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Mixing in Korg Gadget: share and discuss
Do you mix your Gadget projects... inside Gadget? YOU DO???
I'm deep in the mixing stage of my current big project, which I'm doing in Cubasis because (a.) that's what I did for my last project [crickets chirping], and (b.) I can use all the effects and AUv3s I've bought.
So far the results are good but it's been fussy and fiddly and time-consuming, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's all been absolutely necessary, given that for this project, all of the tunes were started and finished inside Korg Gadget (with a lot of imported samples and a little audio), AND, they already sounded pretty good in Gadget. But I exported the stems anyway and brought them into Cubasis. "Next time, why don't I keep it simple and do the mixing in Gadget too?" is what I'm asking myself.
I know a lot of folks here mix their Gadget projects 'inside the walls' and export the audio and chuck FAC Maxima or whatever on it and call it done (as in 'getting shit done'), so please... tell me about it! What are the greatest advantages and worst limitations of mixing in Gadget? What's your process/workflow? What built-in effects are good, which ones are not-so-good, and which ones are missing that you wish weren't? How's the EQ? How's Deemax? etc. etc. etc.
Please share your knowledge. Feel free to post examples, too! Don't be shy now.
Comments
I made a template with my most used gadgets, on all their channels I have the first 2 Ifx reserved for EQ and compression. That way I can mix inside Gadget, it's not perfect but it is so much quicker this way.
Of course you should mix in Gadget Each channel ought to get compression (sidechain optional)!and Eq minimum. I will also add low pass filter for highs and high pass filter for lows. At the end of the chain I will add the decimator to degrade the sound either to 16 or 12 bit. Doing this makes a significant impact on the sound. I won’t mix until after the arrangement but I might do a bit of sound shaping during the initial stages.
After that’s all handled I’ll still add some additional compression and EQ to the final mix in Cubasis. Waves are great and some of their vintage effects are ok. I’m holding out for some special bundle of AU fx but nothing has really impressed me yet. Fab filter is available but I’ve got waves so I can’t justify the extra expense. Had I not bought waves I would have got fabilter instead.
I think it is important to keep perspective with Gadget. The devs have no intention of it being a DAW. The development of Gadget IOs and Gadget for Mac show a clear trend in which gadget is a playground for root sound design. They provide simple audio production and effects so that you can get some idea of what the possibilities are but they just want to give you a taste. They really want you to export to ableton for mixing, mastering, and effects. I'm not a huge fan of anything in the software except the sequencer and the modules. The EQ, effects, mixer, and midi implementation all leave things to be desired.
That being said, people make it work. I have heard really great stuff from people using gadget alone. So it is possible, but not optimal.
I always found that the output from Gadget sounded pretty good, if a little 'pleasant'. That can be fixed by hardening a little in other apps but I wouldn't let vague doubts stop you from trying to keep everything in the box. Try it, see how you get on.
Mixing is just part of the craft in any DAW. The pull for gadget is the ready made sounds and UI make it easy to modify the presets and get an understanding of what you’re doing.
You can get a great mix any number of ways. You’ll find that you have to compress and EQ the final mix for better punch on the speakers.
Nice idea! Efficient! How do you find Gadget's EQ?
(My only Gadget template is for tuning new samples in Vancouver. One gadget is Vancouver of course, the other is something playing C-E-G on a loop.)
Thanks for the step-by-step; that sort of detail is really useful!
So when it comes to icing the cake in Cubasis, you're talking about a single exported audio file, right? i.e. not stems.
Yeah, see, this is the impression that I've gotten. That's why despite completing all these tunes in Gadget, I hadn't even considered doing the mixing inside the box. But now the problem I'm having is, with so many effects and mixing options available in Cubasis, there's so much more experimenting and tweaking to be done to get everything as perfect as possible.
If you have perfectionistic tendencies, limitations are great for productivity!
