Mixing in Korg Gadget: share and discuss

Chaztrip

@icsleepers said:
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? )

This is awesome. Thank you.

icsleepers

@vitocorleone123 said:
and it's always fun to finally flip the switch from mono to stereo when mixing and hearing how huge it gets.

THIS. IS. MY. FAVORITE. PART.

Smile on my face EVERY TIME.

icsleepers

@Chaztrip No worries! There's A LOT of great videos on the Propellerhead site that are Reason centric application wise, but theory wise, they can be applied to literally any other platform.

Spidericemidas

All my stuff is made within Gadget. Every track gets a Compressor and EQ slotted in right away and I mix as I go along adding each track.

Effects-wise I use delay and reverb, the stereo panner and occasionally the slicer. I stay away from phasers and flangers as they play havoc with EQing. I often allow imported sounds to carry over the reverbs or delays from whatever app they’ve come from, which can add their own ambience in a different way to Gadget’s reverb and delay.

When I’m happy with the mix, I just dial up the basic limiter a tad for a boost.
It would be nice to have a little graphical representation of the Compressor’s behaviour as in BM3, or a graphical representation of the EQ, but without those visual guides, it might be considered as good training for the ears alone instead! I don’t have a clue about mastering, so I don’t do it. But I was thinking of trying to feed a final Gadget mix through FabFilter Pro Q2 to ‘see’ what’s going on in the mix.

I’m never going to be a pro producer, but I’m personally happy with the results I get. Personal preference to sound is the thing, and the capability of our own ears as the years pass by! I like my stuff a bit sharp, but many others don’t. Bass is my nemesis in mixing!

Seeing as I have permission to post an example of Gadget work in a non-“Creations” thread, I will do so. Thanks for listening!

zpxlng

@Spidericemidas, thanks for sharing! Both the track and the details about your process.

MichaelLawrence

@Spidericemidas excellent song! Like the vibe and nice ear candy towards the end.

db909

@icsleepers said:

@vitocorleone123 said:
and it's always fun to finally flip the switch from mono to stereo when mixing and hearing how huge it gets.

THIS. IS. MY. FAVORITE. PART.

Smile on my face EVERY TIME.

Never fails to tickle my ears. I actually discovered you can get better “mixes” out of iKaossilator by simply doing it in mono, think it comes down to using phase cancellation and masking in your favor seeing as how there’s zero mix controls. You end up getting a front row seat to how much the actual arrangement affects a mix

Anyways my biggest mix tip for everybody is again, force yourself to use nothing but the basics, volume, eq, and panning, see if you actually need those 13 compressors

vitocorleone123

see if you actually need those 13 compressors

Wait.... you only use 13?

I'm definitely trying to use fewer effects just because I can. Some of the Gadget sounds are pretty damn good without having to manipulate the hell out of them. Others are definitely "thin", which can be OK depending on the genre. Or not.

LucidMusicInc

@Spidericemidas said:
All my stuff is made within Gadget. Every track gets a Compressor and EQ slotted in right away and I mix as I go along adding each track.

Effects-wise I use delay and reverb, the stereo panner and occasionally the slicer. I stay away from phasers and flangers as they play havoc with EQing. I often allow imported sounds to carry over the reverbs or delays from whatever app they’ve come from, which can add their own ambience in a different way to Gadget’s reverb and delay.

When I’m happy with the mix, I just dial up the basic limiter a tad for a boost.
It would be nice to have a little graphical representation of the Compressor’s behaviour as in BM3, or a graphical representation of the EQ, but without those visual guides, it might be considered as good training for the ears alone instead! I don’t have a clue about mastering, so I don’t do it. But I was thinking of trying to feed a final Gadget mix through FabFilter Pro Q2 to ‘see’ what’s going on in the mix.

I’m never going to be a pro producer, but I’m personally happy with the results I get. Personal preference to sound is the thing, and the capability of our own ears as the years pass by! I like my stuff a bit sharp, but many others don’t. Bass is my nemesis in mixing!

Seeing as I have permission to post an example of Gadget work in a non-“Creations” thread, I will do so. Thanks for listening!

Phasers, choruses, flangers are great for giving a synth, particularly a pad/string or lead some sense of movement, they’re just another kind of delay effect.

And it can’t be stressed enough that one of Gadgets most salient features is the sound quality of its filters, which I tend to put on everything also.

Spidericemidas

@MichaelLawrence said:
@Spidericemidas excellent song! Like the vibe and nice ear candy towards the end.

Thank you very much!

Spidericemidas

@zpxlng said:
@Spidericemidas, thanks for sharing! Both the track and the details about your process.

Thanks for posting a thread on Gadget. It’s my favoured app to work in. Interesting to hear how other users get on with it too.

Processaurus

@zpxlng said:

@Chaztrip said:
Ok. Noob question from old guitar player. Why do you want to mix in mono? Benefits?
Thanks

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.

