foreverloops LONGPLAY

An interesting application, Foreverloops, often crashes with an error and loses all progress.
On Windows 11, other applications do not freeze.
If I have some free time, I’ll provide audio and video data about the application freezing.

As a musician with a focus on looping and complex rhythms I was quite interested in the idea of using gears for connecting sequences rather then a typical grid view. What a marvelously mechanical idea!

With this program, however... well, it's certainly works OK when fooling around but I found myself hate it after a very short time. First of all, there isn't a single UI element or options to alter the overall volume. In an audio application? Really? That's quite pathetic to be honest. Secondly, it goes for the "has to look good and simple on screenshots" route and puts EVERYTHING into context menus in pie shape rather than providing something more accessible. It's fiddly, unintuitive and the iconography doesn't help either. Changing gear speed and segment count for example is something you'll do quite often to put beats down but it's already a doubly nested sub menu for every single gear you're trying to touch.

It would've been a lot easier to e.g. involve the mouse wheel while hovering over an entry or just provide some widgets when hovering over the wheel itself. But nay, one has to menu dive for the sake of marketing. Same goes for muting/soloing wheels, changing their size etc. It's a mess. There's also a lot of other bits to nit-pick over like the sample browser containing a crap-ton of builtin stuff until you get to your own samples, the horrible performance when hovering over UI etc... all fine if the basic experience were to work in the first place.

Thus: No, I can't recommend any of what foreverloops is in the current state. You'd be better off with a couple old Lego gears, bells and a motor!

"What goes around comes around!" It's interesting and unusual, a non-standard music making program. it may take some time to figure it out, the user interface is different than others you have used before.
https://youtu.be/4dxTjSu42Yc

I love the gear design! I especially love the fact that you can easily do odd time signatures and polyrhythms!!!

If you find yourself lost in the process of creating music without much end product to come of it and that fact doesn't bother you -- foreverloops is for you.

It seemed good at first but when I paid for it and the dlc's I find it does nothing. DLC's show but don't work and are not available to use. It could be simplified, the circles? well.. Not needed. Not happy with this program. Don't wast your money. Free sound programs are much better and eaiser to use.

Totally Worth the Money. When you u gonna fully discover it, it's lot more than what they Charge. MIDI sound r awesome

It would be nice to have a built-in tutorial of some sort. It's very difficult to figure out. :/

You have to try this thing, its amazingly fun. Super easy to get some simple sounds going. Check out the you tube channel to get a idea of how it works.

This is a fun system if you're not looking to do serious work on it. The gear setup, while fun, is unnecessary and even confusing. Your traditional DAW works much better. I would like to see it simplified for better access to budding musicians as well as have display options, there's so much white on white now that everything turns into a blur after a while. The creators are very active and appear to be updating and making changes regularly though.

This is really fun to play with. The rotating gears is a nice way to visualize how the sequences are interacting. Looking forward to VST support! :)

This is an abandonware.

Support is wonderful, took around 3 minutes for a response via email, and the person I talked to was very patient and polite.
Aside from that,

- there's plenty of stuff to work with
- a really smooth UI
- plenty of documentation if you find it confusing via a README file, their website, and video tutorials here on the forums.
- lots of functionality with a simple look

As of writing this, this is my first day with it, so take this with a grain of salt.

‘foreverloops’ on PC / Steam
Score: 10/10 for insightfulness and developer bravery, 6/10 for functionality.

‘foreverloops’ is software that uses rotating gears allowing for the looping of sounds, pictures and video in a truly creative way. ‘foreverloops’ is fledgling software with great potential. Think different.

