Er... what on earth are those things you're playing? No, they're not calculators. They're purpose-made small cheap synthesizers called Pocket Operators, sold by a Swedish company called Teenage Engineering. Each one has it's own speciality, e.g. bass, melody, voice samples... They can also be wired together to play in sync, which is what you mostly hear me doing here.
Before music, my hobby was Lego. You can also see an old interview I did with the BBC where I talk about the adult fan of Lego scene.
I live in London with 1 wife, 2 kids, 9 Pocket Operators and 1cat.
Пікірлер
Little helper)
Impressively catchy, well done!
@@banloup thanks, I was hoping that was the case
this makes me want to play starbound again...
This was great. Haha. Not familiar with that particular (I'm assuming) kids show though.
Yes, CamberwicK Green (and its neighbour Trumpton) was one of the shows all British kids of a certain generation grew up on. Here's the original for comparison kzread.info/dash/bejne/gGmWyNGmds-4eMo.html
Love this! Yes, I grew up with Trumpton.
Thanks very much, Allan
Not grown up with any of these, but slightly irritated by the vocals: "Here [ewww] is a box"? Also, don't the last 2 seconds sound much like Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield?
Ha, sorry. Many of us have fond memories of that particular narration from growing up in the UK in the 1970s. At the end was a different pattern stored in the Tonic, which to be honest, I wasn't planning to hit. Any similarity to Ms Benatar is just a coincidence.
Excellent work Rich! Getting plenty of sonic goodness from these little beasts!
@@expensivenotes thanks very much. If only i had a musical dalek
What the heck are those machines. Somehow ended up here, not mad at it.
Pocket Operators by Teenage Engineering
Talent! Extraordinary
This is a fun and wacky arrangement! I like it a lot.
@@mechantechatonne thanks, glad you liked it
better than the original
Praise indeed. Thanks
I just watched this through with my jaw open, and then had to watch again. I wish I had the wit to manage this kind of live sequencing setup. I love playing and improvising but one instrument at a time is just about manageable. This works really well and Axel F fits so well that I hardly noticed the change! Enjoyed it very much.
Thanks very much, I don't think it's half as good as what you do with your inventive weekly jams+ instrument design skills.
gosh, i love the format, hope the algo picks up on it.
Thanks very much.. You can give it a hand by sharing, liking, subscribing etc
I love the enthusiasm and energy behind this. So trippy and blippy. Awesome work!
Thanks, mutual appreciation going on here. Small world of people recording songs for multiple Pocket Operators in 2024
Damn... This is bumpin'. I like the flare and variety behind this work. Never fail to impress!
Much appreciated!
Awesome 👍
Thanks 🤗
Genius, Richard 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Thanks Angie, very kind of you.
🔥🔥🔥
牛逼
Very cool!
I feel the the urge to sing this song is just a whim away.
ok. not nearly as hard as actually playing the song on drums or bass, but ok.
Ace stuff! Sounds like star wars cantina music, a symphony for droids haha. Hope the guys at Teenage Engineering get to see this, I think it's what they had in mind when they designed the gear.
Thanks very much, symphony for droids is a great title. Sadly, I think TE are way past caring about Pocket Operators these days. They've forsaken the cheap end of the market.
groovy
So you're the new operator with your pocket calculator huh?
They only look like calculators
Guy just keeps pointlessly touching knobs that aren't even doing anything. DJ 101
Awesome! Bach works so well with these modern day instruments!
Do you have a Spotify page? I really love your covers, it would be awesome to be able to add them to my playlists 💛 Keep up the amazing work!
I'm afraid I don't. Clearing the rights with the publisher is a hurdle.
Ah, fantastic! (I think I noticed this a little late… maybe I should actually break my universal rule and actually click on the notification bell…) I didn’t recognise the tune at all but am going to seek it out. It works really well as an electronic thing, especially with the way you’ve chosen/designed such 70s-sounding patches! One of the main lead ones, with (what sounds like?) a filter envelope on every note, sounded 100% 70s-TV-theme to me - absolutely brilliant. I’m glad to see you’ve mastered the bizarre-fragment-length trick to get different timings, although I sympathise that you had to 😃 (And all of mine are .WAV exports as well - usually I just leave the wire connected to a speaker to trigger some sound-sensitive lights or something, and edit the WAV file in separately. Incidentally I have only ever found one (Mac) program that can interpret the exported WAV, which is Fission by Rogue Amoeba. I have to re-export from there to get a file usable in anything else. No idea why but I hope for a fix sometime.) There’s something brilliantly jaunty but understated about your arrangements - they’re always filled with interesting sounds and great arrangement choices, at the same time as being really delicately balanced and not overly in-your-face. In short, they sound like actual musical pieces rather than novelty performances. Fantastic.
