Transform your phone into a looper pedal with the new Beats and Loops drum machine and looper app
Trigger drum fills, record loops and jam away – assuming your screen survives
Finnish developer Kovaluu has introduced a new app, Beats and Loops, which transforms your phone into a drum machine and looper pedal.
Before you hear the word “pedal” and think about stomping down on your phone, Kovaluu stresses that while the app can indeed be foot-controlled, you need only to place your phone on the ground and “lightly swing” your foot above the screen to operate it.
Essentially, you’re mimicking the “stomp” part of a stompbox – just be careful not to get too excited and accidentally smash your phone screen in the process.
As for the app itself, you can use your foot to start and stop songs, trigger drum fills, switch song parts and record loops hands-free.
The drum sounds on the “Beats” side are sampled from a vintage Ludwig kit and played back in uncompressed, multi-sampled 24-bit quality. There’s a selection of 50 beats with A and B parts and fills, as well as a cajon kit and a metronome.
Tempo is fully adjustable and the user can program new drum kick patterns.
Loops, meanwhile, can be recorded directly through the phone’s microphone or via an external source. Recordings are automatically synced to the beat, so there’s no worry about timing when starting or ending takes.
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MIDI and external audio interfaces are supported as well.
Beats and Loops is available for download for $3.99.
For more information, head to Kovaluu.
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Rich is the co-author of the best-selling Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion. He is also a recording and performing musician, and a former editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has authored several additional books, among them Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the companion to the documentary of the same name.
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