Effective use of effects

OP-1
#1

So I’ve had my op-1 for about a year and a half and I’ve really enjoyed making music on it. I have never before been able to prototype short loops and sounds at the speed I can on this machine. As time has gone on I do find myself try to coax some specific changes out of this little machine that I can’t quite seem to do. Historically I have used effects to nudge a sound into the area I want it, but I’ve had real trouble using the effects on the op-1. I find myself using mostly nitro, cwo, spring and sometimes punch, but often not too happy with the results, I’m really curious how do you all feel about the library of effects and how you personally use them, and any tips/tricks you’ve found? (Specifically phone and grid, can’t seem to get anything interesting out of them) Thanks!

#2

Grid and Phone are the wildest, they go pretty well on percussions, but also pads or any background sound on which you need to give a bit of an experimental touch.

#3

grid- i use it to liven up high hats. adds sorta a beat repeat sound / psuedo reverb/delay



Phone - feed it something and it can spit out a bass line or melody sorta interesting. also works as a bitcrush.


CWO - is wild but when you turn the delay off and bring the rate down to super low (using shift ) you can get a really nice phaser.


Punch - i used this as a filter for so long before they dropped nitro that I dont really know how to just use it as a compressor. which leads into the compressor on the master channel that I also havent quite mastered yet. I really need to dig into both of these.

Nitro- bubbly drowning in water effect. very intense I need to use channel 4 to modulate it more for something less intense than what the effect itself produces. But that bubbly water sound is something I really enjoy. but also a nice filter when not using the envelope follower.

delay- its a delay

spring- spring reverb

A great tip I picked up on this forum is to lower every option in the effect all the way to the left. I.e. to zero. Most are set way to high for ordinary use/unless you wet dry mix later. These effects shine imo when they are used subtly. Out of the box they are too intense for ordinary use. Itll also help you figure out what each knob does.

as per getting things to sit in a mix work on bouncing from tape using the EQ, effects, gain to get everything to mix nicely. tape is the best/weirdest thing about the op1 and deserves/requires you to master all of its quirky functionality. Ive had one since launch and im still learning new stuff. love this thing.



#4

Phone - Pitch shifter, unison doubler/octave/interval. Just turn off the glitch(white) and adjust the other two to taste.

Grid has a very lo fi tone and if you arent ready for it you will be constantly disappointed. Use it to add a gritty layer to sounds.

Delay - very long delays with infinite feedback can make this a looper of sorts. Has a nice darkening of the sound. The blue knob retains material as buffers so you can record different stuff and switch through the time multipliers that can contain more or less. Also, it will retain material in the feedback buffer infinitely, meaning you can switch effects and go all over the place, and when Delay is turned on again you will hear the old material feedbacking.

Punch - the mix knob lowered can lead to phasing and subtle EQ bumps. Also play with the subtleties 0-6 poles(white)

Spring is best as a master track fattener, adds huge stereo image and sound

#5

You can also send an LFO to Grid for a bouncing-ball stutter or a pitch-shifting delay. Not very subtle, but lots of fun!

#6


Nitro- I need to use channel 4 to modulate it more for something less intense than what the effect itself produces.



What exactly do you mean by that?


#7
You can also send an LFO to Grid for a bouncing-ball stutter or a pitch-shifting delay. Not very subtle, but lots of fun!

I got a really cool sound some time ago, assigning the Gyroscope to the green or blue on grid… This was < 6 months into my op1 times, maybe < 3 months… It’s since been backed up, as a preset, but It was a really really cool infinite hold / pitchy effect for drums using the tilt…

#8

But I’m the same, I seem to not use grid and phone so often… They scare me, but I love em.

#9

There was a thread about grid recently if you want some tips and ideas on how to use it: https://www.operator-1.com/index.php?p=/discussion/3780/is-grid-useful

#10

my general impressions (many exceptions to this, these are just my tendencies):


cwo - I find myself using it mostly with low blue settings. That way, it can be like a static timbre shifting thing (as you vary the green delay parameter)
Higher blue settings can really fuck up some bass patches, crazy ringmod-esque stuff… good for tuning in that one hit, not as good (in my experimentation) with melodic stuff.

delay - self explanatory most of the time. Can get some nice wonky sounds with medium-length delays, with delay time modulated with LFO (weirdly pitchbent echo sort of effect).

