Importing Audio Loops from Function Loops

In collaboration with Function Loops, Audio Evolution Mobile provides a number of free and commercial loop packs. 

To import an audio loop, select Import sample loops from the Project menu. The following dialog will appear, displaying the loop packs and their contents that are present on your device. Press the Shop button to display the loop packs that you can download and purchase. Function Loops have very kindly allowed two of their packs to be made available for free to all Audio Evolution Mobile users, as can be seen in the screenshot. Download them from the Shop. All other loop packs require an in-app purchase.

As can be seen in the loop browser, selecting a loop pack from the left column will display the loops it contains in the right column. You can tap on a loop to preview it. Select the loop you require and press Load to open the following Stretch and Pitch dialog.

This dialog allows you to tailor the loop to your project as it is imported by adjusting the BPM (Beats Per Minute tempo) and key (pitch). This is achieved by stretching the clip to match the BPM and pitch-shifting it to match the key. As can be seen, all Function Loops loops are named following a naming convention which Audio Evolution Mobile understands and uses for this import process.

As you can see the dialog displays the Sample BPM at the top.

Next is the Project BPM. Depending on the project status, this setting may or may not display the current project temp BPM by default. If the audio loop being imported is to be the first track in an empty project, the project BPM will be set to the same BPM as the loop sample, as can be seen above. If you load the loop using this setting the project tempo BPM will automatically be changed to the value shown as the loop is imported.

If, however, the project already contains a track at the point at which you import an audio loop, the Project BPM in this dialog will, by default, display the current project BPM. In either case, you can of course enter your own BPM value manually, but please note that the project BPM will be changed according to match the value set for the last loop imported so if you don't want that to be the overall project tempo BPM, you will have to remember to change it again afterwards.

Stretch optimization allows you to specify if the stretch algorithm should be optimized for a musical or speech based clip. In most situations, having the Automatic box checked will give you the best results.

Next, we move onto the pitch adjustment section. First is the Sample Key. This selects the key the sample loop is in according to the naming convention - in this case, the key of Eb. If, for some reason, the wrong key has been entered it can be changed using the drop-down selection.

Project Key allows you to select the key the project is in if it already contains musical tracks. Select from the drop-down list.

If the sample key differs from the project key, it will need to be pitch-shifted, or transposed, to match the project key otherwise they won't match musically. This can be done by pitch-shifting upwards or downwards until the same key is reached on different octaves. Thus, the Up and Down selections allow you to decide which direction you'd like the pitch-shifting take.

Once you have everything set up, press OK and the loop will be imported into your project, stretched to have the correct BPM value and pitch-shifted to have the same key as the other elements in your project.

For information on how to create repeats of your imported loop on the track timeline and for more information about audio editing generally, please see here.

Preparing your own Loops for Import

You may have read the last segment and thought that it would be useful to be able to import your own loops using the Stretch and Pitch dialog rather than just importing them using the regular audio import method described here. This is easily done but it does require your sample loops to follow the naming convention which Audio Evolution Mobile uses for this process. As such, there might be a bit of preparation you need to do first.

When Import sample loops is selected from the Project options, Audio Evolution Mobile looks in the AudioEvolution > SamplePacks folder on your device for folders containing samples. By default, there is no folder for user samples so the first thing you want to do is create a folder for your samples to be placed in.

Next, you want to rename your sample loops if they don't already follow the app's naming convention. The naming convention is as follows.

NameA_NameB_Key_000bpm

The parts in green are user defined variables. The parts in red must appear as they are shown.

NameA allows you to name your sample so you can identify it.

NameB allows you to have a second part to the name if required, it can be missed out if not (though only have one underscore ( _ ) between NameA and Key if you do that). If you need to add a third part to the name, you can, just make sure it is separated using an underscore ( _ ) from the other elements.

Key is where you would put the key for the sample loop. Use any of "C", "C#", "D", "Eb", "E", "F", "F#", "G", "Ab", "A", "Bb", "B".

Finally 000 is where you put the numerical BPM value followed by lowercase bpm as shown in red. If the bpm is lower than 100, prepend it by a 0, like 090 when the bpm is 90.

So, for example, if your original sample loop is named 'My Bass Loop Number 1.wav', clearly that doesn't conform to the naming convention so you would need to rename it to something like 'Bass_01_D_120bpm.wav'. 

Once you've renamed your loops accordingly, simply copy and paste them in to the folder you created in the AudioEvolution > SamplePacks folder on your device.

Now, when you select Import sample loops from the Project options your folder should be included in the Loop Packs on the left of the selection dialog shown at the top of this section, and your loops will be shown on the right when your folder is selected.