The Switch's new music gadget is half broken but still brilliant
What a week it's been for creative sorts on the Switch. Labo might have stolen the headlines - even if it's not quite stormed the charts just yet - but I lost the best part of a weekend tinkering with another toy that's just found its way to the eShop. Korg Gadget is a handsomely featured digital audio workstation - or DAW, if you must - that brings a selection of music tools to the Switch, all of which are enough to enable some sweet, sweet sounds. Or some absolute dirge, more likely.
Still, the Korg Gadget excels in being extremely user-friendly, even to someone with next to no ability or experience beyond fiddling with Fruity Loops. This isn't a rival to Logic Pro or Ableton, of course - instead, it feels like a successor to the likes of Codemasters' outstanding Music 2000 (a piece of software, legend once had it, that Dizzee Rascal produced his debut album on - though like most legends, it sadly proved not entirely true), and going back a little further to Nintendo's own Mario Paint.
And it's a successor of sorts to Korg's line of DS and 3DS software - with the developer of the 3DS outings, Detune, working on Korg Gadget. This is a slightly different proposition, and arguably a more welcoming one too; a collection of 16 gadgets, ranging from drum machines to synthesizers and with some more familiar than others, this is geared towards laying down tracks in as frictionless a fashion as possible. The Chicago gadget, with its silver faceplate, does a more than passable impersonation of Roland's iconic TB-303, and it sounds pretty spot-on too, delivering those same soft whip acid basslines. Elsewhere you'll find appropriations of 808 and 909s, and soundbanks that'll deliver the crack and snarl of a junglist drumline. It is possible, with the minimum of effort, to get some mildly impressive results.
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