Korg Gadget for Mac
The iPad’s best music app finally arrives on the Mac
$299 Developer Korg, korg.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later
When it was released for iPad in 2015, Korg Gadget quickly became a favorite with people making music on the go. But in turning that into a desktop experience, Korg has made too direct a conversion.
Fortunately, it’s still good. The gadgets – mostly synths and drum pads based on classic kit – are full of superb presets, along with knobs and sliders to fashion your own custom noises. There’s variety, too, from ear-smashing bass to delicate synth sounds.
Workflow is smart. Songs comprise one or more tracks, each housing a single gadget. Each track contains clips of between one and 16 bars, which can be set to loop or play once. Individual notes are set down using a piano roll, through drawing them or having Gadget record as you play live.
Arrangement happens in the mixer view. Tracks are aligned vertically, and the rows across all tracks are scenes, which can also loop. This approach differs from Logic’s timeline, but is beneficial for electronic and instrumental music. If you want a short
drum loop behind a longer riff, that can all be achieved using a single scene. However, it’s problematic for guitars and vocals, which becomes apparent when you find the app’s audio recording gadgets force you to think and edit in a maximum of 16-bar bursts.
On iOS, you flick between mixer and gadget, but the macOS release can show both simultaneously. The effortlessness of the mobile release hasn’t quite translated, though; what works with direct touch interaction can
feel stilted and awkward on the Mac. Also, Korg rarely takes advantage of typical desktop interface conventions. For example, you can’t click a slider or dial and then input a precise value; nor can you select multiple clips to copy and paste when arranging a song. Playing instruments on keys is also inelegant – ideally you would have an external controller.
From an integration standpoint, things are better. iCloud sync works well across iOS and macOS, and projects export to Ableton Live intact. With Logic, you must make do with per-track rendered Wav files or MIDI, but all gadgets are also available as plugins if you want the sounds but aren’t worried about Gadget’s workflow. the bottom line. Here’s a package that’s a decent version 1.0, but it needs to do more to feel like it truly belongs on the Mac.