So I’ve had this idea in my head for a while now after I figured out the possibility to switch synth engines for presets. I’m no programmer but I’ve seen some pretty neat things done for the OP-1 like blattm’s Linux tool for sound preview presets and reddit user u/joshpriebe1234’s OP-1 Companion (opc). This has me curious about possibilities for other companion programs. My hope is that maybe someone could develop it further if there’s enough interest
I own a Microkorg and a few other smaller synths and one of the things I enjoyed about them is the various third library managers you could find. It made backing up patches and organizing sessions easier. There is also the possibility to load plugins into your DAW and automate program changes. I don’t know if there’s anything out there that works as a library manager for the OP-1? Something that displays all patches on your OP-1, maybe it allows you to preview sounds of your presets, save backups, maybe the ability to save MIDI mapping templates, etc.
Going back to figuring out the possibility to switch synth engines for presets… There are a lot of nice textures found within the stock presets. What I usually do when sound designing is I find a base patch that has more or less the characteristic I’m going for and modify it to suit my track. To add more dimension I change the sound engines until I find something interesting to compliment my base patch and mix it in on another track. It’s sort of a nice way of experimenting while also carrying some of the original characteristics from the base to a new patch. Doing this you can find some really nice textures and it can stir up some sound design ideas.
I don’t know if anyone has managed to save each variation of the stock presets?
Example:
Base Patch: DIGITAL: DAYLIGHT
Variations:
CLUSTER: DAYLIGHT
DNA: DAYLIGHT
DR WAVE: DAYLIGHT
DSYNTH: DAYLIGHT
FM: DAYLIGHT
PHASE: DAYLIGHT
PULSE: DAYLIGHT
SAMPLER: - (this is where things get weird. I don’t know how customizable SAMPLER would be)
STRING: DAYLIGHT
VOLTAGE: DAYLIGHT
Hi there, blattm here. I just wanted to add a few thoughts…
What is the problem? Why hasn’t there been progress for a while?
My impression previously was that not many people are coding software to use with the op1. But I just checked on GitHub (more about that below) and it changed my mind to some degree. There are many tools with considerable overlap. Developers tend to write their own tools, which are just usable enough for them. (And I’m definitely guilty of this).
Many different helper programs…
If you search on github (the place where most programmers upload their work) you will find many projects related to the op1. There are different helper programs (at least two for DAW integration) and other cool stuff. Check it out!
Making op1 tools platform independent
I noticed that some were upset that op1 tools were linux only.
The op1 tools were programmed in bash. I did it this way to learn more about bash. If I had to reimplement it, I would use python + subprocesses. opie by op1hacks is good example of how i would approach it now. It was written for macOS and would be a good starting point for a platform independent version of my op1 tools. But currently I don’t really have time to do op1 related programming alone without support of other devs.
List of all presets on op1 with preview, etc
I believe opc has exactly this capability, but I’m not sure.
I usually have all presets I ever created or downloaded on my PC and copy whatever I need to the op1 just when I need it. I know it doesn’t have the best UI, but technically, a folder with op1 patches displays them in a list and allows to preview sounds (at least if you used op1tools to add previews ) op1tools also has the capability to do backups automatically.
… But yeah, I know, the UI/UX is far from optimal.
Maybe there is something cool on GitHub. If you find s.th. interesting, let me know.
List of stock presets
I think there was a collection of all op1 field stock presets posted a few days ago. They will probably contain the OG op1 presets as a subset.
Generating Patches automatically
You can automatically generate patches. Here is the description of a tool for this. It is definitely possible to write code to read a patch, modify some values of the settings, and store the modified version (this would be done on a computer). libop1 would probably be a good starting point to create such a software. You could then use op1tools to attach the correct sound preview to the patches.
Bottom line
There are many open source projects related to the op1. Maybe some of them will be helpful for you. Maybe one of them is almost providing what you need. In this case you could open an issue on github with a feature request, or try to contribute yourself.
) op1tools also has the capability to do backups automatically.