First track on the OPXY

OP-XY
1

Hi,
This is my very first more-or-less finished track made on the OPXY. It’s a somewhat ambient piece about machines slowly waking up to consciousness.

I wanted to keep the harmony simple so I could focus on the opXY’s arranging capabilities. Everything was produced inside the machine and recorded straight in stereo into Ardour.

I would have liked to take it further, but the opXY is limited to nine patterns per track, and there’s no way to copy notes from one pattern to another. I was aiming for three movements — minor, major, minor — but I couldn’t push it beyond that.

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Well done :+1:

What was done in Ardour? Did you do much mixing, mastering, (and editing,)or was it just to record to a DAW for export/bounce?

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Yes @raphael_betemps , well done! Nice overall shape to the track. It feels complete.

I’m wondering, why was 9 patterns per track a limitation? Did you use all the tracks?

Anyway, nicely done.

Rick

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Thanks @yellow_eyez

Everything was done on the Teenage Engineering OP-XY. I recorded the audio output directly into Ardour. I did use a compressor/limiter and an equalizer to prevent peaks and clean up some heavy low-end that was lingering in the bottom of the spectrum, but that’s all.

Apart from that, it’s 100% in-the-box.

1 Like
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hi @fwroberts

Hello,

I used all the melodic tracks on the Teenage Engineering OP-XY. I also made use of the two effect tracks and audio track number 13, which gives an extra layer of control when mixing everything together.

I didn’t use tracks 9, 10, 11, 12, or 14 at all — they’re quite hard to manage in a mix, and at this point it’s just too complicated for my brain.

On three of the main instrument tracks, I almost reached the maximum number of patterns — (8 used, 1 left). That means I only have one pattern left for a final variation, which isn’t enough to keep developing the track further.

I ended up with 14 different scenes, each one introducing variations in volume, filters, effects, and so on.

To mix 14 different scenes with only nine patterns, without relying on mutes, I used the additional audio track to give myself more flexibility.

Something very important for me was to have musical transitions — meaning instruments that start in the last bar of one pattern and continue into the next one. That was quite complicated to achieve.

The main limitation is that the overall mix relies on volume changes recorded inside the patterns, so you quickly run out of room.

Of course, if I had been less ambitious, I could have used two tracks for the same instrument, but that would have reduced my sound design options.

With only four different chords — which is very little — you very quickly reach the limits imposed by the nine-pattern restriction.

Another drawback of the OP-XY is that you can’t copy notes from one bar to another or from one pattern to another. You can only copy an entire pattern, which shifts its number and the position of the others in the stack. So you have to write everything down on paper and keep track of which chord or variation is stored in each pattern.

That said, I had a lot of fun, and with a few improvements, the OP-XY could become even better than the Synthstrom Deluge — it’s a great machine.

Thanks for listening to the track :folded_hands::blush:

1 Like
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Then quite frankly it’s an amazing forray, very inspiring Use of the arrangement possibilities

(can you perhaps speak a little more on the volume automation you mentioned ? Like anything at all ?)

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I’m using the external audio track to gain an additional mixing option. It’s normally intended for external audio, but you can actually route the entire mix into this track, which allows you to control the mix of all melodic tracks from a single place, with nine extra patterns available for automation.

What would be great is if this functionality were also available in the scenes — that would give us virtually unlimited automation possibilities. For now, I have to do these automations directly in the patterns, which are limited to nine.

With this track, you can have nine original melodic patterns with their mix settings recorded as pattern automation, plus nine additional variations that affect the whole mix. It’s powerful, but really complicated to set up — there are a lot of parameters to keep track of.

I should mention that I didn’t use the Brain at all (its possibilities are quite limited once you have some knowledge of harmony), and I also avoided the punch-ins, which are a nightmare to re-edit.

From now on, I’m going to try using MIDI CC messages to control longer mixes from external gear, which is something that’s possible with the Synthstrom Deluge but not as flexible on the Teenage Engineering OP-XY.

1 Like
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Thanks @raphael_betemps for taking the time to explain your workflow. I found this extremely helpful and it has given me some ideas to explore. I’m very new with OPXY and appreciate your willingness to share what you did.

Rick

2 Likes