Korg Gadget > The Hodgepodge for song production on iOS?

richardyot

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

richardyot I'll be very interested to see how you feel it helps or contributes to your way of working.

Actually I'm planning to use it for sound design initially, I have 13 animations to create over the next 3 months and they all need some incidental music. I bought iM1 for this purpose and it's perfect, but some of the synths in Gadget also look pretty good for this, Ching Mai and Kiev for example.

I would like to try incorporating more synths into my personal music, but that's a long-term project I guess. So for now my SOTM entries will still sound like the JAMC if they were really into shoegazing.

JohnnyGoodyear

@richardyot Hmm. I can see the animation/incidental purpose, but I can't think about SOTMC right now, or if I do it would all be angry blues

I am in an airport. My life is an airport. The world is a mirror-room of airports sub-divided into endless lines of angry people inching towards The Service Counter of Nowhere. There will be no clogs or tulips. The Europe is karmically closed to us it seems. There is only separation anxiety from lost luggage and life in this same old Luckenbach t-shirt I always wear for luck, along with another plastic-wrapped sandwich of pale meat. Stand-by sucks. I think we will return to Go without having gone anywhere but the world's longest trip to Atlanta and back. Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek Alphabet and also very much a four
letter word to me now.

S'pose there must be a tune in here somewhere

richardyot

Once you get on the plane you can get the iPad the headphones out, right?

FrankieJay

@Paulyboy said:
Wow thanks for all the responses everybody!

One of my biggest problems is getting an idea for a song in my head and then having to wade through the appropriate apps, instruments, presets, etc. to attempt to re-create what's in my head before it disappears. All too often I end up drowning in this sea of choices and then the idea in my head is gone. The piano roll in Gadget looks, to my eyes, like the easiest way to get an idea out of my head into some sort of close facsimile digitally before it's gone.

And then if I understand it correctly you can now export the MIDI out of Gadget into your favorite DAW? If that's correct it seems like you could then populate those MIDI tracks with your preferred instruments (Thor, Nave, etc..) in something like Cubasis, using the insert FX there if you wish? I might not do this every time but it would be nice to know if it's an option.

It's also nice to know that something like Diode, my new favorite drum machine, syncs well with Gadget. I might actually substitute that for the drum track created in Gadget later on after exporting to Cubasis;. If I understand correctly that is?

I might actually pass on Module for now though. Are the piano sounds in M1 suitable enough? Plus couldn't I just export the MIDI and substitute in iGrand at some point later on like I described above? It looks like Module was as low as $20 once before so perhaps I could simply wait until it hits that again and live without it using other things as substitutes in the meantime. Unless of course that's too much of a pain and not worth all the trouble?

And for the record I do like electronic music but I prefer "real" instrument sounds, which is why I was considering Module.

I also, for whatever reason, much prefer the iPad over my Mac for doing any of this stuff.

Thanks again for all the great responses everybody!

I know everything is subjective but what have you really got on your Mac? I mean what software are you using?

I come from a Mac background and my workflow includes Logic Pro X plus I play into Logic from iPad. Essentially utilising the best of both worlds. I love iOS synths and all that but they are too limited for me to seriously do all my work on the iPad. Yes music is about having fun but if you want to be a serious producer, you have to be open minded and use all the arsenal at your disposal. At least that is what works for me.

Good luck in your musical journey:)

Will

Not at all the fault of the app but I've never actually finished a song in Gadget. I quite like and have long made loop based music but loops are elements in a linear headspace for me and I don't think I've tongue kissed Gadget long enough to enter that headspace.

richardyot

Well I just bought it and spent the evening with it. First impressions are pretty good, I wanted to create a quick piece of incidental music and was able to do this in a few minutes, so I totally get the convenience and the workflow.

It does have limitations obviously, aside from being a little too self contained it's also pretty limited as a mixing environment, no FX inserts, only the FX on the gadgets themselves but nonetheless it's a lot of fun to play with.

