Teenage Engineering News: The one downside to writing a news story about the brand new Teenage Engineering Oplab – launched at NAMM 2012 – is that it’s almost important to describe exactly what it is, and in fact exactly how good it sounds.
The Oplab Musical Experimental board is exactly what it sounds like – a multi-connector jumping-off point which allows you to sync-up hardware and then create and mutate sounds using... well, just about anything.
This plug-n-play board has two USB in/outs, CV in and out and MIDI in and out and program selection switches. In the middle, there’s a gap where one of three ingenious sensor chips can slot into the middle of the board too – tap, flip and poke – as well as a special wireless sensor for, erm, your shoes?
It’s an odd simple premise, but from this mish-mash of technologies you can achieve just about anything. Use the mouse as a pitch bender for tones that are transmitting through your MIDI. A broken hard-drive can function as a scratchpad for some junkyard-DJ bliss. You can sync up your music with lights and other sensors to have them triggered in time to the beat.
The aforementioned TS-1W wireless sensor for your shoe (or wherever else you want to attach it) can be used as a trigger for kick-drum beats or theramin-style to control pitch-bends or LFOs or just about anything else. TS-2 ‘Tap’ does exactly what it sounds, TS-3 ‘Flip’ detects spherical movement (you’ll have to figure out how to use that one for yourself) and TS-4 ‘Poke’, which is a velocity-sensitive pad sensor.
It’s possibly no clearer than when we started, the point being that syncing any hardware, software or bits and bobs from around the house you can think of is something of a chaotic art, and you’ll doubtless figure out your own path to walk (possibly in wireless sneakers) once you’ve gotten your hands on this. You certainly can’t accuse it of being unoriginal.