Anything else I should know before buying this?
The short answer:

1. A novel and simple visual interface to a basic Euclidean polyrhythmic sequencer that does not require a digital audio workstation (DAW).
2. Synchronisation and extension of audio polyrhythm to visual polyrhythm.
3. A stable and creative tool in its most barebones beta state with massive potential, but not yet useful for musicians. Will the developers have sufficient staying power required to flesh this product out? Will a bigger studio pick this up?
4. Very expensive for what you get – essentially a ‘cool toy’ at this moment. Think of this as ‘Early Access’ or ‘Kickstart’; you are paying to develop this software. Note there is a ‘Pro’ version on the way…

Anything else I should know before buying this?
The long answer for musicians:

‘foreverloops’ is software that allows looping of sounds independent from meter; a Euclidean sequencer to be precise. A rotating gear is equivalent to a bar, all gears/bars rotate at the same speed independent of the number of beats in each bar.

Could ‘foreverloops’ offer something that is not already available for Ableton Live or Reaktor? Yes.

1. Increased creativity through a low barrier interface that is completely ‘new’ will allow musicians and visual artists to create a ‘new’ kind of composition….
2. ‘foreeverloops’ has a very quick and simple interface while Ableton Live or Reaktor have very steep learning curves and a dense interface.
3. ‘foreverloops’ could remain relatively inexpensive. Existing software and hardware solutions are extremely expensive for audio polyrhythmic creations. See addendum.
4. If anybody knows of software for visual polyrhythmic expression please post in the comments.

What is missing that would make ‘foreverloops’ truly interesting to a musician?

1. The ‘Gears’ need to be more detailed to make this a truly superb sequencer – more choices of steps, better control over speed, polyrhythmic vs polymetric etc….
2. The provided library of audio loops is rudimentary; acquire a library elsewhere.
3. Audio loops need to be malleable at least at the basic level like pitch, stretch, start and stop points; stuff available in a basic DAW.
4. At this time not interface able with anything. (VST plug-in, MIDI etc…)
5. Missing audio export controls: high quality audio (24bit/96kHz) and export MIDI files.
6. This list is very long and easily fixable, there is so much audio engineering talent available.

Long answer for visual artist: A very interesting toy… the potential is huge.

1. This is so different than the linear approach in a video workstation that I believe one day its true value could be in rendering images and video more malleable to accompany music; think performance, advertisements, interactive experiences that could respond to user input.
2. Wish list: composing a video in real time to accompany a speech, a performance, or to sit down and ‘paint’ a video for fun. Think Ableton Live and Push for visual images; midi controllers for layering in/out images and video, playing with color balance and filters in real time; the possibilities are truly endless if developed.

ADDENDUM: Audio polyrhythm options (Ableton Live and NI Reaktor)

1. Ableton Live with a free plug in polyrhythmus
http://cdm.link/2014/07/polyrhythmus-insanely-great-generator-rhythms-arpeggios/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTgSgTGoBLc

2. NI Reaktor standalone with a free plug-in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf8D8x-H_us

3. Hardware based polyrhythm quick summary
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2017/10/19/polyrhythmic-sequencing-with-euclidean-rhythms/


2018.01.14

If you like synthesizers, sequencers, or tape loops, you'll love this. Foreverloops has a very adequate number of instrument sounds to have some serious fun.

If it had effects, phlanges, reverb, or volume controls for components, that'd make it pretty perfect.

I'll be looking forwared to DLC of additional banks of instruments, electronic sounds, or foley effects.

While you can create music and manipulate video with Foreverloops, it is not an all-purpose music creation/video editing tool. At this point it is a creative toy, although quite a powerful one. Very easy to use, a beginner can jump right in and create in a very short amount of time.

The gear system is unique in music creation as far as I can tell. Most music creation is done linearly. From what I have experimented with in a short amount of time, this makes the software easy to use but the end result is fairly repetitive since it is simply a continuous loop.

The ability to add your own sound, video, and photo clips makes this software able to create endless variations of multimedia projects.

Pros:
Very user-friendly and easy to use
Instant results
Unlimited potential for unique projects
Fun!
Potential for live manipulation to vary the loop pattern (This will take some preparation and skill)

Con:
Fairly short video and audio loops make the results repetitive unless used as mentioned above to vary the loops