One thing to watch out for, mixing elements in mono, that you are planning to pan hard away from each other, is TOO MUCH clarity/separation, so that it sounds awkward and unbalanced in the audio spectrum when you go back to stereo, after eqing in mono. It usually sounds good, panning similar frequencied instruments away from each other, so if you eq them radically different, trying to get them to pop, in mono, you unbalanced the frequency spread between your L and R channels.

Definitely check the mix in mono, check how it sounds standing on the other side of the room, but watch out for this over-separation in your hard panned elements- after all, panning is a legitimate way to separate elements of your mix, apart from eq. It isn’t cheating- it’s mixing.

zpxlng

@Processaurus said:

One thing to watch out for, mixing elements in mono, that you are planning to pan hard away from each other, is TOO MUCH clarity/separation, so that it sounds awkward and unbalanced in the audio spectrum when you go back to stereo, after eqing in mono. It usually sounds good, panning similar frequencied instruments away from each other, so if you eq them radically different, trying to get them to pop, in mono, you unbalanced the frequency spread between your L and R channels.

Definitely check the mix in mono, check how it sounds standing on the other side of the room, but watch out for this over-separation in your hard panned elements- after all, panning is a legitimate way to separate elements of your mix, apart from eq. It isn’t cheating- it’s mixing.

Interesting! Thanks for the advice. This is all still relatively new to me.

mulletsaison

I like starting songs in Gadget, but I don’t like mixing in it. So, I tend to export the MIDI to Dropbox and then either export the audio to Dropbox, too, or use Gadget as a source in Audiobus into Auria, soloing the tracks I bring in. Why? One reason is that in some cases, like Salzburg and Alexandria, I just don’t like the Gadget sounds as much as my other apps (in those two cases, Ravenscroft and Galileo). Second, I use a lot more effects than EQ and compression, so I feel like not being able to use, say, Discord, all the ApeSoft/Amazing Noises effects, Kosmonaut, etc., etc. is like tying one hand behind my back. Third, even if I like the sound in Gadget, I sometimes like other sounds better (hence the MIDI export / import into Auria). Fourth, I do like to layer sounds, borrowing from Mr. Phil Spector, who may be a murderer but is/was one hell of a producer, having multiple instruments playing the same part a la his ‘wall of sound’ approach (again, MIDI export/import). Last, and this is probably more a product of what I ‘grew up on’, namely arranging in Digital Performer and ProTools, arranging and repeating blocks of sound is way more enjoyable than programming the number of times a part repeats before switching (folks who cut their teeth programming songs on synths and drum machines probably feel the opposite).

Yes, this requires using Dropbox, and, I believe, only Dropbox, but at least Gadget and Auria share that as a common integration, making the workflow dead easy, in my experience.

@LucidMusicInc said: 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.

To be clear, I assume you use Audiobus or AUM to get tracks into Cubasis of choice, right? Or do you have another workflow?

P.S. The mono mixing tips are absolutely spot on.

LucidMusicInc

@mulletsaison said:
I like starting songs in Gadget, but I don’t like mixing in it. So, I tend to export the MIDI to Dropbox and then either export the audio to Dropbox, too, or use Gadget as a source in Audiobus into Auria, soloing the tracks I bring in. Why? One reason is that in some cases, like Salzburg and Alexandria, I just don’t like the Gadget sounds as much as my other apps (in those two cases, Ravenscroft and Galileo). Second, I use a lot more effects than EQ and compression, so I feel like not being able to use, say, Discord, all the ApeSoft/Amazing Noises effects, Kosmonaut, etc., etc. is like tying one hand behind my back. Third, even if I like the sound in Gadget, I sometimes like other sounds better (hence the MIDI export / import into Auria). Fourth, I do like to layer sounds, borrowing from Mr. Phil Spector, who may be a murderer but is/was one hell of a producer, having multiple instruments playing the same part a la his ‘wall of sound’ approach (again, MIDI export/import). Last, and this is probably more a product of what I ‘grew up on’, namely arranging in Digital Performer and ProTools, arranging and repeating blocks of sound is way more enjoyable than programming the number of times a part repeats before switching (folks who cut their teeth programming songs on synths and drum machines probably feel the opposite).

Yes, this requires using Dropbox, and, I believe, only Dropbox, but at least Gadget and Auria share that as a common integration, making the workflow dead easy, in my experience.

@LucidMusicInc said: 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.

To be clear, I assume you use Audiobus or AUM to get tracks into Cubasis of choice, right? Or do you have another workflow?

P.S. The mono mixing tips are absolutely spot on.

