The horse in the circle of fire is also a quote from Phillipe Garrel's "La Cicatrice Intérieure", a rather obscure surrealist film from the 70s (starring and scored by Nico/Christa Päffgen!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JYiADaKJ3A
Whoa. I didn't realize the whole movie was on YouTube! Randomly skipped to https://youtu.be/aPtxS1c-fGA?t=1187 which contains a tossed silver ball which Teenage Engineering seem to be quoting almost verbatim in their video.
Watching The Holy Mountain, I felt like my life had been divided in 2 - that which came before watching it, and that which came after. Sure is an experience, and I certainly can't unsee a lot of it.
Someone please help this little skeptic: is that video real, or Midjourney? The short cuts make me think Midjourney, but then they have a shot with their product in it.
Well yeah, mostly that it has a ton of actors and setpieces (and a horse!) for what AFAICT is a joke product. I mean, it's perhaps not a joke, but... surely anyone who actually wanted to be a touring musician with this kind of music would just load up sounds onto a regular board? Is "musicians who don't even know the genre they'll use professionally yet" a valid market in the first place?
And it consists of short, highly composed shots, which is how non-professional (read: non-Sora) AI videos are these days. They create the individual images then animate them into 2-4 second clips with slight, predictable movement.
> Is "musicians who don't even know the genre they'll use professionally yet" a valid market in the first place?
That's not really Teenage Engineering's primary market, in the same way Rolex's primary market isn't "people who need to tell the time". Both T.E and Rolex products do their jobs really well, but the people buying them are buying more for the aesthetic than the function.
Teenage Engineering are primarily a design boutique, although musicians do use their products their main audience are collectors / audiophiles / graphic designers going through a mid-life crisis.
There are two big sides to the iPad market, the "spend more than >$1000 for a designer/pro tool" side and the "it's just a good <$500 tablet" side. The latter probably gets 5x-10x the amount of use per purchase, especially by younger audiences.
> Is "musicians who don't even know the genre they'll use professionally yet" a valid market in the first place?
Genre is contextual. An instrument can “sound like” one genre solo / when highlighted, yet contribute an entirely different sound when submerged in the mix.
Modern country music uses “disco” instruments but not in a way that sounds like disco. A guzheng makes pretty much the same sound as a banjo, but nobody notices because the music the two instruments conventionally get used in doesn’t have much overlap (in play style, but also in terms of what other instruments are used together with them.) A fiddle is literally just a violin, but they’re used so differently that people call them different names (mostly because a “trained fiddler” knows a very different skill than a “trained violinist.”)
Also, there are music genres that just use “everything”, with musicians constantly looking for a new sound for every track they put out. Industrial and electro are both like this.
In short, there are plenty of professional musicians — especially live keyboardists — that already have a setup, but still hunt for new instruments/effects to achieve a new “sound”. (Normally that’s just through VST plugins, sure, but there’s also a thriving market for physical old analog synths that haven’t been digitally replicated yet — and this product is clearly intended to appeal to people used to buying in that market.)
Which video is 11 years old...? The release video for this project that seems to be copyrighted 2024? This is the most baffling response I could've received, so I'm quite curious!
They thought you were referring to the Holy Mountain movie clip from YouTube that the parent comment shared.
When you said "that video", it was ambiguous whether "that" referred to the promo video or the one the comment shared. It seemed fairly clear to me that you'd be asking an AI question about the 2024 promo video and not the one from 1973, but it evidently wasn't clear enough as multiple people have assumed the latter.
Apparently I'm the official translator for both sides of this conversation.
Seems like the people at TE have fun over-designing gadgets that are more aesthetic than usable. Good for them that they've managed to make a viable business out of it.
> Seems like the people at TE have fun over-designing gadgets that are more aesthetic than usable
You're saying this like their over-designing blocks/prevents basic usability, but the small amount of TE devices I've tried, they just look good, are easy to understand and are easy to use. Maybe the sound/workflow isn't revolutionary, but not every device needs to be either.
I'll still keep mostly to Elektron, but can't say I haven't been close to buying an OP-1 before the prices got too crazy.
> You're saying this like their over-designing blocks/prevents basic usability
I meant it more like they are not building products that are there to meet some need for the general population that isn't met, they aren't designing and building general use-case type products, but instead building extremely niche things like medieval samplers. Oddball, extreme niche uses. Like they aren't trying to build something like a piano that's light and easy to move, or a guitar where the strings never break, but these fun gimmicky toys. Something nobody ever asked for but which makes you smile.
> I meant it more like they are not building products that are there to meet some need for the general population that isn't met, they aren't designing and building general use-case type products, but instead building extremely niche things
You're describing like 90% of all music hardware that is being launched today :) Who really needs a new delay pedal when there already exists thousands of them? Hardly makes them being gimmicks though.
A groovebox with a sampler isn't that niche at all I'd say, it's just the theme/design that is niche, but considering it's also a small hardware upgrade compare to the original, it isn't just a different theme but an incremental upgrade.
That said, as a electronic music producer myself I wouldn't buy this either, but not because of the theme/design.
It’s perfectly fair to call this gimmicky and niche (note the commenter you’re replying to didn’t call it an outright gimmick). Sure, a groove box on its own isn’t niche, but one loaded with samples of medieval instruments is arguably quite niche.
