The OP-1 Lie I Tell Myself (and Why It’s Fine)
Sometimes in my own mind, I masquerade as an OP-1 expert. After all, I use it all the time. I know it well.
But yesterday it occurred to me that I’ve basically never sampled with it. Sure, I’ve done it a couple times, but do I really know how to do it? The answer is no, I don’t.
It brings up an interesting point with gear. I read somewhere—or maybe I heard it a long time ago—that you don’t have to make everything do everything. If you have something and you’re trying to rationalize keeping it, or why you bought it, maybe you feel like you have to have it do everything. But that’s certainly not the case.
You do have to figure out what it does for you, what it helps you do, and what kind of tool it’s going to be. In that regard, I’ve been really successful with the OP-1. What I need to do, I can do quickly, and kind of expert-level in that I don’t really have to think about it. I just jump around.
One good example is: you can’t move too fast with cutting, copying, lifting, and pasting with the tape. You’ll overburden the processor and you’ll mess something up. So you have to move quickly, but you have to move within the time of the OP-1 tape itself.
That is something that you initially have to be pretty patient about, because if you’re cutting and pasting in a DAW, you can just—as fast as you type—you can do that kind of work. But not with the OP-1, it doesn’t work that way.
Once you get the rhythm of it though, it’s not slow. It just is being what it is.
So essentially you have to let these devices do what they do for you. Once you figure out what it is that they do for you.
I think it’s the exact same with songwriting. You have to stay within yourself, and if you want to be Sturgill or Sebastian Mullaert—well, you can’t be. But you can take these influences and internalize them and be patient and see how they come out.
It’s the beauty of songwriting, and it’s also the beauty of all this great gear that’s around.