Yeah you could do any of those things. The question has to do with stems meaning every track getting exported individually which can be done if you export as an Ableton Live project (each scene will get exported as a clip). Anyway you can get good results arranging in Gadget or Cubasis.

mulletsaison

@LucidMusicInc said:

@mulletsaison said:
I like starting songs in Gadget, but I don’t like mixing in it. So, I tend to export the MIDI to Dropbox and then either export the audio to Dropbox, too, or use Gadget as a source in Audiobus into Auria, soloing the tracks I bring in. Why? One reason is that in some cases, like Salzburg and Alexandria, I just don’t like the Gadget sounds as much as my other apps (in those two cases, Ravenscroft and Galileo). Second, I use a lot more effects than EQ and compression, so I feel like not being able to use, say, Discord, all the ApeSoft/Amazing Noises effects, Kosmonaut, etc., etc. is like tying one hand behind my back. Third, even if I like the sound in Gadget, I sometimes like other sounds better (hence the MIDI export / import into Auria). Fourth, I do like to layer sounds, borrowing from Mr. Phil Spector, who may be a murderer but is/was one hell of a producer, having multiple instruments playing the same part a la his ‘wall of sound’ approach (again, MIDI export/import). Last, and this is probably more a product of what I ‘grew up on’, namely arranging in Digital Performer and ProTools, arranging and repeating blocks of sound is way more enjoyable than programming the number of times a part repeats before switching (folks who cut their teeth programming songs on synths and drum machines probably feel the opposite).

Yes, this requires using Dropbox, and, I believe, only Dropbox, but at least Gadget and Auria share that as a common integration, making the workflow dead easy, in my experience.

@LucidMusicInc said: 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.

To be clear, I assume you use Audiobus or AUM to get tracks into Cubasis of choice, right? Or do you have another workflow?

P.S. The mono mixing tips are absolutely spot on.

Yeah you could do any of those things. The question has to do with stems meaning every track getting exported individually which can be done if you export as an Ableton Live project (each scene will get exported as a clip). Anyway you can get good results arranging in Gadget or Cubasis.

Yes, I understand how stems work, and I was saying that I typically export the audio stems to Dropbox, then import from Dropbox to Auria. I’m sure one can get good results arranging in Gadget; I’m just saying it’s not my cup of tea. I hoped to communicate that my way is not the only way. I was just curious about your workflow in getting audio tracks, whether stems or a stereo mix, or whatever, into Cubasis without leaving iOS. Apologies if that didn’t come through as I’d hoped.

And, yeah, fair enough, essentially my workflow is basically the same (albeit with Auria instead of Cubasis) as the original post, for which @zpxling was asking for alternatives.

LucidMusicInc

@mulletsaison said:

@LucidMusicInc said:

@mulletsaison said:
I like starting songs in Gadget, but I don’t like mixing in it. So, I tend to export the MIDI to Dropbox and then either export the audio to Dropbox, too, or use Gadget as a source in Audiobus into Auria, soloing the tracks I bring in. Why? One reason is that in some cases, like Salzburg and Alexandria, I just don’t like the Gadget sounds as much as my other apps (in those two cases, Ravenscroft and Galileo). Second, I use a lot more effects than EQ and compression, so I feel like not being able to use, say, Discord, all the ApeSoft/Amazing Noises effects, Kosmonaut, etc., etc. is like tying one hand behind my back. Third, even if I like the sound in Gadget, I sometimes like other sounds better (hence the MIDI export / import into Auria). Fourth, I do like to layer sounds, borrowing from Mr. Phil Spector, who may be a murderer but is/was one hell of a producer, having multiple instruments playing the same part a la his ‘wall of sound’ approach (again, MIDI export/import). Last, and this is probably more a product of what I ‘grew up on’, namely arranging in Digital Performer and ProTools, arranging and repeating blocks of sound is way more enjoyable than programming the number of times a part repeats before switching (folks who cut their teeth programming songs on synths and drum machines probably feel the opposite).

Yes, this requires using Dropbox, and, I believe, only Dropbox, but at least Gadget and Auria share that as a common integration, making the workflow dead easy, in my experience.

@LucidMusicInc said: 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.

To be clear, I assume you use Audiobus or AUM to get tracks into Cubasis of choice, right? Or do you have another workflow?

P.S. The mono mixing tips are absolutely spot on.

Yeah you could do any of those things. The question has to do with stems meaning every track getting exported individually which can be done if you export as an Ableton Live project (each scene will get exported as a clip). Anyway you can get good results arranging in Gadget or Cubasis.

Yes, I understand how stems work, and I was saying that I typically export the audio stems to Dropbox, then import from Dropbox to Auria. I’m sure one can get good results arranging in Gadget; I’m just saying it’s not my cup of tea. I hoped to communicate that my way is not the only way. I was just curious about your workflow in getting audio tracks, whether stems or a stereo mix, or whatever, into Cubasis without leaving iOS. Apologies if that didn’t come through as I’d hoped.

And, yeah, fair enough, essentially my workflow is basically the same (albeit with Auria instead of Cubasis) as the original post, for which @zpxling was asking for alternatives.

I get it. I just thing there are too many steps involved until Korg gets on board with Files and proper stem exporting.

AtticusL

@icsleepers said:
100% put together in Gadget, mixed in Gadget

Just bought your album. This is great stuff, great cause too.

icsleepers

@AtticusL said:

@icsleepers said:
100% put together in Gadget, mixed in Gadget

Just bought your album. This is great stuff, great cause too.

Thank you so much! I’m glad it resonates with you! I figure since my job 100% matches donations there wasn’t a great reason not to, and it’s an important cause to me