As a guitar player: Nobody wants strings that never break. How would we ever try new strings? ;)
But as much as this is a half-joke, it also encapsulates an attitude that Teenage Engineering caters to: A lot of musicians love new experiences, even if they are minute changes. Because music is ultimately about taste, and playing it is about finding just the right minute changes, and creating it is about finding just the right inspiration.
Yeah, it's a bit gimmicky, but that's the point: Novelty to stimulate new ideas.
I have an Elektron Octatrack I turned one twice collecting dust. Want to buy it or know the best way I can sell it to someone who will love it to make music?
https://www.elektronauts.com/categories has "Marketplace" category once you're logged in, bunch of music fans there who'd be happy to purchase it I'm sure :)
the product target audience is dungeons'n'dragons hipster nerds who are mildly interested in sampling gear, don't know anything about music and have way too much disposable income to throw away on an plastic toy
I had no idea the B&H folks were this cool. I've ordered mundane stuff like C-stands and apple boxes from them. They looked like a dated 2000's era storefront.
Could it be because, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1320 "In France, a large group of common people band together in Normandy on Easter Sunday to begin a crusade, after a teenage shepherd says he was visited by the Holy Spirit" (my emphasis).
Regarding the year dating, more likely to be a reference to just the general medieval theme. Only event in the year (in Sweden) I could find that is notable is the execution of Magnus Birgersson (Heir apparent). Not sure why'd they reference that though, so I'm guessing it's just a number that is "close" to 133 + in the medieval times.
I've managed to convince myself over the years I wouldn't actually use any of Teenage Engineering's stuff, however I might lust after it. But 200 hours of Manor Lords and a Lankum gig later, this was the fastest £249 I've ever spent.
I was pining for an OP-1 for yeaaaars. I finally got one a few years ago and just picked up a field, and I’ve got a couple of the POM line now too. No regrets, all super fun. Wiring the POM 400 to my controller is very satisfying
Yes, is this a slight hardware refresh to the EP-133 with a new skin and different factory presets?
The KO-1 had a similar "Street Fighter" edition, which could be loaded with the original PO-33 samples.
Are there any reasons not to buy this over the EP-133 from a pure capability standpoint? I wish the marketing were a bit clearer on that front, seems we need to intuit this by diving into the specs and capabilities ourselves.
There are new features in the software (presumably implementable on the original if they choose to) but the new one has twice as much memory, with the new samples taking up 75% of that.
Did they resolve the intense hardware bugs with the EP-133? I haven't been following after basically giving up on TE due to this (EP-133) being the second time they sold me a lemon.
I ordered the KO-II for a friend, after reading about it on Hacker News. I love Teenage Engineering's playfulness and creativity, but was disappointed when the KO-II had quality issues with its input nob, making it unusable.
They were quick to issue a refund, but I would have loved to see them fix the underlying issue and offer us another unit. I'd have the same concerns about this model, since it looks like it uses the same base hardware.
This is the cost of doing business when you have to pay for engineering (and tooling + certification) on niche products. Nothing they do is really designed for mass market.
Desks, drum machines, synthesizers, mixers are not really niche products. They take fairly common items, and create a version that appeals to hipsters but is not as useful as cheaper options. Example $2k for this little synth https://teenage.engineering/store/op-1-field which wouldn't appeal to most synthesizer enthusiasts. Its more like office desk toy.
I definitely wouldn't pay $1600 but I like the idea of an ultra-modular and configurable desk. I wonder if you could build something similar with 80-20 extrusions (and/or similar knock-off) and an Ikea desktop. There's a huge ecosystem of ways to integrate/extend these and you could do some cool things with them.
This is the 10,000th time someone has posted TE products to HN and said they're overpriced. They make high-end luxury products for rich people, if you think it's too expensive then you're not the target audience. This is like saying a Lamborghini is too expensive because you can by a Toyota that does 90% of the same stuff for a fifth of the cost. Every one knows, that's the point.
I mean I get it, I would never buy anything from TE either, just like I can't afford a Lamborghini. But I can still look at it and go "Wow, that's really pretty."
Probably resentment because the original OP-1 was not crazily priced for its novelty and feature set. Once it got popular it rose from $800 to $1400 and the new OP-1 Field is $2000.
And the KO-II series is actually reasonably priced by their standards!
An interesting video came up on my YouTube recommendations last month that compares bardcore (and neo-medieval) to actual medieval music [1].
Western music underwent a huge change after medieval times moving from a modal system to a tonal system. Bardcore is tonal music trying to evoke a medieval vibe, and it often succeeds quite well...but it is still far different from what actual medieval music would have sounded like. If you like bardcore but are curious what historically accurate medieval music would have been like, you might enjoy the video.
I found it really funny. It's obviously probably useless for actual medieval music[0] but I think it can find it's users in bardcore or dungeon synth circles.
You can definitely recreate this just by collecting appropriate VSTs and sample libraries, even probably by just loading some "medieval samples" to some groovebox.
But if I got this second hand on cheap price I would definitely make some fun with it even if it has somewhat cryptic labels.
