⌛Time Past ⌚ ~ First OP-1 Field Jam

video upload by Postmodern Machine

"Hello 🏄🏼‍♂️

My Teenage Engineering OP-1 Field arrived two weeks ago. 🍾

I have never had or used one of these in the past and I'm building lots of thoughts on it, most of which are positive! Overall it's a super inspiring machine if you are keyboard based for being creative wherever you are. 🌿

I started exploring it by building this track. One small gripe I have is the lack of crossfades when editing with cuts, which is very simple to do in a DAW and remove all clicks and pops. There is really no reason that cuts to the tape should create clicks and pops. My main synth loop on this had a click in the edit at each loop, but when I built the other tracks, I used some more savvy techniques to cut the loops as far from sounds as possible, to prevent clicks and pops. This did work well and when I brought everything into the computer, I only had to fix my one loop. 🤲🏼 That said, it's a bit cumbersome to work around loop points to get the result I want.

The OP-1 so far is a really really fun way to be creative. It was still a blast despite any quirks. If you can accept of the limitations as just something to work around. I used the vintage 4-track simulation for this. 📼

Mostly the real gift with this is that the bulk of work on this track was done nowhere near a computer, and working with the tape feels nothing like working on a computer. I am old enough to have had my first recording experiences on tapes of various sorts, and I had forgotten how the limitations can be very freeing. Rough edits can be part of the charm and can be embraced as part of the sound. One you edit you can't go back. You have to be careful and brave. I did not anticipate how fun moving around on the tape would be and finding edit points etc. Having a real zoom mode would be nice on the tape 🔊

Also worth mentioning is it's nice hearing my unquantized playing. The sequencers on the OP-1 are pretty limited. Only one bar loops at most, so I only used the sequencer for the "ambient percussion" that's going in the background. I had to in some cases manually shift the loops a bit of my real playing to align with the sequencer by lifting and re-placing them so that I split the difference in my not perfect playing, but overall it's nice to hear my slightly off kilter, but real playing in a track including the beat! It was definitely a bit intimidating playing the beat overtop of the existing track 4 and knowing I could not easily go back.. 🥁

🌱Everything came off the OP-1 sounding a bit "funky" overall, and full of character. I decided to upload the 4 individual tracks into reaper to be able to EQ each one so that they felt a bit less lo-fi, but still full of character. I removed the one loop click sound in reaper. I also collapsed the drum beat to good old MONO, which you can not control on the OP-1. If the samples are wide, you can not narrow them, only move them in the stereo field.

I also applied some compression here and there and about half the mixbus chain I use that was described in the Kiss your Mixbus 2 part series that starts here: https://youtu.be/UjtNzu09LMU Everything needed some compression. It was pretty raw sounding, but having the 4 tracks to mix separately is extremely cool, and the track has it's own character but is also quite finished sounding. All pumping type sounds were created in the DAW, as you have limited ability to apply effects on the OP-1, and I wanted to use the modulations to add more interest into the raw sounds. 🤟🏼

Most importantly I did not add any additional effects that changed the character of the sounds or ambiance coming off the OP-1. Other than basic EQ and compression this is the sound of the OP-1. Just mastered a bit and less mid-rangey than what came off the device. Sounds were very easy to mix and feel quite interesting without a lot of frills.

I was concerned about the lack of velocity sensitivity but in the end it just creates a certain character which I worked with as best I could and the sound ended up pretty interesting. I like how indie the track feels and want to build more on it at a future time!😋"