This reads like a promo piece for Teenage Engineering. The credit for the mini-synth revolution really belongs to Tatsuya Takahashi, the designer of Korg's groundbreaking Volca instruments. His Monotron synth was launched nearly five years before Teenage Engineering launched the Pocket Operator series. The Monotron is pocket-sized, fully analog, is musically useful and is supplied with a complete schematic; this last feature sparked a renaissance of circuit-bending and modding.
I think you're missing the point of what Teenage Engineering is trying to do. For as simple as the Korg Vulca series is, it's still an synthesizer first. You need to have some familiarity with electronic instruments to understand the controls of the Monotron that you mention:
Pitch
Rate
Int.
Cutoff Peak
Compare that to the controls on the Pocket Operator:
Sound
Pattern
BPM
FX
Play
Write
If you were handed one of these with no experience making music, which one would you be more likely to get started with? Heck, the Pocket Operator even has cute animations that go with your beats!
I have tremendous respect for Korg, but I think Teenage Engineering is prioritizing fun and accessibility in a way that I haven't seen in my 30 years of making music. This may be a fluff PR piece, but I think they deserve a ton of credit for making something as intimidating as electronic instruments so downright fun and adorable.
The Korg Monologue is a brilliant piece of kit with the demo patches and microtunings done by Aphex Twin (who worked very closely with Takahashi on the development).
> This reads like a promo piece for Teenage Engineering.
Yeah. As an electronic music hobbiest, this has a really odd feel to it. TE's stuff is really not all that innovative and while it has its niche isn't really blowing the doors off of anything. I've never personally liked their stuff - it seems so rigid and lifeless.
The Monotron + Monodelay were, admittedly, toys, but still very fun to play with and definitely ushered in a modern age of small, cheap fun synths.
>This reads like a promo piece for Teenage Engineering. The credit for the mini-synth revolution really belongs to Tatsuya Takahashi, the designer of Korg's groundbreaking Volca instruments.
And neither TE or Korg has "won over kids and professionals".
They just built some cool products and made decent sales. No groundbreaking phenomenon in either.
The DX7 for example changed the whole industry. Volca's and TE not so much...
This does read like a pure PR piece. TE angered most of its fanbase by increasing the price of the OP-1 after it claimed parts became more expensive due to a new supplier.
Yeah I performed a bunch of live shows in Mojave with just a monotribe I had an op1 but the USB on it snapped off during a show and it killed it. A painfully expensive loss compared to a $60 pocket operator being broken.
While I have never used one, I am such a huge fan of this one particular band Buerak that I had to find out how their beats were made and it was Korg Volca. Buerak is just a guitarist and a bassist, their 'drummer' is the Volca Beats and I think it's also the secret sauce. Many late-soviet bands were into New Wave and made use of synths/drum machines, Buerak - whether they claim this as an influence or not - is clearly influenced by these bands (most famous would be Kino), but the Volca sound is just so much more dynamic - and it is accessible. It's pretty cool that these guys, who ostensibly do not have a lot of money (from kind of a B-rate city in Russia), were able to make such dope music.
Can anyone recommend a good synth that will be fun to play with but not too confusing for 3–5 year old kids? (With adult helpers who have some basic piano experience but don’t know much about synths.)
There’s no arguing it - Korg did the mini-synth thing before Teenage Engineering. Actually, Korg, Roland, Moog and Waldorf (among others) all did it before Teenage Engineering.
As a musician and synth lover, I don’t know anyone who uses the TE gear as a serious musical equipment. They’re widely considered to be in the toy or novelty realm, except the OP-1, which is saved by being absurdly expensive for what it is.
Haha, “changing electronic music” is a BIT of a stretch here, NYT. These are definitely fun toys, but if anything these are just entry points into analog synthesis.
Eurorack modules, and the massive DIY community around them are changing music. Ableton live is changing music. Behringer making super cheap, high quality synth modules is changing music.
Teenage engineering does make some really cool stuff though. Now get on making more OP-1s please!!
>, but if anything these are just entry points into analog synthesis.
I just saw several demos of this Pocket Operator on Youtube and what I saw was more of a sampler than an analog synthesizer.
