The OP-1 was a revolution in a space where previously there was nothing, but neither it nor TE in general have had a big impact on the broader hobbyist or professional communities.
Accessible, capable, portable, and cheap was accomplished for hobbyists by (1) the generation of synths just prior to the first Volcas and Behringer retro-ripoffs, starting a few years before the OP-1 came out, and (2) the iPad moment. Self-contained and highly flexible but still fun was accomplished for professionals by (1) Reason and (2) Octatrack. Quirky jams on the go in an expensive statement piece is accomplished by modular.
The Pocket Operator series suits some of the writer's arguments better, but those didn't pop off. The OPs and the modular starter kits are, more than anything, stunning design pieces that appeal to tech prosumers with an interest in music who lack experience outside the DAW. But even then, you can get more functional pieces with similar curb appeal from companies like Elektron and Critter & Guitari.
In my anecdotal experience, most everyone who buys a Teenage Engineering synth uses it for a month or two to record about an album's worth of demos then either leaves it on a shelf or sells it to get something else. Compare to something like the Volca Drum which has become a staple in the community as far more than a toy (for a great album heavily featuring it, check out Crush by Floating Points).
People talk about the $2,000 price tag (for the field) as being hard to justify. I feel the same way, but I do have some synths in the $2,000+ price range. In that price range, you can get a high-quality performance instrument--something like a proper stage piano, synthesizer workstation, or one of the cool analog or hybrid synths from Sequential.
And if I want something that's small, sleek, and portable like the OP-1, the iPad is totally killer these days. If I'm gonna drop money on high-end dedicated hardware, I could get something like an Octatrack or MPC.
The OP-1 seems a lot like, say, a Kawasaki Ninja. It's a sexy, sexy beast, but most people would rather have a car, or maybe a scooter or bicycle. You don't buy a Ninja because you need to get to the grocery store or visit your parents. You buy a Ninja because it awakens feelings within you.
I bought and returned a Pocket Operator. One of the least musical, unfriendly instruments I've ever owned.
And imagine, you can buy an OP-1 or seven Volcas! You can get the 2 Circuits and still have money for 2 Behringers! I never found the sound from the OP-1 particularly interesting, and the instrument is more suitable for looking cool rather than making actual music.
It's also more expensive now than it was on release. At $849/799€ it was still expensive, but that was easier to justify given the niche than the 1000+ it costs now.
This is so objectively untrue that when I read it I assumed it was a joke or somehow tongue in cheek.
Even at the height of its popularity, the OP-1 was rarely used by serious, professional producers ... for reasons that should be pretty obvious. It's a toy. When I say "used" I mean "found its way onto the final version of a track," and when I say "professional" I mean "someone who works in a studio or who produces music for a living." I owned one and enjoyed it, and by TE's frequent appearance on the front page, I'd say many here did as well.
The title of the link is also a stretch. I disagree, but I think it skates by. The Microkorg had a huge impact on music tech, but was also rarely used in the studio or on tracks (in part because of its bigger brother, the MS-2000).
EDIT: The title has been edited. I don't remember the one prior, but something like "...massively influenced music technology."
Serious music producers use toys all the time. The main riff of Gorillaz Clint Eastwood was sampled from what is essentially a toy: https://youtu.be/EDX6l9_58R and there's a lot of videos of producers like Legowelt, Four Tet and others making great songs on the spot by sampling other toy instruments. Toys are great source of inspiration.
I also have envy for OP-1. I think it comes from yearning to be a different person or have different talents. I have similar feelings about buying a leica rangefinder camera, a mac pro, or a SwissMicros calculator. They just seem like such cool kit and I wish I was the type who needed them.
Buying a nice bicycle may be the healthiest of these obsessions: Approximately as ludicrously expensive as audiophile gear, but you don't need to be talented to get some extra fitness and joy out if it. It's as expensive as it is accessible, and if you want to, sociable.
I bought the bike, finally, in 2019 right before the pando. A beautiful Cannondale, CF everything. Since then, I've learned I have arthritic degredation in my back and really shouldn't ride it for any extended period of time.