grid - Most often use it with minimum Y, low X, for a ringmod/downsample-aliasing sort of effect, mixed to taste to add some flavor. Occasionally use it as a strange kind of reverb-ish thing.

nitro - Most often use it to make a sound mix better, less of a showy effect. Though the envelope follower is nice to add some more motion to a sound.

phone - On a synth/drum, I most often use it to add octave (or other interval) layering. You can tune white and green to whatever suits your sound (certain settings work better on tonal stuff, other settings on short percussive things). On the master track, I use it for stereo glitchy imaging. Plus you can always ramp up the glitch in both uses.

punch - Again, I mostly use it to tweak a mix, giving high end rolloff with low end boost. Doesn’t quite go as aggressive as I’d want for more of a drive kind of effect.

spring - also good for some stereo image on the master, typically with dialed up blue settings. I use lower blue settings more on individual synths, where I might be looking for a more colorfully springy sound.

did i miss any? hope not, I’d be a bit ashamed if I did…
#11

I feel that we need some kind of recipe book for effects, because every effect can be used in multiple different ways, and the ways they are used are sometimes different depending in whether we’re talking about Master or FX slots. Or maybe discovering those uses are part of OP-1 rite of passage, don’t know.

Some examples:

Grid with max Blue (frequency/delay), min Green (pure delay) settings can add metallic texture to high-frequency sounds that are too “smooth”.
Spring dialed all the way down except Red (intensity) can be uses to make patches generally louder.
Phone tuned to +1 octave and with White and Green all the way down can produce an interesting “singing choir” effect.
Punch can create distortion if you dial Green (resonance) most of the way up and set it to mostly open cutoff. It will also self-oscillate on max settings.
Nitro can be used to add “kick drum” effect to any sound with sharp attack. Up the resonance, engage envelope follower to ~10%, adjust Blue (low-freq cutoff) to cover the appropriate range.
CWO with Green (delay) around 70-80 begins to sound like a real delay with additional effects.
Delay produces a really cool effect if you up the feedback, lower Blue (size) and then slightly modulate Green (speed) with a Value LFO. It produces analog-ish floating pitch. Something similar in principle by different in sound can be done with Grid, like was pointed out by ludicrouSpeed.

And then there is the hidden multi-filter effect, which is actually quite good and also does a lot of different things depending on the settings.

And then there aremany LFO-as-effect tricks.

The biggest problems with OP-1 effects are the fact that most of them add noise/glitches and that Spring can’t generate long reverbs without totally destroying your sound.

#12


Delay - very long delays with infinite feedback can make this a looper of sorts. Has a nice darkening of the sound. The blue knob retains material as buffers so you can record different stuff and switch through the time multipliers that can contain more or less. Also, it will retain material in the feedback buffer infinitely, meaning you can switch effects and go all over the place, and when Delay is turned on again you will hear the old material feedbacking.
This is a really cool tip. It never registered in my mind that on max
settings Delay lasts this insane amount of time. I will definitely
experiment with it to see how far it can be pushed.
#13
Delay - very long delays with infinite feedback can make this a looper of sorts. Has a nice darkening of the sound. The blue knob retains material as buffers so you can record different stuff and switch through the time multipliers that can contain more or less. Also, it will retain material in the feedback buffer infinitely, meaning you can switch effects and go all over the place, and when Delay is turned on again you will hear the old material feedbacking.

This is one of my favourite OP-1 tricks, and resampling the result with ear.


Try this for a really decayed lo-fi loop:

Set master drive to 0, master delay to outer circle, 99 feedback, speed 0-10 depending on length of your loop and so that there is a bit of silence after.

Play in your loop, crank delay speed up to 99 and let it decay until it’s about half the volume.

Turn delay speed back down to original speed, crank master drive up to 50-60 until original volume.

Resample your messed up loop to tape using ear, turn delay off and turn master drive back down.

Lift and drop loop to sampler / drum sampler for further messing with and fx!
#14

Made a quick vid to demonstrate this, love how the delay degrades the loop after a while. Sounds bitcrushed and noisy like an old sampler at the lowest sample rate!


Sorry for the earbleeding sounds while delay speed is at 99 lol… quickest way to degrade the loop quickly

https://youtu.be/_JrThcqsiOw
#15

This is cool! Chuck it in the tips and tricks thread