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.
putting together loops, waveforms and so on........
So, I'm not only green in the ios recording world, but pretty much in recording/mixing/mastering in general.
What are the tips/tricks/ways you all connect in yer DAW seperate loops/Bins/sections to create a song?
When I recorded an album about 6 years ago, the studio I used was just getting up and going, and the guy was pretty new at it all. I basically played my songs on my guitar all the way through to the click track. If I was off on timing, he may of had to cut and paste, but basically just a straight play through.
I guess I don't know if Rock/Metal musicians typically do straight through play to the click, or if they piece the song together like, I think a lot of electronic musicians do? Maybe? I know I can play to a click track in time for a shorter time frame, than for a 3-6 minute duration. I'm ADD, and I can start thinking of squirrels or lots of other shitsobeeshe. Well, then my timing goes off.
So, where can I read something or what videos can I watch, or what do you all do, to piece together a song? Like I've got some drum beats I've sequenced in Rock Drum, and portions of the song I've done in song mode, and they sound great, until I try to put them together. Same with guitar parts I try to piece together. I try to get the sections lined up nicely, there are usually audio pops, or the sections don't line up and provide a fluent song.
It seems like I'm better off with playing straight through, but then there are parts where my timing is off, what do I do about that? How do you fix that as well?
Does it make sense what I'm asking?
Comments
if I were recording a "song" (or most traditional pieces for that matter), I would want to track a performance straight-thru. As a bass player, it's what I'm called to do. For this project, for example( https://thethomaselement.bandcamp.com/album/casting-lines-ep-album ), all my bass guitar parts were tracked straight-thru. The live hand percussion was tracked straight-thru, but the percussion loops was sound-design I did in an Emu Orbit module. This was all done back in the mid 00's on a Roland 880EX DAW.
For comparison, I've refined my chill-style on iOS and work with loops. Therefore I don't necessarily perform straight-thru. Beatmaker2 is what I employ mostly for composition & arrangement. What app are you tracking and arranging with? If your using the Rock Drum app(which I'm not familiar with), maybe look up some YouTube vids. I know it helped me when getting up-n-runnin' with Beatmaker2 and other apps.
It's a broad question but for rock music, to whatever extent possible, I'm in the 'play through' camp. That doesn't necessarily mean a single perfect take though. Play until you flub, stop and back up a few measures and then punch in and continue. Rinse and repeat. Be sure to be playing along just before the punch in point to ensure a smoother transition.
Thanks guys, appreciate the responses. The punch in thing is something I need to get better at. Got to admit, the time I've messed around trying to patch different sections together could have been spent punching in, or perfecting it.
Thanks for sharing the tunes Thomas. Sounds great. I'll listen more when I'm not at work.
I'm recording rock stuff on iOS. I use Auria for arranging drum loops and moving parts of songs around. If you're already doing something like what follows, I apologize. First, make sure your tempo is set to the proper BPM. Set the transport to bars/beats. Set the snap feature to whichever unit makes the most sense for your edit/punch (bars, beats, 1/4, etc). I've been able slice 8-12 tracks, move them to other parts of the song and deleted huge sections this way; sometimes a chorus is too long or a middle 8 is better in a different spot on the timeline. All my studio experience is analog, so I'm still amazed at how seamless this works. I am unable to hear the edits, even on acoustic parts. I also use the automatic punch for just about every instrument, which also works great, given you punch in the right place. I have RDM but haven't tried using it for recording. I do have a bunch of third party drum loops from The Loop Loft and Drums on Demand that I imported to Auria. Auria has some drum loops in their store that seem good for metal/hard rock, but I haven't tried them. I'm not sure what DAW you're using, but Auria has really blown my mind. I never had a desk top or lap top DAW, just a Tascam porta-studio cassette 4 track back in the 90s. My "real" studio work was all outside the control room, so I never paid attention to what was happening with the computers. Absolutely crazy what I can do now, and I haven't even scratched the surface yet. Someday maybe I'll understand midi. Sorry for the digression and hope this post helps in some way.
Hardly a digression! Nice post.
supanorton, thanks for the detailed post! I'm using Auria, well stumbling my way into it. I appreciate the explanation on the snap feature.
I miss my Tascam Portstudio. Nothing better than letting the tape roll for 15-30 mins to catch all the in-between take banter.
If I'm gonna download some drum loops from "drums on demand", how would I do that? On my Mac and then import to the iPad via iTunes? Or can I get them directly to the iPad. Also in what format should I get them, apple loops or wavs or what? Thanks!!! I'm a nubee to iPad music production.
You could use iTunes or iFunbox (for Mac, NOT the iOS app). I think Apple Loops is the best format for Auria because Auria will automatically time stretch the loops for you.
You may be able to download the zipped loop packs directly to AudioShare, but I'm not sure about that. Unless someone can confirm, your best bet is to download them to your Mac first.
Yes you can use the web browser built into Audioshare to download zipped samples directly into Audioshare? The program will then extract the zip file. Any samples can then be opened in your app of choice as normal
I personally find this is highly equipment dependent. I the days of tape sync to a computer sequencer I used to create verses choruses etc in the digital domain driving synths, but the audio from guitar and vocals would be run through from the top each time because it's easier that way. I wouldn't even punch in corrections on tape, it was just easier to take it from the top and get it better, the previous takes counted as practice. Later in the 90s when I stepped away from computers and went totally hardware sequencer based (but no vocals), (CSQ600 etc) the longest sections were only about a lines worth so I focused on introducing variations by spending most of my time playing the knobs.
This was also the way a lot of other people at the time were heading, and hence a lot of the 90s electronic music was dance oriented (mine was never intended to be — keep it under your hat but mine was intended to be porno music, used on a CDROM porn mag I was producer designer of) and highly repetitive within short durations or time spans, and the novelty came from patch alterations. But there's very little overall flow of a total composition, or at least, rarely, because the equipment makes you think in smaller sections of granularity and you forget about the shape of the whole. You forget where your started from and have little idea of what it should look like when it ends, when you're still in progress in the middle. It's not really a composition, more a jam session with yourself, but a valid art form nevertheless.
Nowadays I think in sections and treat them in differently ways at different times. I've no idea why but the past two songs I started with then middle eight, then did the verses and choruses, then spent time arranging which of those went where. Then I did the stuff that flows all the way through again, to make it sound like an integrated whole. Singing, I tend to sing a line over and over and over then the next line, then the next line, into Logic Pro X (not tried iPad vocals seriously yet) and it'll be all the verses and later all the choruses, and so on, as they're supposed to have a different feel to them anyway. I still don't do 100% iPad recording (although the idea generation is, as well as the riff and and structure deciding and creation, much as I used a QY20 for decades ago on the train). I collect from the iPad into garageband and load that into Mac GarageBand and read that into LPX.
Then just before the song is finished, I have to remember to put the drums on, so with the whole thing assembled back on LPX I use “drummer” (Nikki) to do the drums. This is in sharp contrast with how I used to compose I the tape sync days, when I spent far more time than I liked to do my HR16B or TR-808 drums before I did anything else because I believed it was necessary to do so, and failed to realise that I'm simply not interested In drums and find the whole area of drums tedious and unnecessary.