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.
Comments
Yes, each audio unit input has a midi channel filter so all you need to is set the output channel for each Drambo track and set each plugin to listen on that channel only. Drambo works great in Loopy Pro. In fact, after trying a bunch of other sequencers out of interest the past few weeks, I'm back to Drambo.
@EnergyCrush - catching up on your comments today, it does sound like Koala should do it for you. It's one of the least expensive options as well.
(When midi looping is released in Loopy Pro it will meet your needs even more directly, but in the meantime, and even after, you just can't lose with Koala.)
Input quantization too? I'm not so sure.
Loopy will have optional quantization when recording. But if you mean live quantization of input (so that you hear the adjustment as you play), no. What I mean is it can the notes down in the note sequencer quantized if you like, rather than having to do it manually afterward.
Quantizing what you hear as you play is awful, completely unworkable if you ask me. Unless you play every note early or exactly on the grid, you don't hear them until the next quantization point. I find it impossible to play like that.
Recording quantization is what i was talking about. 👍🏽
The MidiQ script for Mozaic on Patchstorage is pretty neat for "relatively playable" live quantization, but yes, generally i agree with you, live quantization confuses the ear too much.
Ya just gotta practice that finger drumming baby.
Midi quantization will be mind-blowing in Loopy Pro when it's released.
I totally agree. Unfortunately I've also discovered that just adding Drambo, sitting inactive, adds 10-15% CPU when not idled. And Drambo doesn't like being idled. All other applicable sequencers I've tried so far (Koala, mker, and Prism) add virtually nothing when not doing anything.
I have to have a rethink now as to whether I center on Drambo for sequencing duties. My iPad 9th Gen is pretty under powered. Probably gonna have to be Prism, though I don't care for it too much (personally).
@EnergyCrush - I'm going to spend some time today with Koala as the sequencer. It doesn't meet all my needs "on paper", but your approach of just sequencing notes, then handling automation separately has me thinking.
I will miss getting more mileage out of sequences with probability and cycle conditions though. But that's just me being lazy and drifting from the real beauty of Loopy - spontaneity. tbh, I'm happiest and most productive when I leave all that tweaking behind.
@wim : that 10% may be 10% of a throttled cpu
Of course.
But it's the net difference between Drambo and the other sequencers that is the point. Swapping them out could, but probably doesn't, change the allocated cores. But, even if you load them all up in a project and disable and enable them, you can see the change. It's remotely possible core swapping is going on in that case too, but unlikely. Drambo clearly has a higher impact. That's important for those who are trying to minimize overhead.
[edit] CPU indications are dodgy at best. There's clearly at least a 5% overhead penalty for Drambo on my device, sometimes higher, never lower. I'm not gonna worry about it too much myself.
Thanks for the info.
That is my hope as well, seeing MIDI in Loopy. But yes, I may well dive into Koala first and see for now, it does look very promising.
I'm not so worried about the cost of each of these products so much as just buying more things I won't use it won't really work at this stage, since most of them don't have any trial/demo option. Big cruff avoidance
Loopy has been fantastic, allowing me a level of immediacy to capture ideas and do retakes that I had been greatly hoping for. I had been looking at another Roland MC-505 Mk III (haven't been able to bring my Mk I from the states yet) and had tried a Tascam DP-03SD ... had ordered a Tascam Model 12 as well, which may have been a great replacement for my Mackie Pro12fx v2 but got cancelled by the sender for a still unknown reasons.
But I think none of these really would have given me what Loopy Pro already has, withuch more functionality while adding zero burden to the fast workflow.
I did have to swap the Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD with my RME Babyface Pro fs for better floor noise, gain, and parity of record and playback volumes.
I highly expect the Arturia DrumBrute Impact to replace the Elektron Digitakt and be the best drum tool for this workflow for me right now after working through a similar breakdown of drum machines (atm don't want software for that) - I'm not opening a can of worms on Elektron with anyone ... I will keep my Digitone in the workflow with the Novation Summit for all the synth power I'm likely to ever want, but neither the Digitakt nor Analog Rytm Mk II are as immediate as the Impact, and I just can't deal with trying to go through the hundreds of thousands of samples I have to put together even a single, let alone several, drum kits right now.
I then only wanted a vocoder (grabbed Qneo Voices Synth, as while it may take a little more to get setup, I don't expect to need to do that every time once I find a decent sweet spot and bake it into a template), and a very immediate MIDI sequencer.
With all those I can keep throwing own my idea and decide what feels strong enough to finish from a computer, where I have mixing and mastering templates to work from.
Feels very close, feels good.
Of course I'm also quick to question an unreleased update, especially given the already refined list I have. Of course I have no way to know, though I do feel Loopys modus operandi seems inline with what we might be likely see in added MIDI functionality. In fact the only two I feel less confident about would be auto-quantize and overdub. Overdub seems the shakiest of all, given Loopys approach to audio retakes.
I'll hope for it when we see what comes to pass, and figure out what I can work with in the meantime. Or, if I don't find something, continue recording off the cuff for now, before adding any burdens to the chain
I don't know that I've ever seen real-time quantization. Yeah, it's not what I was thinking of or looking for.
Actually, what has popped up in a few cases that I really like the idea of is non-destructive quantization, where what quantization gets applied can change without affecting the original notes at all. Seems potentially more adaptable for playing different part styles ... fast or slow basslines, long evolving pads, or custom arpeggiations, which I do a lot of.
Quantization is the only part of Koala I saw I wasn't sure about, as docs say it is just 1/16ths, no indication it can be changed. That might be fine, I don't usually play anything that fast, but in some cases it might make a wreck of a triplet somewhere ...
