Battle 55 - The Loop

This battle will place focus on one of the more daunting but interesting parts of the OP-1: the live performance!

  • Set a loop range in the tape anywhere from two to eight bars
  • You may use a maximum of two loops and switch between them at will (hint: while the tape is playing inside a loop, shift + < or > will move the loop range to the left or right by the same length as the loop, but will finish the current loop before switching. use this to seamlessly transition between your selections)
  • Arrange your tracks as necessary, then commit a live performance to the album (edit: or a daw if necessary - see comments)
  • You can use any tricks the OP-1 has to offer, including mixing, muting and unmuting tracks, lifting and dropping, tweaking effects parameters, playing notes live over the tape, recording more to the tape during your performance, etc. – anything is fair game as long as you stay within your loop!
  • The song can be any length, although one minute at minimum would be preferable
  • Any outside samples are welcome. This time the OP-1 is just your performance tool, feel free to push it to its limit
  • Deadline will be July 15

Hopefully for many of us this challenge will push us to explore a side of the OP-1 that is intimidating and easily ignored. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

I like it.

Great brief! Must participate. =)

finger torture

Nice rules
1 problem : you can’t record to tape when you are already recording to album.
I like to play with overdubs so i am recording my jams externaly with a mini kaos pad. Maybe i m missing something.

Yeah, maybe this time external recording must be allowed. And what about the common external effect banning rule? :slight_smile:

Actually, this is the way I usually work with the op-1… since I like to have different loops and jump between them in order to be able to make a varied liveset.

i was unaware you cannot record to tape and album at the same time. in that case, i’m comfortable allowing recording out to a daw for the sake of adding onto the loop. however, since this is an op-1 battle i would say no external equipment or effects processing. everything is still being kept in the op-1 as much as possible, but using a daw is fine just to get around that one limitation, since it seems like a reasonable feature that would make sense for the op-1 to have if not for what i’m assuming is the inability to write to the disk in two places at once

Cool brief. Might push me to get back to working in the OP-1 :wink:

Mmmm yeah ! I haven’t touched the op for weeks ( months)… I ‘ll try to make something too

My shift button finally died 100% after 1 year of super careful use…
good luck and careful on how you press the shift. I will not even try to do something :confused:

looped it.

https://soundcloud.com/dj_kln/watch-out-loop-mix

we’ll extend the deadline to aug 1. hopefully we can get at least a handful of entries to vote on :slight_smile:

Cool, I want to get back into the action.

New the community, suppose this is a good way to start! Here’s my entry ~ https://goo.gl/MtrBA5

August 1st? Yay! I just got my Op-1 a week ago & I really hoped there would be a battle. I’ll def submit something. Stay tuned…

@Servando said:
My shift button finally died 100% after 1 year of super careful use…
good luck and careful on how you press the shift. I will not even try to do something :confused:

Grab a replacement keybed from ifixit. $100.

I didn’t make the deadline, but I’m still going to try to finish something. I think I got ahead of myself :confused: I filled up 3 tapes in 2 weeks, so I’m not short of ideas. I’m just having so much fun creating rhythms & designing sounds, I can’t stay focused enough to finish a beat. This thing just makes me want to experiment & play! I WILL be getting in on these battles tho. The Op-1 is my new favorite <3