Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator Synths

  On 1/23/2015 at 3:48 PM, juiceciuj said:

ordered all three. there's a video of someone syncing it to a volca using the cv out so i assume it would sync to a4 the same. i thought they all sounded pretty excellent. dirty as fuck.

 

worth it for the alarm clock function alone

getting cv sync tips the scales for me – initially I was thinking this would end up like my bleepdrum. Fun little piece of kit, but lack of integration options basically relegates it to toy status (or more off-the-clock experiments, but that's not really what I want out of a drum machine).

Here's the referenced video if anyone else is curious –

Yeah, looks like a fun addition for some people. Not sure I'd every use one (the synth might be more to my usage) but this is a cool little idea and execution from Teenage Engineering.

purchased!

but delivery in april!! D:

does anyone know if you can save patterns? I know you can string patterns together, but then, if you turn it off is it all lost?

  On 1/29/2015 at 1:01 PM, MIXL2 said:

purchased!

 

but delivery in april!! D:

purchased all 3 when they were listed as "in stock" but have only gotten vague copy/paste emails stating they'll be delivered anytime between now and three months. -_-

  On 1/30/2015 at 3:22 AM, Hanratty said:

does anyone know if you can save patterns? I know you can string patterns together, but then, if you turn it off is it all lost?

looking at the manual here: https://teenageengineering.com/guides/po-12it looks like you don't even turn it off unless you take the batteries out it just goes into standby.

One issue with these might be that when you have all three synced up together the audio is passing through the devices and that means there's distortion when, let's say, a big bass drum sounds and lowers the volume of the hi hats/synth leads. To deal with this a person might plug them all into a mixer, but then wouldn't you lose the sync of the devices to each other?

  On 1/30/2015 at 4:36 AM, juiceciuj said:

 

  On 1/29/2015 at 1:01 PM, MIXL2 said:

purchased!

 

but delivery in april!! D:

purchased all 3 when they were listed as "in stock" but have only gotten vague copy/paste emails stating they'll be delivered anytime between now and three months. -_-

FINALLY got my po-12, this is awesome, is my first time twiddling real knobs and is real, real fun.

is kinda chaotic, and not really intuitive as to how to program it, but I think I will get the hang of it after a couple of weeks. some of the pre-made patterns are really cool sounding! I reckon this little guy could make quite some noise on the wrong right hands

yeah those little duds are pretty sweet. went to a local synth meet last sat and me and two friends (each of us controlling one of the three synced pos) improved a short set as a part of the "mind meld" which is where anyone who wants takes turns improving 10-15 minutes with the kit they brought. neither of my friends had ever touched one before so i just gave them some basic instructions on changing patterns/sounds and it turned out to be a pretty funky little jam especially considering the unrehearsed nature of it

  On 1/30/2015 at 3:22 AM, Hanratty said:

does anyone know if you can save patterns? I know you can string patterns together, but then, if you turn it off is it all lost?

it will store up to 16 patterns. patterns are saved even if batteries are removed. every single tweak is automatically saved as it occurs and there's no undo so be careful ;)

  On 2/1/2015 at 1:38 PM, Hanratty said:

One issue with these might be that when you have all three synced up together the audio is passing through the devices and that means there's distortion when, let's say, a big bass drum sounds and lowers the volume of the hi hats/synth leads. To deal with this a person might plug them all into a mixer, but then wouldn't you lose the sync of the devices to each other?

this is definitely an issue and it's actually seems worst if you hook them up chronologically. it seems to be minimized when hooking them up reverse chronologically. probably because the built in mixers/compressors aren't having to deal with big deep kick drum sounds passing through the other two synths

got the PO12 for my girlfriend,

she's never used a drum machine, she is pleased with this one.

imo it's weird that you can only live-record p-locks, not edit them on the grid. would've been trivial to add, and would've allowed for more controlled edits.

i.e. hold a step, then tweak knob - a strange omission.

the fx-tool is insanely powerful on this thing (po-12) I started trying to recreate the amen and after a bit of fx+11 and fx+3 that shit sounded completely different and ridiculous.

also, I love how the little dude goes all metal when u add bitcrush.