Samplers are more about sound clips manipulation. Analog synths would be more about waveform generators, sine/sawtooth/square, oscillators, envelopes, etc.
E.g. Pocket Operators makes it easy to record some percussive sounds. It auto-analyzes the input for transients and chops them up at boundaries. It instantly maps multiple pitch-shifted versions of those sounds to the buttons. Users then have a quick DIY drum machine that triggers custom sounds.
If these devices can also do traditional analog synthesis, none the Youtubers I browsed demonstrated that capability.
EDIT based on replies: Yes, I now see that searching youtube for specific devices such as "PO-14 Sub" or "PO-16 factory" will show the demos that manipulate synth sounds. Searching only for generic "pocket operator" gets you the sampler demos.
Hm, honestly, Being into analog synthesis is one thing, and making music is another. That has always been a thing I hear, fun toys are not meant for serious music. I believe you can use anything to create music. I own two of these pocket operators and I already create music with them. If you can sample sounds from anywhere, why would these devices just be toys?. I don't see them as that, unless you're an analog synthesis person that is looking to patch like crazy, which is another story.
Not sure about that. If it's introducing a whole bunch of people to music production who would otherwise find it too intimidating or expensive to get started, that seems like it's changing it. Perhaps in a different way than some of the other stuff you're citing.
Was about to say the same thing. TE makes great products, but those had barely any impact on the music production world.
The quality of DAWs, the availability of great free VSTs, endless YouTube tutorials and tons of avenues for sharing one's work is what created the current environment of hyper productivity.
New entrypoints are a change; they're just a change that takes a while to develop fully. More people get into electronic music who otherwise mightn't've, and they bring their perspectives with them.
It's akin to a fidget spinner if you ask me, barely worth 60$ itself.
I've been making music for 20 years and this looks like a glorified (though pretty basic) calculator modified to play notes. Real meaningful music compositions can't be created with it, and I doubt it's going to replace keyboards in studios. Just imagine a studio engineer hooking that tiny POC up to a professional mixing desk for a few bleeps?... :/
If anything is evolving in terms of creating grammy award level music it's probably going to be software on laptops and iPads first.
Not many impressive things have come to the music world since VST (software) synths, beatport, and Serato began to rise (Serato is still terrible BTW), but the music industry needs a lot more innovation injected into it.
Gonna take this opportunity to plug an open source project I've been following for a bit: https://github.com/topisani/OTTO. Essentially, they are trying to create an open version of Teenage Engineering's OP-1.
Thank you! Many times I have thought through how I could approach something like this. The actual tech behind the OP-1 isn't complicated, they just came up with an awesome form factor and UX. I'm absolutely gonna try getting involved in this project, appreciate you sharing.
There is also the Organelle from Critter And Guitari which runs PureData on arch Linux on the raspberry pi. It is also a synth/sampler (though sequencer-based instead of "tape") with a similar form factor to the OP-1.
I started working on my own mini synth with Teensy and the Teensy audio shield, however this seems like a great project to pivot to. Definitely plan on reaching out to the team and seeing if there is any way to help!
I bought the PO-35 Speak which has two mono tracks for a vocoder-based synth and a drum synth. The OP-1 originally piqued my interest but I wanted to test the waters of electronic instruments before jumping (only had guitar and piano experience before). At first glance it appears very limited and is often dismissed as such, but as I understood it better I found it had impressive depth and capability for making tracks. The true power is really the design, the entire time spent on the learning curve is fun, from out-of-the-box to building patterns and full tracks is a rewarding experience. There were times I thought I had hit its limitations and was disappointed to learn I couldn't do something I wanted to, only later to learn there in fact was - my initial approach was just wrong. The device almost has a game-like reward for discovering it's features.
That said the thing died 6 months in and the warranty process took about 3 months. In the mean time the OP-1 had its notorious production/price shenanigans climbing to $1300 from $800 so I picked up a Deluge instead. The OP-Z also looked interesting but I don't think I'll give TE any more money and certainly not for that something that I couldn't part with for months at time.
For what it's worth I have an OP-1, bought it 1-2 years ago when it was £800 - and I thought it was expensive then!
