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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Closest iPad app to BeatBuddy?
I'm looking for a drum app that lets me map MIDI controller buttons to things like start and stop - but also for different sections, ie verse, chorus, bridge, ending.. that sort of thing.
If it's something that can be used within Loopy Pro, synced to the tempo that I might have set with an acoustic guitar riff or something, that would be awesome too - but more than happy with something where I set the tempo myself (or tap tempo) and off we go.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
The goal would be to just have a beastly drum machine that I can run through songs with, different sections etc. Happy to have to change kits or genres on the iPad itself though if I could MIDI map those to dials or something, that would be even better.
Comments
I would (and do) use hammerhead for this kind of thing. Set your kit and you can have up to 8 patterns triggerable with a midi keyboard. Map any other knobs you need through loopys interface.
Fantastic, I'll give it a shot - I already own Hammerhead. Cheers.
How do you set the patterns to be triggered via MIDI?
I don't see any MIDI learn or MIDI settings at all in Hammerhead.
It’s the notes C1-G1 to change patterns
See the manual. The patterns of the current preset are note C0-G0 (or C1-G1 depending on the octave numbering used by the host). And you can change presets by midi via whatever mechanisms your host has available.
Thanks for that @Fingolfinzz and @espiegel123 - got it working.
For some reason it doesn't work in Hammerhead stand-alone for me, but it does in Loopy Pro.
Unsure what that's about - I'll need to figure that out so I can use it as a standalone drum machine of sorts, and I'd need to know how to stop/start it via MIDI this way too.
Within Loopy Pro, it's working really nicely - I'll have to set up a preset on the Pacer and have a think about how I want it to work, but the basics are there and I know it'll be able to do what I want it to do.
If there's options beyond Hammerhead that do this same thing, I'd love to know as well - something that does what Hammerhead does, but with ways to quickly swap entire kits with a MIDI mapped dial or something would be awesome.
Still happy with what's going on though - I know that at bare minimum, I'll be able to have this work with Loopy Pro and the rest of my set up for adding in beats, and swapping between patterns etc mid-song. It's already fun AF and I haven't even started getting it to integrate more with my setup with LP + Nektar Pacer.
I believe that presets include the kit. If you save a preset and recall it, it uses the kit you set u for the preset. There are many ways to to change and recall presets in Loopy. Stepped Dials and Radio buttons are handy for that.
..and these can swap presets within Hammerhead? From LP?
I'll have to explore this. Would be pretty much what I'm after!
Loopy has a select preset action. You can use it in buttons, dials, midi bindings, etc.
Here is a project that shows how to access presets and change patterns.
Cheers @espiegel123 - I'll check that out tomorrow to see how to put it all together.
Tonight I set up the guitar FX side of things now that I know how to do the preset select thing w/TH-U Overloud and I lost way too much time just jamming out to some guest made Hammerhead presets + some I made myself.
I've got a couple of minor issues - one is that if I lay down a loop, without a chosen tempo - ie, just getting Loopy Pro to find the tempo itself, it tends to be in double time. This is kind of remedied by having presets where I accommodate for that in Hammerhead myself. But it means when I do choose a tempo ahead of time, then I need to choose a tempo twice as high as I want, for the beat to be correct. Not the end of the world, already have work arounds for it.
Would be nice to have LP not go double-time when detecting the tempo of my initial loop though.
I didn't expect this to be so much fun - I figured I'd just jump in and get things working how I want and be like "okay cool, now I've got a different way of adding drums to gigs", instead wound up just having fun and getting the guitar FX side of things to be closer to how I want so I could jam out more.
IDK how many people at pubs/clubs are going to need to hear some 90s techno styled covers of their favourite songs but.. they're gonna get it.
I'd love a more realistic/organic drum machine that lets me do a similar thing with switching between patterns too.
I like how KORG Gadget's Gladstone sounds, something like that.
I understand I could do something similar using Logic's Drummer, and they sound awesome - but I can't use Logic Pro as a looper the way I want to, and looping (real loops, tempo set from my initial loop, actual instruments.. not Logic's "Live Loops") is at the heart of what I'm doing.
Would love to get a realistic drum machine in as part of it. I believe Hammerhead can use imported samples, but I'd still be after something with a slightly different workflow anyway.
