KORG Gadget 2 released, yesterday morning, on iOS, Mac and also now on Windows.
As such, I took a day off from coding, and instead spent the day playing with the iOS edition of the app.


View on YouTube

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KORG Gadget has been my music software of choice since it first released on iPad way way back in 2014.
Every single piece of music that I've done since then (aside from the occasional MOD file) has been done using KORG Gadget, and even a fair number of ingame sound effects, too.

The software isn't "the best" music creation package in the world. That title probably goes to Ableton, FLStudio, or any other number of "more compatible" products.
KORG Gadget doesn't really integrate with other software very well, mostly due to the fact that it was born on iPad, where Apple's strict rules doesn't really give the option of decent plug-in abilities.
.. Of course, as those abilities have expanded, it's become increasingly clear that the other reason for the limitation is KORG wanting to keep things their own walled garden of synths, thus forcing users to keep on buying more and more KORG things.
Meh..

But even with that limitation, they absolutely hit the "feel" of Gadget perfectly spot on. The entire interface was created from the ground up, specifically for iPad.
There are "weird" design decisions that feel slightly broken on desktop, but if you try to use them with just your finger on a touchscreen, you'll soon realise why those decisions were made.
It's to keep things simple and prod-able, so they work with a giant stumpy finger on a moderately small iPad screen. And.. It works!
In fact, it works TOO well. If I compare Gadget to other "Desktop-First" music apps, the issues become alarmingly frustrating.

Bits of interface that require extremely precise touches are FAR too common in a lot of different iOS Music apps. Issues which are all too often caused by developers creating the interface with a mouse in their hand, not on a touchscreen with giant stumpy fingers.

Gadget got it right, from the get-go, and that's why it's been one of my favourite tools for all this time.
Lying in bed, iPad in hand, creating! It's the best!!

As for Gadget2, well.. A lot of the tweaks have been just simple tweaks, and if you've been using the iOS version for as long as I have, they'll simply feel like the same little upgrades you've had for the past 5 years.
The "Big update" is more down to the fact that this version finally includes a Windows edition to sit alongside the MacOS one. But given the overall price of the Windows version, alongside the fact that I've paid a TON to KORG already for all the iOS in-app-purchases, I don't think I'll be picking up the Windows version any time soon.

I already have the iOS one, and it's fully capable as it is.
I'm happy with that.

I made the above little ditty, yesterday, to show off the ease of creating on the thing.
Maybe it might inspire some of you to give it a go.

If you are interested, there's a "LE" free edition of Gadget available in the AppStore, which you can have a little play with.
But be warned, if you do decide that it's a keeper, you'll likely want to buy all the different instruments and other bits and pieces, and then ... it soon racks up!!