When a track starts to get more complex, and enters the realm of arrangement and structure (after the composing is mostly done), I find it hard to proceed most of the time. Maybe I don’t have the right set of mind in my workflow with the tape. Arranging on tape in my case, escalates quickly in multiple lift and drop sessions, spilled bits of loops on the tape here and there… mostly its ending up by moving the project to my daw for that part. I don’t like the work on the daw so much though, cause I quickly get indecisive with too much opportunities, creating to much „versions" of the song etc… opposed to the creative restrictions OP1 offers so nicely.
Am I doing something wrong? I would like to stay in OP1 as long as possible.
my workflow so far goes as:
A: I make some loops that evolve the theme from loop to loop, with variations and progress. At the end of a loop I try to give a small variation of eg. the last bits of the drums, to build a bridge to the next loop, on the beginning of the tape. When I’m done I start arranging them by dropping copy’s to the later part of the tape. Then after a while I want to re-arrange, and that’s where things start getting really complicated for me. (But I have to admid that I’m also a person who likes to try out variants, though). It starts to getting flimsy and mistakes start to grow. Sometimes I thought the problem might be that I just had to commit earlier in the process.
B: I create some loops as described above. I then switch between those 3-4 loops live, muting single tracks, and record that all to album. I like that because it’s a really musical way of creating a track. But somehow my tracks stay kind of „small-ish" or after a minute of running they stay kind of static.
At last I thought also about getting a further small device that’s not a daw, but something that’s great for arranging and structure. But in the end I would love OP1 being that device itself.
but I really don’t know. Now written all thant, I feel a little dumb 
. Maybe there’s a better way opposed my own attempts, or it’s just the way I look at things in a wrong way…
really exited if you feel of being in a similar boat, or if you found an other interesting approach to perform your tracks.
Cheers