No regrets, but damn, what a waste of a stallion! Still have the bike, it just hasn't been ridden to it's potential.
>Approximately as ludicrously expensive as audiophile gear, but you don't need to be talented to get some extra fitness and joy out if it.
Bikes are kind of different. There's an order of magnitude difference in your experience with a proper carbon road bike versus a steel Huffy. People who've only experienced the latter tend to think of biking as miserable. It's the one thing that I tell people to either spend the money on or don't bother.
Another is that if your bike is for exercise, and you spend your time chugging up hills, then it doesn't matter if it's not built from the latest, lightest titanium alloy. The heavier the better in fact.
That's true only if you manage to ride the heavier bike almost as much. You might find it much more enjoyable to ride the more expensive bike, and end up riding more because of it.
My best interpretation of it is that a purchase is akin to a promise to yourself. Buying an OP1 is a promise that you’ll write music in the future, maybe release an album. Buying a Leica is a promise that you’ll get really into photography, maybe publish a book or have a gallery showing.
Of course, the effort to keep a promise is manyfolds greater than that to make it, and spending a few thousands of dollars only requires clicking a button, whereas putting thousands of hours into something requires… putting thousands of hours into something.
Anyways, when I have such consumerist impulses now, I try to break it down. What about this purchase is flattering my ego or making promises to myself? Is there anyway I can get those results without dropping a month of living expenses on a new piece of gear?
100% with ya. High-end music gear and camera equipment are always on my wish list. It's easy to fall into 'gear acquisition syndrome', so I've just tried to be intentional about treating myself to nice gear only when I know I'm really gonna use it. Also thankfully, I live in a big city where I've been able to buy and sell some great equipment on the secondhand market.
I'm pretty sure I have ADHD because I get heavy into a project, buy a bunch of shit, then move to the next thing. The OP1 is my unicorn. I want one so bad, but the cost is so high even I can't justify it. Red means recording on YouTube twists the knife because it just looks so cool. I'm sure there are better synths, but man, I want the OP1.
I have ADHD (diagnosed) so take this as a message from future you: don’t waste your money.
I too lusted after the OP-1 bc of Red Means Recording. I finally bought one a few years ago. I barely play it. The sounds aren’t that great and the sampler is Casio sk-1 level. You can’t record more than a few songs on it and it doesn’t have enough onboard memory to hold many samples. I bought a Arturia keystep and installed logic on my MacBook. I use that set up 98% of the time.
The OP-1 is certainly a pleasure to look at. I'd love to have one too, based at least partly on looks, but thinking more pragmatically, I don't think I'd really get the price tag's worth out of it as a music instrument, given its workflow. Make sure to look at other options - there's so many these days, including software-only solutions, and you'll find plenty of videos and forum discussions about this. Personally, I really really like my dirtywave M8. (You might've also seen it on RMR's youtube).
You and me both, my friend! The price is definitely high, but there are solid used options available for the original at this point if you're patient and strike when the moment's right. Treat yo'self!
I bought an OP-1 field on a whim because I saw one used like new at -25% its original price and I couldn't resist. I expected to immediately regret it because it's very, very costly and I never produced music, but after a couple weeks with it I am very glad I bought it, it is a lot of fun to use. It's very powerful and also very limited at the same time, which is a good thing because you don't have to overthink things, just record. It's so simple you can use it with your eyes closed after a week.
Yes, you can spend $200 to get bitwig + an akai mpk which does so much more... But it's a completely different experience, and you will likely just get lost in the near infinite amount of parameters.
You could also buy an SP-404 and other professional gear and stay way below what you would pay a single Op-1 (nevermind the field) but then you have N pieces of unwieldy equipment instead of a slick, portable one.
It is a very unique piece of gear. It's definitely way overpriced though... Maybe deservedly so, it's one of those products whose value is greater than the sum of its parts.
Still, at the end of the day, it's a toy. If you want to have fun, buy it. If you want to actually produce music, look at professional equipment.
I don't think so. If you actually look at the capabilities of their products, they're often nearly useless or incredibly under-provisioned compared to other instruments of the same type. And then there are their ridiculous price tags.