> You can definitely recreate this just by collecting appropriate VSTs and sample libraries, even probably by just loading some "medieval samples" to some groovebox.
This is true for basically all electronic music hardware available today and in the past. I guess what we really pay for when buying these type of hardware is what's missing rather than what's included, and the constraints that helps you focus on actual music making.
Yeah, it was all 90s ROMplers and soundfounts. I can definitely record some dungeon synth bangers with my Kawai K1 (which is basically ROMpler, just samples are single cycle waveforms) and it sounds just right.
The world would be missing something if we didn't have creative geniuses off in the corner making art for art's sake, accessible for the masses to keep at home.
Yeah, this seems like one of those April Fool's jokes that for all intents and purposes seems like a joke but is an actual product that you can buy. Kinda like how Gmail with its massive 1 GB of storage was announced on the first of April.
It’s fascinating trying to play any kind of tune on the pads of this device when in “keys” mode. I have the sibling model and find it almost impossible to produce anything that sounds “normal”. I don’t really mind — it’s hardly meant to be a piano after all — and it certainly makes for an interesting phenomenon. It’s also one I think the designers nod to: the pads can be retuned to different scales suggesting a complete break from any kind of equal temperament octaves.
While I haven’t had the chance to ride one, I imagine it is the same feeling as riding a joke bike where the headset is geared to invert the sense of the handlebars (left is right, right is left) or using a pair of circlip pliers where squeezing the handles opens the jaws rather than closing them.
Alas, Teenage Engineering really set themselves a high bar with the OP-1 and I still don’t think they’ve ever come close to it. The OP-Z just didn’t compete without a screen, the pocket operators (and the K.O. II and Medieval, which have the same interface) have a much less intuitive design language, their IKEA lights are controlled by colour coded, identically shaped controls on the back, etc.
They are all lovely products at good price points that do their jobs delightfully but when they came from the same studio as the OP-1 it is like comparing a Pininfarina Peugeot 205 with a Pininfarina Ferrari 250.
I had their OP-1 for a long while till I had to part with it for some emergency cash. It was a truly delightful thing to play with and lost neither charm nor monetary value even years later.
> the pads can be retuned to different scales suggesting a complete break from any kind of equal temperament octaves.
I was kind of curious about this since in the medieval era, equal temperament wasn't used very much. But it just allows retuning to major/minor and modes in equal temperament, as far as I can tell. Would be an excellent device for medieval music if it could be tuned to meantone, Pythagorean and so on!
Yes, exactly - minor/major and modes in 12TET (as well as pentatonic but that's just major/minor with fewer notes).
What would be interesting with this synth (something other synths, like my Korg Monologue, can do) is being able to tune to different temperaments, i.e. not 12 TET - for this synth especially, since 12 TET was rarely used in the medieval period in favour of pythagorean or meantone tuning.
Thanks for elaborating. I should have been clearer that I was just quoting the docs and have no idea what I’m talking about. Your comments have given me some interesting things to read (listen?) up on, later :)
If you like synths/electronic music, and you're interested in listening to music in other temperaments/tunings, check out the artist Sevish. He also designed a web app for creating alternate tunings: https://sevish.com/scaleworkshop
I’ve been producing music on both software and hardware for 20 years. Borrowed the EP-133 KO II from a mate and found it to be highly initiative and pure style over substance. I don’t get what its selling point is. OP-1 I can understand but this thing is pointless.
But at least the layout follows she Golden Ratio I guess.
Has anyone began dabbling in music production, just to play with some of teenage engineering's gadgets?
I'm pretty sure if I bought one, it would just sit in my cupboard, but I'm looking for an excuse to buy one, has anyone here gotten more use out of one of their gadgets than they expected they would?
Maybe start with something cheaper to evaluate if it's something you want to do long-term, and if it fits, start looking at the TE stuff, you'll know better what you want then too.
Good entrypoint is the Novation Circuit family of devices. Circuit Rhythm is mainly around sampling and a drum machine, Circuit Tracks a all-in-one groovebox. Both of them are a lot of fun :)
Eventually you'll probably be better served by some Elektron device, still high price point but UX is a lot better/discoverable + lots of features in every single box.
A Pocket Operator was my entry drug to hardware music making. Having only dabbled with DAWs which never felt quite right (still sitting in front of a computer, having nearly infinite choices between plugins and sounds).
After playing with the PO-33 for a few weeks I quickly reached its limits and bought a groove box (not from TE). Still have the PO-33 lying around, ready to be played by me or guests that find it intriguing.
unless you're a really big fan of TE there really isn't ever a reason to buy anything they make other than maybe the pocket operators. it's all overpriced shit which doesn't make sense to buy when compared with competing products. for example this thing makes zero sense when the sp404mk2 exists.
I’m not a fan per se of TE, but I did get the OP-Z as a continuation of playing with the POs.
I still like it but I’m already trying to find something to eventually replace it with. But is there really something out there with similar size, features, and price as the OP-Z? I would like to find something.
i'd definitely prefer to buy an mc-101 over an OP-Z personally if you want something in the same sort of price range. if you can spend a bit more, i'd look into the dirtywave m8 if the workflow appeals to you. i have one and it's my favourite piece of audio hardware that i own.
of course virtually any computer with a DAW is the real best answer in terms of features and price, but i understand the urge to want to be away from a computer while creating.
