Welcome to LOOM

LOOM is a live looping performance instrument. You record and overdub audio on its audio tracks and MIDI on its instrument tracks, and either perform by hand at the looper or play the tracks against an arrangement you drew in advance. LOOM makes no network calls, so it runs on a Mac with no internet connection.

This manual describes the window control by control. Start with Your first loop, then use the rest as a reference.

The manual is a PDF that ships inside LOOM, so you have it on your own disk. Choose File ▸ User Guide or press ⌘/. It opens in Preview, or in whichever app your Mac uses for PDFs.

Your first loop

You need an audio interface, or your Mac's built-in input.

1. Open LOOM. The notice line at the bottom left reads opening the audio device..., then engine running once the interface is open.

   

2. Choose your interface. In the side panel's GLOBAL tab, turn the INPUT DEVICE and OUTPUT DEVICE chips. Both start at (system default). See the side panel.

   

3. You already hear yourself. Plug into input 1 and you hear it in the speakers, with nothing to arm or switch on. Inputs 2 and up start muted. Unmute the input you are playing in the mixer's INPUTS bank (⌘3). The bank starts on SHOW ASSIGNED, which lists only the inputs a track records, so choose ALL to see the others. See The mixer.

   

4. Choose the input a track records. Open the TRACK tab and, under SOURCE, switch on each input the track records (IN 1, IN 2, and so on). Every track starts on input 1, so if you play one instrument into input 1, skip this step.

   

5. The first track's ring already has keyboard focus. LOOM puts it there when the window opens, so you do not have to find it. ← and → move between tracks and land on the new track's ring.

   

6. Press the ring, with Space or Return, to start recording. The ring says REC while it records, with → PLAY in small type below it: your next press closes the loop and plays it.

   

   The first Space or Return after LOOM opens starts recording, because the keyboard is already on the ring. To move away from the ring, press Tab first.

7. Press the ring again to close the loop. The track plays the take back and repeats it until you stop it. The ring now reads PLAY, with → OVERDUB in small type below it. The large word is the track's current state, and the arrowed word is what your next press does. See The ring for every state and what each press does.

   

8. Stop the track. From the ring, press Tab until you reach STOP. The fader, MUTE and SOLO come before it. Once the track stops, the ring offers PLAY again.

   

UNDO on that track removes the last layer. CLEAR discards the track's material, and you cannot get it back. LOOM writes your recording to disk once the loop closes. See Where your recordings live.

VoiceOver: the notice line is spoken whenever its text changes. LOOM uses it to tell you that a press was refused, that the tempo moved, or that the device opened. Speech depends on ANNOUNCE, in the side panel's ACCESSIBILITY section, which starts on at every launch.

Where to go next

• Keyboard shortcuts — every key the window answers to.
• MIDI mapping — the notes LOOM answers, one octave per track, and what to know before you plug a controller into the same Mac.
• Privacy — what LOOM collects, and what it sends.

The rest of the manual covers the window control by control, in the order you meet it on screen:

• The window — its layout, the words this manual uses, the menu bar, and what accessible means here.
• The top bar — SONG, the MOVE set (TO TOP, ROLL, STOP), TEMPO, CLICK, the beat LEDs, FOCUS and the view switcher.
• The globals row and the track strips — everything that acts on every track, and everything on one.
• The arrange view — the regions you draw, the keys that edit them, and the PERFORM buttons: PERFORM FROM TOP, PERFORM FROM HERE and PERFORMANCE STOP.
• The mixer — the banks of faders, the line that says what they address, and the effect rack: eight slots on every strip for LOOM's EQ, compressor, delay, reverb, noise gate, chorus, octave, cab and amp, with their presets and racks.
• The side panel — the song's settings and one track's.
• The bottom rails — DEVICE, NOTICE and the status readouts.
• Dialogs — saving, replacing, opening, the at-risk warning, and the session log.
• Instrument tracks — the four tracks that loop MIDI, how you play and record them, and the editor for each instrument:
  • The synth — its oscillators, filter, amp, LFOs, voice and arpeggiator, and its presets.
  • The drum machine — its parts, kits, pattern grid and patterns.
  • The sampler — loading a sample and playing it from the keys, and SLICE mode for chopping it into one slice per key.
• Where your recordings live — the songs folder, the audio files in it, and how to back them up.
• Your licence — the trial, entering a licence, and what to do if LOOM will not open.
• Reporting a problem — what to send, and how to get it.

What this manual does not cover

• What VoiceOver actually says. This manual gives the name, role and description each control passes to the accessibility layer, which is the part LOOM controls. How macOS presents that, including what it does with a control scrolled out of view in a scrolling panel, is platform behaviour. It is checked by hand and not described here.
• Exact pixel sizes and colours. Sizes appear only where they change what you can do.
• What each state means musically. The manual lists the ring's phases and how each one looks. What a WAIT SWAP is for belongs in a guide to performing.
• The engine's behaviour behind a control. The manual says what each control writes to, but not how the audio thread acts on it.
• The --loom-ui-selftest and --loom-ui-snapshot command-line modes. These are development tools, not part of the UI. The manual mentions the self-test only where it defines what accessible means in LOOM.