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 do you use Pages in Loopy Pro?
I'm trying to get my head around Pages in Loopy Pro and what they can do. I'm fairly new to LP and have been reading the manual and Wiki and watching all the tutorials as I design my workflow. I keep seeing mentions of doing this or that on Pages, but I can't find any full explanation of how Pages can be used and how they interact with loops, widgets and actions.
I'm asking for others to share how they use pages in order to build a thread that others can reference and learn from.
Related question: what the hell is Loopy AU? I first saw it mentioned in one of Ed Spiegel's wonderful templates, but I can't find an explanation anywhere when I search. Is Loopy AU functionally a variation on Pages?
I'm working with an M2 iPad Air. I'm feeding a live instrument into LP, learning to integrate Hammerhead, and merging synths from AUM.
Thanks,
Steve
Comments
Hi. I believe Loopy AU is just the AUv3 version of Loopy Pro that you can run inside a host like AUM. Of course Loopy AU cannot then be a host, just a loop player and MIDI controller.
I'll put LP into AUM and give it a try. I'm also trying to figure out how to use my older iPad Air 3 as a second screen for controlling LP. Can I put a Page from stand-alone LP on a satellite iPad?
Loopy Pro can run as an AUv3 in any AUv3 host including Loopy Pro. As noted, an AUv3 can’t load AUv3.
When running as an AUv3, Loopy Pro won’t have the ability to use and control AUv3 that it has when running standalone.
You can also host the AUv3 version of LP inside of LP.... It can come in handy for some things, but usually it's not necessary.
I'm no expert, but I think of pages as just an extension of the workspace. Like for example I have a second page which has buttons to select between about 20 presets of a plug in I use, plus some other parameters like volume. I have a button on the main page that opens the preset page, and I have a big button on the preset page that returns to the main page. That way I'm not crowding the main page with too much stuff, and I can change things easily while playing with big, easy to press buttons, not little fiddly ones.
Unless you are making use of AUM capabilities like multi-in/out AUv3, I’d suggest hosting everything in Loopy Pro. You will generally have better integration and lower CPU use as Loopy will automatically free up the CPU from using idle and muted effects and synths. It also has some convenient features for changing presets and AU parameters.
Pages are just the layouts you work with. All projects start with a least one page. You can add additional pages for whatever you want. Some people use them so that they have alternate layouts in the same project. Some use them to hide buttons and dials with which they don’t directly interact. Some use them for something no sections or different songs.
One thing I 've done with pages is have a couple of widgets for one single instrument on its own page with a couple of donuts of different lengths (1, 2, 4 and 8 bars or something) to record to. Like for recording guitar, have a widget to open your ampsim, or already mapped buttons and sliders for the parameters in there, to keep stuff out of the way, you don't need at the moment. Xy-pads too.
So from what I’m hearing here, pages are merely alternate views of one big canvas. Yes? But what I’m wondering is if a page somehow isolates the actions. Are the loops and widgets on a hidden page idled? I saw somewhere (but I can’t locate it now) the options: “This page; all pages.” That’s where I got the idea that pages affect what triggers and what doesn’t.
I have a lot of complex routings working in AUM now. I’m gradually migrating the functions to LP. I often swap out synths and effects as experiments, and AUM is best for that, so I hear.
Thanks for the heads up about the CPU benefits of hosting as much as possible in Loopy.
Steve
Can I put a Page from stand-alone LP on a satellite iPad? I have an iPad Air 3 I’d like to use as a second screen. (Perhaps this question should be a separate thread?)
You can send midi between iPads. Loopy doesn’t have any special functionality related to using loopy on multiple devices as satellites.
Objects on pages don’t go idle automatically.
“This page vs all pages” appears as an option when choosing targets if the project has multiple pages.
You might find this tutorial useful
Swapping instruments and effects is straightforward in Loopy Pro and you have the benefits of setting up the workspace with buttons and faders and xy-pads anc the like to control your plugins.
@ThinAirX
This video has a big section about pages:
I suspect if you search on YouTube that you will find others that touch on them,
You might also take a look at the sample projects that come with Loopy Pro. Some of them have multiple pages and also browse through yhd projects people have posted on patchstorage:
https://patchstorage.com/platform/loopy-pro/
Play groups can't straddle pages. I guess that's one sense in which they separate functionality.
Pages also have follow actions available for when you select them. So, you can trigger things to happen when you switch to a page. A few examples could be setting a new tempo, or fading out and stopping loops on another page, or changing effect parameters.
If you have an established AUM centric work flow, using Loopy Pro AU as an extension of it can be a good way to go. For me that only complicates things, but I never had a well established workflow to begin with.
If using Loopy Pro as an AU in AUM, a powerful approach is to use it as an Multi-Input FX. That's one true instance of Loopy that can receive input from multiple channels in AUM.
I’ve been through all the tutorials, but I’ll re-watch those recommended here. There’s SO much for a beginner to grasp about LP that one pass isn’t enough to absorb all the powerful features and how they interact.
Follow actions for selected pages is the kind of function I was fishing for. I’m just beginning to understand follow actions, but I can see how they might make pages a powerful way to manage workflow and control a complex setup. I’ll experiment.
Please explain. Does that mean that, for example, Group 1 can only exist on one page and not have members on another page? How about having Group 1 on one page, Group 2 on another page and invoking exclusivity—click on a clip in Group 2 and anything running in Group 1 (on the other page) stops. Or does group numbering reset on each page?
RE: Michael’s “One Button, Many Pages” video: Now it’s obvious to me, but the first time I saw it I mistakenly thought the “current page” in the bindings message meant “this page you’re on right now as you make the bindings.” i.e., if I'm initiating the binding on Page B, “current page” would set up the binding only for Page B. Now I see the opposite is true: the binding works on the page being viewed currently while in play mode.
Yes
I don't know. Wouldn't take more than 10 minutes to experiment though.
There's a wiki out there just itching for experienced technical writers like you to pitch in. 😉😎
@wim I took your suggestion. I loaded up some test pages and invoked groups. From my experiment I confirmed:
This answers some of my original OP question about page behavior. Groups affect play/stop only on the current page, but they are addressable from anywhere with widgets and actions. Which means that you can isolate groups by changing pages and get one type of behavior, but have additional control even if not on that page.
While I was at it, I experimented with colors. They appear to work the same no matter how many pages they’re on. For example, yellow clips on any and all pages act as one color. I experimented with volume and the volume slider controls all yellow.
Steve
Some time ago I used pages as sections.
So I had instruments/tracks in columns and chords in lines. Whenever I changed page, was for a different progression/section.
It's one of the multiple ways you could set it up. But i'm not creative
Thanks @ThinAirX - that's a nice concise summary. 👍🏼
For me, I'm using LP in my hybrid guitar pedal board. I trigger my effects in LP via a an external midi trigger audio midi interface.
So pages help me have varios effect widgets and setups with different BPM tempo for playing live at church.
So I trigger the pages via a Mvave Chocolate Bluetooth midi controller.
Works great! The pages are a total blessing cause my setup doesn't really change that much. Each page sort of works like a different song in our worship set.