Yeah! I think that the available sequencers give the user just enough options to combat the feeling of "I need to play it perfectly in time with nothing," and the way they blend together with live overdubbing is really cool. Thanks for watching :)

Yeah, it just puts you into a completely different mindset! Really a creativity booster haha.

You can grab a cheap multitracker and have the same limitation without spending a month's rent on it.

@@Leo9ine will it be the same size and portable all-in-one solution? :)

Yeah it certainly is. It only appeals to a very specific audience, but if you're in that group it's the best thing ever haha.

Yeah it's a fantastic piece of gear, IF you enjoy the tape workflow haha. Can't believe I've almost had mine for 2 years now!

Thanks so much!

Sometimes it's all about getting into a different mindset! Thanks for watching :)

No worries, there's a lot to unpack in the keystep!

Thanks for watching :)

Exactly! That's why I always break it down into being a groovebox AND a tape recorder. Thanks for watching :)

Thanks for watching!

Yes, the Deluge and the M8! These two are my darlings right now. They are both incredible! The M8 is seriously blowing my mind - I was big on trackers in the 90s (Amiga + Pro Tracker, and later OctaMED) - so having this power in a hand held device is like a dream come true!

Yeah that seems to be a fairly common story from what I can tell. It's certainly not for everyone haha. What are your thoughts on the M8? I'm still not really sure I understand how it works lol.

@@FreeBeat it's a classic tracker, but absolutely powerful. Three synth engines, unlimited sample player, ticks and tables, lots of effects... all in a pocketable device with batteries and speakers!

And, well, Audio Tracks. 8 of them. Admittedly they don’t have the gimmicky tape animation of the OP-1. And I don’t know about overdubbing in the Audio tracks. But you can re sample.

Yeah the OP-1 is probably not for most haha, and the MPC One is such a powerful device, especially for the price! Thanks for watching :)

The audio tracks are very very different from the OP-1 workflow. The "gimmicky tape animation" has nothing to do with what makes them unique. It's the fact that after something is on tape, it can't be touched. Aside from a few master effects and eq settings (that effect the entire track), once it's on tape, it's set in stone. Not at all like the MPC or Deluge. I seem to have a hard time conveying what sets them apart, sorry lol .

I feel this comment wholeheartedly haha. It's a brilliant and frustrating device all at once haha. When I first got it, I thought I was going to produce complete songs on it. I quickly realized this wasn't going to happen lol. Instead, the OP-1 helped me start to learn the basics of Ableton! I found that using the OP-1 to get the skeletons of my song sections made working in Ableton a whole lot easier (it had been really daunting before), and the combination of the two have become one of my favorite workflows. Thanks for watching :)

It is! Thanks for watching :)

Absolutely, lifting and dropping after a successful take is critical! Thanks for watching :)

@@FreeBeat For sure! Thanks for making informative videos!

Not necessarily, the sequencers are actually pretty intuitive to use! If anything, trying to ignore the sequencers and just record directly to tape will improve your timing :)

I've got a couple of grooveboxes which could, with a lot of effort, emulate the workflow, but I just wouldn't. It's more work for something that's still not intuitive and guided like on the OP-1 where you can see the tape track and copy/cut/splice the tape. This isn't a missing feature that a different vendor could add in a firmware update, it's a whole workflow with dedicated buttons and display. I don't think I"ll get an OP-1, but I'd sure like to know about a dedicated multitrack recorder that offers a similar workflow. I shopped around a bit and didn't find anything that seemed as useful for when you're coming up with a song, and not just wanting to record all of your instruments.

@@juliuscanus1568I think some devices can do it just fine. A cheap daw can work with audio only, as long as the user doesn’t keep midi around.The deluge arranger looks like a classic daw timeline and coping audio around or trimming it isn’t hard. That people don’t do this and tend to stick to midi whenever the device supports it makes OP1 maybe unique in some psychological sense: it entices you to use audio workflows because it simply doesn’t let you do midi arrangements. But that doesn’t make the OP1 unique in a functional sense. And the claim that you make and that the video makes is that the workflow is somehow unique in functional sense, you can do it only on OP1s. That is certainly not true, if you can find a way to engage psychologically with an audio only workflow, there are more devices that can do that.

Although other gear might be able to come *somewhat* close to the OP-1, it's workflow is still unique. Even after the process you described in your comment, the Deluge still gives you the ability to change quite a bit after the fact. You never have to truly commit to anything on the Deluge (which is awesome, a great feature). Once you've recorded your audio on the OP-1, it's basically unchangeable, outside a few master effects and master eq (which effect the entire track anyway). Aside from that, on the Deluge, whether you're sequencing the parts or resampling them as audio, you're working with the same grid and timeline. On the OP-1, you work on your sequences and parts in an entirely different section of the device. You only take them to the tape recorder once they are perfected. These may seem like small differences on paper, but I can assure you they add up to an incredibly different and unique experience on the OP-1. Like I said, some gear might attempt to come close, but nothing is truly like the OP-1. Hope I cleared it up a bit haha.

@Free Beat I hardly ever change notes in my patterns anyways. But I can get stuck in an arrangement, deciding the order of the fragments, and how many instruments join in in a certain part. I wonder if that would be less on the OP1, but I think you can still copy/paste fragment orders on the tape and still have 4 tracks to experiment with the number of instruments. But changing it is probably somewhat more tedious so perhaps the op1 would encourage to be more decisive about arranging. Not going to test it though, since I’ve recently spent money on modular stuff, which I am learning right now. Which is also a dumb way of not buying a PO and not going on a long vacation 😹

I come from the world of traditional music. There, "beat" typically refers to either the tempo (pulse) of the song, the heart"beat" if you will, OR it refers to the drum beat of a particular section or song. It seems that the term "beat" is used a lot more loosely in electronic music, typically referring to a section of a song, or an individual pattern. I've seen the term reference both just the drum part of a pattern (like I described in the traditional music world), or all of the parts of a particular pattern (Drums, bass, keys, vocals, etc). The "song" is the end product. It does not matter if there are vocals or not. An instrumental song is still a song. Songs are typically comprised of different beats/patterns/sections combined together. You've probably heard the term "song structure" before. This references the structure of a song, with different parts of the song typically referenced by either letters, or their respective section names. Song Structure Example 1: Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus 3, Chorus 3, Outro. Song Structure Example 2: A, A, B, A, B, B, C, B, B. Each of those sections can have their own beats and patterns. Songwriting is simply the act of working on music with the intent of the end product being a song. You can be "beatmaking" in order to work on your song, which could be considered songwriting. Also, a lot of these terms get easier to understand with context. For example "I'm working on the beat for my chorus right now, I've been songwriting all day!" There are also "songs" that have just the same "beat" repeated over and over again. This is a lot more common in electronic music. Basically, both words are pretty loosely thrown around, and, at least in the world of electronic music, you almost have to know who is talking to understand exactly what they're referencing lol. Hope that helps.

@@FreeBeat it helps SO much and I have my answer. Thank you fir taking the time to answer my question fully it really means a lot to me. Best wishes Luke

It's definitely an awesome update, thanks for watching!

You can!

Oh yeah the form factor is just icing on the cake haha, and that battery life!

@@FreeBeat LOL, Yes! Let us not forget about the battery life. 4 months and mine is still at half! Nothing else I've had, or anything electric for that matter, compares.

I use it all of the time, just not on camera :)

The intent with the OP-1 is that you work on one song at a time, so feel 6 minutes is pretty fair. You can also slow down the tape in relation to your tempo and stretch it out I believe.