For this battle, we're going "off the grid". That means no tape markers!! Scary, I know. Go on, be brave, go to the metronome screen and turn the green encoder all the way to the left. Rid yourself of the shackles of the grid and experience a new freedom! Let it inspire you to experiment with different tempos and song structures.
Pro tip: to help with navigation, notice that in this mode, shift + left / right now jumps to the previous / next snip in the tape (actually quite cool).
Sound sources
For this battle, you are allowed to use:
The FM synth engine
The DBox drum engine
...and because it's Battle 52, you can also sample the track "52 Girls" by the B-52's (youTube link below)
Other rules
Go nuts with effects, lfo's, drive, resampling, bouncing to album and back again, just no other sound sources than the above.
Keep your track to as close as 3 mins as possible.
Feel free to submit up to 2 tracks, voting done on the track, not the producer.
All mastering done within the Op-1.
Upload to SoundCloud
Please post your submissions to this thread by end of Sunday 18th Feb. Good luck!
I got something going last night. Hope I manage to get it finished. However, so far haven’t really embraced the no tape markers rule, I’ve mainly come up with workarounds for it. =) =)
Non grid is interesting… I can honestly say that I’ve left my tape in tape markers mode since I got it, and found how to put them on…
It actually works quite well without them… When playing it seems to obey the same rule of moving the active loop directly adjacent to the currently active loop when you hit shift + arrow keys…
I think I accidentally set a loop on the bar markers before I removed them… So I’m not sure if I’m cheating… Maybe I’ll just start again… You can do a lot with bpm + sequencer + click and hitting the loop end button / green / shift + green to set loops… Once you have a loop set to the bpm, you’re pretty golden… Just gotta use your ears to keep on track… It’s a good exercise… Dunno if I’m leading padawans astray or not,
this is definitely off the grid. maybe a bit off the rails too. no B52 sample on this one, but all other rules checked off (sorry a bit long). hope you enjoy it.
Non grid is interesting... I can honestly say that I've left my tape in tape markers mode since I got it, and found how to put them on...
It actually works quite well without them... When playing it seems to obey the same rule of moving the active loop directly adjacent to the currently active loop when you hit shift + arrow keys...
I think I accidentally set a loop on the bar markers before I removed them... So I'm not sure if I'm cheating... Maybe I'll just start again... You can do a lot with bpm + sequencer + click and hitting the loop end button / green / shift + green to set loops... Once you have a loop set to the bpm, you're pretty golden... Just gotta use your ears to keep on track... It's a good exercise... Dunno if I'm leading padawans astray or not, :p
Yes. Me too, always stayed in grid mode and discovered some interesting new techniques in off-grid mode: recorded some snippets of the B52 track to tape, then rerecorded that to master-track with FX. Then back to tape. Cutting the recording while playing it like tapping the tempo worked really well. Then Shift+Loop to set the current snippet to loop to check if it’s running smooth … and you can copy/paste/paste/paste/paste to make your own grid. Nice.
Alright guys, recorded off grid directly to album. Used a lot of tape techniques for this. Was actually just a melodic synth track until I came back to it later and pitched it down, and randomly changed the loop markers, added loads of compression and master reverb. Literally created a completely different tune! Kind of glitch, industrial. Any feedback very welcome…
Non grid is interesting... I can honestly say that I've left my tape in tape markers mode since I got it, and found how to put them on...
It actually works quite well without them... When playing it seems to obey the same rule of moving the active loop directly adjacent to the currently active loop when you hit shift + arrow keys...
I think I accidentally set a loop on the bar markers before I removed them... So I'm not sure if I'm cheating... Maybe I'll just start again... You can do a lot with bpm + sequencer + click and hitting the loop end button / green / shift + green to set loops... Once you have a loop set to the bpm, you're pretty golden... Just gotta use your ears to keep on track... It's a good exercise... Dunno if I'm leading padawans astray or not, :p
Yes. Me too, always stayed in grid mode and discovered some interesting new techniques in off-grid mode: recorded some snippets of the B52 track to tape, then rerecorded that to master-track with FX. Then back to tape. Cutting the recording while playing it like tapping the tempo worked really well. Then Shift+Loop to set the current snippet to loop to check if it’s running smooth … and you can copy/paste/paste/paste/paste to make your own grid. Nice.
Great idea that mate. Maybe add it to tips and tricks thread.
Hey guys here’s mine. I’m on holidays in Hawaii with my wife and son at the moment, so I’ve been chipping away at this once they’ve gone to bed.
Everything in this one was from the FM engine in some way, with the drums in particularly being heavily processed/resampled using the nitro filter to try and get things a little crunchier. It’s a bit long and A/B structure as I’m planning on making this a full track with vocals, but for the spirit of the battle I’ve left it as is!
I like working off the grid, even though I managed to fk up a bunch of times and accidentally overwrite/lift sections that I would normally be saved by the grid. But hey, that’s the beauty of working on a machine without an Undo function (just like analogue tape)
Hey guys here's mine. I'm on holidays in Hawaii with my wife and son at the moment, so I've been chipping away at this once they've gone to bed.
Everything in this one was from the FM engine in some way, with the drums in particularly being heavily processed/resampled using the nitro filter to try and get things a little crunchier. It's a bit long and A/B structure as I'm planning on making this a full track with vocals, but for the spirit of the battle I've left it as is!
I like working off the grid, even though I managed to fk up a bunch of times and accidentally overwrite/lift sections that I would normally be saved by the grid. But hey, that's the beauty of working on a machine without an Undo function (just like analogue tape)
With the ducking, do you mean like the faux-side chain sound? That’s one of my favourite things about the OP1 - using the low headroom as a sort-of pumper.
Turn your Kick drums up past the line, then go to master drive/compressor and set it to Drive: 50, Release: 50. You can get grittier again if you lower the release under 10, but it gets pretty wild.
