OP-1 Field Vocoder Upgrade Surprise

Well we were not expecting to see this upgrade (though we also were not expecting the velocity sensitivity on the keys previously). Teenage Engineering is doing a good job keeping the upgrades rolling. So Condu now has vocoder capabilities. This has led to the obvious questions about going a different direction with the spacecraft voices. We know we needed to make some changes, however, not sure a vocoder is going to always be the answer (I will need to play and sing etc).

Either way, we have decided to back off on this. We will stick with the original plan of making light changes to SuperStar's and DarkStar's voices for this album. Between learning the OP-1f (yeah it is very similar but there are things to learn) and being sick for a few weeks, the current album is starting to feel like it will never get released. After we are done telling the story of the adventure on planet AI, the following album will have limited vocals (as we back off the story a bit and start making music that the spacecraft play in space). This will be a pretty big departure and a good time to make other changes if we decide to.

The vocoder is another nice piece to work into the music though. It will allow access to all the affects available on the OP-1f. Interestingly a lot of the Youtube videos using it so far are not using voice as the main input (but some other input). Can be used for drums or even another synth input. So it will be interesting to see where this takes us as we work on our musical journey. Also what else is in store for Condu in the future.