Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
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Getting into Gadget
I bought Gadget when it was at it’s recent low price but haven’t had time to touch it much (or any music at all in recent months, totally tied up with live video work instead, no sleep, no spare minutes). On the train I’ve poked around at Gadget and find it baffling, can’t delete anything I tried, can’t move things, can’t use it properly at all, but that’s probably a lack of reading an instruction manual more than bad usability. Probably.
What I certainly don’t want to do is create dancey-ravey-housey modern young people having fun type of anonymous music, and have noticed that that’s the first thing it funnels my input into if I don’t watch out. AsI say, I can count the minutes I’ve had a chance to use it so far on the fingers of my hands. It seems to be a world by itself, and the perimeter of the world isn't the iPad and connections to many other apps, but rather, the Gadget app is the city walls and boundary. Would this be an accurate perspective?
And furthermore, while we’re on about perspectives, would it be correct to think of Gadget as one huge hidden sound synthesis and readout program but with a cute collection of visible parameter subsets? Rather than presenting one giant megasamplerslicersynth with dangling patch leads everywhere, it subsets the likely parameters for a family or association of sounds, and then another for a different breed of sounds, and so on. It’s probably all one sound architecture, but the bits that poke out at you are groups of subsetted controls, ignoring other irrelevant ones and encouraging certain types of control action. Not just raw controls as we would have on a modular, but ganged, grouped and virtual composited controls. Would this be an accurate perspective?
Comments
I suspect your inherent world view is overlaying this as Brave New Gadget, whereas for most of us it's a matter of the constraints acting in the service of workflow; always a balance, but one mostly positive in this environment. I am not a dance man (or even a song and dance man), which is why I found the addition of Module to be a great step forward with Gadget, but I do suffer from a large imagination but a limited set of technical skills and this program allows expression of the former within the reality of the latter.
Sounds like you need to be introduced to the "Function" button (bottom left).
Yes Soladar is correct and it would not hurt to watch a couple tutorials while you are at it. Gadget is not all that complicated to use at all and the possibilities are literally endless!
I've had that same experience. But you cam definitely write some reg rock tracks with it. You just have to get in to the mindset of "Pattern" based music making. I'm more linear type kind of composer but Gadjet does help get things going from your mind to the iPad.
I made the mistake of pigeon holing gadget when it first came out too. Heard the tracks people were making and just made up my mind that it wasn't for me. Then, as you said, I finally caved with the recent sale. Boy was I wrong. Now it's a starting point for nearly everything I work on. I don't create complete tracks in it at all. I use it to build up he framework for the beats of the song I want. I find the midi editor in gadget to be the best I've found honestly, but I'm no midi-first kind of guy, so others probably have different opinions. I'll also throw in some ambient tracks here and there, and maybe even a few cinematic hits to change pace here and there. Once I get that down I export stems to Auria and make them sound like whatever I want. Then I lay down my guitar and keys in there via IAA. Gadget has defintely helped me in a BIG way with composition and framing out a song. And I don't make any electronic music at all really. It's a powerful tool, and one that is defintely worth the investment in time it takes to learn the controls. And as others have pointed out, the button you're looking for is on the lower left and labelled "function". Good luck.
There are some good Gadget tutorials and other stuff at Mee Zanooks Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2XZO1BCceuA9LoDAoyOjAQ/videos
In answer to the OP....
A tip you might find useful - if you don't want to get stuck into a 'pattern based rut' - is that you can record infinitely long jams (much longer than the 16 bar limit) by:
Creating scene 1 - and giving it the full 16 bar length.
Duplicating this into as many scenes as you want to jam for ... so you might end up with 8 scenes of 16 bar length.
Then start recording at scene 1 and make sure the loop button is off. It will continuously record your playing throughout 128 bars.
You can of course then go and tidy up the midi - take the bits you like, reorder or whatever....
The same goes for recording the modulation of any midi ccs - it can be done continuously over more than 16 bars using the above method
(Apologies if you already knew this).
Once you have, say, a basic drum and bass line repeating, or chord progression or whatever - this can be a good way to come up with a melody / riff.
I see no reason why Gadget's composition model is particularly geared to dance music to be honest. Although perhaps the plethora of synths and lack of audio tracks make it a tough choice for some genres.
If you buy, and really work out how to use the 2 sampling Gadgets then you can open up that 'walled garden' a bit - but I admit the 5sec and 10sec limit on samples doesn't make this that easy.
Bring on audio tracks and more/better effects management and then I think it will be the 'perfect' iOS composition DAW. In terms of application and UI design I think it's really quite a masterpiece. It's extremely solid too.
I admit, the first thing on did on gadget was a ridiculous dubstep drop. What can I say? It couldn't be helped.
But the second thing I did was a retro 60s spy movie track. It was crazy!
The I did the B minor study by Sor.
The range is there, you just have to step through its doorway.