You guys should upload some samples/loops

Yes.

i have two roughly 10 minute jams that i did at a synth meetup a couple of weeks ago. i didn't do the recording and it seems like a good bit of the bass got cut somewhere between my setup and the tapeout but whatever. i brought all three pos and me and two friends each jammed on one. they had never touched them before and since we weren't planning on participating in the "mind meld" (where anyone that brought gear and wants to, plugs into the master mixer/pa and takes turns jamming for roughly 10 minutes) i didn't have much time to explain many of the controls to them. things get a bit repetitive as i think my friends kept forgetting how to change things/use fx and accidentally were changing volume settings and stuff.

anyways our jams are kinda buried in the two below files but there's some other good stuff. some droney noisey stuff then some kinda bootleg volca acid stuff. a couple of people did a set with pretty short set (4 mins or so) with a sh-101/tb-303 and original electribe sampler.

ht tps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/492470/ASC/ASC_Mindmeld_04_2015/ASC_2015_04_18_Mindmeld_Part1.mp3 (starts around 28 but level gets boosted around 29 minute mark)

ht tps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/492470/ASC/ASC_Mindmeld_04_2015/ASC_2015_04_18_Mindmeld_Part2.mp3 (starts around 43min mark)

*edit oh that's weird how this site does drop box links. don't know what to do about that since you can't see time readouts or whatever... but whatever. take out the space between the ht tp for the links

Someone needs to make something like this that's a combination sampler (i.e. device that records and plays back samples), drum sequencer and BBD, and make it so the sample memory and BBD memory can overlap (maybe with, like, S612 style start/end controls), and also give it simple pitch and amp envelope knobs. Like 4 voices. God that would be cool.

This is how ju demo:

[youtubehd]H6EFcYvFRO8[/youtubehd]

  On 4/28/2015 at 11:09 PM, Danny O Flannagin said:

You guys should upload some samples/loops

made the pattern in 10 minutes, all of the fun comes from the FX tool, as you can hear, insanely powerful

Just wanted to say I now own three of these (12, 14 and 24) they are very powerful (especially the 24, although i have yet to record a live session with that one)..

here is some little ambient fun i recorded live using only one sound of the po-14 being fed trough some fx:

https://soundcloud.com/consult-needler/po-14-fun-1

inspired by voafose and alike..

edit: added link

  On 4/27/2015 at 10:28 PM, phling said:

got the PO12

 

imo it's weird that you can only live-record p-locks, not edit them on the grid. would've been trivial to add, and would've allowed for more controlled edits.

i.e. hold a step, then tweak knob - a strange omission.

The PO-32 is capable of this.

  On 11/13/2017 at 8:46 AM, drukqs said:

 

  On 4/27/2015 at 10:28 PM, phling said:

got the PO12

 

imo it's weird that you can only live-record p-locks, not edit them on the grid. would've been trivial to add, and would've allowed for more controlled edits.

i.e. hold a step, then tweak knob - a strange omission.

The PO-32 is capable of this.

  On 11/13/2017 at 3:36 PM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 11/13/2017 at 8:46 AM, drukqs said:

 

  On 4/27/2015 at 10:28 PM, phling said:

got the PO12

 

imo it's weird that you can only live-record p-locks, not edit them on the grid. would've been trivial to add, and would've allowed for more controlled edits.

i.e. hold a step, then tweak knob - a strange omission.

The PO-32 is capable of this.

Yup, you can even make melodies this way, if you're determined enough

I find it just a little surprising that TE hasn't come up with a sequencer engine on the OP-1 that imitates the functionality of the PO's. It would be pretty killer to be able to tweak samples with that same parameter lock mentality. (Am I wrong in thinking that some of Elektron's gear does this?)

So far it seems that you only have control of the individual samples. A good workaround is to just simplify your drum kit into 3 or 4 samples and spread pitched/sliced variations of them across the whole keyboard, then write your sequence.

Or they could give us some kind of USB PO that is essentially a sequencer for the OP-1, but it seems like the OP-Z is supposed to kind of do that? Not sure about per-step parameter locks with control over pitch/volume/timbre/etc.

Pardon my ignorance, I need to do more research on other gear instead of asking about it on a forum. Although every time I research some gear I feel guilty for doing it and say I should just be grateful with the gear I currently have. It's just the more proficient I get with the OP-1 the more attractive the Octatrack seems...

I am selling a mint PO-32 . If anyone's interested pm me

PO-32... I am new to this thing, and it's just the best. Microtonic is already one of my favorite drum machines, and this takes that and adds so much to it. I had a Volca Beats, and it was OK, but in comparison to this good good drum machine, it was nothing. The thing that blows my mind is that, other than multi-outputs, it has all the best features of $600+ drum machines, with value added from the live effects, and the fact that, with morph, you can use up to 32 Microtonic patches at a time... (in 4 choke groups, which is a really nice limitation.)

Syncing this up and making hardware jams is so fucking fun.

Heres an all hardware jam, with the drums & drum effects all coming from the PO-32 (stock patches in this one)

fyi 99% chance they're about to announce another collaboration with sonic charge. leaks indicate a new po called speak so probably bitspeak? should know this week.