Anyway, my opinion will not be useful comparatively, since it's my first and only piece of electronic music hardware, only other stuff I have is guitars, amps etc. I can tell you it's been very fun, very reliable (only once I froze it when using a combination of a lot of effects at once with settings I imagine probably took up too much memory), battery lasts for ever (due to CPU type etc), it has a lot of depth, I still haven't figured out how to use absolutely everything, features are very discoverable and learning curve is pretty linear. Some of it is "programmy" as you describe for the POs, but it's also plenty intuitive and direct with the built in keyboard, which I appreciate because my musical background is mostly instrumental.
The main reason I got it is for the very thing that makes it unique, it's tiny, all in one, it's got almost everything you need and is fun - I know it's not the best value for money or the best audio or best effects etc etc, but I don't want to make music on my computer, and I don't want to start out with loads of independent devices to manage and wire together... I appreciated the idea of something I could grab and play with to encourage me to play with electronic music more, and it total achieves that.
The only thing I feel like I miss sometimes (and this is considering I have never owned any other electronic music hardware), is more keys, for the form factor I can't argue, but I think the next thing I would buy is a midi keyboard, I've tried programming longer pieces but it never fits in the sequencer.
[edit]
My single gripe in out of all the design/quality is key debouncing (it doesn't have velocity keys), which doesn't seem to catch enough... sometimes I can exploit it to effect, but most of the time I don't want it - it's occasional, like maybe 1/50 if i'm not being very careful and just hammering rather than pressing. I should probably try updating the software though as this may have been improved. I doens't bother me massively though, like I said it's the only thing.
How do you find Deluge? Thinking about buying it as a maxi-version of Circuit when I make more space in my studio (Octatrack, Maschine & Circuit as groove boxes/sequencers/samplers already there).
I bought the PO-33 thinking it would be a fun musical toy I could occasionally play with. To be honest, I was disappointed with how much repetitive labor was needed to do even the simplest things on it. Something about it just did not entertain my programmer-brain. I could visualize each step needed to make a fun track, and then decided it would not be worth the time. I mostly spent time imagining how much easier and more fun it could be.
I hit this wall, but what I've decided is that it makes a fun adjunct instrument to play in real-time; using the sequencer is basically something to occupy time on transit or whatever but not a productive music-making idea. Just use it to collect fun samples over the course of your day and then mix them into other things in your DAW of choice.
Novation Circuit is way more flexible/fun than TE/Volca, although 5x more expensive. I'd recommend people to start with that one, it can be easily plugged into a pro studio later, it's perfect for traveling/commuting and allows "happy accidents" for finding cool riffs to happen faster.
dumb question, perhaps someone will take mercy on me:
i've wanted to learn to make electronic music for.. ever. and i've never really done it.
i have a mac. and an iPad. and an iPhone. and an M-Audio MIDI controller.
what's a good recipe -- hardware and software -- to build the base skills & knowledge to make decent ambient/chill tracks? i'm hoping someone can send me in the right direction..
Interesting seeing this on HN the day after I ordered their OP-1.
TE is doing some really neat stuff. I am pretty excited to be able to play around with electronic music composition without being tied to a computer. Doing more with less might help me to not get distracted by all the shiny tools I could load onto my workstation. Also, having a portable unit makes it a lot easier to go out and collect/try new samples.
As an owner of a TE OP-1 and a more professional Korg Prologue, I can say first hand how awesome these TE devices are. I really want to play with more kinds. The team over at TE does a great job building good interfaces, and making it "fun". I feel like Gene from Bob's Burgers.
That said, I love being able to program my own DSP for my Prologue, and it's 16 voice polyphonic analog sound is just hard to compare that to that of my toy OP-1, even if they are both capable of making music above my pay grade.
Even if the piece reads like a Pocket Operator promo, it still captures a bit of what TE’s products aim for - fun, usable, etc.
That said, I’ve been considering getting an OP-1 for ages but keep hoping someone will come up with a suitable software alternative for iOS - right now there is no shortage of iOS audio software (Synth One is free and amazing on its own right), but I’d love to have an OP-1 style workflow within a single app.
I have had a bunch of synths before, including an Volca. And what TE does is that they have lowered the barrier to entry in making interesting music. They are really fun to jam on. You can just pick up a Pocket Operator and iterate on a song withought much difficulty. They also have depth if you want to tweak or play around with it.
