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.
Struggling with hihats
I always struggle with getting life out of my hi hat loops. Its so hard to program one shots for me that sound like they aren’t programmed. Kicks snares etc are pretty strait forward, but getting those shuffles and open hats to match the closed has always been my struggle.
I pulled the trigger today on this sample pack of hi hat loops that is normally 200$, on sale for 40$, and discontinued with code BF24 to 20$
I don’t usually buy sample packs but… for hats.. good hats… 🧢 i went for it!
If anyone else feels my pain this might be a good sample pack to jump on.
Normally I’ll add textures like the tail end of a ride or crash to my hats to simulate reverb and room but having these loops will absolutely let me get the hats out of the way and focus on the synths and other elements! Its 400 hi hat loops!!
Comments
I’m not a drummer, and I’m a one man band so its very helpful to add a skilled drummers sounds to my band’o’uno🤣
Tips for programming hi hat one shots to sound not quantised - program them with quantise on, then turn off quantisation and nudge em off grid. I don't usually adjust velocity, but it may be another thing you can try in addition to nudging notes off grid.
If you have any other questions, let me know. Hope these couple of tips will help. If not, nothing wrong with loops. In fact, Loopy Pro excels at loops.
Thanks my man. I def nudge those hats all over the place but they still just seem to sound dry and lifeless in comparison to the human velocity and timings and ability to make each hit sound a lil different with the resonance, and different tensions on the HH pedal.
I normally use koala and the velocity helps… its just getting that swing and change in timbre is so much effort haha. Sometimes a one man show just needs a touch from another skilled musician haha.
I’ve had a few drummers come to my studio and record but my recording gear isn’t great for drums
Just saw this. Lol. Yeah, I'm not a drummer either lol. 😂 I just program the drums to sound natural.
I’ve been so tempted to buy a hi hat recently!
Ah now I see. Maybe someone else can confirm, but I believe OneShot has round robins.
Who knows mate? Might be fun to mess with a hi hat.
Also chopping these loops up into one shots is very helpful. Since each hit is from the same hat but have slight changes, I’ve been having great luck making em flow , over using samples from all over the place.
There’s always the XY (jk)
I also have trouble with drums but let me show you this cool trick on the Op1F
Do your pattern without your hats.
Then go to your endless sequencers.
Set the notes to 32nd notes, and set the sequencer to random -
then program ONLY hi hats into the endless in random steps meaning let’s say on 1,3,4,7,9,11,12 etc
Then go to your track and set your loop
Record it over playback on the main pattern and you’ll have almost like glitched Trappy hi hats randomly
Finally click shift and lift and then merge the hats into the other drum track with shift and drop
Hope it’s useful to you
Ah yes! Sample and loop chopping is always a good option.
Seems like you're talking about acoustic drums, right?
Using samples at different hit strengths and different open/close positions does it for me. I need at least 3 keys for closed, half-open and open (commonly F#, G# and A#) plus velocity layers to give some realistic expression when playing the hats 😉
It starts with a hi-hat.. leads to a snare.. then a kick.. suddenly you’ve got a complete kit.. then 2 kits.. hey, an electronic kit would be fun.. then your 3rd acoustic kit.. such has been my journey.. actually started with the electronic kit first though.. It’s been an absolute blast and as a guitar player first, I wish I would’ve started on drums.. they’re SO MUCH FUN!
Go for it dude.. all you really need is kick, snare + hats.. that’s it.. you can groove to your heart’s content.. or until your neighbours tell you to “turn it down”.. 🤣
I haven’t really tried a lot with drums on the op1f so I’ll def give this a try! I’m always looking for tips n tricks on that thing! Good call my man
For the record I’ve been making beats for 20 years i just hate my hihats 🤣 most people would say they are fine and sound great but i want that soul swing!! And funk! A real drummer just gets it! Trying to find all the individual samples is a pain in the ass, That’s why i was recommending these loops while they are super cheap…. Get all the parts of a hat position in every one of 400 loops
Thats what i set out to do…. But then time catches up to me! Since i have to have this dumb job and responsibilities 🤣 that’s the ticket tho!
I had an electric set! But it got stolen 😤 haha dude all i want is an acoustic snare, kick n hat… until i get that and want all the toms n cymbals too 🤣
Nanostudio 2 actually has a nice choice of factory HiHat samples, only 4 per model but they're sampled in a way that you can mix them well to get more variations.
BTW I have an old HiHat and a nice snare drum here, nothing beats the wide range of expressions on the real thing, especially the snare.
I usually have 4 different closed hi hats for acoustic drums, 2 or 3 opens , a half open, etc. If I’m programming drums, then I usually just start them on one HH, get the rhythm I like, and then start shuffling. But the best I’ve found is playing them on push or Maschine or whatever with actual pads.
