The OP-1 Discipline Makes Creating Music Straightforward and Enjoyable Once more

Making music could be so simple as choosing up a guitar and enjoying it right into a tape recorder or as advanced as constructing a venture in a digital audio workstation (DAW). Now think about if it may very well be each.

Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 Discipline is a tiny, transportable, battery-powered music studio. It is also nearly essentially the most enjoyable you may have making and recording music. It is an replace to the decade-old OP-1, bringing refinements greater than something new, however these adjustments take the OP-1 Discipline from quirky to important. Briefly, the OP-1 Discipline makes music enjoyable once more. 

“For me, it offers me a transportable take-on-the-train all-in-one manufacturing gadget that I may also use at dwelling in the home with an acoustic piano or Nord Grand, and lets me keep in a musical state of mind fairly than a pc state of mind,” stated OP-1 F person and musician Rowan Pope (aka darwiniandude) on a discussion board thread participated in by Lifewire. 

Groove Field

It was that you’d begin a tape recording, then play your instrument. You’d lay down just a few tracks on that tape and have a music. The apparent draw back was you needed to spend years studying your instrument so that you’d be ok to get all of it down in a single take. 

Computer systems make it doable for anybody to make music and make new sorts of music doable. However they’ve their one draw back. The software program is advanced and may typically really feel extra like utilizing Excel than making a banging tune. {Hardware}—drum machines, synthesizers, samplers, and many others.—is equally advanced and infrequently hides options behind menus. 

The OP-1 F is the very reverse. It’s designed round a digital tape recorder that behaves loads like an actual tape recorder. You may sluggish it down, run it backward, and overdub on any observe, infinitely. It solely has 4 tracks, however that restrict forces you to focus. As a substitute of letting your venture sprawl right into a 50-track monster, you should make choices as you go, decide to tape, and transfer on. 

Not-So-Massive Straightforward

However the magic is in how simple this all is to make use of. 

For instance, if you wish to pattern a sound on a devoted sampler machine, you often must enter report mode, report the pattern, trim it, then assign it to a key or keys. And that’s with the straightforward ones. On the OP-1 F, you simply activate the pattern enter (built-in FM radio or an exterior supply through line-in or USB-C) and press a key on the keyboard. Let go, and recording ends. That’s it. You may instantly begin enjoying. This allows you to pattern one other synth that doesn’t play chords after which play chords with the OP-1.

Recording to tape is simply as simple. Hit report, then play. There’s additionally a drum sampler, which helps you to report a number of drum sounds and slice them up onto particular person keys, however this may slice any sound. The opposite energy of the OP-1s, each the OP-1 Discipline and the OG OP-1, is it’s simple to get wild, quick.

“There actually isn’t any competitors, and that is thoughts boggling on condition that [the original has] been out for 10 years,” digital musician and OP-1 F proprietor Oscar Brouwer (aka tendingtropic) stated on the Elektronauts boards. “I’ve been enjoying with my OP-1 Discipline for 2 weeks now and nonetheless have 75 % of battery.”

Between sampling off the radio, slicing up the consequence, and enjoying it via the bizarre (and typically great) results, you’ll always shock your self. Famously, Bon Iver took an OP-1 to a cabin within the woods to report his first album. When you report your self singing “Oooooh” into the OP-1’s sampler, then play it again as a chord, you’ll acknowledge his sound instantly. 

What makes the brand new OP-1 Discipline so significantly better is that it now samples in stereo, and the 4 tape tracks are additionally stereo. Its built-in speaker has gone from a vestigial afterthought to “Wow, does that sound come from there?”

And total, it is simply higher. Even when you don’t need all of the gadget’s quirks, it’s nonetheless essentially the most speedy method to report. It simply will get out of the way in which. 

A last instance. I had an concept for a music the opposite day whereas on a stroll. Usually, I’d open up Ableton on my Mac later, futz round, and neglect about it. This time, I discovered a bench below a shady tree, switched on the OP-1 Discipline, and performed with my concept. It is not good, however as a result of the sound high quality is good, I can drop the entire tape into Ableton and end it there.

Like I stated, the OP-1 Discipline makes music enjoyable once more.