If you like their POs, you'll probably like the OP-Z too. The main difference between the OP-1 & the OP-Z for me is that the OP-Z is a sequencer, as in the OP-1 just records whatever you play. Different workflow for different style, I guess.
curious as a layman who is exploring music maker hardware: what’s the difference between this and a monome? I’m interested in input devices that give you the freedom to both compose and improvise for live shows.
[+] [-] jdietrich|6 years ago|reply
https://www.korg-volca.com/en/
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/12/22/569092364/...
[+] [-] thomasec|6 years ago|reply
I have tremendous respect for Korg, but I think Teenage Engineering is prioritizing fun and accessibility in a way that I haven't seen in my 30 years of making music. This may be a fluff PR piece, but I think they deserve a ton of credit for making something as intimidating as electronic instruments so downright fun and adorable.
[+] [-] tlibert|6 years ago|reply
If you are interested in what a deep, respectful, and meaningful relationship looks like between artist/engineers, this interview is a must-read: https://warp.net/editorial/richard-d-james-speaks-to-tatsuya...
[+] [-] nkozyra|6 years ago|reply
Yeah. As an electronic music hobbiest, this has a really odd feel to it. TE's stuff is really not all that innovative and while it has its niche isn't really blowing the doors off of anything. I've never personally liked their stuff - it seems so rigid and lifeless.
The Monotron + Monodelay were, admittedly, toys, but still very fun to play with and definitely ushered in a modern age of small, cheap fun synths.
[+] [-] dijksterhuis|6 years ago|reply
A drum machine for £110! No way! And a keys synth?! AND A BASS SYNTH?!?
Cheap, versatile and had range to the sounds you could make. Total fundamental change in the synth market.
[+] [-] coldtea|6 years ago|reply
And neither TE or Korg has "won over kids and professionals".
They just built some cool products and made decent sales. No groundbreaking phenomenon in either.
The DX7 for example changed the whole industry. Volca's and TE not so much...
[+] [-] fumar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shams93|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loblollyboy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobolus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IAmGraydon|6 years ago|reply
As a musician and synth lover, I don’t know anyone who uses the TE gear as a serious musical equipment. They’re widely considered to be in the toy or novelty realm, except the OP-1, which is saved by being absurdly expensive for what it is.
[+] [-] wishinghand|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lux|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brbrodude|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|6 years ago|reply
Eurorack modules, and the massive DIY community around them are changing music. Ableton live is changing music. Behringer making super cheap, high quality synth modules is changing music.
Teenage engineering does make some really cool stuff though. Now get on making more OP-1s please!!
[+] [-] jasode|6 years ago|reply
I just saw several demos of this Pocket Operator on Youtube and what I saw was more of a sampler than an analog synthesizer.
Samplers are more about sound clips manipulation. Analog synths would be more about waveform generators, sine/sawtooth/square, oscillators, envelopes, etc.
E.g. Pocket Operators makes it easy to record some percussive sounds. It auto-analyzes the input for transients and chops them up at boundaries. It instantly maps multiple pitch-shifted versions of those sounds to the buttons. Users then have a quick DIY drum machine that triggers custom sounds.
If these devices can also do traditional analog synthesis, none the Youtubers I browsed demonstrated that capability.
EDIT based on replies: Yes, I now see that searching youtube for specific devices such as "PO-14 Sub" or "PO-16 factory" will show the demos that manipulate synth sounds. Searching only for generic "pocket operator" gets you the sampler demos.
[+] [-] jaclaz|6 years ago|reply
Korg M1 (in 1988) US$ 2,166:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korg_M1
Pocket Operator US$ 60 (today)
[+] [-] nabla9|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pacomerh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notJim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BadassFractal|6 years ago|reply
The quality of DAWs, the availability of great free VSTs, endless YouTube tutorials and tons of avenues for sharing one's work is what created the current environment of hyper productivity.
[+] [-] Qwertystop|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DidISayTooMuch|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winternett|6 years ago|reply
I've been making music for 20 years and this looks like a glorified (though pretty basic) calculator modified to play notes. Real meaningful music compositions can't be created with it, and I doubt it's going to replace keyboards in studios. Just imagine a studio engineer hooking that tiny POC up to a professional mixing desk for a few bleeps?... :/
If anything is evolving in terms of creating grammy award level music it's probably going to be software on laptops and iPads first.