Doing music with hardware outside of the computer is way different than making music on the computer. I probably tried for 10 years to get into music making via the computer, but never really got into the flow of it. A week after purchasing my first hardware some years ago (the first Novation Circuit), I had already starting putting together full tracks and it was a lot more engaging.
So even if you try out LMMS/FL Studio/Ableton/making-music-on-a-computer and don't like it, doesn't mean you don't like making music at all, maybe it's just the wrong workflow for you.
In Safari on iOS I can zoom in on the page with whatever that reverse-pinch gesture is called. I think Apple also came to that same conclusion as you guys quite a few years ago that allowing the website owner to prevent the user from zooming in on pages on the phone was incredibly user-hostile and so they stopped honoring the part of the meta viewport html5 tag that specifies that the page cannot be zoomed in.
Had EP-133 KO II. Very frustrating. First time, I had an inspiration for a beat so I grabbed it and after an hour of learning curve I realized basically anything I wanted to do I couldn't. Limited time signatures didn't let me record the beat I wanted in the first place. Then it turned out only one fx can be used at a time (want delay and reverb? nope. want delay on the synth and reverb on the beat? nope again), you cannot actually save projects, cannot tune notes etc.
Even for using it just as a fancy overpriced MIDI input, velocities from pads were way too unpredictable compared to a cheap korg nanosomething.
This made me think of a question I've had for a bit now.
What is the cheapest way to get a grid of buttons that wires into a laptop (mac if it matters) to play sound effects? My wife is a teacher and would really enjoy hitting a button and getting some dumb sound effect to play. But it's just a lark, so it's not worth too much $ invested.
I had assumed a cheap drum pad + midi, but not 100% sure that makes sense.
Not necessarily the cheapest possible options, but cheap enough and fairly quick to get going:
If you want a MIDI pad controller, the Korg nanoPAD 2 [1] is $65 new (and often pops up used) and powered entirely off USB. You can then set up Sitala [2] to listen for notes from the pad and drag-and-drop samples onto each note.
If you want keyboard-style keys, the Pimoroni Keybow kit [2] is $57 - there is a bit of assembly, but no soldering.
I've seen nanopads (1 and 2) go for $20 fairly often; the kind of thing that's so cheap I'm always tempted to get it with minimal actual use cases for it.
Search for "effects pad" on your online marketer of choice. Show a few to your wife in the affordable range (whatever that means to you), get the one she likes. Personally I would make sure the screenshots do not include the price tag, but that's me.
While I’m not a consumer of this product, I met some of the product designers at the medieval week in Visby, Sweden today. And that the company supports a project like this, which is clearly a passion project, displays joy. After this I think teenage engineering is a great place to work. Not just a SV product factory.
Website design made me click the buttons for good several seconds until I realized this a photo of a real deal, not a web replica of the instrument.
Nicely done, wonder if web trial would be possible and attract more “I probably want this” fans/consumers
Teenage.engineering must be owned by “people of leisure”, creating things they feel are personally fun and satisfying without worrying about the business side of things like profitability.
Sure the OP-1 and the PO-400 are cool, but the price of the OP-1 Field is a non-starter and the usability of the K.O II would make lookmumnocomputer cry.
Now… this!?! Who would look at this and say “yes, I need one of these” (I just checked the date to make sure it’s not either April 1st or Halloween)
Maybe they’re really performance artists wanting to hone their industrial design skills in parallel on the side
I think their target audience are well-heeled Apple customers who like to imagine that they are musicians. Hacker culture doesn't have a "collector of expensive African originals" role, so "amateur who collects equipment far out of proportion to the time they invest in using any of it" has formed to collect the same psychological energy. It's about the combination of the creator fantasy on the surface backed up by the collector's motives beneath.
It is a very common way to present as a consumer in hobby markets, but it has elaborated itself to a great degree in this case because hobbyist musicians aren't surrounded by retired session artists the way, for example, woodworkers are surrounded by retired tradesmen.
You’re not totally wrong, just mostly. I use Apple stuff. I bought an EP-133 at launch. That part was true.
I also spent thousands of hours with a MIDI setup on my Amiga when I was in high school, teaching myself how to program the little FM synth my parents bought me for Christmas, and learning the theory of what makes a drum pattern sound good.
I don’t have thousands of hours available anymore. I still want to dabble sometimes though. Those are skills I worked very hard to learn, I enjoy exercising them, and I don’t want them to atrophy. That specific Teenage Engineering device has all the things I want to play with in a single portable box that also manages to be dirt cheap for what all it does.
Some people drive BMWs because they want to be seen driving them. Others drive them because — get this — turns out they’re nice cars to drive. At $300, my EP-133 isn’t exactly the BMW of musical instruments. It still does a hell of a job of scratching my musical itch. I couldn’t care less if anyone else ever sees me playing with it. I hope they never do. I got it for me, to enjoy, to make (bad) music with so I can get songs out of my head and into my ears. Sorry-not-sorry if that’s not “real musician” enough for some. I don’t care. I’m still having fun.