I've confirmed that MIDI Record Quantization will be destructive.
However, it's also possible to apply non-destructive quantization automatically after recording with an action, or with settings on the clip. So, as usual with Loopy Pro, there's a way to have your cake and eat it too. 😎
Thanks for keeping me up to date, I hope you find it as useful as I hope to, and am interested in how it works for you.
It's where I've landed. I got super burnt out in the middle of working on an album, overwhelmed to the point I just had to stop music altogether ... stopped writing lyrics, stopped singing, stopped making anything.
Some of it was that I had used FXpansion's Geist to add busier drums that were fundamental to the songs with too many layered hits to separate with transients and that I could not recreate or come close to with any samples or powerhouse drums that I had (NI Battery, Maschine w/a good deal of expansions, XLN XO (to get a handle on all my samples), Algonaut Atlas 2 (to also try getting a handl on all my samples), Liqube Audio's Resonic (actually a very amazing lightning fast tool for quickly going through and cutting up samples), countless others.
Loopy Pro and the immediacy of what I have setup in another room has been a fresh breath of air. I don't mind setting up and routing all the hardware and cables, testing and tweaking things to get base levels good, or even going through the hassle of finding the right pieces of gear, having it shipped to the states, and figuring out how to get it here, as long as it fits the mindset I can sustain right now ... just, no computer, no regular updates (and I already run Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC to minimize that as much as possible) no sample digging, no menu diving, and where possible minimal tweaking to presets. Anything more and I start to feel that sense of being overwhelmed again, really don't want to see that happen again.
I wonder what the likelihood of getting A Tasty Pixel to see this thread and desired MIDI wants is ...
To clarify, you can turn on non-destructive playback quantization as a preference in Loopy so that while the raw midi is captured, playback is quantized. There is both standard quantization and swing and groove quantization.
The setting can be global, per color or specific to an individual clip.
Lol, that seems reasonable. I actually don't entirely mind quantization working destructively either, even if it means I have to make multiple takes. That aligns with how audio works right now, and I treat it as an opportunity to play a bit better each time. Feels like good practice, since the motivation to get the part in is already there ...
Oh! That's actually perfect ... I actually thought that is how non-destructive quantization worked - records as-as, and then quantization can be applied for playback.
Is that not right? Maybe I'm using the term wrong ...
Man ... yes, if overdub MIDI recording was also possible, it seems like MIDI implementation inside Loopy Pro would be amazingly spot-on ...
Both will be available. Destructive quantization on record, or non-destructive applied to playback. 😎
Overdub MIDI recording will be possible.
In most respects, midi looping and audio looping will work the same. Plus all the goodies you wouldn't expect such as reverse playback, speed adjustments, layer peel and replace ...
This includes notes and CC/PC messages too, though only Notes will be editable at first.
Awesome
That would be absolutely fine, and amazing. I don't envision even modifying notes after the fact, if I need to play something over, that is fine.
But once I have the sequence down, just being able to tweak filters and other FX before recording the audio will be fantastic, not to mention changing the instrument so I record either for other verses, or for in parallel with panning. Just being able to have MIDI sequences I can get down just as quickly would be phenomenal.
TL;DR - The older Prism videos are a bit out of date due to changes in the app.
FYI - Looks like Prism is not going to be in the running here in this case, but I'm a huge Prism fan (but still a beginner). I would like to point out, for anyone who's interested in Prism, that there have been a massive number of changes to the interface and also a ton of enhancements since the videos listed here were put out. The manual has been greatly expanded and updated as well. The link to the manual and feedback options are built into the app.
That is good to know, thank you. I've been hunting for docs for many of these programs so that I can determine whether they will accomplish what I'm looking for without having to buy the app just to find out it won't work for me. That parts been a little frustrating with iOS apps.
The developer is actually updating Prism’s documentation and in-app help tips as we speak .. and yes, many many changes, enhancements and features have been added to Prism since the above videos came out.. but I do think the videos are still very helpful in showing the basic functionality of Prism, especially the series of videos @sfm put out.
Prism’s developer @A_Mortal_Mage also has a roadmap site with more features to come, which is definitely worth checking out and throwing your own ideas in ..
https://prism.featurebase.app/
+1 - Agreed - the older videos are excellent. All you need to do is remember some screens will be different, but the overall workflow of the app is the same.
Thank you for sharing that, it will be another to look at. It might still prove not as immediate as some others, but maybe I can get a better sense of that through the videos.
@wim @espiegel123 While perusing various tools, I came across Mozaic again, and this time started looking through uploaded scripts, noticing you both have made contributions that show up on patchstorage.
While so far most of the screenshots I've seen don't really demonstrate it's use for displaying a piano roll (which isn't strictly necessary), there are certainly scripts for quantization, looping, channel control, etc.
I'm curious if you think it is potentially a sufficient tool for just building exactly what I'm wanting with no cruff as opposed to picking up something already made.
As the search continues in both hardware and software, I also came across a failed kickstarter open-source project called MIDINA that incorporates a Raspberry PI v5 to make a MIDI sequencer that seems to check a lot of boxes (he had an Akai Force and Squarp Hapix that he partially drew from during design and testing). I'm not certain that makes as much sense to most people with something like the Retrokits RK-008 out there, but as I believe I could actually legally acquire all the parts necessary myself in Mexico, I'm in contact with the dev to see if a version of the source code is still available somewhere as a potentially alternative in hardware form. While I could deal with any language the open source is written in, it appears to be Python, which is my daily driver.