I'd love the "realistic" drum machine/app to let me choose from some basic pub/club type genres (rock, pop, pop rock, punk, funk, ska, etc etc.. genres people actually gig..).. and have a few kits to choose from. And patterns.
Basically a more singer-songwriter/gigging musician styled drum machine. Hammerhead is fun AF. But if there's something that seems more.. practical. to gig as a solo musician, that would be awesome.
I'm glad Hammerhead is working out for you! I also find it fun AF and quite easy and immediate when trying to get something going. I think that's why it's become a mainstay in my performance geared apps.
The lack of fully featured auv3 realistic drum apps is debated quite a bit here. To my knowledge no developer has gotten it "right" for the majority of people yet.
IMHO currently the best choice for realistic stuff comes down to these two questions:
Are you going to program your own drums?
Yes? Digistix 2
Do you NEED auv3?
No? Lumbeat apps
The Lumbeat apps are premade pattern monsters, but no auv3. Digistix is a really great environment for making kits and beats but doesn't come with a lot for premade stuff.
This isn't what I do, but I think honestly if I was a guitarist looking to jam with the most flexible and realistic ipad band I would use Audiobus 3 and the lumbeat apps for drums and bass I think it would be hard to beat their stuff for realism, song building, easy musical randomization, and immediacy.
Agree. I don't like common drum machines and Lumbeat drummers are the one I found who have some "AI" creativity. Like Rayzoon Jamstix (PC/Mac) which is still unbeatable IMO.
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Loopy Pro has a tempo detection range setting in the clock/tempo panel that guides its guess about the tempo. You may want to adjust that range if you are frequently getting a wrong guess from Loopy. If after adjusting the range, you keep getting errors, it might be useful if you could screen record some examples for Michael to look at to help him refine the tempo detection.
You may want to use tap tempo to get a sense of whether the tempo in your dphead is in the detection range. I discovered that I often play ballads with tempos below the default range.
After you record the first loop, if it guesses the tempo wrong there is a quick fix. You will see a glyph to the left of the loop (which goes away when the next loop is recorded or the file is saved).
It pops up a panel where with one tap you double ir halve the detected tempo. You can also change the beats/bar in case you realize that you aren't in 4/4.
Note that the tempo detection assumes the recording is a power of 2 measures long (1,2,4,8,16.....). If (as I sometimes do) you record 12-bar loops, you may want to make your first recorded loop a one or two measure "percussion" or drum groove that sets the time and feel. I am a guitar player and often record a "pick scratch" loop to set the groove.
The Lumbeats apps are the best out there at the moment if you want more or less natural feel that you don't need to program. But they are IAA apps which for some is a deal killer. You can use the Limbeats apps with Loopy Pro and it can be handy to set up widgets ti control their features (like remote song and pattern switching and fill triggering).
I usually start a new Loopy project with one of the Lumbeat drummers, record 1-3 loops of 8-16 bars each (let's call them verse, chorus, bridge), and then remove the Lumbeat app's channel so that it doesn't try to reload the next time I launch the project. If I'm being really organized, I will rename the loops to reflect their origin: e.g., FD - Drum and Gas = "Future Drummer - Drum and Gas preset."
Oh ya, I always forget Loopy has IAA support!
I have this idea to create in Loopy Pro an X-Y pad, and send the midi to a Lumbeat drummer to control the complexity and intensity, the X-Y pad in the Lumbeat drummer interface. So I have the same beat, with different nuances. And then I record this to audio.
So you can change the drum loop from Loopy Pro without changing apps and screens. But I have to check if Lumbeat receives these midi commands. I think it does.
I have made a loop setup like Ableton, I can start a whole row with loops (drum/bass/guitar 1/guitar 2/etc) with a single button. This way I can change from intro, to verse, to chorus, bridge, outro.
If you are ready to compromise some complexity the IK Blueboard and Lumbeat apps is a great combination . Almost plug and play
You have 4 buttons to work
And if you add Ibassist you already have a band going ..:bass + keys + drums
Way better than beat buddy
BTW I had a beat buddy , sold it…way too overrated and too much work behind the scenes and horror UI ( the manager and chunky SD card labor..)
IPAD + apps way better
The only points I’ll give for beatbuddy is that there is a third party Library wherein if you want cover an exact song you have the song + drum kit available to buy
Yes it works, great feature. I added the 2 toggle buttons and a fill button too.