Yes, fun is the key value. It is fun to play with a music toy, with a near-useless interface, and still get 'something' out of it. That is a key factor in their design principles - make some expensive whimsical toy that GAS-afflicted punters will invest in.
Meanwhile, you can spend the money on even more powerful devices and avoid the frustrating UI experience for which Teenage Engineering are infamous.
Sure, you can make music with a toy - thats the beauty of music, not the toy.
Your comparison of TE to BMW is apt. As is OP’s comparison to Apple.
For those of us who have raced cars on a track, we see the BMW E36 M3 (90s) as the last proper race worthy vehicle. People who drive BMWs now just want a “nice car to drive” and spirited drivers don’t want anything to do with them.
Likewise, people who use TE instruments want to feel like they are making music, even though they are not using the hardware or software conducive to do so.
I agree with you that BMW and TE aren’t the gear that hardcore professionals would reach for, but enthusiasts who enjoy those respective activities can get a lot of enjoyment out of.
Both make stuff for people who enjoy nice things, no pretention required.
I glossed over the "Apple" dimension of elevating plastic stuff to luxury goods by being amazingly careful about injection molding marks etc, but I don't know a lot about it. I think the daring fireball guy is the recognized expert on the consumer experience side of it.
I don’t know, I got an OP-1 to play with many years ago and I seldomly recognise presets or effects when listening to music from talented and successful musicians. Which makes me realise that I have some skills issues when I compare with the noise I make.
Blasphemy! Thou shalt not present such claims without the proper scrolls and ledgers of sales to substantiate. Ist thou not acquainted with the more-expensive instruments of musical synthesis available?
I don’t think they make cranes tall enough to get you off that high horse. This thing is cheaper than my crappy middle school beginner trumpet was and professional musicians don’t have a monopoly on making or experimenting with music.
I am not a fan of Teenage Engineering (Disclaimer: I make audio products too).
The reason is, they set a standard for useless gimmicks which are far, far too expensive, designed to appeal to style over substance.
The OP1 is one of the most over-rated 'instruments' out there. It has a fancy, expensive OLED, a fancy, expensive casing, and useless gimmicks. The OLED never really shows you anything useful to the act of music-making. This is true of their Pocket Operators as well - its nearly all stylistic whimsy over functionality.
Save yourself the hassle and frustration of using a Teenage Engineering product and either buy the parts and make yourself an LMN3[0], or invest in devices that don't take the piss out of the user, such as the 1010Music Bluebox or Synthstrom Deluge.
The musical-instrument industry is rife with people who want to rip off the punters, who they know for a fact are easily afflicted with GAS (gear acquisition syndrome), resulting in customers across the globe who end up stashing their expensive, sexy-looking (but functionally retarded) toys in the drawer after a period of glib usage.
I am over TE. Just today I was looking at the OP-1 that's had a dead key since it was about a year old and been completely non bootable since a year or so after that. With the EP-133 I made the mistake of believing TE would do a better job of the practical design of their instruments. But it broke with interface problems reported by thousands of people. TE wasn't very supportive of my repair request and I don't have time to chase them for a replacement of something fundamentally broken. I don't want more objects that won't last.
Yes, this is a common refrain I have heard from musicians and hobbyists lured in by the aesthetics, only to be frustrated with the actual functionality after a week or two.
Fortunately, there are other manufacturers who "get it" and make instruments, not toys.
The problem of TE and self admitted by their CEO (in Figma's Config talk) is that they won't listen to users feedback. They are really good in design and terrible in compromising. They make toys, which can be used as musical instruments (like anything else that makes sound), the reason I call them toys is because they have the most glaring blind spots which prevent them to just be called "music instruments". Even their flagship OP-1 suffers from this and it has a ridiculous price tag. Till they get down from their high horse and start implementing basic functionality for musicians, these machines will never reach their potential.
The Pocket Operators are the best Price-to-ActuallyFunctional thing that TE produce. They are very immediate and fun to use. Everything else they do is extreme bait.
> The OLED never really shows you anything useful to the act of music-making.
Thou art prone to hyperbole! Said instrument of synthesis ("Operator-1") has a step sequencer, mixer, ADSR envelopes, recorder, and other useful indications for the bard. One ponders how thou hast not consulted the scrolls [1].
I owned an OP1 from the day it was released until 6 days after I discovered it rotting in a drawer, unused, in a room full of far better examples of synthesizer interface. I tried really hard to accept Teenage Engineering's priority of non-sequitur over functionality.
Sure, the OLED occasionally shows you a few things. But its completely useless compared to, say, the utility eked out of the display of the Deluge, or Bluebox. By comparison to either of these devices, the OP1 is unacceptably paltry for the price.
And then, there are the Pocket Operators. Don't get me started on just how useless that very expensive bespoke LCD print is to the musician...
Me too, which is why the whole Rabbit R1 debacle was so surprising, not just that they did the design for it, but that some of their leadership was so deeply involved in it.
I think that's a little unfair as an assessment of their design. Good design is generally considered to include functionality, and from what I've seen of their products they do generally have good functionality. Sometimes that might be a little at the cost of the visual design (the OP-1 doesn't look like the most accessible tool), but on the whole I think they make products that are good overall.
Does anyone have recommendations for a more practical, entry-level device for making small songs? I’m making a survival-horror game for the Playdate and need some music that fits the vibe.
