Once upon a time, I played a little bit with trackers on the Amiga. With very little musical knowledge, and even less access to actual manuals, I ended up mainly collecting samples from games. Putting them together into something resembling music was a challenge I attempted perhaps twice.
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago, when I suddenly found myself asking Kristoffer if he had any tips for music gadgets which allow you to play with sound without needing to know … well, much of anything. I am not sure what exactly brought me to ask, other than hearing him and others around me talk about making music regularly, and gradually realizing that music people have all the cool hardware.
(Software too, for that matter. I would love to see what a computer operating system designed by music hardware people would look like)
Without a second of hesitation, Kristoffer recommended the Pocket operator 33, knockout! edition, or PO-33 K.O! to its friends. As the photo clearly shows, it is a pocket calculator-sized device. It runs for months on two AA batteries, has a screen without backlight which shows some information and a lot of meaningless but fun animations, and I doubt anyone could figure out the interface without instructions in some form.
I should also mention that all the pocket operators are delivered as naked circuit boards. All the hardware is there and fully assembled, but if you want a case that is a separate thing. I felt good about adding some protection, so I went and got Teenage engineering's own case in yellow.
So what do you do with it? You record sounds, and then you put them in sequences to make music. You can also add various effects, either into the song itself, or on top of the song as you play your sequences. The interface may make no sense if you just stare at the buttons, but you can quickly work your common operations into muscle memory and find a cheat sheet (or just google) for the rest as needed.
Several videos I have seen have complained about the bundled manual. One called it "about as useful as a chocolate kettle". The thing, as I see it, is that the manual is best as that cheat sheet: It explains well what all the buttons do. What it does not do is tell you anything about how you may want to use those operations to make music. Youtube comes in very handy here, the PO-33 has been out for (almost ten?) years, and lots of people have put out everything from beginner walkthroughs to videos of creating beats in certain styles and a whole lot more. Find one which appeals to you, watch through it, and try everything you like out as it comes along.
I was expecting a steep learning curve, and perhaps to get completely stuck at that crucial step of managing to put together a song myself. I was completely wrong, and I had a little tune I felt good enough about to share within a day of unpacking the PO-33. Kristoffer really knew what he did with his recommendation. Placing sounds one by one is just plain fun, regardless of whether the result actually sounds any good.
I thought beforehand that I would perhaps create one little song at a time, "finishing" (whatever that means) one before moving on to the other. Now, however, I am not sure that is how things actually work. I think the PO-33 is much more about actually playing with sound. Picking sounds, placing them, recombining, playing, re-playing. "Exporting" a song - that is, playing it back and recording it on something - feels more like taking a snapshot of something ever-changing than it does creating a final object of some sort. "Here is one version of what I have made recently."
I do need to figure out export of sounds and sequences though. Or rather, how I want to work with my sounds and sequences over time. You can only have 40 seconds of sound in total, spread over eight drum sounds and eight "regular" sounds, and 16 sequences (which you can then combine into much longer chains to make a whole song), and that runs out rather fast if you find something fun to sample. Plus, clearing out old stuff is a little bit of a chore to do manually. So, I think I will want to export everything and start fresh with some kind of regularity, but I am not sure what I want my workflow to be just yet. Time will tell. To be clear, all the necessary operations are supported and in the manual, I just need to decide how I want to work.
The best path forward is probably to simply keep playing and see how the pieces combine. There has to be a million sounds around me even in this moment which I could sample and use to build strange things …