus on it as recorder
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/45545/i-want-to-produce-minimal-techno-where-do-i-start/p1 My thread about wanting to learn Minimal Techno. (Although now I'm trying to wrap my brain around "IDM", lol.)
Having a blast in Korg Gadget. I know Gadget requires more screen time, but a person can make some pretty decent Techno in it.