The reason I’ve been eyeing hardware is because I spend all my time writing code and drawing pixel art, so it would be nice to have something away from the computer to work with.
My favorite device for standalone music authoring is the NI Maschine. They sell an expensive standalone version but a cheap second hand controller feelssvery off-the-computer with your laptop connected but the screen closed.
Doubt those are individual "7 segment LEDs", more likely it's just a light-pipe with a specialized shape, and white LEDs beneath. There's another very similar device on their website with slightly differently shaped "7 segment LEDs".
Initially I also though that they are just using same trick as what they have for rest of the custom colored indicator shapes. But after looking at some teardown videos of EP-133 it seems to be using real 3x(10+1)segment display module for the number section.
So this might still be specially shape mask on top that 10 segment display. But considering that it by itself isn't exactly common (compared to 7 or even 14 and 16 segment displays) I wouldn't be too surprised if they were able to find a factory in china that would make a customized segment led modules in batches of few thousands. At the end of day what are 7 segment displays if not a bunch of LEDs and light guides molded into single plastic case. It wouldn't be cheap but for a premium product with focus on visual design and experience like what the teenage engineer makes it doesn't seem impossible.
As for something more accessible to a hobbyists - people have been experimenting with placing custom cutouts on top of LED displays with quite good looking results.
It can be as simple as thin laser cut stencil on top of LED matrix display https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLgUtjyKO6Q
With thicker 3d printed mask you can even shift the positions of segments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt2merZcuno
I can’t take this company seriously after all the R1 nonsense. I get that no product is perfect in its first version but it sure feels malicious how they fooled everyone with what they promised vs what they delivered.
Fwiw Teenage Engineering is a design firm who was originally contracted by Rabbit to design the physical device. I don't think they had anything to do with the functionality.
While Rabbit Inc is a separate entity, they are more deeply intertwined than a mere design contract. Rabbit's CEO, Jesse Lyu, is on TE's board of directors. TE's CEO, Jesper Kouthoofd, is employed by Rabbit as "Chief Design Officer".
That’s a good point, I guess they didn’t have any hand in the software…just seems icky to me.
I trusted the product mainly because of their name, it’s hard for me to understand how they didn’t see what the underlying product was when they attached their name to it.
Teenage Engineering use a type of design that is intended to obfuscate the functionality of the device. For example, their Pocket Operator series use LCD displays which have very little utility to the experience of music-making. The OP1 has an OLED display which mostly displays non-sequitur nonsense.
Those of us who despise Teenage Engineering are reacting to a design ethos which devalues the users knowledge and understanding of what they are doing, over whimsical non-sequitur. You're not getting a musical instrument - you're getting a device, which despite itself, can nevertheless be used to make some kind of music.
That's the beauty of music, not the device. You can make music with anything.
So the feeling among those of us who also make musical instruments is that Teenage Engineering are packaging up an inherent feature of music and selling it to people in a fancy way - they don't really care about the music-making features, which are almost secondary to their effort to design aesthetically appealing, moderately functional, expensive toys.
And in that light, it makes complete sense that they would involve themselves in the Rabbit R1. The impression is that Teenage Engineering kind of despise their customers, who they think are dumb, and they therefore invest in non-sequitur aesthetics in lieu of smart design that pushes the industry forward. Teenage Engineering ship exploitation and ridicule - they don't make finely crafted instruments for musicians to hone their skills. Most great musicians who play with an OP1 and make music with it, do so despite the devices' many roadblocks to creativity.
There's sort of two ways to look at the Teenage Engineering products. The first is as a tool to produce music, and the second is as a kind of interactive sculpture. The design and production of these things is so good they are almost like art themselves. Are they useful? Not really, you could achieve the same thing with a VST — hardware isn't required for this — but to think in this way is to miss the point.
Are sculptures, picture frames, decorative vases and ornamental unused candles unnecessary?
I know many musicians who love using Teenage Engineerings products for making music, performing live etc.
However, I do think there is a case to be made for falling into the trap of being more interested in the gear than the thing you're meant to do with the gear.
At the very least, Teenage Engineering hardware is generally very well designed, high quality and built to last. At least this product has some creative spirit behind it. I'm in love with the merge of Medieval and Modern Electronic here!
For an example of excessive consumerism, look no further than the Eurorack[1] space. They don't call it Eurocrack for nothing!
> However, I do think there is a case to be made for falling into the trap of being more interested in the gear than the thing you're meant to do with the gear.
that is literally the intention behind all modern music hardware (eurorack especially) i think. i've been a producer for nearly 20 years and i've still never seen anybody make genuinely good music with any of these things. not even once.
these 30-40 year old "enthusiast" types getting 17 views on their 28 minute "generative ambient jam #236" videos are basically an unlimited cash cow.
Heh I feel called out. I love these kinds of things and don’t publish any music. For me, it’s about the joy of making music. It’s not a performance, it’s a recreational activity. It’s playful.
When I want productive music making, with the intention of publishing, a computer with a DAW is the obvious tool for the job. No question. Hands down.
