Originally published at: Teenage Engineering's OP-1 is ten years old | Boing Boing
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I bought one of these years ago and fell in love with it. As someone whose musical experience never went past playing covers on ukulele, it felt like something I could make actual MUSIC with.
I sold it because I stopped using it as often. Later I missed it and re-bought one off eBay only to find I’d forgotten everything and it’s quirks felt more like limitations rather than fun things to be worked around. Also in the meantime I’d started trying to make music with other things and found myself unable to integrate it with anything else terribly well. So I’m off to sell it again and put the money towards a Moog or something.
Still an unbelievably well designed product.
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Clicking link. Nope, still can’t budget for that. Maybe next year.
(Not saying it isn’t awesome)
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Yeah it’s funny, it’s still unusual, you still can’t play it like a “proper” instrument, it arrived when everything out in the open and a knob for everything was becoming the norm with its metaphor based menu diving and annoyed the hell out of a lot of people with its high price tag.
I guess it’s not for everyone, but it’s amazing it exists.
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I’m in awe of what it can do and what people are doing with it, especially the sampling and tweaking those into music.
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The DFAM continues to tempt me.
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$1121? I’m kinda rooting for Behringer.
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I often toy with the idea of buying one of these, and not because I need it to make music (which I’ve never done and never would). What’s great about Teenage Engineering is they fully embrace the idea that tools can be worth making and having purely for their own sake, which is a feeling some of us have always had but which society has sneered at until recently.
It’s like, when you’re a kid you are encouraged to covet objects that have literally no point but to be played with, and then we’re supposed to suddenly grow out of it, which is total bullshit, I think stemming from the fact that the ability to make fascinating objects is not something Western people can do for themselves. I mean, playing with toys is no more or less pointless than playing with music or painting, but individuals can make music on their own, so that is considered respectable, whereas making physical stuff is something we need Asian people do for us, so that is held in contempt. If you want to play with toys as an adult you have to pretend to be a connoisseur of cameras or cars or pens or whatever, and to appreciate these things only for their “practical” qualities. Even with Warhammer miniatures or Funkos Pop, you have to have the “serious” wargaming or collecting hobby to excuse liking the objects themselves.
I believe that’s changing though, because it’s increasingly possible to make lowbrow object culture at a boutique scale, and because of artists like Teenage Engineering that don’t apologise for foregrounding this angle.
(Not that I’ve heard them speak about it; I’m just basing that on what they make).
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Open all the boxes.
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Bought a Matriarch… sadly, it really means a DFAM, Sub, and Mother32 are next. I can stop anytime. Really. Just a few more patch cables… Oh wait, Eurorack? Whats that?
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I have a quarter of my tiptop Mantis Eurorack case filled. Even with my limited modules it’s crazy fun. I’ve really been lusting to buy some missing items lately. I too could quit anytime. …anytime… 
I inherited one of these, love it but am not musical. It’s like bobtato said
That’s what I do.
Unfortunately, the mic module on mine has fritzed out so samps have to be uploaded to it until I can buy a replacement module.
I made silly stuff like this: SEVEN 20/3/21 on Vimeo which is a reaction to David Lynch’s Daily Numbers thingy thing: https://twitter.com/swirlthenumbers/status/1373297114789335043
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