Let me ask you... if you could add or improve one effect in Gadget, what would it be?
This is how I'm feeling. And yes, projects in Gadget just seem to sound good, even without any serious mixing! They don't burst with flavour but the sounds sit well together, effortlessly.
My current project has become so big and 'serious' that I want to go all the way with it, 100% effort, even if mixing in Cubasis has been taking up my free time for weeks. But for that reason, AFTER this project, I wanna just muck around and make silly doodles for a while. So any Gadget projects, I'll try mixing in Gadget.
Thanks for the advice.
Until Korg gives us Files support I can’t be bothered with the stems. I do everything including the videos for my YouTube channel exclusively on iOS. Basically the final mix down gets one more pass and I’m done with it. But if I were using mics and acoustic instruments that would be very different.
I add as few effects as possible within Gadget and mostly just use the level faders. After the track is composed, I export each track at high quality and mix and master on my PC. I only create a couple songs per year, so this process works for me.
The EP I just finished was 100% mixed in Gadget minus a pass of each exported wave through Grand Finale. I like the bump in clarity I get from GF.
But I was pretty happy with the process in Gadget, mix wise. It's good to mix in mono (System app > General > Accessibility > Mono Audio = turned on) but I'd recommend that for anything, Gadget or whatever. The EQ left a little to be desired but I think it's because I'm spoiled by a graphical EQ (ala GarageBand).
Long story short, mixing in Gadget was ok and honestly, would do it again.
Thanks for sharing! Do you have a link to your EP?
Yeah, I try to mix in mono as much as possible — didn't realise that option existed in the system settings! That's a nice workaround.
Cool thread.
Mix in Gadget as you go along. Then maybe Grand Finale afterwards.
That’s what I generally do.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 exaaactly!
@zpxlng I have one track up so far on my soundcloud, the whole EP isn’t posted yet, was going to wait until Amuse processed it but I already submitted to a bunch of online radio stations so I’m probably gonna just get it together first thing tomorrow morning since it’s set
I’ll update here so you can check mix! And yeah, the mono audio switch works a treat!!
For my Electric Ian album once the music was finished but vocals didn’t exist, I’d done all the mixing in Gadget and exported the whole as a single file and mastered in Final Touch by exporting from Gadget macOS and airdropping to the iPad. Got a good result. Soon after, though, I moved fully over to the Mac and separate exported audio tracks for a better gain staging and mixing in LPX using better automation (and binaural panning on some instruments). I far prefer it that way now, treating the iPad as an instrument and the Mac as a studio.
@zpxlng https://icsleepers.bandcamp.com/album/cellar-door
100% put together in Gadget, mixed in Gadget, literally just ran the main export through Grand Finale like I said for just a liiiiiittle bit of sheen on the top. GF has a tendency to sometimes crush the life out of a bass drum but I don’t write really bass heavy stuff and I can’t totally blame GF I have zero idea what I’m doing in there lol
Aaaand totally not sure why it posted the EP like that, was hoping it would just be a link, sorry everyone
Ok. Noob question from old guitar player. Why do you want to mix in mono? Benefits?
Thanks
And @icsleepers great tracks!!!!!!
None whatsoever.
However... certain elements like drums and bass work a lot better in mono because unwanted frequencies can be surpressed.
@Chaztrip Thanks! Mixing in mono is helpful to identify phasing issues and also yes, agreed with @LucidMusicInc I’ve been able to find and correct issues with bass being too loud across bass instruments and drums. I like to flip back and forth to get an idea of how everything sounds holistically
The art of mixing is connected to composition and sound design. It’s is all about getting your elements sounding crisp and distinctive. Too many layers of sound and too many effects can wreck a song. Keep it simple. Trust your ears. Don’t rush it but don’t be a perfectionist either. Holistic is the key word.