Still, there are absolutely people who publish fun tracks and perform live with this stuff:
And that’s just the indie fringe. Chvrches uses hardware synths. The Stranger Things soundtrack includes a critical sequence programmed on a modular sequencer for microtonal control. The Weekend’s Dawn FM video album features a Moog One prominently. Taylor Swift performed with a special edition Prophet 12. Etc etc
I'm a 30-40 year old with absolutely no interest in making music, but I want every single thing which crosses my news feed from Teenage Engineering. So yeah, that checks out.
People with the talent/skills/motivation to make music will end up making music with whatever they can get their hands on, and for anyone who doesn't fall into that category, no amount of equipment purchasing will fix it.
OP-1's portability, synth range and 4 track combo seems to have been pretty successful creatively from what I've seen, beyond that they've been extremely limited though. Closest I've seen them come is the OP-Z but a combo of build quality issues and just not getting the idea across very well has crippled it.
There's a decent argument a lot of those people could've achieved the same with some much cheaper 4 track alternative but it probably wouldn't have drawn them in as much.
Pocket Operators are a great fidget toy but the collecting nature of them all is a bit annoying (saying that as someone who bought a bunch of them and only ever really enjoyed 3 of them: 14, 32 and 33). Useless as music outside of maybe an drum beat to improv over from what I can see though?
Have very little issue with them myself though. Even absurd projects like the Choir are kinda neat to me; toys for rich people to burn money on which may result in other people stealing the good bits and making something better and more accessible.
Think whatever this is is a big misstep after the EP-133 done a good job addressing a bunch of their past issues as a business (albeit with a lot of room to improve)
I think you're largely right but man there's some gold in the jams. Here's a 1 minute synth jam video posted to youtube 17 years ago, it still blows me away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8Kiw4aoex4
Of course he's brilliantly talented and became Dorian Concept, to your point.
> and i've still never seen anybody make genuinely good music with any of these things. not even once.
So? Why does that matter?
I have a decent second hand Nord Piano 3 .. I certainly can't make good music on it, but I have fun playing it. Sure, with that kind of instrument I'm sure there's plenty of people making great music on it, but does that matter to me? Not really
I'm willing to bet the overwhelming majority of instruments sold are never used to make genuinely good music. People buy them to challenge themselves, to have fun, to learn new things.
Some instruments are more aimed at that kind of usage rather than actually making good music, and I think it's fair to say that Teenage Engineering stuff falls in that category.
I bought a couple of pocket operators at some point. I found it very fun and challenging to work within the constraints of those devices. I would never use any professional music making software because it's just too overwhelming. But with the Pocket Operator I feel motivated to try making some simple jams and have fun with it. It's never going to become anything serious and that's OK.
Well, probably wouldn't be able to convince you that the artists playing shows using Euroroack (or Elektron, or TE) in front of bigger audiences that you ever have are "genuinely good."
> However, I do think there is a case to be made for falling into the trap of being more interested in the gear than the thing you're meant to do with the gear.
Have you ever met a guitarist[0], or a golfer? I play guitar, and as a teenager I spent _years_ playing a cheap encore guitar plugged into a no-name 15w amp imaginable with a zoom 505 [1]. I practiced for hours upon and hours and sounded awful. Now as an adult, I get to spend some money on the hobby and sound like what I thought I sounded like aged 15!
I played for years, on a cheap, short-scale, Univox bass, and getting a used Rick[0] (don’t judge the hair. It was in style, back then) made a huge difference.
I no longer play, but did get get pretty good. In that case, the tool made the difference (and a buttload of daily practice. I felt I needed to earn the right to play that thing).
But I think everyone knows some rich bastard, that has a handmade bespoke axe, and is absolutely terrible.
I agree 100%. Getting a Gibson was also a game changer for me. Today there is cheaper stuff that is also good quality (but you gotta dig), but back in the day you needed the kind of gear used by pro musicians to actually go the extra mile.
And it's a good observation about bespoke guitars: I feel like the problem is people trying to go beyond that, with the illusion that "even more expensive" will be even better. Then they start buying things that are hella expensive but don't give much more (due to diminishing returns, or sometimes they actually suck, like bad handmade instruments), or doing things like collecting 20, 30, 40 overdrive pedals just to find the "perfect one".
> Today there is cheaper stuff that is also good quality (but you gotta dig)
I think I disagree here - You don't have to dig for cheap and quality anymore. An entry level squier from the last 15 years is sufficient quality for a beginner IMO, and one step up (classic vibe) is firmly into the "instrument for life" territory these days. You only need to upgrade for preference/feel.
I have the luxury of regularly getting to play a Gibon SG from the 70's which has been well maintained. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful instrument in it's own way, but my 2007 MiM strat is a _far_ superior instrument.
To me the biggest change has been to amplifiers. Mid range practice amps now sound passible. Digital modelling is pretty good, and helps keep the volume down. That wasn't true before, most practice amps made guitars sound horrible. I always recommend people spend more on the amp than the guitar. I have a motley collection of cheap guitars and they all sound preety good into my Fender Twin... my Classic Vibe strat (as another commenter said) sounds perfect, as does my homemade Tele with homemade pickups.
Digital Modelling is a game changer. I've got a Helix Stomp XL, and it's replaced every pedal and amp in my house for guitar & bass, _and_ it's smaller than a pedalboard.
