Picked up the KO about a month ago as my first pocket operator and love it. A little obtuse at first but I picked up on how everything works quicker than expected, and I’ve always liked the kind of creativity working within certain limitations can bring about.
Anyway, as is inevitable with something with such memory limitations you can forget about an “undo” function. I was deep into piecing together my first track with it, was super feeling it, a real banger you guys. Then it happened, I fat fingered and overwrote my bass sample, that probably about 60-70% of my tracks in the sequencer were utilizing at that point. I was pretty much done with the whole thing, just touching up and carefully mapping out the sequence order to actually make it full song.
So this is a cautionary tale that if you’re working on something more complex, good idea to back up progress just like any other larger project.
But I’m also throwing it out there as I bet many of done this at some point. I remember where the sample came from, roughly the 3-4 seconds I pulled the bass note from… I’ve gotten close, done a lot of trial and error, but I’n not 100% sure the bass note I originally trimmed to, the exact pitch settings, filter settings I’ve gotten close I think. But with all those variables, even one little simple sample seems almost impossible replicate exactly.
I finally got something I felt was maybe 90% there, but once I found the right notes and reprogrammed, the timing is off a but. And I’m guessing that’s because even if to my ear I have something close to how I remember the sample sounding, if it’s not the exact pitch and trim length of the last sample, it’s going to throw the time off a bit no matter what?
This was longer winded than intended but hopefully some of you read it, and share some of your stories and maybe some of the more seasoned users out there who may have found creative ways to salvage a screw up like this.
i’ve done exactly this a couple times
and if u pull the batteries out right away
when u put them back in sometimes it reverts back
to the last time it saved its internal memory properly
have recovered overwritten samples and even patterns a couple times w/ this
not always fool proof tho
but always worth a shot
I think you touch on how unique and once in a life time musical performances can be; magical, in the moment, and spontaneous. Now onto thee importance of always recording. I know it’s kinda an out of the studio tool. Though we lean heavily on the equipment and anything can happen. Enter the roll of back up hard drive. Periodically record your audio out when you feel the magic, especially on the pocket operators. Cuz when it starts feeling too good to be true it seems the universe always throws something our way to make sure we’re paying attention. i don’t know how many times I’ve played something that mused me, come to find out I wasn’t recording and can’t recreate to the T what happened… On to the next one…
that’s one thing I don’t understand in general, it happened so often that I was recording and at the peak there was no more memory or the battery died or other mystical things happened to ruin everything.
You make some great points here, appreciate your artful perspective. I’ve really let this keep me from moving on and creatively exploring more with the device. These are unique devices and some of the primitive tech limitations aren’t necessarily a fault, they aren’t meant for creating an opus, but playfully staying in the moment and experimenting with sounds in real time. There really is an ephemeral, magical ingredient to music where you end up creating something through experimentation, yet it’s not like you willed it into existence in this precise way, because as you said you can’t perfectly recreate it. I think that’s a better way to approach a fun little device like this, even if it can be frustrating at times, not take it too seriously and use it to keep chasing the discovery of more magical moments.
Oh yeah this happened to me on the KO a number of times!!! Super frustrating.
Usually i would go to record a new drum sample, say number 10, but by accident i would end up pressing number 9 for a SPLIT second, and that would overwrite what i had on 9. Which was usually a super important drum sample and the whole project would be screwed.
This among other reasons is why i hardly pick up the KO any more.
and the whole project would be screwed.