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.
Just a £3 bamboo flute, Koala, and a few fx: The Old Magicks
“…it was mostly a kind of force that doesn’t belong in our part of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature.” - H. P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror.
If I can venture a little pretentiousness*. (Well, all right, some more pretentiousness); I had in mind something about trying to capture the slightly breath-held sense of invisible tension that seems to attach to some ‘thin places’ in the world… groves long believed to be sacred, lonely dolmen on exposed hills, certain crossroads at certain times of the year… the moment before, a sense of something in the act of becoming. I like the great 20th century philosopher Bertrand Russell on this:
“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
Our wits; and maybe our senses too.
I was mightily impressed with the skilled flute improv of @jimhanks featured on these pages recently. https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/54133/flute-improv-with-fluss-based-drone-backing-track
When I saw bamboo flutes for £3 today on a market stall, I thought ‘I’ll give it a go’, despite the teensy handicap of being about as good on shonky sort-of flutes as I am on keyboards or guitars, which is to say, not at all. Still, nothing ventured…
…so I played the six individual notes the flute offered one after the other into Koala using the iPad’s own mic, duped and pitch shifted until I had kind of an octave, and did the above. No other instruments involved, primary fx Koala’s internal ones, all sequencing internal to Koala as well. Triggered manually, live, into AUM, captured as File Player loops, mixed live and routed direct to AudioShare.
Frankly, Koala is one hell of an app.
Brickbats, bouquets or bypass as the mood takes you, dear reader. For those moved to comment: Rest assured, I will hang on your every word. 
*ADDENDUM: there is a price to pretentiousness, of course. The very great risk of making oneself look like a pillock! @rottencat pointed out that the quote about magical things, which I had in my commonplace book for years as coming from Bertram Russell, a belief I shared with much of the internet, is also, like much that is on that same internet, ‘fake news’.
The quote is also attributed to the poet W B Yeats, which kind of makes sense, what with his Celtic Twilight mysticism, and association with MacGregor Mathers and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and whatnot.
However, according to @rottencat’s source, the very useful Quote Investigator site, both are wrong:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/07/magical-things-waiting/
The slightly different quote : “The *universe * is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” comes from a lesser known writer, Eden Phillpotts, in the book ‘A Shadow Passes’. As Any Fule Kno.
Doh!
Comments
Hi @Svetlovska ,
Lovely tone, I am being swallowed up by the vastness of this musical stroke!
This lovely creation is truly waking up my senses, and closing my eyes make it even more alive!!!
Very nicely done, love this recording.
Rene
You hit your mark. Very thin and Tibetan Book Of The Dead, indeed.
I love this, @Svetlovska!
It’s like a soundtrack for that moment when the potential becomes the actual.
Yes! Koala is amazing and my three latest projects (only one uploaded) are made with samples I record with various paraphernalia I have at home (and I do question why I have bought so many synth/instrument apps
).
I do sometimes set up Koala in AUM with Klevgränd's Brusfri to get rid of all the various hums and noises an apartment building gives up - and, I have a mic but on occasion I use my phone raw like you have done and that works surprisingly well although it takes some extra work.
Nice one, and love the backstory as usual!
Thanks all for the listens, and the kind words.
I’m currently at the early stages of trying to weave some of my material, including this, into an hour long, ahem ‘set’, for an ambient podcast I’ve been invited to contribute to (insert quote about ‘waiting ages for buses and then’… here) as an early proof of concept for this alleged gig later in the year. Having not really paid much attention to Koala before despite having had it for ages, I’m beginning to really appreciate Koala as a soundboard inside AUM for instant spontaneous manual triggering of little bits of sonic glue or punctuation as I try to modulate from one of my tracks to the next. It’s a whole different discipline to just producing a finished singular item. Much to learn…
Lovely piece, helped my kitten finally go to sleep this afternoon, her tired little eyes struggled to stay open but couldn’t resist the gentle tones… thanks and great way of working you found!
This is very lovely. Very very very lovely. I think you nailed the sense of those ‘thin’ places, places where the border becomes less well defined. Thanks for sharing!
@krupa: you do realise acting as a sleep aid for cute little kittens is somewhat at odds with my lady of the outer darkness persona? Err… carry on! @sevenape : thank you! @Pxlhg : have you a link to your koala piece? Also: good tip re Brusfri, which I have - and will remember to use next time!
Nice! Certainly wouldn’t have thought that it had its origins in a very cheap flute.
If she doesn't sleep enough, her powers of evil will be much diminished when it's time to flex them later
a sense of something in the act of becoming..
Perfect description.. Beautiful piece.. Koala has found you.. it’s a great pairing.. look forward to more..
Thanks for sharing..
@Pxlhg : have you a link to your koala piece? Also: good tip re Brusfri, which I have - and will remember to use next time!
Sure, it's this one: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/53090/son-homemade-samples-and-guitar
Thanks for the kind words. Wow, all that from a £3 flute and a £4 app? Most impressive! I guess I've been doing this all wrong 😝
I like this a lot. It reminds me a bit of Sakura by Susumu Yokota which is one of my favourite ambient albums.
@jimhanks : thank you! If I only had your skills… @nickneek : thanks for the recommendation, I had never heard of this artist before, but I’m checking it out on Tidal as I write this. Very cool, I am flattered by the comparison:)
https://tidal.com/playlist/1c9fc2fc-823b-4c58-b40e-c5125cf4ab51
Nice tones. Great workflow. One day I will master Koala!
Loved that album, and a few of his others when they first came out. The vinyl, along with all my other vinyl, including quite a lot of rarish 60s and 70s Brazilian music is lying back in the UK in the house of someone I barely knew and whose contact details I lost years ago. 😂
So actually you mentioning this is a nice reminder that I'm glad I don't feel much need - nor do I have the spare cash, frankly - to collect physical objects any more 😁
Lot of tension here, perfectly rendering your intent. I close my eyes and see the invisible strings propagating.
Well, there is a dying I think that says something like "It's not bragging if it's true".
@jo92346 : “A dying” - I like that
Thanks for the listen, and the comment! Watch for a future track called ‘A Dying’…
Awesome. Thank you for sharing and extra thank you for expanding on the process, I always love reading these things to get a better idea of the audio jam I'm listening to.
I’m a firm believer these days in that it’s not what you start off with but what you finish up with and this is a great example… tremendously effective track 👌