Adding a sample and hold LFO on the velocity, adding a flanger but juuuuust barely, lfo on the tuning, tons of stuff like that.
If you do, you should think about getting a snare too. Playing a hi-hat on its own is a weird experience, and if you can get rhythms and dynamics right between a hi-hat and snare, the Kick is more straightforward. Learning to swing and use the appropriate sticking is really important, but just as much on the snare.
I think our friend @reasOne should honestly get a drum kit and learn to play it. I think he may have some good chops to at least create some full drum loops to pop into a track.
Even better than just getting a few parts of a kit. You can start with a small kit and add on to it, so no need to look like Neil Peart sat behind a kit from day one.
Oh god, Neil Peart's kit was mindboggling. I'm still sad he passed on.
Hihats are such a wildly expressive thing. I'd say if you're looking for a truly "human" feel, then the loops will not only save you time but also give you the best results. All IMO. This pack sounds pretty good!
Something I really like doing when working with one-shots or synthesized hats, if you end up chopping some of this up:
Add some random to the velocities of each hit. It doesn't have to be much. The more effort put into sample and velocity layering, the better this trick works. I played the drums every day for a lot of years, and even then never got to the point where every hit on the hihat was identical. I find adding some random velocity replicates that pretty well. Doing this judiciously on pitch is nice, too, because a human has a hard time hitting the cymbal in the same spot every time. This is similar to @drez's suggestion of S&H on the velocity and tuning.
Still, I've never found programming hats to sound as good as human-recorded loops (genre-specific issue here, of course).
This thread is amazing because there’s a ton of value from some knowledgeable people here! Really dig it all and especially this part @tom_ward - but honestly everything. Shout out @ everyone here. I took notes! From all 🙃
But also because just a few hours ago today I was complaining aloud to a friend about my hi-hats on this loop I’m making and having a hell of time with it in Koala for whatever reason and thought going to piano roll could help but I’m just not used to that process lol
Context - it’s strange cause I NEVER talk about specific music things with them ever. Just projects as a whole not individual instruments and never really share any issues ever. Strange to see this title when I logged on lol.
Also all threads instantly go up a couple notches whenever Neil Peart gets mentioned. Was a mad lad.
https://youtube.com/shorts/mupBZN50i9c?si=0L6dc7f945XkQsvp
Mr. Purdie.
That's so cool
Logic’s session drummer is great at making hi hats. You can get it to make a short loop or your entire track’s worth. It’s probably worth a month’s sub just to make a ton of percussion and hi hats loops (midi and audio).
I often use it to make tambourine and shaker loops in the same way. Often I’ll speed them up, run them though lol-fi plugins to make them sound like they’re on vinyl then convert them to a quick sampler which I play back a few semi tones lower to get them back to the right tempo but at a lower pitch — Like I used to do with my AKAI back when the world was a better place
(*nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. *).
I usually programme my own hats but session drummer is much better than me at acoustic hi hats.
You could make a ton of midi hi hat loops with session drummer in no time. One shot plays them back a treat.
Hi,
An old story...apologies.
Its the early 90s I had an MPC 60 and looking to get on this recording "team" for this producer doing what we called then dance music. Playing live drums was getting tough to get recording gigs.
I spent a whole night making this beat and it was OK, the hats were very "drum machiny sounding". It looked like I wasn't gonna make it.
I asked for and got one extra night to get em right.
So I loaded every hihat I had in the mpc and worked all night into morning....came to the studio.and they were about to just let one of the brothers on the team to just try and play it on my mpc. Further embarrassment:-) The "non funky" white guy:-)
I said listen to what I did first. I got the gig.
Try and get musical variations in the hh part using both velocity and a bunch of different closed/semi closed hats. Small off grid can help, but not a nessaty.IMHO. Try and group em together as light to hard hit sounding. Also, if your sampler supports it use Velocity to Sample Start Time. This alone can turn hard hit samples to work across the velocity range. Tuning them to sound closer to each other.
Its a subject that people have written whole articles on esp in the old days of midi.
An article that,for me, changed the whole way I looked at programing drums, was called the Feel Factor in sound on sound and electronic musician. Was from the late eighties I think. It actually changed the industry IMHO. This before any kind of groove quantization was available. I think the authors last name was Stewart. But I have old timers:-)
Nowadays I use superior drummer 2 and my trusty old Roland ekit in the studio. I do have a cpl of kits programmed in drum perfect pro that works pretty good for hh, except haven't got multiple open hh samples to work in DPP. But I can get it pretty believable.
GL
Bud.. just get Lumbeat Drum.. whatever your style.. Drums conquered.. well, not AUv3.
Also gotta recommend DrumJam (IAA), though. I just discovered how great it is for high hats the other day, in fact. Sorta like how it works in Koala but so many great options for varying the timing and glitching them up!