Even the Pod Go (which I had before this) is completely usable up to a level where you can absolutely afford to replace it with a helix.
I have an HX Stomp as well, but I'm doing most of my practice lately with a Tonex One, which I got for €150 brand new, and sounds amazing. It's incredible how far we come.
It also reminds me of how a lot of the most coveted guitars, pedals, amps weren't selected by the guitarists who made iconic because they had some sort of secret sauce in them, but literally because they were the cheapest/most convenient thing available at the time.
Also, I love the sound of a good crunchy 15w practise amp. I think one day those old zoom pedals and the Line 6 bean will be highly coveted!
It was like that with Jazzmasters and Big Muffs. And even Les Pauls in the 60s and 80s. They were just cheap and widely available used and out of fashion, but then someone started using it again and the prices just exploded.
I think this can be generalized to any hobby.
When you sorta know you can't really aspire to the art for your own normal limitations, expanding gear knowledge becomes part of the enjoyment, as a sort of surrogate.
Nothing wrong with that, though, as it really keeps the economy of some niche gear producers going for the benefit of everyone! :D
> However, I do think there is a case to be made for falling into the trap of being more interested in the gear than the thing you're meant to do with the gear.
Is that such a bad thing? It’s supposed to be a hobby, if geeking out on gear relaxes you you shouldn’t have to feel bad for not being productive with it.
Many of my hobbies (mechanical keyboards, flashlights, guitar pedals) have been addictive and going as incredibly deep as I have has made me appreciate each item to a new degree.
I am a shitty bedroom guitarist that has pro-level gear that I get endless hours of enjoyment from buying/selling and "knob turning." I probably spend 50% of my guitar hobby time on non-playing activities and it all brings me much joy.
The fact that there are tons of consumers like me makes this gear more affordable for everyone, including low level artists.
I get a bunch of satisfaction purchasing used high end gear, owning it for a few months and then selling it for more or less what I bought it for. I usually get some nice social interaction with the seller/buyer as a bonus.
Very well said on gear-trap. Last night I was watching an old video[1] of the kind of gear Ólafur Arnalds uses.
I was amazed and aghast at the amount of expensive "outboard" gear and other vintage hardware such as "compressors", "filter banks", "levelling amplifiers", Korg PS-3100, a vintage analog synthesizer which costs more than 20,000 (!) euros,tape recorders, etc.
Many of these things I didn't even know existed. But I'm just a newbie to learning music.
It's a privileged position to be in, to just acquire whatever vintage hardware, instead of resorting to emulated software to create the sounds.
At least, he (and others like Nils Frahm) can justify it, as a highly successful professional musicians. But many hobbyist musicians seem to fall into the trap of, "if only I get that Roland Juno-60, I'll make more awesome music".
> "if only I get that Roland Juno-60, I'll make more awesome music"
But you might! A new instrument can inspire you and make you want to play more music and that can lead to improvement.
All things considered, the Medieval isn't all that expensive. All you are really risking is approx. $100 if buying new (because you can resell on eBay) and practically nothing if you buy it used.
I agree; a new instrument can inspire you. But many people tend to fall into the so-called "gear trap", especially those of us who work in tech.
I was not referring to the "Medieval" in specific, but just lamenting about losing the forest for the trees. It's a bit like the monthly, "the perfect note-taking tool" discussion cycle we get into here on HN.
If you're conscious of the potential gear trap, more power to you. :-)
Many performers use a semi-permanent patch. You effectively build a synthesizer with exactly the affordances you want, and carry the thing to the gig patched up. (Those setups tend to focus a lot of cable management too, lol, so that you can actually reach the controls)
Or, some do improvised live patching, in which the goal is NOT to replicate sounds.
I'd say most performances on these are accompanied by a DAW. Then you just record it and re-use sounds between performances. For some instruments/tracks you probably want the freedom to play it live and accept that it sounds different between performances. In fact that's the whole appeal of it in my opinion.
Two choices - either you record this and work with the recordings, or you accept that no two performances will ever be the same and make it part of the appeal.
I like to take photos and sometimes write things down! In a sense you're assembling a sound sculpture. But once you've found a great sound and lost it, sometimes you end up finding something very similar but not quite 100%! You see this a lot with live performances from any electronic musician to be honest.
Still, most of the time you find something incredible and it's gone as quickly as it appeared!
Teenage Engineering gear is not meant to last. It is an illusion created by how their product looks like and how it is marketed. Once the warranty expires, you won't be able to repair products like TX-6. I've gotten bitten by that myself. TE does not really provide much support to its users to help them maintain and repair this expensive gear.
I kind of have the same thought. This very much looks interesting and I like the whole folk/medieval metal scene quite a lot.
But the realist and the person in my who doesn't like spending money both agree: If $350 - $500 are on the table, I'm probably better off with a good keyboard with MIDI support, since it's a more open-ended and flexible tool. And my DAW can do a lot of the looping, looped recording, effects and such.
But enough negativity, this thing still looks really, really cool.
How is this any different from any company selling musical instruments? Car advertisers don't sell you on their product by showing you the latest model stuck in gridlock traffic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Mountain_(1973_film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdXGhsAynGI