Elektron-Users

I got an OP-1 cheap off of magical Craig's List Los Angeles. I've been up all night feeding sample food to my OT. Incredible tool for creating loops for an OT. The synth sounds are pretty weak- they should make the thing an inch thicker and drop in some better filters or something- but it's an interesting tool for making a whole lot of noise in a very short period of time.


Question: anyone find a solution to the HORRENDOUS beat sync and BPM match? I like some un-quantized, off-kilter drumloops as much as anyone, but when you throw outside samples into the mix it can sound like the firmware decides where to sync a loop totally at random!

Also: I don't have a proper MIDI to USB interface to chain it in, but is it even worth it? The endless sequencer seems to have potential with my Elektron Gear, but I haven't really seen any evidence thus far.

Pointers?

Hi!

A long post:

Take a minute with it, and give the OP-1 a fair chance before dismissing the synth sounds - They're quirky, for sure, but people actually get great results out of the synth engines. ohpeewon.com is full of people who use the OP-1 standalone and achieve wonderful results.

So far I've mostly been using the OP-1 "out of sync" - that is, sampling it to the OT without actually syncing the two boxes. I've used the Endless sequencer quite a bit to make melodies. Then I just trim the samples in the OT. I think that many people also compose stuff on the OP-1 and then sample the 4 tape tracks into the OT for mangling.

I haven't really tried the sync at all yet, but I think I will try it for sure.

Now that I think of it, you could probably trigger the Endless using the OT's midi sequencer without actually syncing the two boxes. You'd just send a C4 (or whatever note) from the OT MIDI sequencer to the OP-1 while the Endless is enabled. I've grown suspicious of MIDI sync in general, never seems to work, but it'd be great to have in-sync loops right away from the OP-1 for the OT to sample.

Not sure about what you mean with the BPM match and Beat sync. You mean when sampling in the drum machine section? The transient detection can be pretty quirky, for sure.

One more thing: I'd strongly recommend that everybody who owns one would try to use the OP-1 as a standalone music creation tool. That way you really learn the ins and outs of the little machine and notice the potential - the standalone workflow is actually incredible - so easy for me to achieve results I really like, and very quickly too.

I had a whole long response typed out and the server crashed on me so I'll keep it short:

1) Yes, i've been using the OP-1 by itself and transferring recordings to my computer for later use in the OT.

2) The sequencers are great. Best feature by far, only wish editing them was a tad more intuitive.

3) the Drum Sampler would be genius if it could properly read the tempo of incoming samples and time-stretch/sync properly.

4) You can get surprisingly good percussion tracks out of this little thing.

5) The chromatic sampler is very good and immediate. The simplicity of live sampling and re sampling does fill in a need if the OT is your only sampler, and it's much higher quality sample rates than your Kaoss loopers so it wins points as a companion to the OT in a live setting there.

6) The lack of storage space and/or expandable space and RAM is not a "good" limitation- yes, we've all heard the "less is more" thing when it comes to sample memory- but having to constantly dump my work into the computer to keep making tracks is tedious and would have been an easy fix with, say, 500 MB of sample memory and 64 more MB of RAM...Cell Phones have 2GB of RAM....you figure with all the fancy color displays they'd add some more RAM to compensate...

7) The synths are interesting enough. I don't have any wild digitals anymore so this will do nicely for wailing drones and (half-decent) FM and some fuzzy arps. The DNA synth is cool. The Wave stuff is nice, but most of the synths are just scaled down iPad apps with actual knobs...In fact, it makes me wonder if the OP-2 will have Wifi (BIG YES FOR SAMPLE UPLOAD AND TRANSFERRING PLEASE) and apps to download. Seems logical for the company to sell apps (they're already into selling little chintzy plastic things as accessories- why not downloadable synth engines and sample packs- all without touching a usb cable? How about DAW specific apps that sync to the OP-2 via OSC and allows streaming audio? There's the way samplers stay relevant!).

All-in-all: It's pretty incredible given how small it is. They clearly sacrificed on stereo outs (and ins) and basic MIDI to accomplish this feat, but the ease of transferring high quality samples to the computer makes it bearable. I feel like they could have a few more menus with parameters dedicated to captured samples to make the whole package almost perfect, but I'm not a programer so what do I know? (OP-1 "JJOS" anyone?)

I have an OP-1. Unfortunately, I can't be of much help as I don't use the sampling functions. My plan with the OP-1 for integrating with the OT is to sketch out stuff on the OP-1 (usually on my daily train ride), then sample into the Octatrack, in a similar manner to how Tarekith samples an iPhone app into Octatrack in this video... the video also mentions sync issues, and how to fix when the Octatrack "guesses" the wrong tempo in the sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ1kMQKt_rY

Lots of useful tips/info to absorb in this video...

I know other OP-1 users do use it to sequence other gear using an Oplab, iConnectMIDI, or a Kenton box for the MIDI connnectivity. I'm not really interested at this time in system integration with the OP-1 - I'm more like Josker in that I like to use it standalone, so sorry again about the lack of help. I have an iPad with IOS apps too, so i know how good Nave, Thor, etc. can sound, but I still like the OP-1 synth engines for their own personalities. I also like messing with the endless sequencer because the patterns inside that sequencer lend themselves to euclidean rhythms and other cool, unusual beats. Finger sequencer is fun with the preset patterns, but I haven't been motivated to create my own because the editing display is so tiny, with the screen real estate taken up by the gorillas or nerdy guys.

Check out the Ohpeewon forum. That's where a lot of the power users (guys/gals into integrating OP-1 with modulars, MIDI, whatever) are. Some of them have OTs too, go figure.

While waiting (seemingly forever) for the iConnectMIDI 2+ (I'm holding out for the 4, now, actually), I bought the iConnect 1 today....not even considering that there would be some weird micro-midi female adapter instead of a normal USB female.

So it's basically useless for the OP-1 (but it blows away the iRig because it's about 5 feet long and powered by USB and can be used with the computer and iOs devices), and I'll just sync my iPad to my Octatrack with it when I'm ready to get in an iPad, OT, OP sample frenzy. I am interested in getting samples of my P12 and Ambika sequenced by the OP-1, but that will have to wait for my iConnect preorder....

RyanA4 wrote:
While waiting (seemingly forever) for the iConnectMIDI 2+ (I'm holding out for the 4, now, actually), I bought the iConnect 1 today....

guess what's now in stock on the iConnectivity site. yup, iConnectMIDI2+ for $99.99US ($10 more than street price).

in music, sex and G.A.S., timing is everything.

RyanA4 wrote:
So it's basically useless for the OP-1 (but it blows away the iRig because it's about 5 feet long and powered by USB and can be used with the computer and iOs devices), and I'll just sync my iPad to my Octatrack with it when I'm ready to get in an iPad, OT, OP sample frenzy. I am interested in getting samples of my P12 and Ambika sequenced by the OP-1, but that will have to wait for my iConnect preorder....

Confused by this - how is the iConnectMidi 1 useless for the OP-1? I use them together all the time.

Not the FIRST iConnectMIDI box, the cable thing that came out more recently. The cabling doesn't work with the OP-1 cable (it would need to be Mini USB to Mini US to connect to the in/out midi part of it.

Is this really correct? I dont have an OP-1 (yet..) but I do have iConnectMidi box and I cant see why it would work with OP-1.
It seems to work in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ION1A-F5YkM

I agree with JOSKER. I actually love the sounds of the OP-1....every aspect of it expresses that it is sonically different than anything on the market.

As far as it's tempo sync, I recommend taking a morning, downloading the PDF manual from the Teenage Engineer website and completely devouring it from start to finish. It's a pretty short read even whilst doing everything on the OP1 as you read through it.

I also recommend putting aside your OT and any other gear for that matter and making a series of tracks using only the OP-1...perhaps you'll come into a sudden realization as to why the OP-1 is such an awesome bit of kit.

Finally, hit up YouTube and check out how people are using the Op-1 in their projects and stand alone....there are loads of good vids out there, like Cuckoo for example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJwU8utM7iE