OP-Z Tips and Tricks

OP-Z
#1

Since I couldn’t find a post that collects all OP-Z tips & tricks here I thought I’d start one myself.

/////// Please feel free to post your favorite special tricks one the OP-Z ///////

Here are two tutorials I made, hope it helps you out!


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#2

both are really nice. especially the tape track panning and the scratching on vocal samples are really inspiring.

Great Job!

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#3

Great stuff! How long did it take to piece together the epic mask?

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#4

Thank you! It took me a day to get the basic structure…and then a few afternoons tweaking to finally decide that it’s done :slight_smile:
I didn’t go by any kind of instruction so it was a lot of trial and error

#5

Thanks! I really hope they come out with some other type of soon for some extra weirdness.
Also LFO on the tape track…being able to modulate the finetune would make for some nice shaperbox-ish effects.

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#6

yeah, a few more fx and some modulation options would be killer. :innocent:

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#7

another quick video of tips…

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#8

Seems like this is still the closest to a general tips & tricks thread.

Here’s one I just stumbled on that’s guaranteed to save me a lot of headaches:

Quickly copying a step without deleting it

  1. Hold the step you want to copy
  2. Press - then + (or + then -)

This immediately copies the step and guarantees you won’t accidentally erase it in the process. Especially helpful if you sometimes lose steps when your device double-triggers.

Pressing + then - avoids changing the microtiming unless the step is at a maximum value (e.g., if a step is as far right as it goes and you select it, press + then -, it will now be slightly earlier).

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#9

The performance FX track (Track 13) only lets you use one octave on the OP-Z’s keyboard, but it’s much more powerful when controlled externally.

Here are some tips for adding variation to drums on Track 13:

  • Each octave controls 1 audio track. The lowest is the kick, second-lowest is the snare, and third-lowest is the hi-hat
  • F ducks the track’s audio & outgoing MIDI
  • G plays 16th notes of the last note played
  • A plays 32nd notes of the last note played
  • The black keys generally soften the sound via envelope/filter modifications

Track 13 has pretty decent polyphony, so it’s pretty easy to take a 1-bar drum loop and make it into 4, 8, or 16 bars by adding some ducks and loops to the Kick, Snare, and Hi Hat.

This has already changed how I plan to program hi-hats since it’s easier to get them to drop out for a bit and add in the occasional roll.

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#10

I’d overlooked the sampler until the past week, and it’s quickly become a crucial part of my workflow.

The issue is that, if you want to play back a loop you’ve sampled on the OP-Z, you’re limited to 6s in the synth sample engine or 12s in the drum sample engine.

The good news is you can use the “old school” technique of recording a sped-up version of the sample and pitching it back down on the OP-Z.

The sample engine allows you to pitch a sample down by up to 48 semitones. That’s 4 octaves, which means playback will be 1/(2^4) of the regular rate, which is 1/16 or 6.25%.

If you’re willing to deal with extreme lofi playback, this means you could theoretically fit a 96 second sample onto the synth engine or a 192 second sample onto the drum engine.

In my experience things degrade really quickly when they’re sped up by more than 2 octaves, but that didn’t stop my from testing the limits by fitting a 3:00 song into the drum sampler and the synth sampler.

Here’s what that process looked like using REAPER:

  1. Record 3:00 song into REAPER
  2. Open the recorded item and uncheck the option to preserve pitch when changing playback speed
  3. Change the item’s playback rate to 16 for the drum sampler and 32 for the synth sampler
  4. Record the sped-up versions into OP-Z
  5. Pitch down by 36 semitones for the drum sampler or 48 for the synth sampler

I’m mostly using this to sample loops I make on the OP-1 which are longer than 12s, in which case the process generally looks more like this:

  1. Set the OP-1 to play the tape back at 25% of its normal rate (-24 semitones)
  2. Record the audio/synth/whatever to the OP-1’s tape at this slower rate
  3. Set the OP-1’s tape playback rate to 100%, which is 2 octaves higher (or 4 times faster) than before
  4. Record the faster version into the OP-Z
  5. Pitch the sample down by 24 semitones
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