Is there any way in Gadget to copy and paste midi notes? even within the same grid, I could not find copy and paste and that's something I often want to do ...
is it possible at all?
You can copy an entire grid block and edit out what you don't want. The function button on the lower left will allow you to do this.While you're in gadget view (I don't know if that's the correct term or not, so excuse me gurus) click on the function button. On the upper left you'll see a menu with three options, copy being the third one down. Hit that and from there you can then select e source to copy from. The second click will be the destination you want to copy the notes to. Hope this helps.
@matt_fletcher_2000
Wow, I didn't know that about recording continuously! I'll try that.
I admit I used gadget to make a wrote by numbers trance type track as I learned it. It was fun and not what I typically do. But it was fun.
hi yes, thanks for explaining, I know I can copy complete patterns, what I'd like to do is copy notes, like a phrase of six notes or so and then copy paste them to different parts in the grid. like you can do in cubasis or auxy ?
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 Good post Matt. It took me a while to get the 'turn off the loop button and just keep recording' option. Certainly opens up the head as well as the stave.
While there are many things in many apps I'd like, if the genie appeared this morning and gave me one quick wish it would be for a (feasibly) unlimited sample length in Dubai (and yes, I'd take 30 secs if that's all the genie was offering...), but currently unrequited desires sounds like a topic for another thread...
I'd be happier with gadget if the full assortment of effects was standard for every gadget. When I use it I feel compelled to make all the gadgets sound unrecognizable but that's not possible with maybe half of 'em.
But who am I to judge, I've never programmed anything.
You can also, within the piano roll screen, copy a bar of midi to another bar (function > copy). But that's the most granular you can go. You can't copy individual midi notes - just bars of notes.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000
Ah! I wasn't aware of that. Yes, that's usefull and could be a workaround for many situations where I want to copy notes. Cool, thanks!
Any news on the next update to Gadget?
No but I can't wait for the promised audio tracks. And yes, they should up the sample limit for Bilbao and Abu as well.
Matt, thanks for your awesome post!
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 said:
i'd just be happy if they got midi channels sorted and i could use it as a multi-timbral synth like i do with Nanostudio...
Just thinking out loud here, but if you copied from say bar 1 to bar 2, could you not then select a bunch of notes from bar 2 and drag them back to where you want them in bar 1? A little convoluted, but it woukd achieve the goal.
yes you can
As I say, I've literally used it for minutes, and probably won't have time for serious exploration for some weeks to come yet. About it, I know nothing.
Gadget is one of the easier apps to use. A few more minutes and you'll probably have it figured out. On the one hand it does sort of channel you into certain things. On the other hand there is enough flexibility and variety that it does not limit you to "paint by numbers" so to speak.
A brief overview: find a gadget you like, read their descriptions to help you, load that gadget, get a sound you like in that gadget, write a section a music, write another section of music, maybe apply some automation, and so forth and so on until you are ready to add another gadget, at which point go to the beginning of this overview and repeat.
It kind of hints at what's available in the available track names: Drum, Bass. Lead, Pad. All of the gadgets generally fit into one of those categories. So yeah, they do try to walk you through it, but again it's not constraining either.
Another tip...
Go very horizontal before you go vertical.
So by this I mean, ALL IN SCENE 1, come up with a part (eg drum pattern), then a bass line, then maybe a melody part, then chords, then some extra percussion, then a vocal sample, then FX etc, then duplicate the bass line synth and try a second bass line pattern, then a second melody, chords for the chorus or whatever. Etc, etc...
On my Air1 I can get about 14 or so tracks without problems. Then go to scene 2 if you need to and carry on as above.
Use the mute and solo buttons to try all these parts in combination with each other, bringing things in and out, tweaking synth patches etc. Basically use it like Abelton clip view by using the mute and solo buttons. Killing tracks and parts that don't work, trying new things.
Then you'll end up with loads of tracks and parts spread horizontally across maybe 1, 2 or 3 scenes depending on the amount of layers in your track. When you're happy with the mix of elements and have 'practiced' and tried out various sequences of things coming in and out, then move to stage 2 which is organising this into a linear track moving down the scenes vertically (ie arrange your track). This can actually be done quite quickly.
Then, obviously, create variation, try to merge different sections with transitions etc, add automation that runs across scenes and generally polish.
That is exactly how I use Gadget! One of the things I love most about it actually... It just flows so well
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 good stuff (again) Matt. I get this on Gadget, but there are other apps I would really like such a concise and plain-spoken explanation of a sensible process.
I can attest that Gadget will work with just about any genre or workflow. I have several Auria projects in progress chock full of Gadget tracks - and it's much closer to rock than electronica or ambient. So if the garden is walled, the walls aren't over tall.
I find the sequencer unmatched on iOS. Great interface. I would recommend giving it another shot, maybe watch Doug's tutorial first (see below). It took a bit for it all to click for me but once it did - very much worth it!
So awesome!!!! Been using this more cause of these tips! Thanks!