I'm only an amateur and I'm sure a quick google will turn up better explanations than mine, plus the attendant arguments about its effectiveness, but as I understand it, the advantage of mixing in mono is this:
Mixes sound clearest when each instrument/sound has its own frequency range that it occupies — or dominates, at least. Mixing in mono ensures that you can hear when two instruments are trying to occupy the same 'space' frequency-wise. In stereo, instrument A and instrument B might occupy the same frequency range but if one's panned to the left and the other's panned to the right, you can't hear the overlap. But in mono, A will dominate and make B inaudible, or vice versa, OR they'll cancel each other out and sound like a flat fart. So you do some EQing, cutting one where you boost the other and vice-versa, and hopefully each sound can now be heard distinctly.
The main argument against this is, "Who listens in mono anyway? No-one, that's who. So if the sounds can be distinctly heard in stereo, how they sound in mono doesn't matter." To which the counter-arguments are, "Actually some people might still listen in mono, you'd be surprised," and, "Even in stereo, mixes sound better when each sound has its own personal frequency range! So mix in mono and it'll be easier to accomplish that."
I don't know enough to passionately argue one way or the other, but the pro-mono argument at least SEEMS very sensible to me, and I think every DAW should have a little 'mono' switch that you can toggle on and off on the master channel. Would make things easier.
@zpxlng agree about the Mono switch. It's funny because ANY reasonably professional hardware console has it (and I use it all the time during mixing and mastering), but most iOS "DAWs" lack it...
(fortunately I've moved mostly to Sunvox for my mixing / mastering on iOS, "where anything is possible"
)
Wow man, this sounds pretty crisp to me! (At least through my decent PC speakers.) Really nice production. Lovely tunes too.
When you said it was all-Gadget, I wasn't expecting vocals. Did you record them elsewhere and import them? Or actually record vocals directly into Gadget? Because the latter always seemed like a terrible idea to me. Very curious about your process there.
The forum does it automatically. It's convenient and I don't think anyone minds!
Anyway your slick tunes have made me feel more confident about mixing in Gadget in future. I'm sure if you compared them to 'professional' tracks you might hear the VAST CHASM of quality, and I'm sure during production you had a lot of points where you felt like, "It's annoying that I can't do such-and-such in Gadget, because such-and-such would make this sound WAYYY better," but to my ears they all sound pretty fancy.
Yeah up until now I've just been doing track-panning dead last in my mixing process and hoping for the best. But of course some instruments are really wide and some bounce back and forth between left and right... and until now I haven't been able to do anything about it! I'm really grateful for the trick @icsleepers shared.
You have eq, compression, Fx, volume, etc and it can all be automated. There’s no problem whatsoever mixing in Gadget, the few projects I finished in gadget sounded great, perhaps even “professional”. Really if you have a good arrangement and simple volume, panning, and eq, you shouldn’t need much else. It always comes back to the basics
Yup, all this - literally this is all I did. Like in any DAW it’s pretty incredible how low you can (and should) bring the volume down, on certain instruments/tracks.
Yeah, 100% truth told these are from Launchpad/Blocs wave. I'd love to record my own vocals since I don't think I have a god awful voice, space and time constraints prevent it right now
So yeah, they were imported
I agree I don't know that I'd want to straight record anything into Gadget since I have no idea how to edit what's in Rosario or Zurich (if it's even possible, aside from trimming the wave I don't think you can move timing??)
I thought mixing in mono makes you sound like The Ramones?
Not totally related to OP, I mean, tangentially I guess so I apologize. This is for Reason but applies to anything really, we're talking sound science (physics? acoustics?
)
You don't generally spend the whole time mixing in mono. But it is recommended to spend some time early on (like initially) and maybe before your final mix (for minor tweaks) in mono. People DO listen in mono - smartphone speakers, bluetooth speakers, or even just being out of the room with stereo speakers means people won't hear it in stereo. Your ears and audience will thank you, and it's always fun to finally flip the switch from mono to stereo when mixing and hearing how huge it gets.