Backing up loops - building up liveset on the OP1

Hi OP-1ers,
Let’s say I’m making a beat on 4 tape tracks, I’m happy with it and want to back it up. Am I able to only export these 4-track loops section?
From what I understand I am only able to back up the whole tape, not the only portion where my loop is. Is this correct? If not, do I have to edit it on a daw?

Let’s say I manage to do the above one way or another and would like to build a liveset with all the different 4track loops back to back. Am I able to import them on the OP1?
Very new to this, excuse my newbiness.
Thanks

As far as I know you can only export the complete tape tracks. One idea might be to lift each track and drop it in a drum sampler patch, but there would be a twelve second maximum.

If you were to arrange back to back loops on the tape for live playback, keep in mind that holding shift and pressing the loop button on the tape screen will loop the length of the highlighted tape segment. This would be useful for moving through loops of different tempos. You are also able to slice each of the four tape tracks to different lengths, say one bar on track one, two on track two, four on track three, and eight on track four. Press the track button containing the length you want to work with, then shift+loop to loop all four tracks for more or fewer bars.

Another tip is to hold shift and then press either the left or right arrows when on the tape screen with a loop engaged. This will cause the loop to jump forward or back at its own length. The arrows can be pressed multiple times to move further from the currently playing section. Pressing the play button after completing this operation will cause the loop to play immediately at the same point in the queued segment, however occasionally with undesirable dropout.

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That’s some good info Lymtronics, thank you. I am also trying to get my head around things like this at the moment.

Wow these are great tips indeed. I knew about the shift arrow… no idea about the track button/shift/loop one! Thanks for that.
About the ability to arrange loops back to back it would be great to be able to do that… just can’t figure out how yet. It would mean that you need to build your live set little by little and back up the tapes each time. I sent an email to DJthomaswhite hoping to understand how he managed to build up his live set on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXtRKvfLlqQ

I tried combining a bunch of different track back ups into ableton the other day and re exporting the 6 minute tracks back to the OP1. Mine came back a solid full 6 minute takes, so you need to go back through and cut them back up which is a bit fiddly, but totally doable. The lift is limited to 90 seconds though, so you have to cut up a lot of smaller chunks to remove the silence. When I imported them though, there was some analyzing going on that I think was looking for breaks or cuts but not sure if this is metadata that the op1 creates rather than ableton. My tip is to make sure if you’re working to the same BPM the op1 device grid is, line up things in your DAW to that and cutting on the grid using shift and arrows is pretty tight.

That’s awesome. Thanks for the tips. I will give this a try. Really like this forum.

wow. The second of lymtronic’s tips above is a real good one. knew about the first, but not the second. many, many thanks.

Hi Guys,

I tend to fill my tape from start to end with 1 or 2 bar loops. As I write, I copy and modify the loop repeatedly so when I am ready for a show I start playing the first loop at the start of the tape and navigate back and forth to create the live arrangement. I don’t focus too much on removing beats and stuff as you can do that with mutes and solos on the OP. Having a transition piece between loops that make up a song helps the flow. Something with a bit of the old and a bit of the next loops. This makes for DJ-type blends as you move through your loops. Add in OP FX and the small Kaoss Pad and things get really flexible. Most 1 bar loops play 8 times before moving on, sometimes 64 or more depending on where I try to take things with the prerecorded parts. This extends the 6 minutes in the OP to a good half hour or 45 minutes. If you drop (slow down) the tape resolution a bit you can get close to an hour but this comes at the cost of the resolution, but in a world of 320kps mp3’s DJ’s play the difference is minimal. I hope this helps! - DJTW

^awwww jisssss great advice!

If your set was all to be the same tempo then you could create a set in AbletonLive made of lots of 4 bar loops one after the other at say 120bpm. Export this out as a 4x6 minute AIFF files (one for each track). Connect the OP-1 as a drive and dump the tracks into the Tape folder.


Then set the tempo on your OP-1 to 120bpm and all markers for looping should be in the exact positions and the shift> will work too.

Haven’t tried this but in theory why shouldnt it work.

Haven't tried this but in theory why shouldnt it work.

Yes this works. Thats the way i do it. Prepare all Loops in Ableton. Export as AIFF and drop it to my Op-1.
I think thats the best way to get clean cut Loops onto Tapes.

I remember dropping my tracks into Ableton Sessions screen, and see the tracks directly cut where there would be silence, without any manipulation.

If for instance you have in the OP-1 a 4 bar loop then 1 bar loop then 4 bar loop, in Ableton you would get your two 4-bar loops clips, with a clean cut of 1 bar in between.

Digging up this old thread!

Could someone help me with the format the tape file needs to be before being imported into the OP-1 tape folder?

For example I rearranged and conslidated all the loops I need for my liveset into Ableton live, the 4 tracks are 6mn long each.
The tracks are named correctly, track_x.aif, etc
I save as .aif in live…

But when I import the tracks it doesn’t accept them and “re-creates” blank tapes.

- What am I doing wrong? Has anyone ever succeeded?

Thanks for your help!

Yes it worked for me.
Under 6min Mono .I think 24bit 41kHz .
I even had an aiff file were I deleted the extra F and it worked!?

Obviously deleted tape tracks and replaced with same name tracks, in Tape.

Didi this lately.

Got this “recreate” tape 4 where I dropped all my filed recordings.
And it was OK, everything was kept.
The thing is there was some “correction” made to the track : it was stereo originally, and certainly not the same size as the other.
Is really your track on OP-1 empty ?

+ Have you tried to listen to the original .aif track in VLC for instance, to check that it’s not empty in the first place ?
Sometimes I export from Ableton while only one track is Solo…


For example I rearranged and conslidated all the loops I need for my liveset into Ableton live, the 4 tracks are 6mn long each.
The tracks are named correctly, track_x.aif, etc
I save as .aif in live...

Hi @lefilou, I’m wondering whether the reason that the Op-1 didn’t accept the .aif files is because Live puts something into them that the Op-1 cannot parse and rejects for some reason. Do you still have an example of the tape track that you couldn’t import? I’d love to have a peek inside it to see if I can figure out why.


On a related note, I was playing round with the tape track aifs recently myself and was able to work out how TE have encoded the loop start and end points inside the aif file. They’ve added a “regn” chunk which contains a field at the start that says how many regions there are and then an array of regions, each of which specifies the start and end points of that region. I was able to use this information to write some code that takes a tape track as input and generates a list of new aifs, one for every region, each containing the audio from that region.

Thanks so much for the prompt answers!

@Spheric_El mine was 6mn long, not “under 6mn”. Also I thought audio files were meant to be 16bits 41khz, not 24… interesting.

@LyingDalai The track was empty on the OP-1, although there was def something on it (I checked afterwards)

@yoof I will send you the track example tonight, thanks so much. Wow this, start and end point data is amazing! A Utility tool would be even better :slight_smile: Being able to organise your set on software by dragging your fav 4-track loops on tape… as well as the loop points…!!!
Is this something you are working on? (say yes, say yes, say yes, say yes)


41 kHz ? You guys mean either 44.1 kHz/16 bits right ?

yes I meant that I thought 44.1 kHz/16 bits, not 44.1 kHz/24bits