Thanks for the kind words - and paying attention. Good to know the Mac/wav struggle is real. Must check out that Fission thing. I just uploaded to a random cloud converter. Your recordings sound fine, so it must be a better quality conversation. May I ask, what format do you convert to?
@@richselby7878 Usually 44.1kHZ 16-bit stereo WAV. At first I deliberately chose a different format just to be certain the software was actually rewriting it, but that ended up not being necessary. In Fission at least, as long as you press Export, it rewrites/rebuilds even if you choose the same format you're already in. It's a very simple program but surprisingly often more handy than my full-featured DAW - recommended!
Very fun ! Thanks for the tech description, I like this little insight on your music journey.
like the homage to Woody Allen. Nice touch.
Thanks but no idea what you mean.
This is great! 👍🏻
Thanks very much, Mr DeLuge, for being the first to comment. I think I'm going to like your synthstrom tracks a lot
Thank you. I’ve registered for a Woovebox and think it’d really suit my workflow and I do like small, powerful DAWless music production gear 😀
@@DavidDeLuge After coming from the Deluge, I think the small buttons and cryptic screen abbreviations might take some getting used to.
I’ve watched a number of videos and the UI does seem to be very intuitive. I’ll definitely give it a go 😀
Loved everything of this!😮 Moondog and Pocket Operators?!? Great playing skills btw! Thank you so much for sharing! 👍
Thanks very much, I love it when somebody takes the time to comment
@@richselby7878 Pleasure! So glad to found your channel! 👍
This reminded me of the cover of this song made by Moog Cookbook - but this was way cooler! Great stuff
Nice setup!! Check your volume levels boss. Seemed like your channels could be better balanced for volume <3
For sure. This was my first time using the Maker Hart mixer. Gotta get used to it
Pretty cool. I hear the theme from "Get a Move On," by Mr. Scruff. :-)
Indeed. You'll find Moondog in Mr Scruff's record collection, for sure. Check out the original on Sax Pax for a Sax, it's terrific.
Oooh love it! Reminds me of the Alabama 3 version ✌️🥰
😂
This is the first time I’ve seen a video of Hotel California stay up a whole year. Usually the Eagles are militant about copyright strikes.
Tempting fate! Or perhaps it's different enough?
@@richselby7878 Either way your work is EXCELLENT!
@@EverettVinzant thank you very much. Do check out some of the other stuff too
Unbelievably sick
That's a sweet jam. How are you liking the Woovebox?
Thanks very much. Although you have to spend time programming both systems, when I'm ready to record, I feel like I'm playing my Pocket Operators but with the Woovebox, I feel like I just press play. However, much greater flexibility on the Woovebox with chords and patterns. For my next tune, I've combined the two systems. Fortunately, the Woovebox outputs PO sync pulses and even comes with a splitter cable, meaning it's easy to wire into my PO desk. But now am waiting for a new mixer because the WB is, shock horror, stereo, which sounds bad through my mono Bastl Dude mixer.
Cool 😊👍🏼
This is my request for more SPEAK PO 35 doo wop!
This is just amazing! It's got a very 1960s vibe to me - I think because the sound design evokes space-aged ambient stuff at the same time as retro electronic organ, plus there's a whole Switched-On Bach thing going on :-) (also I detected the moment of 'sheep may safely graze' in there, which my wife has been urging me to do a Woovebox version of...) Such a creative arrangement. Amazing range of sounds and moods and was very hard not to dance to. On your questions: - joining fragments of different songs together - no, I'm certain this isn't possible. I suspect it never will be because the different songs contain different effects parameters, delay lengths, sound patches etc, and moving from one song to another would potentially mean releases/reverbs from song 1 would still be playing once song 2 took over -> more processing than the device can handle. - adjusting tempo within a pattern - no, no way to do so. I am confident in my answer to that because I asked the developer. I was checking for software updates every day until I finally achieved it by exporting at 5 different BPM settings and editing them together! - vibrato - yes indeed. On the Pitch page, you can set an LFO with a triangle or sine wave shape to affect the pitch, by how much and at what speed. And on individual steps, you can adjust the behaviour to implement or ignore the default LFO.
Well you found it eventually. I figured it was unlikely to pass without a decent comment when you did. Thanks for the kind words and answering the qs. I've not yet worked up the courage to enter the LFO pages. Modular synth gobbledegook here I come.
WoW! That’s Awesome! Have a great week!
Thanks Juan
Lets hope its better than their «record cutter» 😂lol
Great!
impressive !!
How have I only just noticed this, a month late? Pure joy - congratulations! Your showmanship increases every time! Also, I feel it important to say: you’re doing important work. Never doubt it.
Fantastic! Welcome to the club :-) Some lovely sound design there - and this piece works perfectly. I could totally imagine it looping forever, with some kind of generative algorithm turning the parts on and off almost at random. Great stuff indeed, and a challenge to raise my game…
You found that quickly! Sound design pretty much involved random filter settings.