Hi! If your question relates to Loopy Pro, you may find a faster answer at one of the other Loopy Pro communities (https://loopypro.com/communities) – this forum has been closed down.
Triggering loops on note values.
Ok, so there is one thing that bugs me with Loopy. Don't get me wrong, it's a great app but there's one feature I'd like to able to configure or turn off or something, unless of course there already is a solution to my predicament. My issue is that if I have an 8 bar loop and a 2 bar loop and I want to use the 2 bar loop as an intro (when recording a session or such) and then trigger the 8 bar loop, I have to wait 6 bars before triggering the 2 bar loop, unless I want a really long intro. To me, it is important to be able to trigger a loop on a specific note (whole, half, eight, etc) and not have to wait for the next time my triggered loop has finished a lap, so to speak. Any thoughts?
Also, I beg you Michael not to adhere to all the feature requests that people are making regarding Loopy. I think Loopy is already becoming somewhat convoluted with features and gestures, so please don't make it bloated!
Also, I beg you Michael not to adhere to all the feature requests that people are making regarding Loopy. I think Loopy is already becoming somewhat convoluted with features and gestures, so please don't make it bloated!
Comments
Hmm, I get your point, although I'm not sure there's a great deal I can do about it without, as you say, cluttering up the interface - it's one of the disadvantages of a looper over, say, a multi-track recorder, I think. Still, I'll give it some thought.
As far as existing interface clutter goes, I'm sorry to hear you're finding it a bit messy! Is there anything in particular bothering you? Anything you'd drop?
In terms of the UI, I think my main concern is the size of things. Adding the ability to use 12 tracks on an iPhone is cool, but it makes each track to small to be used for anything other than triggering on/off, or recording. Any editing, volume, panning or fine tuning the starting point is almost impossible with 9 or 12 tracks. Did you look into using panes instead of having only one screen? Each pane would have 6 tracks, and adding one more pane would give you 6 more tracks. I realise if you're live looping you want everything available to you at one tap and not have to swipe or something to access more tracks, so maybe I'll just have to stop using 9 or more tracks
Also, the bottom bar (with the metronome and everything) works well, except for the metronome, in my opinion. I'm one of those who always sets a tempo before I record anything, and the lack of precise control over the metronome is frustrating. Swiping back and forth to set the tempo doesn't work well if you want an exact tempo, say 67bpm, as it tends to jump too far. It would be nice to be able to type in a tempo, using a keyboard or a spinner or something. On the loop length control bar, you utilise panes. Perhaps that could be used on the metronome as well, by breaking it up into three parts, time signature, tempo, and tap tempo. If you want to tap the tempo I don't think you really care what actual, by numbers, tempo it is, but if you do you could always swipe and manually adjust. It would give each feature more space to do its thing.
Here's a crazy thought...I'm full of those by the way
I'm rambling now so I'll stop
Oh, one more thing. If I have a session with 8 tracks and I change the layout to 6 tracks and accidentally save, I will loose two of my tracks. Not a big thing but maybe having some warning or perhaps making the track layout part of the session, so that when I load a 8 track session it will give me a 9 track layout, and if you load a 4 track session, a 6 track layout, and so forth.
Paragraph 1 (track triggering): Possibly - I intend, at some point, to make loops behave like triggerable samples (triggered via MIDI messages, most likely, or perhaps able to be put into a 'sample playback' mode, where you can trigger the loop with a tap or hold). If I manage to do that, it might be relatively doable to incorporate what you describe. I'm not entirely decided on that course of action due to the complexity that it will introduce - I'm already getting users complaining about not being able to understand the app, and I'm wary about adding extra functionality that modifies the base behaviour. Still, I'm continuing to mull it over.
Paragraph 2 (UI size): Hmm - just use 6 or 9 tracks, then ;-) The default is 6 for the very reason you describe - as 9 on 12 tracks become quite small on the screen. I considered never making it adjustable for the same reason (principle), but upon popular request, decided to open it up to being configured if users wanted more tracks, at the expense of screen real-estate. Having it in 'pages' isn't an option, as tracks become too inaccessible - the app's main focus is live use, so it wouldn't make sense. But if you don't like it, just configure it the way you want
Paragraph 3 (metronome): The metronome adjustment thing *is* a spinner - you can hold and drag if you like, but you can also tap to adjust in increments of 0.01BPM (or hold to adjust in increasingly fast increments). I'm not keen to add anything that requires keyboard input, as that will mess up the interface a bit, but I'm pretty satisfied with the controls that are there, personally speaking. I'll keep your other thoughts on the matter in mind, but I think that 'd rather focus on other things for now, unless more folks complain about the interface
Paragraph 4 (separate panel and menu access button): I think that would clutter things up a bit, I'm afraid; I'm not really sold!
Paragraph 5 (loop layout changes): Actually, it used to behave the way you describe - if the session had more tracks than were configured, it'd show more tracks, but this was confusing users, so I made the number of tracks fixed. I understand your point, but I think that I'll probably keep things as they are, for now - if you have more tracks in the session, then I don't understand why you'd want to see less on screen, anyway; I think the take-away there is just to not set the number of tracks to a lower number when you're editing. Of course, I'm always open for persuasion by popular demand, but I haven't had any other comments on this mechanism, so I'll leave it be for now.
Phew! Cheers for all the thoughts! I'm-a gonna go lie down now ;-)