teenage engineering op 1

OP-1 is a sexy beast.

That is all I have to contribute to this thread.

  On 12/8/2013 at 4:17 AM, mcbpete said:

I'm only messing man - It was a good attempt. I give it an 8 out of

So yeah, this is actually a very inspiring and fun instrument. It's way too expensive and very lo-fi, but if you manage to pick one up for cheap/second hand it's well worth it.

  On 12/8/2013 at 9:44 AM, oscillik said:

Holy fucking lol

Funny autechre tutorial btw.

  On 12/8/2013 at 9:44 AM, oscillik said:

 

I came here to lol and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of gum.

  On 1/26/2012 at 11:48 PM, soundwave said:

I see what your saying but the OP-1 and Tempest to some degree are kinda like lot of good old ideas repackaged in a new box. The Elektron's and Nord Modulars were and still are quite ground breaking design concepts next to what came before.

 

I cant speak for Autechre but I'd be surprised if they went near an OP-1, sound wise it does nothing new.

 

nothing in the elektrons or the nord are anything new sound wise either. only things we've had are new ways of interfacing with the gear. most synthesis is old theories FM, physical modelling, FFT, additive, and subjective synthesis. the new stuff is the way the machines let you access these things. The OP-1 is a fun interface, thats a lot in my opinion. Music is supposed to be fun

This thing has a similar appeal to me as Yamaha's Tenori-On way back when it came out. Anyone know how they compare?

I've been listening to a lot of I Am Robot And Proud today, I seem to remember he uses the tnr-o a lot.

seems wildly different from the tenori on in application but similar in that they both allow relatively unique ways of creating music. i feel like calling it "very lofi" is a bit of an overstatement. it gets pretty dirty (especially in higher freqs) but the sample play back, built in mic, fm radio, and of course the synth engines mostly all sound squeaky clean (to me at least).

+1 to how dirty / noisey it can get. Its funny sometimes how crazy the sounds coming out of it are.

Its an amazing machine and its enormously vast in terms of what it can do. I don't think its really over priced at all, I think that people are too fixated on its physical size - its an enormous machine on the inside. If it was the size of the JD-Xi people would think about it differently. I find when I'm using mine that often I'm like "I wonder if I can do that" and it always returns results.

I do wish it had better plug in / out functionality though.

  On 7/31/2015 at 6:12 PM, digman said:

 

 

I do wish it had better plug in / out functionality though.

my biggest complaint with it + the fact that the mic tends to get very easily blown out which is weird considering the mic on my casio sk-1 still works perfectly fine. I had to get the mic replaced once, and it blew out again a month later then i sold it because i was pretty annoyed at that point. ITs a great little device in theory and probably even more great for people into the whole tape chopping way of editing for 'off the grid' flylo clone types

I'm getting money together to possibly buy one of these next month. I'm weighing up an impulse decision to buy a Machinedrum after playing with it at bitroast's place last weekend.. but then again I could buy an OP-1 *AND* a nord drum 2 for the price of an MD in australia.

Interesting that Everybody Sweat was made on an OP-1, that's a great album.

I reckon you're going to have much more fun with the OP-1 based on the stuff you usually do.

I tried it in a nearby music store and was suprised how much background noise there is even when no tone is played. anyone else had this impression?

Yeah, the headphone output is pretty damn noisy. When you export the tracks to your computer they're clean as a whistle though.

  On 1/6/2016 at 12:57 AM, modey said:

I'm getting money together to possibly buy one of these next month. I'm weighing up an impulse decision to buy a Machinedrum after playing with it at bitroast's place last weekend.. but then again I could buy an OP-1 *AND* a nord drum 2 for the price of an MD in australia.

 

Interesting that Everybody Sweat was made on an OP-1, that's a great album.

i'm itching to sell most of my hardware (including a machinedrum and analog four) only holding onto my op1 and some sentimental stuff from my wife

Lord how I wish I could afford a Machinedrum (or a Rytm, think I'd prefer it...) right now. Maybe later this year. OP-1 looks plenty fun, but I just don't know if it'd be worth it for me.

sent using magic space waves

i wanted a machinedrum for like 10 years. it's a neat machine for sure. just never got into the requisite menu diving. the only reason i bought the elektron stuff is because i got a killer deal on it

  On 1/6/2016 at 4:10 PM, juiceciuj said:

 

  On 1/6/2016 at 12:57 AM, modey said:

I'm getting money together to possibly buy one of these next month. I'm weighing up an impulse decision to buy a Machinedrum after playing with it at bitroast's place last weekend.. but then again I could buy an OP-1 *AND* a nord drum 2 for the price of an MD in australia.

 

Interesting that Everybody Sweat was made on an OP-1, that's a great album.

i'm itching to sell most of my hardware (including a machinedrum and analog four) only holding onto my op1 and some sentimental stuff from my wife

 

I'm slowly selling off all of my cheap gear. Ever since I bought the monomachine I've realised that it actually is worth spending a bit more money on gear—the quality difference is ridiculous.

I'm still thinking I'll get some good use out of the MD, but I bought the MnM for live use, and if I keep adding to that setup (MnM, kaoss pad, electribe, midi keyboard) it just won't be easy to take out to gigs anymore.. as it is, it's not ideal!

OP-1 seems like something I could actually use to improvise a whole set with if I wanted. It'd be minimalist, but interesting.

edit: one thing I've been unsure about, and that doesn't seem to be covered in videos, is if there's a way to define a few loop regions in the 4-track tape mode? I know it's limited to 6 minutes of total recording time, but I'm wondering if maybe it's possible to have, say, 4–5 30 second loops that can be recalled?

  On 1/7/2016 at 1:43 AM, modey said:

 

edit: one thing I've been unsure about, and that doesn't seem to be covered in videos, is if there's a way to define a few loop regions in the 4-track tape mode? I know it's limited to 6 minutes of total recording time, but I'm wondering if maybe it's possible to have, say, 4–5 30 second loops that can be recalled?

dunno if there's a way to truly define regions that can be jumped through. the tape is automatically broken into bars that so that it's easy to break your tape up into segments. i think the problem is going to be that everything needs to be the same bpm. then you can start by looping/muting different tracks and manually progressing through the groove. check this mini set a dude setup. 100% op1 + using the built in radio for external samples

Interesting. Having everything in the same BPM isn't a big problem, really. Could the tape speed be changed or is that locked to tempo if the tape is broken into bars?

I just read the tape section in the manual and it seems like it's possible to do what I want; I'm thinking maybe recording some monomachine loops into it and then messing with it live might be a nice way to make my live setup a lot more compact.

I kinda wish I knew someone local who owns one and didn't mind me borrowing it for a while. I'm pretty sure I'll like it, but "pretty sure" isn't good enough when it's going to cost me ~$1300AU :P

i just think the tape divisions are always going to match what the current bpm is set to. not really sure how you'd evenly jump between bits at different tempos recorded on a single tape. ya know? fyi i'm still an op1 n00b. there's a pretty good knowledge base at operator-1.com

yeah, either way I guess it'll provide interesting results. I think I'm going to just go for it, once I can get the money together.

I love my op-1. I've had it several years now and it is still one of my most used pieces of gear.

I personally don't find the device a great 'live' unit although plenty seem to be ok with it. You can jump thru loop points but in a linear fashion - ie you can loop a 4 bar section and then tab along to the next 4 bars.

I find it really useful for creating audio that I later use in the daw. The 4 mono tracks seem limited at first but I make sections along the 6 minutes to create more. I don't usually feel like powering up the daw on evenings after work but the op-1 and iPad combo allows me to create usable audio for use in productions rather than just messing about with a toy.

Ymmv