GLOBAL – Introducing Loop. It’s an innovative new music production app created by Nokia that’s exclusive and free for Nokia N8 and C7 owners. It allows you to create your own tunes using the device’s microphone and the sounds from your own life. We’ve been using it for just a couple of hours and it’s a lot of fun. Click through for all the details.

When you start the app, there’s the usual choice of opening an existing file or starting a new one. If you choose the latter option, then there’s a choice of ten background beats to choose from, or you can make your own, if you’re really ambitious.

Below is the main screen. We’re going to explain this in more detail:

Look at the circles first. Going from the centre of the screen, the red button toggles recording, so you can capture samples. These might be your own voice, recorded music, your car starting up, or whatever takes your fancy. It’s best to wear headphones while you do this: otherwise, your new samples get muddled with the existing sounds.

The concentric coloured rings are sampled sounds. You can add up to four at a time, but the app lets you merge them together into one, so theoretically, you can add dozens of samples. These samples can have a timing from 90bmp-170bpm and last 2-8 bars. 

The four hemispheres at the outer edges are special sounds, keyed to the background beat you chose. For a hip-hop style, these are scratch effects, for example. For French Electro… actually, we couldn’t face trying that one. 😉

The software takes care of the timing and pitch of your samples, by the way, so they’ll fit in with your background beat seamlessly.

Next we have the mixers and the output options.

The mixer’s functionality will be obvious, allowing you to alter the volume of your various samples. Once you’re satisfied, you can save your results, export it as an MP3, set it as a ring tone or share it on Facebook. There’s also a dedicated hub for keen Loopers at www.loopapp.net.

So what sort of things can you produce? Here’s one we (didn’t) make earlier:

yshi laugh by Chris621

And lastly, here’s a video, testing the limits of what can be done.

Anyway, download it from Ovi Store, here. Within minutes, you’ll be creating *cough* wicked beats. If you put them on the loopapp site or SoundCloud, then share the links here.

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