Medieval

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.

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.

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."

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:

https://youtube.com/@teftymeems

https://youtube.com/@espenkraft

https://youtube.com/@hainbach

https://youtube.com/@elisetrouw

https://youtube.com/@truecuckoo

https://youtube.com/@bobeats

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

Hmm… “good” is relative. Lots of stuff out there

Ciani has been a pioneer in this space since the 70’e https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Ciani

Check out the boiler room set of https://caterinabarbieri.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W25FTlO42VY

Vogelsinger has pieces all over YouTube. https://helenevogelsinger.bandcamp.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYxheEGl2oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W25FTlO42VY

Some others that come to mind: https://polypores.bandcamp.com/

https://bluetech.bandcamp.com/music

Evan B’s label for this music only https://www.behindtheskymusic.com/

People make some good tracks with the OP-1.

I think dipplo (a big edm artist) used the OP-1 in his live sets for a while.

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.

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.

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)

Just like 99% of golfers buying expensive and cool clubs are middle aged white rich dudes who just play with their friends two times a month and brag.

It's no coincidence that we invented the "enthusiast" or "prosumer" categories precisely to separate certain products from professionals

Might not be your cup of tea but finneas the brother/producer of billie eilish made a lot of top 10 hits while using an OP-1…

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.

[0] https://cmarshall.com/MulletMan.jpg (I still have that guitar, and the neck is still true.)

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!

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

There was recently a post and discussion on this very topic here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954679

Seems complicated, indeed.

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!

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.

That’s up to you how you do it.

You can sample certain sounds and perform with that instead.

You can patch it once and never touch again.

You can learn how to patch it exactly the same, even with 100s of cables.

You can keep parts of the patch the same. Some modules can help, saving their internal state or communicating with other modules on their own.

Etc.

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.

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.

You don't (mostly, except by ear) and that's part of the allure of it.

I’ve never heard that before. Hilarious and brilliant!

I don't think that was said by Alan Parsons. It was by a slashdotter in response to an Alan Parsons interview:

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2663265&c...

People in general are pretty good at finding ways to feel superior to someone else, and that includes both audiophiles and musicians in this case.

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.

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.

Not at all! I'm reminded of this blog post: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/04/20/hobbies.html

Good thing that there is nothing like that in other hobbies like Woodworking, Ham Radio, etc.

Seems a bit harsh. There’s surely more dimensions to their market than this?

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.

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.

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 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.

So they do sell to "real" musicians too.

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].

[1] https://teenage.engineering/_img/54b7f9bf8681400300255cab_or...

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.

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.

It's not surprising when you think that design is all that matters to TE. Functionality is a byproduct not the end goal.

It's certainly real.

What was it about the video that made you think it's generative? That it's surrealistic?

The video is 11 years old fwiw

Welcome to Alejandro Jodorowsky, he's like AI off the chain with no guard rails but it's 1974 and the home PC doesn't yet exist.

The last thing I was expecting during my daily Hacker News read was bumping into a Parajanov reference. Incredible.

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.

Watched it with some friends on shrooms for the first time. Incredible. All the movies we watched after it that night felt bland and uninteresting.

Or Midsommar, which is quite similar.

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.

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."

Wow, they even exclude it from their free shipping offer.

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.

it's not a desk man, it's a field desk, a whole new category of product

mousewheel to zoom, left click to drag works for me on firefox windows

Control + mouse scroll wheel works for me

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.

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.

But if you don't like it, you might like something else. I'm a big-time ableton user and don't like LMMS.

the novatron devices appear to be more expensive than the linked TE one?

I have a couple pocket operators. They’re pretty fun. I have the robot(28), which has some interesting scales and “rhythm” which is drum machine.

Unlike the more expensive products these are harder to work into a computer based work flow. But they are fun.

They have one that has “office sound” samples, which is wierd.

This midieval device looks a bit like a giant more functional pocket operator.

Speaking of both amazing and frightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRIfsFefatg (Pumped Up Kicks, medieval style.)

It's worth going fully OG,

Hildegard von Blingin' covers Hildegard Von Bingen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K9PfjRjxM

I bought the '82 vinyl in '82: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Feather_on_the_Breath_of_God

So. Here’s the thing about B&H: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170814

If you thought B&H is cool, you haven't met Sweetwater yet ;)

(B&H is great for photo/video, but for music, they're not it, IMHO)

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.

Yeah but they can pick their clients. Big miss to be involved imho, although maybe it doesn't make a difference to their market.

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".

https://www.rabbit.tech/newsroom/teenage-engineering-jesper-...

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.

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.

You are comparing dessign with art.

This is a digital hardware synth that makes sword-clinking sounds. It goes for 300 USD.

This is maybe half a step above a fart cushion. There’s no need to buy this whatsoever…

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.

I'm very sure you'd quickly get tired of that demo track.

It's definitely something that plays Bardcore at least.

I can't even think of a good reason not to allow that, it's all static images and text.

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.

All of their products are completely pointless and I am incredibly happy that they exist.

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, 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.

I can zoom it just fine on Safari.

Which is really obnoxious because I can barely read the text underneath it.

Now do alcoholic beverages!

[face slap emoji] thank you, you saved me from refreshing their site every couple months.