Hello everyone. This is more of a reflection than a question, and it’s my contribution from my point of view. Will post it here and in TE Reddit community.
I really love Teenage Engineering products (I have practically all of them), and I enjoy a lotvjust turning them on and playing for 10 minutes with the OP-1, OP-Z, KO II, the different Pocket Operators, the POM 400, or even all of them at once. I have achieved a pretty good and stable synchronization for live playing, and turning them on and playing is very motivational and creative.
The friction comes when I want to turn those bases or sounds into profesional songs.
My current approach is as follows (I am still working on it):
• I create sketches with KO II and/or OP-Z as the base, and OP-1 for melodies.
• When I have something more or less finished, I record MIDI into my DAW (Ableton), dedicating a channel for each MIDI sound on the KO II and a channel for each track on the OP-Z, loading the most similar sounds or even the same ones for each channel.
• From there, I create audio tracks and record each OP-1 track, or I play it live again, and keep adding instruments (with the AKAI Keys or playing the guitar) and vocals.
• I adjust the MIDI notes (if necessary), make the necessary tweaks to ensure the composition is good, export the MIDI to wav, and import it back again.
• Then I start with the mixing: for each track, I adjust volumes and panning, apply equalization, compression, and limiting, and for some sounds, I create groups and apply light compression and/or limiting again.
I think it’s a good workflow and the “correct” way to do it. I don’t have creativity issues and I know how to do it, but I find it tedious, especially compared to how easy and fun it is to do it on the different devices.
What I would love is to be able to use a base created directly on a PO, or the OP-Z, or KO II, without having to transfer track by track (which can be impossible with the POs) and losing part of the magic in the process, especially with the drums.
This leads me to question whether it’s really worth systematically mixing and remixing the sounds, adding equalization and compression to all tracks, groups, and subgroups. On one hand, I think that the drum sounds these machines offer are professional and made by professionals, so with a little internal work (adjusting sound, volumes, and panning), you can achieve very good results. But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that if I do it this way, I am totally losing control and flexibility, and it will result in a not-pro sound.
What is your approach? Does anyone use these mixes directly in their songs? I would love to know your process.