I'm still waiting for DJ culture to change 8 years after this video was made - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPZaZndMOzw
Not many impressive things have come to the music world since VST (software) synths, beatport, and Serato began to rise (Serato is still terrible BTW), but the music industry needs a lot more innovation injected into it.
[+] [-] jscheel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohitsdom|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lamp_book|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asauce|6 years ago|reply
I started working on my own mini synth with Teensy and the Teensy audio shield, however this seems like a great project to pivot to. Definitely plan on reaching out to the team and seeing if there is any way to help!
[+] [-] lamp_book|6 years ago|reply
That said the thing died 6 months in and the warranty process took about 3 months. In the mean time the OP-1 had its notorious production/price shenanigans climbing to $1300 from $800 so I picked up a Deluge instead. The OP-Z also looked interesting but I don't think I'll give TE any more money and certainly not for that something that I couldn't part with for months at time.
[+] [-] tomxor|6 years ago|reply
Anyway, my opinion will not be useful comparatively, since it's my first and only piece of electronic music hardware, only other stuff I have is guitars, amps etc. I can tell you it's been very fun, very reliable (only once I froze it when using a combination of a lot of effects at once with settings I imagine probably took up too much memory), battery lasts for ever (due to CPU type etc), it has a lot of depth, I still haven't figured out how to use absolutely everything, features are very discoverable and learning curve is pretty linear. Some of it is "programmy" as you describe for the POs, but it's also plenty intuitive and direct with the built in keyboard, which I appreciate because my musical background is mostly instrumental.
The main reason I got it is for the very thing that makes it unique, it's tiny, all in one, it's got almost everything you need and is fun - I know it's not the best value for money or the best audio or best effects etc etc, but I don't want to make music on my computer, and I don't want to start out with loads of independent devices to manage and wire together... I appreciated the idea of something I could grab and play with to encourage me to play with electronic music more, and it total achieves that.
The only thing I feel like I miss sometimes (and this is considering I have never owned any other electronic music hardware), is more keys, for the form factor I can't argue, but I think the next thing I would buy is a midi keyboard, I've tried programming longer pieces but it never fits in the sequencer.
[edit]
My single gripe in out of all the design/quality is key debouncing (it doesn't have velocity keys), which doesn't seem to catch enough... sometimes I can exploit it to effect, but most of the time I don't want it - it's occasional, like maybe 1/50 if i'm not being very careful and just hammering rather than pressing. I should probably try updating the software though as this may have been improved. I doens't bother me massively though, like I said it's the only thing.
[+] [-] bitL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damontal|6 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wQgwqwU8U4
[+] [-] jdnenej|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedgew|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] core-questions|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justanothersys|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] browningstreet|6 years ago|reply
i've wanted to learn to make electronic music for.. ever. and i've never really done it.
i have a mac. and an iPad. and an iPhone. and an M-Audio MIDI controller.
what's a good recipe -- hardware and software -- to build the base skills & knowledge to make decent ambient/chill tracks? i'm hoping someone can send me in the right direction..
thanks in advance.
[+] [-] bob1029|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|6 years ago|reply
https://play.date/
[+] [-] nixpulvis|6 years ago|reply
That said, I love being able to program my own DSP for my Prologue, and it's 16 voice polyphonic analog sound is just hard to compare that to that of my toy OP-1, even if they are both capable of making music above my pay grade.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rcarmo|6 years ago|reply
That said, I’ve been considering getting an OP-1 for ages but keep hoping someone will come up with a suitable software alternative for iOS - right now there is no shortage of iOS audio software (Synth One is free and amazing on its own right), but I’d love to have an OP-1 style workflow within a single app.
[+] [-] nathanvanfleet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russellbeattie|6 years ago|reply
_insouciance_: (noun) lighthearted unconcern; nonchalance
This is off topic, but it's always nice to learn a new word while reading up on tech.
[+] [-] poyu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sizzle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travbrack|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SOLAR_FIELDS|6 years ago|reply