In the spirit of sharing, here’s the first thing I “properly” recorded with the OP-1. Recorded a random bit of disco off the radio, looped it up and added a beat and bassline and did a little live “arrangement”. Silly and sounds grungy (bad reception and general OP-1 vibe) but I had fun!
In general I find myself kind of torn, there are a lot of limitations and some bad UX decisions which make some stuff more fiddly than it needs to be for sure, but it’s such a fun and beautiful and whimsical device that I think I can learn to live with them and adapt the music I make on it to fit the styles it can do more easily!
I was looking for something which I could “switch my brain off” a bit when playing with it and it feels like that is half true, in the playing with notes/drums/sequencers phase it’s great fun, but then trying to actually make a song on it is more like solving a brain teaser to work around the limitations/restrictions! Not that it’s not fun to do so though.
OP1 is always a bit of a laugh for quickly throwing together messy pitch/time shifted sampled voices. Here is a bit of Robert Anton Wilson strangeness I crunched out a while back
I had an OP-1 and though it’s tons of fun to fiddle with and love the design and the way the user interface is implemented, musically I couldn’t seem to get anything worthwhile out of it.
I sold it, got a Digitone and never looked back.
If the damn thing wasn’t so expensive I would probably have kept it just as a passtime on the couch.
Lofi 60s garage riff cut up and mixed with mellotron flute sample to create odd cod-egyptian vibe. Hence the daft video. Love the way the OP1 allows the creation of super quick nonsense with none of the usual planning and doing it rightness required of other more structured gear.
Another little thing I made last night, a random classical radio sample looped and pitched down 4 octaves with a LFO on the loop point and just playing a few notes. Was a total “happy accident”, felt it had a bit of that “clicks’n’cuts” glitchy ambient vibe… this is the kind of random fun I was hoping to have with the OP-1, so I’m definitely growing to like it!
Feels like you just have to succumb to its way of working and the kind of music it can do well, rather than fight it…
In case it’s useful to anyone, I’ve found the best antenna for me so far is an audio cable connected to a y-splitter at both ends (so it forms a loop), connected to the mic in. Can’t remember where I saw this but it works much better than either headphones or just a 3.5mm wire on its own for me!
I have been owning an op1 for a couple of months and I have really great fun with it.
I travel quite often for business and therefore I needed a small and compact solution to create music when alone in the hotel room or in the airport…
I expanded the 4 tracks limitation adding a zoom h4n… I basically record the song main frame on the 4 op1 tracks and then record it on the 1st track of the h4n MTR recorder. I then can add different other layers to get pretty complicated arrangements. I almost recorded an album this way with these two little machines…
One thing is sure…the op1 is something that you love or you hate…it all depends on you and on your musical attitude. For me it is a great (and costy) piece of gear which brings me to some new directions every time I spend some time with it.
Next step is to try to combine it with my studio set up (digitakt, digitone, nord 2 lead rack and reface cp…). Any suggestions?
Regards
The op-1 is a nice instrument to combine with the DT, DN, or both. I can’t speak for the other gear you listed as I have no experience here.
However the op-1 synth engines really shine through the DNs effects. Just using it as a small synth for playing leads or chords live here is already good fun.
Since the 1.3 update on the digitakt, it’s quite flexible to control volume and panning and routing of the L and R input to the DT effects separately. You can pan 2 channels of the op-1 tape tracks hard left and the other 2 hard right. Great for having long ambient soundscapes or loops through the DT without sacrificing RAM memory. Its possible to sync then with the right USB midi hubs, but I wouldn’t bother. Just matching the bpms and pressing play simultaneously can also get the job done.
I’ve been experimenting with the OP-1 and the Loopy Pro beta, and it’s pretty good. I think I will be able to record the OP-1 into (stereo) loops, and arrange them in the app.
I like the OP-1 tape for scratch work, but not for arranging. This looks like a great combo, especially as I can connect via usb.
Yes, good points! That’s also what I plan to do with the op-1 and the sp 404 mkll I ordered, once it arrives.
I also did a whole album importing loops and phrases I recorded on the op-1 tape tracks to the DT for arranging and remixing. But here I cut them up with Cubase, so it was a bit of a hassle, but worth it in the end.
Not sure if this belongs here, but I’d like to share my experience with the Teenage Engineering OP-1 - in short, I did not gel with it much.
Standalone, it’s mostly a 4-track recorder. This means that when you spend time perfecting a synth patch and recording it onto the tracks, there isn’t much else you can do to your sound other than to add a few master fx and tape stop and such.
The next thing comes to it’s synths; some are good, others were not good (string synth). When it came down to it, I wanted other sounds that ‘fit my style’. So for the most part, I was hooking up the Moog apps on my iPhone and completely bypassing the onboard synths.
The thing I did enjoy was this - dialing in a decent melody in the arp and then setting the OP-1 aside and have it playback quietly in the background. This was quite relaxing to be honest.
I wanted to like the OP-1 after visualizing how I could use it alongside the OT MKII - midi cc control via midi usb host, or using it as a keyboard to input trigs on the OT, print arp data onto the OT,… etc - but in the end, I realized I could do all this with the things I already had (an iPhone, Squarp Pyramid, an OT MKII).
I sold it recently and do not regret it.
Attached is the only track I put together on the OP-1. I used all 4-tracks on it - all instrument sounds were from external sources.
I just got a new OP-1 and find it to be the most fun, inspiring and best DAW in a small format that can run for hours on battery charge, speakers and has so many synth engines, drum kits and sequencers in one carry small package than anything else. I love mine and even though it has its weak points, a joy to use. I feel like I am making beats by playing a video game and the sense of humor is refreshing on how they implement features.
I received an inheritance and ended up buying 2 Op-1s. In reality I could’ve bought anything but after 8 months of pondering different combinations and set ups I still felt drawn back to the Op (as a previous owner) In the grand scheme of things it’s turned out to be the best decision. Absolutely adore the workflow. And at my stage in life (age/parent) it’s the most direct and fun way for me to make sounds and music.
Partly in case 1 gets broken beyond repair, or stolen (Just my paranoia really)
But i also sync them via an Mpc Live. And because i don’t really want to multitrack externally or buy additional fx etc, it helps to have each Op-1 doing different things & running different fx.
