Build songs easily with this loop sampling app

Looper is a simple app for making music from short loops you record into your Android phone.

Record, loop, and combine

Looper is incredibly basic. There are six pads, and each can hold a sample. Tap one, choose how many beats you want in the loop, and it will start recording as soon as a sound is made. Your loop will then play continuously, and there’s a volume control next to each loop pad.

While your first loop is playing, you can tap another pad to record your next loop. If you’re not happy with anything, just drag it to the top of the screen to delete it. If six loops are not enough – no problem. When you’re happy with a combination of loops, you can drag them onto each other to combine them, leaving you more free pads to record loops.

There’s a metronome which you can turn on if you want, and you can change the bpm of your loops. Two more buttons allow you to stop and play your loop, and save it as an MP3 to your device.

Simple, but limited

While Looper is pretty simple, there’s a marked lack of any instruction. Musically minded people will be happy just playing around with the app to learn how to use it, but less experienced people might be frustrated. You also lose some sound fidelity when merging loops, which is a shame.

With no settings, you can’t choose where to save your files, and in the current version you will lose your unsaved loops if you exit the app. There’s also no way to import samples – you can only use Looper to record via the microphone. That’s great for looping live sounds, whether recording your guitar or human beatboxing, but no use for cutting samples from existing songs or recordings.

Functional, but outdated

Last updated in 2011, Looper still feels unfinished. It looks like the developer intended to add more features, but has stopped working on the project. Nevertheless, Looper works as a simple loop recorder, and it’s completely free with no ads.