As I was relaxing yesterday after a 'hard' day's work (no shit) and minding my own business, I decided to watch this week's Cranky Geeks videocast with Dvorak & Co. At a given moment they started a conversation about this iPhone app, called Looptastic that I never heard before. One of the cranks on the show started demoing a tune while composing the song in real time, based on samples (created earlier) turned into mashup loops. Watch the YT clip to see how it works. The whole thing was taking place on his iPhone that he had connected to a set of amplified loudspeakers. The app has a free version with some free loops as well. Those of you with an iPhone or iPod Touch, go download it and have fun. There are various versions of Looptastic but I went to buy the Gold version (a few dollars worth). They also offer in-app purchases of additional loops. For less than 4 dollars you can buy a loop edition (Hip-Hop, Ambient, Progressive House, Minimal House, ...) Each edition is subdivided in 10 groups of 10 loops each. You can't combine loops from two different groups, mind you.
Once you start 'composing' you let your creativity fly... loads of useless crap comes out for sure. Eventually you are ready to go for a pro recording... you start from scratch again and play your loops to your heart's desire, just like a pro DJ (like the kid on the clip, with electronic effects and all). Eventually you decide to close down your session; you then save your next 'platinum' track under some cool killer name. Next, you export all your tracks you recorded into your PC or Mac . That works via your home WLAN (in AIF sound format). The app establishes a wifi pipe using HTTP, meaning you just start your browser and link to a resource that Looptastic told you to go look for. You find a nice page with all your 'creative compositions' sitting there one by one. A simple click on any of them and there fly the megabytes from your iPhone into the downloads folder in you laptop storage, or whatever other box you care to use.
After importing, I normally use Audacity (free and cool) for some minor sound edits and then import the MP3s to iTunes. From there on the route to the National hit-parade is only a matter of days! Go check one of mine here... Why did I call that one 'pirates', you sez??? Don't ask!
2 comments:
Glad you liked it! (I made the Cranky Geeks loops Sam Levin remixed on the show; I've been meaning to blog about the process.)
By the way, the latest version of Looptastic Gold does allow you to load loops from multiple sets. While your mix is playing, tap the tab at the left side of the screen and then tap the bottom icon in the panel that opens. You can then load the ten loops from any other set into your current mix.
Here's the segment of the Cranky Geeks episode with the Looptastic demonstration. I love how the cranks start to grin as they recognize the sounds.
www.soundtrends.com/Cranktastic.mov
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