am I missing something?

hi operators! 3 days ago I have bought my op-1 and to be honest am a bit disappointed. I was expecting the op-1 to be be more “alive”. I’m sure there are still things to be discovered, but right now I can tell you than the fact that once you have recorded your track on tape that’s it, disappointed me the most. Am I missing something? The synths sound ok (for a £600+), somehow remind me of an old Yamaha dx11 I have owned years ago. So what is so special about op-1? The portability? Is that it? I’m already considering selling it, please help me to change my mind.

Did you expect it to do something that it is not doing? What magic thing is missing? It was a bit shocking to see some of the limitations when I first received mine but after a few songs things started to click. I am stuck to the OP-1 now. Add in a macbook or ipad and I’m set.

yeah, what I was really expecting was a tweak-ability of the tracks hooked into your tape recorder. Like the synths sound so great when you process their oscillators etc. but you can’t do that with your tape:( Also what really bugs me is that you can record only 2 albums. I’m taking my op-1 with me for my night shifts and don’t want to take my laptop with me so I could save my albums into the hard drive and then start again. I’m really hoping that I’ll fall in love with it like you guys did. There is a lot of things about it I like, but there is more I dislike. Mono in? FFS! Tomorrow I’m going to try to use it in DAW, maybe that will make it more interesting.

took me a minute as well to really start using it. now u will pry this guy from my cold dead hands.

also, stereo is nice, but a lil mono never hurt anybody. just ask beach boys brian wilson

Hey @fred81, there is definitely much more life after things have been etched in stone (tape) forever, so-to-speak. That’s almost my favourite bit! Here are some ideas…

Try grabbing a snippet of tape from one of your tracks and dropping it into the drum sampler. (For me, this is such a cool workflow, I could almost live entirely with the endless sequencer, drum sampler, the tape and a bit of random audio - so much to explore right there!). You can then set some loop start and end points for a few keys and program a nice sequence. Then arm an effect on your drum sampler and record your sequence to a bit of spare tape. It’s kind of like remixing something you’ve already done and taking it further with an effect. If I like the result of that, sometimes I’ll take it further again and either repeat the same process (drop into drum sampler and add a different effect) or try to stereoise what I’ve got into my composition (see the panning techniques thread!).

Get the most out of the tape effects! Resample the stutter effect for example and put it to good use. (Note, any resampling you do of the tape tracks will involve bouncing to album and then back to tape - yep, back to mono). Resample the tape effect, drop it into a sampler and slow it down, speed it up, reverse it, play with some funny stereo trickery. Do some tape warble - ie, twist the blue knob while recording some tape to album.

Create your own evolving synth noise by over-dubbing lots of different synths onto the same bit of tape, perhaps with a bit of stagger, and then dropping that into a sampler to play with further.

When I’m totally out of ideas, I often look towards what I’ve already committed to tape for inspiration and what comes to fruit out of my experimentation often becomes something very interesting!

Hehe doc… must have been writing my tips at the same time as you

haha, déjà vu no?

haha, déjà vu no?

More like great minds think alike! hahahaha

took me a minute as well to really start using it. now u will pry this guy from my cold dead hands.

thats not really true about mangling the tape. like a lot of things on the op1, u gotta think a lil differently usually.

couple thoughts...

u can lift+drop or resample (ear) your tape back into synth sampler or drum sampler, and then reprocess back onto tape.

or u can bounce a track to a different track and process thru the master fx. (also ear)

u can do this w/ album too, but i think sampler & bouncing is where its at.

for me they are easier to deal w/ and easier to line back up w/ your other tape tracks.

drum sampler is especially rad for chopping your tape up and laying it down again w/ different chops and stuff.

or i also sometimes like to set up a fx loop using the L & R channels on the output separately

and panning my tape tracks hard L & R.

using 1 out like a monitor, and the other to send to an external fx unit or something to mess w/ further, then plug that back into the op1 input and record back to tape. i typically use an SP404 or a mini kaoss pad. but u can anything, fx pedals, rack, etc.. even ableton!

also, stereo is nice, but a lil mono never hurt anybody. just ask beach boys brian wilson :P

thanks! that’s encouraging:) My setup was fairly conservative; mixture of analogue and digital but no hardware sampler. I like the way you justified mono… yeah I suppose you are right. Re: SP404 so you are using a sampler to sample a sampler? coool!!

Hey @fred81, there is definitely much more life after things have been etched in stone (tape) forever, so-to-speak. That's almost my favourite bit! Here are some ideas...

Try grabbing a snippet of tape from one of your tracks and dropping it into the drum sampler. (For me, this is such a cool workflow, I could almost live entirely with the endless sequencer, drum sampler, the tape and a bit of random audio - so much to explore right there!). You can then set some loop start and end points for a few keys and program a nice sequence. Then arm an effect on your drum sampler and record your sequence to a bit of spare tape. It’s kind of like remixing something you’ve already done and taking it further with an effect. If I like the result of that, sometimes I’ll take it further again and either repeat the same process (drop into drum sampler and add a different effect) or try to stereoise what I’ve got into my composition (see the panning techniques thread!).

Get the most out of the tape effects! Resample the stutter effect for example and put it to good use. (Note, any resampling you do of the tape tracks will involve bouncing to album and then back to tape - yep, back to mono). Resample the tape effect, drop it into a sampler and slow it down, speed it up, reverse it, play with some funny stereo trickery. Do some tape warble - ie, twist the blue knob while recording some tape to album.

Create your own evolving synth noise by over-dubbing lots of different synths onto the same bit of tape, perhaps with a bit of stagger, and then dropping that into a sampler to play with further.

When I’m totally out of ideas, I often look towards what I’ve already committed to tape for inspiration and what comes to fruit out of my experimentation often becomes something very interesting!

I might be on the right track then as I tend to use equipment the way it was not meant to be used, thank you for your tips, will try them!

haha, déjà vu no?

More like great minds think alike! hahahaha

At first I was ecstatic, when the “new” kinda was gone I was very disappointed, but the more time I spent with it, the more I understood this beast it became pretty much my only/primary tool for music production. Give it a bit time and screw around with it.

I mean if you had a dainty little blonde swedish girl to screw around with you wouldn’t toss her out of the window because she couldn’t speak english, now would you?

nice one… in fact I had a Swedish girlfriend once… she was evil.

I’ve had my OP-1 for a couple of months now, so I’m pretty new to this game, but I’m definitely hooked at this point. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. What you will find is that the more you play with it, the more it will start to open up. I think the true beauty of it is that is draws you out of the standard DAW mindset and encourages a more playful, experimental approach to making music.

The odd thing about it that is kind of hard to articulate is that you start to get in a ‘zone’ where things just flow - sometimes you might not even be fully conscious of what you are doing - and it will take you to unexpected places. It sort of ‘tricks’ you into opening up your creativity in a very groovy way. If you stop worrying about what more you wish it could do and just go with it, you will find that it’s the unconventional things you would have never considered that makes it special. It’s kind of a weird zen thing. You’ll see…

OP-1 saved my (music) life . Rethinking is essential and workaround is the norm.

For perspective…My first recorder was a tascam tsr-8. No undo and limited tracks. Coming from the portastudio cassette 4 trackers, that was like a giant leap lol. Now I got daws, plugins, and soundbanks out the arse and its harder sometimes to start a track because I have to go through a million pianos before I play the first part. Stuff got stale and the internet brought the price of beats to like $10 so I let it go for a few years. OP-1 brought me back stronger than ever after the ‘bonding period’. I’d buy another if anything happened to it. You do kinda have to milk the sound out of it for higher quakity stuff.

I’ve been playing with it for last 5+ hours (yes it’s 6am here:) and have programmed some decent synth sounds and sampled and sampled and sampled… I did enjoy working on op-1 however I still don’t see how I’m going to implement this into my live rig. I’ve got a feeling that I might be posting in Sell category soon.

OP-1 saved my (music) life . Rethinking is essential and workaround is the norm.

Fruitful combo on the OP I tell ya.

| was hoping to have similar experience…

Take part at the Battle!!! Highly recommended, you won’t ever learn more about the OP-1 than there, because you have a deadline and homework to do.

For me it’s the easiest way to produce tracks and for the live-thing watch some cuckoo vids. You really needs it to give this thing some more time and let yourself be led by it!
It is possible to use the OP-1 with other gear, but on the other hand it stands for itself, if you concentrated only on work with the OP-1, you’ll probably think “actually I don’t need the other stuff anymore!” ; )

http://operator-1.com/index.php?p=/discussion/490/battle-28-analog#latest

Take part at the Battle!!! Highly recommended, you won't ever learn more about the OP-1 than there, because you have a deadline and homework to do.

For me it's the easiest way to produce tracks and for the live-thing watch some cuckoo vids. You really needs it to give this thing some more time and let yourself be led by it!
It is possible to use the OP-1 with other gear, but on the other hand it stands for itself, if you concentrated only on work with the OP-1, you'll probably think "actually I don't need the other stuff anymore!" ; )

http://operator-1.com/index.php?p=/discussion/490/battle-28-analog#latest

Thanks and of course I keep my other stuff. ; )

I think a lot of people here will probably agree that it takes some time with the OP-1 to truly fall in love with it. For me it was about a month. The limitations you experience when you first sit down with it that seem frustrating end up being the best part of the OP-1, in my opinion. There are better sounding “pure synths” out there and I don’t think anyone would argue that. But for bringing out your creatvity and forcing you to think in new ways there’s just no rival out there. It’s the one piece of gear I will NEVER sell. Hell, I’d buy a couple more if there was ever a threat of TE discontinuing them.