A tribute to Visage:
This is the danger zone, hope the soundcloud copyright algorithm doesn't bite me in the bum!
EDIT:
Here you can hear my two new Teenage Engineering pocket operators PO-20 and PO-24 in action again. The chiptune bass of course comes from the Arcade and the Office does the open hihats and some more perc. Kickdrum and claps were sampled and played on the Akai S20, closed hihats come from the Korg Monotribe, the pad has been created on the Yamaha TX81Z, then there's a dark dub-ish chord-like thing I made on the Yamaha FB-01 and a sequence played by the MFB Nanozwerg.
Actually the track was based on a happy accident when I played around with the PO Arcade and eventually ended up with the Fade To Grey chorus chord progression/harmony. Originally I had made one of those chiptune arp twiddeldy-doo things but then accidentally chose the bass instead of the arpeggio and then decided to go with it. I mean, you can't go wrong with Fade To Grey, eh.
The PO Arcade is a bit more limited in terms of using its sounds in productions than the Office but as you can hear, it also does a decent job in tracks that aren't chip music. The PO Office on the other hand is very cool, specially for someone who uses lots of percussion and rhythmic noises in his music.
The biggest change for me from the previous POs are the one-shot effects. In the PO Rhythm or Sub, effects can be selected and chained by holding the FX button and chosing one or more of the 16 real-time effects while in the new POs, there are one-shot fx that automatically stop when the current pattern is finished. Other effects can be activated and the corresponding button will light up as long as it's active and of course can be deactivated again. Some effects cannot be used together. The new system brings in some interesting ways of using the effects and is less obscure than the old one where you basically have zero chance of knowing which effects are getting used at the moment but it's also less interactive. For example, with the old POs, you can use a distortion effect and cut it short halfway through a step with a filter effect which results in very dynamic sequences. This sort of does work on the new POs as well but there are less effects that can be used that way.
...and there's the chord/harmony progression thing on the PO Arcade (the Robot has it as well, haven't bought that one yet) which also works as a kind of auto accompany mode like in entertainer keyboards. Now THIS is a new function I really like, it works with the arpeggio sounds, the bass and some lead stuff I believe. The icing on the cake would have been an option which makes it possible to activate the chord progression function for only one or two of the sounds instead of all of them at the same time but you can't have it all I guess. If you don't use the harmony progression function, you can still set the notes for each step by holding WRITE and chosing the notes you want with the left pot.
There are two things I don't like with the POs in general, and that's a) the super-flimsy battery contacts on the back and b) the fact that the rubbery cases which you can buy seperately cost almost as much as the POs themselves.
The battery contacts bend outwards when you change batteries which results in contact problems or even dropouts during use if you aren't careful enough. You have to bend the contacts back to their original position after a battery change which I fear might lead to trouble in the long run. What's more, the foldable stand on the back of the units keeps falling off.
The PO cases look quite nice but I don't really want to pay lotsa money for them. For me, the whole point of the POs is their attractive price you pay for a cleverly engineered product. However, if you buy two or three of them with the corresponding cases on top, you'll end up with about 300+ bucks for what is basically a collection of calculators with lo-fi samples and a (admittedly very good) DAC thrown in for good measure. The thing is that it looks almost imperative to have some sort of casing for them, in their "skeletal" form they're quite vulnerable to ESD problems - walk over a carpet with indoor slippers, grab your PO to make some tunes... bzzzzzt, dead...
Speaking of falling off, that's another (minor) problem with the POs. When you have two cables connected to them, the pull of them is enough to make them fall off the table all the time. That's why I've thought about making a wooden case for them which can hold three POs and makes using them a little more convenient. My workflow when creating a track is almost 100% live and loop-based, meaning that I don't make an A to Z arrangement with lots of automation, basically I make a few tracks of different length in my sequencer and/or directly on the hardware (if it comes with its own sequencer), let all the stuff run in loops and then mute/unmute various parts in the sequencers or on the mixer while doing some live tweaking. Of course this involves a lot of interaction with the devices used in a track which can get tedious if they keep on sliding all over the table all the time if you touch them. This usually is when I wish the POs would be larger, heavier and had proper buttons with more space inbetween them. Currently I'm discussing the issue with a friend of mine (a gifted but sadly very lazy electronics expert) how to build a proper case with buttons and stuff for the POs. Actually that could be turned into a product which I'm sure a lot of PO users would find interesting.
Ah man, I've said it a thousand times already but have to say it again, I wish I would be better at DiY/electronics/circuit design...
