I purchased an OP-1 a couple months ago and I'm absolutely obsessed. It seems every time I sit down with it I come up with an idea for a new song.
I like to perform songs by moving a loop along the tape and playing on top of it, usually only using about 20-90 seconds of tape for an entire song. The problem is I usually have any where from 3 to 9 songs recorded within the 6 minutes of tape at any given time, and then I'll sit down and get a new idea for a song before I've finished or exported any of the others, and then I'll start to run out of tape!
For example I've created probably about 25 different beats/songs/jams since I got the OP-1 but I haven't erased the tape once, and I have a song within the first minute of the tape that I created 2 months ago and haven't finished yet!
I guess this is an issue of discipline and focus. Does anyone else have this problem? How do you deal with having too many ideas? Do you work on multiple songs at once, or only one at a time?
That’s the biggest challenge for me too. A lot of ideas, a lot of donuts, not always easy knowing what to do with them afterwards. Record some to the album or export the tape tracks to your DAW (If you have one) because 6 minutes is just 6 minutes
It seems like for every 20 ideas I play with, I might finish and release 1 or 2. And even then my released tracks are really simple haha. I can’t force myself to finish them because I get tired of hearing them. I think in my case it stems from a huge gap between my taste in music and my actual skill.
Aim at finishing tracks, you’ll progress quicker than you think…
Quick and dirty, jam with your loops on Tape while recording on Album… Drop everything on the computer once finished, clean everything and start again.
i record stuff late at night, like hell-yeah it’s the bomb…then erase half of it the next morning, like wtf is this? sometime the better part of a song too. sometimes i’ll find inspiration in just a small segment of that recording, and preserve it, or re-write it.
i work on one track at a time on the OP-1, but if it’s going nowhere i start all over again.
if there’s a part of your sketches you really dig, remember how you made it, so you can just re-record it if something goes wrong. or try to recreate it and maybe come up with something equally nice, or even better.
i forget to save patches or settings on a sound all the time, and then have to cut my losses, or try to backwards engineer them…with varied results.
lots of folks publish their short sketches or grooves and post things on instagram and soundcloud. sometimes getting it out there makes it easier to move off of it, i’ve found.
mostly, just have as much fun as you possibly can.
My tape is full of 2,4,8 bar loops. I never finish a thought completely but it’s always enjoyable to jam for a while with mutes, fx, and improv. Once the tape gets full I do what I calll “the culling of the weak” where I get rid of whatever I don’t deem worthy anymore. I like to think that I’m evolving and getting better every time…
I tend to make a 4 bar loop that I really like, then I push myself to make 2 or 3 variations of it. Using live play, I like to use the shift+> to move the loop around, using mutes, solos, M1/2, and tape tricks, and record that to album. Usually do several takes. Once I have something I’m happy with, I’ll transfer tape and album to CPU, then wipe the tape. This kind of forces me to finish ideas, rather than have them in a constant state of “they could be better still!” like I do in a DAW.
Since getting my OP in december I’ve finished a tonne of tracks on the OP (by “finished” I mean ready for vocals - I cut hip hop instrumentals), and as yet haven’t even attempted to recover the tape parts in a DAW for individual arrangement - I just like the flow of the live cut to album too much!
good luck with it, hope you develop a workflow that suits you
I erase my tape every couple weeks. I love that it has a 1-2-3-4 security process, and takes a minute to erase the tape.
Backups are easy to make. Just drag and drop the TAPE folder to your computer.
That’s a good way to have too many unfinished ideas though- I record a few songs to album, and wipe my tape clean. Then I can work on completely new ideas~
I make regular backups too, in folders with the date of the day (like 170411, backwards for easy sorting). When I don’t feel inspired by what I have on the tape, I just drop the 4 AIF files in a blank Reaper session, it creates 4 differents tracks that I can listen and import back to the OP-1 if it inspires me at this moment. It also allows me to arrange and save 4 new tracks of 6 minutes long, with only the snippets of tape that I want to work on. Save as AIF and back to OP-1.
This workflow is quite new. I think I finally managed to switch tape content in a comfortable way after roughly one year of possessing the OP-1. Waiting for the reception of a Kingston Mobilelite Wireless Pro though, that could open new possibilities… OP-1 + Ipad + Mobilelite = <3?..
It seems like for every 20 ideas I play with, I might finish and release 1 or 2. And even then my released tracks are really simple haha. I can't force myself to finish them because I get tired of hearing them. I think in my case it stems from a huge gap between my taste in music and my actual skill.
Like @kln said, posting little clips of jams on Instagram and YouTube is a good way to keep things moving. I’ll work with a tape until it gets full of loops, usually 4 or 5 solid jams per tape, then back it up to a folder with the date (like today’s would be 20170414), wipe it and start again.
I reuse drum kits all the time, only swap them out every few months or when it feels like a rut is forming in my workflow. I also use the same handful of chords and scales a lot, just modifying the melody and order of the notes. That simplicity makes it easy to get started on new jams and also makes it easier to move on to another idea without feeling like I’m abandoning something. When I have time and feel like practicing I do live jams on Instagram, keeping it under 10 minutes per idea usually, then save that video and post the entire session to YouTube and a 1 minute clip to Instagram.
It’s very cathartic to get something out there and wipe that tape clean.
I’ve been making beats since the late 1990’s, still got shoe boxes full of minidiscs and CD’s loaded with jams, got old memory cards and QuickDisks full of samples, countless beats started in FL Studio (since version 3.5) and other software. Only about a tenth of that has ever been put online in some form or another. Since messing with the OP-1 I’d say the ratio of what gets made to what gets put out has been more balanced, it’s been good getting more feedback too. The older I get the less I care about perfecting a track, I’m just happy making music and sharing when I have the time.
It's very cathartic to get something out there and wipe that tape clean.......... The older I get the less I care about perfecting a track, I'm just happy making music and sharing when I have the time.