Professionals want and need to get stuff done, which (as several have noted here) is not what these products seem to excel at.
Yeah, at this point TE is really more of a design studio that happens to make high-end audio equipment (along with other luxury stuff). I do think that, at least when OP-1 was released back in 2011, the target was music pros or borderline professional enthusiasts. Due to the growth of the community around it in the past decade, it's definitely possible it's gravitated less professional and more high-end consumer.
I don’t know that it’s targeted AT music professionals. But many music professionals I work with love it.
The TE gear isn’t some industry standard, but they definitely get a lot of love and use. I was in the studio recently of an A-tier film composer and he had a few of the TE wooden choir dolls on his desk.
Those choir dolls are pretty cool! The evolution of the first project TE's founders worked on together even before they decided to start the company and focus on OP-1.
There's no denying the OP-1 looms large in the world of modern hardware synths. Everyone knows it, a lot of people have one despite the price tag. Its design aesthetic and portability have certainly been influential. How many people actually use it to make music? I have no idea, but it seems like a relatively controversial synth instrument when it comes to discussing its actual capabilities and usefulness (its successor, the OP-1F has done little to change that by doubling the price tag but not substantially changing its feature set). Personally I don't think I could ever got much done with it, but I could see myself at least having some fun with it.
Yeah, I hear ya. I also share your frustration with their decision to push the new Field series products even higher into the luxury goods stratosphere.
For a year or two I was quite obsessed watching “Red means recording” on YouTube.
I think they’ve branched out, but back then it was well edited videos of songs being created on OP-1, with a top down view of the keyboard. No talking.
He talked me out of going down the hardware synth rabbit hole [0] I did get a BeatStep Pro and a MicroFreak even after seeing it, but I'm quite happy stopping there. The free software synths are good enough for my needs. I bought Reaper for a DAW.
What is the "secret sauce moat"'for a product line OP-1 that makes it hard for others to replicate?
Is it..
- The hardware? Because I thought low level hardware was a commodity in this day and age...
- The software?
- The industrial design of the actual unit?
- The cool hip design/marketing/brand?
I don't think that there's any secret sauce or moat, it's just kind of a weird niche.
Multi-engine synths / grooveboxes are getting more common. You see stuff like the Roland SH-4d, or the various options from Elektron. You can combine these things with an ever-increasing selection of pedels. And if you have an iPad, there's all sorts of quirky stuff you can do there.
I honestly don't see why someone would want to create an exact clone of the OP-1. If I made synths, I would want to make something new.
I think their secret is being deeply in touch with a certain synth subculture. Elektron is a companion company in that niche.
Their PO-2x series, for instance, was designed by Linus Åkesson a.k.a LFT. A lot of his coding and hardware projects have hit the HN front page.
I have a feeling many "serious" studio people scoff at this subculture, especially outside Sweden... But you shouldn't scoff at Sweden when it comes to music production.
Impact on pocket cash for sure. But seriously: How to replicate Teenage Engineering OP-1 and OP-1 Field for free. | GAS Therapy #35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU8alMWUmDI
Accessible, capable, portable, and cheap was accomplished for hobbyists by (1) the generation of synths just prior to the first Volcas and Behringer retro-ripoffs, starting a few years before the OP-1 came out, and (2) the iPad moment. Self-contained and highly flexible but still fun was accomplished for professionals by (1) Reason and (2) Octatrack. Quirky jams on the go in an expensive statement piece is accomplished by modular.
The Pocket Operator series suits some of the writer's arguments better, but those didn't pop off. The OPs and the modular starter kits are, more than anything, stunning design pieces that appeal to tech prosumers with an interest in music who lack experience outside the DAW. But even then, you can get more functional pieces with similar curb appeal from companies like Elektron and Critter & Guitari.
In my anecdotal experience, most everyone who buys a Teenage Engineering synth uses it for a month or two to record about an album's worth of demos then either leaves it on a shelf or sells it to get something else. Compare to something like the Volca Drum which has become a staple in the community as far more than a toy (for a great album heavily featuring it, check out Crush by Floating Points).