JohnnyGoodyear

@richardyot said:
Well I just bought it and spent the evening with it. First impressions are pretty good, I wanted to create a quick piece of incidental music and was able to do this in a few minutes, so I totally get the convenience and the workflow.

It does have limitations obviously, aside from being a little too self contained it's also pretty limited as a mixing environment, no FX inserts, only the FX on the gadgets themselves but nonetheless it's a lot of fun to play with.

It seems that the more one plays with it, the more possibilities become apparent...and, by the same token, the more the missing audio file/Bilbao sample time extension/whatever stick in some of our throats, but it can be a very creative writer...

RUST( i )K

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
It seems that the more one plays with it, the more possibilities become apparent...and, by the same token, the more the missing audio file/Bilbao sample time extension/whatever stick in some of our throats, but it can be a very creative writer...

The more you play with it the better it is........................................................

waitwut

Entire price of Gadget and expansions worth Abu Dhabi and Bilbao.

Plus, M1 has greatly elevated the app. It gave us everything Marseilles didn't.

richardyot

So this is my first Gadget track, the result of my doodling last night as I was finding my way around the app. I needed to create something quite specific: an ambient incidental piece for an animation that is loopable and with a subtle Eastern flavour.

The fact that I was able to achieve this so quickly on my first attempt (took 30-45 minutes) is testament to the ease-of-use of the app! I think for this kind of soundtrack work it's a no-brainer for me.

Matt_Fletcher_2000

Nice work @richardyot - out of interest, which Gadgets did you use?

I can hear Chiang Mai I think.

richardyot

Chiang Mai for the melody, Kiev and Helsinki for the counterpoint harmony, Bilbao for those two drum sounds and then 3 instances of Darwin for pads and atmosphere.

Chian Mai and Kiev are my favourite gadgets so far, lovely sounds.

richardyot

One really nice feature is that when you set a scale in one gadget, it then stays set in all the other gadgets you add. To get the oriental feel I used the minor pentatonic scale in my initial progression in Kiev, and that was then automatically set whenever I added another instrument.

Matt_Fletcher_2000

Yep, the handling of scales in Gadget is brilliant. I wish all DAWs did this.

I think Chiang Mai is definitely one of my favourite Gadgets. You can make some really interesting sounds with it - while at the same time it can just sound crystal clear 'classic' if you want.

Kiev I stuggle with a little bit - need to spend more time with it...

I love the fact that evn though i've been gadget for about 18 months - there's still loads more to master/explore in it...

JohnnyGoodyear

@richardyot Not going to give this the full SOTMC third-degree, but pleased to see you breaking through the Gadget eggshell. Sounds good. There's no question it's a useful tool to have in the box, perhaps especially in light of your particular 'soundtrack' tasks this summer. And presuming you do find it a workable part of the solution, by the time the kids go back to school you will be a relative Master

Interesting (to us non-dance genre fellows) that Chaing Mai is immediately a comfortable place to start/dive in. iM1/Darwin now adds so much more to the overall palette. Just think, in another ten minutes you too will be joining the 'if only Bilbao did more than 5 second samples and what the hell's going on with the undo?' chorus

Being a visuals hound, I would LOVE to see the animation that this accompanies at some point...

R_2

@richardyot Lovely little tune. I too would like to see the animations when your finished.
Kiev is great indeed, makes me look forward to iWavestation for Gadget.

@Matt_Fletcher_2000 said:
I love the fact that evn though i've been gadget for about 18 months - there's still loads more to master/explore in it...

True. Recently got Abu Dhabi, like the different approach to samples compared to Bilbao.
Control of attack time was something I missed in Bilbao (and London).
Bilbao is definitely the sampler to get in Gadget if you only buy one IAP. But for experimenting with loops/longer samples Abu Dhabi is fun.

richardyot

@JohnnyGoodyear said:
Being a visuals hound, I would LOVE to see the animation that this accompanies at some point...

I'm working on the look dev at the moment, much as I would love to post some samples it's under NDA. My avatar will give a you vague idea of what it look like

JohnnyGoodyear

@richardyot said:

No worries. I like NDAs. They smell like money.