A Small Grey Box Filled With Joy

I made this upbeat, major-key, low-fi-sounding jam entirely on my OP-1, the same gizmo used in these videos. The transitions aren't as good as they could be, but they're definitely a level up for me. The whole thing falls apart at the end in a glorious heap. A good LET'S GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY instrumental.

Sequenced, recorded, and mixed entirely on the Teenage Engineering OP-1 synthesizer. Additional grime/sparkle added after the fact in Ozone.

posted by Sokka shot first (3 comments total)

Awesome! "Happy" tag is right.

Care to talk about your compositional process?
posted by mpark at 7:34 AM on June 18, 2017

I listened to this on repeat for about half an hour while I was trying to finish a rather mundane task at work, and it was great. The transitions worked fine to my ears - nothing sounded out of place and I liked that the varying sections kept things interesting. The section around 2 and a half minutes in, with the wavy-sounding background pitches, sounds like a conflict of the story that gets resolved.

I do not understand how this is lo-fi?

Agreeing with mpark -- would love to hear more about your process. Is this something you worked on little by little over a long period of time, or...?
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 12:04 AM on July 3, 2017

Really digging this one. I think this counts as lo-fi in this era, I had a four track in high school and this feels the same as playing with that. Lo-fi in spirit? Lo-tek?
posted by q*ben at 4:15 PM on April 21, 2018