TL;DR - It’s a sampler patch that lets you route the internal microphone, audio input, radio, or USB audio thru an effect of your choice before it hits tape. To use it, make sure audio is playing from one of the aforementioned sources and then hold a key down. Try changing effects or effect settings.
Long Story - I have been using this patch for about a year and am only now getting around to sharing it. I personally think it is super useful and inspiring. I am not sure if anyone has thought of a similar patch before, but even if they have, this is a good reminder of some very cool, advanced OP-1 functionality.
Last winter I got into a situation where I was in an unexpected COVID quarantine right before a big, cross-state move. My studio was packed away. All I had was my OP-1, a cassette deck and some cassettes. I wanted to use my guitar recordings and field recordings from the cassettes and make some music on the OP-1 while I waited out quarantine, but the sounds on the cassettes were raw and needed some processing from the OP-1.
Out of necessity, I figured out how to process sounds as they come in to the OP-1. The two most important parts of the patch are the sample (which is basically pure positive amplitude with no periodicity, so it does not produce sound on its own), and the Element LFO, which effectively routes the audio input to modulate amplitude at 100%. Feel free to study my patch further and let me know if you have any questions.
I think that similar goals can be achieved by recording to tape and then re-sampling, but I like that this patch enables me to effect an input in real time before committing it to the OP-1 tape.
Some fun things you can do with it -
The obvious is you can change the frequency spectrum of any input before the sound hits tape – This means if the recording from your mic is too boomy, you can cut out some low end using Nitro or Filter; This means if you want a rain sound to be more crunchy, you can low-pass it and add some resonance; This means you can filter noise from the radio to sound super pleasing. It opens up so many possibilities.
Use the time-based effects (CWO, Delay, Spring, etc.) to make sounds input into the OP-1 more spacey/trippy
Use phone as a live vocal processor for your voice or talk radio (this is extremely entertaining)
Double up effects, with an effect on this “AudioThru” patch and a master effect (and master EQ and drive) for wild live sound processing
Perform with effects as you record external audio to tape
Make the effects self-resonate when they receive an impulse (like tapping on the microphone). Most effects seem capable of this to some extent, and you can use it to create amazing tonal and percussive sounds that can then be recorded to tape and then re-sampled.
There are probably a ton of other creative things you can do with this patch. Let me know what you end up using it for! Enjoy!
This sounds really great! Especially useful for overcoming the 6 or 12 second sample limit when recording something to tape with an effect.
And also the whole vocal processing thing seems fun too. I had heard about an Effect that TE was working on for the OP-1, can’t remember the name but it looked promising for VFX/Vocoding but it was never released and I heard about using element instead, just never paired that with the sample engine. Anyway, thanks this looks fun!
Immediately I want to add that you can run an fast arp on a single note, make a few tweaks to the envelope so the amp stays wide open basically and then use the arp hold function (red) to be able to play freely without holding down a key! (might be more and/or better ways to do this)
Takes playing with the OP-Z and OP-1 to the HNL too (Whole ‘Notha Level, madtv anyone?)
I am glad you are enjoying it! What arp and envelope settings are you finding best? I have tried the same thing but always get at least a little bit of pulsing.
I also wanted to remind everyone that the green knob on the LFO page can be used to attenuate input volume (along with the red knob on the input page).
hi, sounds to be great to experiment with…
I’m trying to install it, but the op-1 always gives me an error message.
“Fail to create synth patch”
Anyone else?
No idea why you might be seeing this error. Maybe you have run out of space on your OP-1? What happens when you try to save a snapshot of a different synth patch?
I’ve just got it working!
My fault. Limit of sample synths reached. OP-1 should return a specific message, but it only tells that failed.
Great work!!
Thank you!
Thanks for making the OG patch, so clever. Any tips on how you set up the blank sample? I can mimic your lfo settings but want to make sure I’m setting everything else up properly.
I think I used a wavetable plugin at some point to draw a wave with all positive voltage. If you don’t have the ability to do this, I think I still have the plugin on my old laptop and would be happy to send you the nessicary audio files (just let me know the required specs for the Feild).
I can’t get this to work on the field, though it did load onto the device with no issues. The VU meter shows that USB audio is coming in when pressing a key, but no audio can be heard. Not sure if it’s because of the stereo nature of the new sample engine.
Is it just me or do you not get pulsing if you stay on the Endlesss sequencer page?
it takes a bit of trickery ie inputting a single note, setting the sequencer to hold with the orange knob, then hold shift and turn the blue knob to the right to enable manual mode. I don’t know why but if I go back to the synth page or the fx page the pulsing returns but if I stay on the sequencer page it doesn’t pulse. I suppose it’s a workaround if you already have your effects all set for your live input.