I do believe the point of OP-1f right now was to cover the OP-1 OG’s perimeter with a bonus direction in every dimension. Mission accomplished
But I’m pretty sure we’ll see a lot of new features in the future, the OP-1 has some room to get real better.
Here and there a few feature requests were made. I figured it could be nice to gather them in one place.
OP-1 is an instrument with a very consistent UX, so please take the time to think how your request would fit.
As an example, the shortcut Shift+Tape was used to erased the whole Tape (ie the 4 tracks).
TE changed this into a whole new and exciting tape switching functionality.
Right now, we can only have one sequence for each style of sequencer, it would make the OP-1 vastly superior IMO if we could load/save sequences.
That could be done through Shift+Sequencer menu, where you already switch between your sequences, to stay coherent with the Tape switching workflow.
I would also love having the 1-8 shortcuts to hot switch between sequences à la Fingers. A long press on 1-8 buttons while in the Sequencer menu could make it possible to assign such shortcut.
A thing I would truly love is to make the OP-1 less of a loner an make it communicate more with other instruments.
A full MIDI implementation that opens the OP-1 parameters as MIDI CCs would offer to control the OP-1 with other TE gear, such as the OP-Z or TX-6 for instance, or other Swedish machines
I think it would be cool, as the OP-1f takes the OG into the next decade, to have 2 FX slots.
I think it would be cool to have 2 effects on tap for a single sound, like the OP-Z. The current single effect slot is fine but the workflow of using sampling to add more effects better suits the OG op-1’s Lofi vibe, the OP-1f’s hifi vibe should have 2 effects slots (not limited, but mostly so I can use a modulation FX and a time based FX, like CWO+Mother)
They’ve got the effects, and could potentially run FX1 into FX2 to make the audio routing more simple, though the option for series and parallel would be killer.
So currently, while on Drum or Synth you access FX by pressing the track 3 button. You press shift + 3 to access the different effects to swap out.
Only one knob is used select the Effect you want, so maybe there could be two columns, similar to selecting a synth and preset, except this selects FX1 and FX 2.
In terms of switching between the two, and turning either of them on/off, I’m still thinking that through.
I guess maybe you could use the 1 and 2 keys of the 1-8 preset keys to toggle on and off, and if you’re on the effect page those apply to the effects not the overall synth preset.
Idk that part isn’t as clean and probably not up to TE spec, but I think this is something that I’d find valuable (especially as more effects get released (right TE?)) (and especially if I could choose the routing option).
the whole reason i got a 2nd op-1 was for playing live with the synth and drum sequencers over the tape at the same time.
it would be insane to be able to set a drum sequence playing and then switch to synth and jam over top of it live without having to first record anything to tape. maybe the behavior could be that if a sequencer is engaged it will continue to play even if you navigate somewhere else on the machine?
The sequencers are my favourite part of the OP1 and I REALLY wish I could recall saved sequences (or sets of sequences in Finger). This would be my no1 wish.
This is my second most wanted feature after being able to save and recall sequences (banks of sequences on Finger). Don’t know how feasible it is at it seems pretty fundamental and would take need it to become bi-timbral - but can’t hurt to ask!
The drum sampler has a pan feature built in but the synth engines and synth sampler does not. My idea is to use shift+orange when in tape mode to pan what is recorded. On the OG OP-1 shift+orange is used to fine tune gain, but it would be much more beneficial to be able to pan whats being recorded.
Right now when you have selected a track, its volume level is applied to the current synth/drums playing.
It would be nice if the Tape effect was applied the same way.
Especially on an incoming signal on audio input.
General comment. OP-1 is fun to use in large part because of its emergent features: different modules interacting with each other in ways that allow people to come up with clever uses, most likely never even thought of by designers. This is something that should be expanded upon.
One area where OP-1 lags behind many much cheaper synthesizers is modulation. Good additions to Field would be:
Standard Value LFO to have all the shapes of Tremolo LFO.
Random LFO routable to individual parameters. This would be way more useful than the way it works right now.
Tremolo LFO to be “tuned” to the last key pressed. It actually does pretty decent sounding AM and FM, but they are stuck at the same frequency.
Also, I would like to see per-patch amp volume and tuning offset setting. Both are already present somewhere in the bowels of the engine (you can modulate them Wheel and Bend), but one can’t just edit and save them. This results in a lot of patches being drastically different in volume. This also makes some other tricks a hassle to use. (E.g. Tremolo turned to 41 does octave shifts, but it offsets the entire sound by ~ 6 semitones.)
Bend range/speed should be user-defined.
I would also like to see knob buttons (knob presses) used for something useful. Most other keys are already occupied, but the knobs are easily accessible to the user and mostly free. In Tape and Sequencer modes, it would make sense to map some shift + knob turn combos to knob press + knob turn. This would make it possible to do two (or four) things at the same time, which were impossible to do at the same time before.
In Synth/Drum modes, knobs could act as mappable macros. How that would work specifically can vary a great deal, but almost anything is better than not using one of the most easily accessible controls on the whole unit.
Finally, OP-1 already has 85% of functionality to do some granular and wavetable synthesis. All it needs is a more sensible envelope behavior and ability to shift all the points for a sample by the same amount at the same time. Seems like a huge wasted opportunity. Obviously, without custom engine it will not be perfect, but it could allow for some interesting experimental sound designs.
Add locators on tape
In tape mode, shift+3 adds a locator on the tape enabling you to quickly skip between loops further apart. Shift+3 while on a locator removes it. Shift+1 goes to the previous locator, shift+2 to the next.
Pan
An addition to my previous pan idea. shift+orange press centers the pan in tape mode.
I think Endless sequencer can be improved on all OP-1s.
When in Crank mode and playing a set of notes, pressing Shift currently stops the notes from playing. Pressing keys while holding Shift deletes old sequence and creates a new one with the first step being the notes you’ve just pressed. This just isn’t a very useful behavior.
Here are the changes I would propose:
When you are in Crank mode of Endless, pressing Shift does not interrupt the sound.
Pressing Shift + some keys send key-off signals for original notes, replaces the current step of the sequence with new notes and starts playing those notes.
This way you get ability to edit Endless sequences and a tool for changing droning chords.
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Sketch should endlessly hold the note when it wraps around if the line has pixels fills both at the end and start.
Pressing Shift when Sketch is running should “record” notes pressed on the keyboard onto the image under scan line. Bonus points if there is a way to switch between “overwrite” and “overdub” modes. This would be immensely powerful: real-time, completely un-quantized recorder. Great for experimental stuff.
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I also think all sequencers should have some kind of override mode where you can freely play notes on top of the running sequence.
Can we include feature requests for the “Field” line of products? Because, I would personally love to see an OB-4 Field with a line out, a TE effects processor unit, and also some sort of more-user-friendly live functionality, be it DMX lighting kits for a future OP-Z Field, or a more higher level language or GUI support for creating videopaks for OP-Z.
