SLoop

Getting Started

Open any audio or video file: drop it anywhere on the SLoop window, click the Open button in the top-right corner, or press ⌘O. SLoop reads the file, draws its waveform, and puts a time ruler underneath. If the file has video, the picture appears above the waveform and stays in sync at every speed.

From there, everything happens on the waveform: click anywhere to jump, drag to select a phrase, and use the controls below the waveform for transport, looping, markers, and speed.

The Loop

The loop is the heart of the practice. Select a phrase, and SLoop repeats it gaplessly — the end joins the beginning without a hiccup, so the phrase keeps its shape while you listen again and again.

Saved Loops

A phrase worth a week of work is worth keeping. With a loop set, click Save Loop — the region is stored as a chip (Loop 1, Loop 2, …) beside the button. Click a chip to bring that region back; right-click it to delete it. Saved loops are remembered per track, so every recording keeps its own set of trouble spots.

Speed

The Speed slider runs from 25% to 200%, and the pitch is preserved at every setting — a phrase at half speed sits at the same pitch, just slower, so what you learn slow is still true when you bring it back up.

Preset chips give you the common practice speeds in one click: 50 · 65 · 75 · 85 · 100 · 150 · 200%. The ↑ and ↓ arrow keys nudge the speed by 5% either way, so you can creep a phrase up toward tempo without touching the mouse.

The Speed Trainer

The classic practice recipe — start slow, earn each increase — as a switch. Set a loop, turn on Trainer, and three small controls appear: from (the starting speed, 25–100%), to (the target, up to 200%), and step (how much each increase adds, 1–25%). The loop starts at the from speed, and after every second completed pass SLoop raises the speed by one step, stopping at the target. You practice; the minding is handled.

Transpose

The Transpose −/+ buttons (or the [ and ] keys) shift the playback pitch by semitones, up to two octaves in either direction — hear the passage in your key, or bring an odd tuning to concert pitch. The readout between the buttons shows the current offset, and a Reset chip appears whenever you're away from zero. The setting is remembered with the session.

Zoom & Pan

Long recordings need a closer look. On a trackpad, use two fingers over the waveform:

Swipe up or down to zoom in and out — the view zooms around the playhead, so the spot you're studying stays in front of you. Swipe left or right to pan along the track; the content follows your fingers. Press Z to zoom back out to the whole track.

While playing zoomed in, the view follows the playhead automatically, and the time ruler under the waveform pans and zooms along with it.

Detect & Notation

Press D and SLoop listens to the loop region (or the visible window, when no loop is set) and puts what it hears on a grand staff: stemless noteheads at true pitch, duration tails, and 8va/8vb brackets where a passage runs high or low. Hover a notehead to see its name; click one to jump the playhead there. The small × in the corner clears the staff.

Let's be honest about what this is: pitch guesses to check with your ear — not a finished transcription. Detection is monophonic (one line at a time, so solo passages work best), and rhythm is deliberately left out — you get the pitches in order, placed where they happen in time, and the rhythm stays your job. That's the practice.

The Detect button toggles automatic mode: while it's on, every new loop you select is analyzed as you set it. Turning it off clears the staff. Analysis covers up to 60 seconds at a time, and when SLoop can't find anything stable enough to call a note, it says so plainly instead of guessing.

Single-Instrument Mode

Turn on Single when the recording is one instrument alone. Detection normally favours the top voice — that's what lifts a solo out of a mix — but on a harmonically rich solo source (a Hammond, a piano) the same bias makes it chase overtones instead of the note. Single removes the bias and hears the instrument plainly.

Note Names

Press N or click Names to print each detected note's name above its notehead — useful while the staff is still faster than your reading. The toggle is available once something has been detected.

Fixing a Wrong Note

The guesses need cleaning — that's expected, not a failure. Right-click any notehead for Octave up, Octave down, or Delete note. Octave errors are the most common miss in any pitch detector; two clicks put the note where your ear says it belongs. Tidy the staff first, then export.

Markers & Tempo

The Mark at playhead row drops a marker at the current position, in three sizes: Beat (short line), Measure (taller line), and Section (full-height line). Use them to map the piece as you work through it — where the form changes, where the measures fall, where the beats land.

Click a marker line to jump to it. Right-click a marker to delete it, or use Clear Marks to remove them all. Markers are remembered per track, so your map is still there when you come back.

Export MIDI

When the staff holds a phrase worth keeping, click MIDI (it wakes up once notes are detected) and save the file. Your notation program — or any DAW — opens it and engraves real note values.

The export is only as good as its grid. Tap a Measure marker on each downbeat and pick the time signature from the meter menu next to the marker buttons — with at least two Measure markers set, the export is quantized to that grid, and the barlines land where you put them. Without measure markers, SLoop exports the raw timings instead, which a notation program will engrave as a forest of tuplets and grace notes. The grid is worth the taps.

One honest note: the export carries the pitches and the grid — the note values a notation program derives from them are a starting sketch to finish by hand, in the program where you do that work.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Video & the Panes

Local video files play with the picture above the waveform, in sync at every speed — slow the hands down and watch the technique while you listen.

The window is built from panes — video, waveform, staff — and the boundaries between them are draggable splitters: hover between two panes until the cursor changes, then drag. More video for watching technique, more staff for reading, more waveform for fine loop edges. Your layout is remembered.

Session Memory

Close SLoop mid-phrase and nothing is lost. On the next launch it reopens the last track, restores the loop points and whether the loop was armed, the speed you were practicing at, your position in the track, and the state of the Detect toggle. Markers are stored per track, so every recording keeps its own map.

In practice: quit at night, open the lid in the morning, press Space, and you're inside the same phrase.

The Free Five Minutes

On the Mac App Store edition, SLoop is free to download and the whole app works from the first minute — audio playback is limited to five minutes per day, and that's the only limit. Loading files, setting loops, reading the staff, placing markers, exporting: always available. The allowance resets at your local midnight, and a small time-left pill in the header shows what remains of today's minutes.

When the day's minutes are spent, the unlock sheet appears. A single one-time purchase, SLoop Unlimited, removes the daily limit for good — no subscription, nothing expires. You'll also find Get SLoop Unlimited… and Restore Purchase in the SLoop menu; restoring on a Mac where you've already bought it brings the unlock over, and if there's nothing to restore, SLoop says so rather than leaving you guessing.