Here's my entry for the #10YOP1 contest, I went full Boards of Canada with this one

This is my entry for the #10YOP1 beat contest organised by Teenage Engineering for the 10th anniversary of the OP-1.

I decided to go with a Boards of Canada-like aesthetic, because, well, they are my favourite contemporary electronic music band. The OP-1 is driving me towards making music that is more spontaneous, more felt, if you will, and that includes sampling as a prominent part of the song-making process, just like in Boards of Canada’s music.

I made all the synth and fx sounds and on the OP-1 and recorded most of the parts live into Logic. It’s a really satisfying sensation to play an instrument and get a take exactly how you want it – after many attempts – rather than just sequence it. Even the arpeggiated part is recorded by playing chords live on the OP-1 keyboard, which leads to unpredictable pattern and timing asynchronicities – it’s an actual word, I checked!

The vocal chops are samples bits run into the OP-1’s phone effect, I like what that effect does to vocals, especially when modulated by the random LFO.

The drums are one-shot samples from Modeaudio programmed into Logic’s step sequencer, to which I added a healthy does of bitcrushing. I’m pretty happy how the percussion part turned out. I like to think that I’m slowly getting better at programming drums. I think the main challenge was to come up with a sensible song structure fitting the one minute time limit imposed by the contest rules. I know it feels a bit rushed, but let me know if you like it, I might decide to make an extended version of it.

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