 Hello, I'll say it to sync here. On the OPZ, while a sequence is playing, there are a number of different ways we can interact with performance, other than the obvious playing in notes or changing the parameters of the sounds. There are three main methods that we have to interact with performance. The first are the punch-in effects, an idea which are kind of borrowed from the pocket operators, where we can change the sounds or the tonality in real time by punching in these little effects as we go. The next is the master track, which allows us to play with the scale or modality of what's currently playing, allowing us to create variations in that way. The master track probably deserves its own video, but it is really kind of almost the song mode of the OPZ in a lot of ways. The final way that we have is the tape track, and for me the tape track is probably the most interesting of the three, but I didn't always think that. In fact, for a long time I kind of didn't really like it, I didn't really get it. So in this video what I'd like to do is talk about the tape track, how it works, and how that led me to a particular way of using it, which I particularly enjoy. So let's talk about what the tape track actually is. So while there's music playing on the OPZ, there's kind of a virtual tape loop that's been recorded in the background, which is synchronized to the sequence, and as it gets to the end of the loop, a new section of the sequence is recorded onto it. Now we're pressing the lower keys here, we're able to jump into that tape loop, parts of that tape loop, and create micro loops inside it, so for example, we can hear that it's changing because the tape loop has been overwritten as it goes. We can jump into a different area, and you get these kind of tape stutter effects, which are really, really cool. The black keys here decide how long that loop is. So at the moment it's set to three, so when we create a micro loop, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, yeah, and then as we go to two, one, much, much shorter, and so on. So we can create different micro loops within our tape loop. Up at the top here we have these first two, the green and the blue controls here, which give us our sort of tape controls. So while we're playing down one of these micro loops, the blue control allows us to speed it up to double speed, so octave up functionally, or down to half speed. The green control allows us to do much more wild changes to the speed. So this is at minimum as I turn it up very quickly, goes much faster, and then much slower. So at minimum we're back to normal at full width, so slow that you can barely hear anything happening at all. Now when I saw people using the tape track, especially people like Cuckoo, they were very, very deft at using the tape track to create these sort of tape wobbles and stutters, and it always sounded really, really right when they used it, and whenever I tried to use it, it sounded terrible, and I don't know whether that's because I lacked dexterity or the music I was making didn't suit it, but I just couldn't get on with the tape track. It never felt right, it never felt useful to me, and so for a long time I kind of ignored it and abandoned it. But doing a little bit of reading, and not necessarily in the manual, in forums and the like, I started to understand the tape track a little bit better, and I started to understand how I might use it more musically, and it's that kind of journey that I'm going to share with you today. So the first thing that kind of bugged me with the tape track was to do with the way that the sound jumped in. So let me see if I can show this to you. It's subtle, but it really, really bugged me, and I'm sorry if you've never really heard this before, and it's going to ruin the tape track for you. So skip this part if you don't want to be exposed to this. As we bring in the tape track to create our micro loops, there is a very short fade in, and then a very short fade out at the end, and as things get interrupted. And I've got to tell you that that softness of attack always really bugged me, because I kind of wanted, if I was going to do these tape stutter effects, which as I said I wasn't good at anyway, but if I was doing them I wanted them to be instant and harsh. I didn't really mind if there was almost a click there, and that fade in, fade out just always frustrated me. So this is what you can do about that fade in and fade out, and I think really this is really the key to the way that I use the tape track now. And as far as I can tell this isn't documented in the manual, I saw this mentioned in passing on a forum post that I can't find anymore. But here's the thing, the tape track doesn't need to interrupt what's playing. It can play on top of it. So if you hold down the track button and turn up the red control when you're in tape mode, what this does is it essentially mixes the dry signal back into the tape. So with it down at the bottom here, we're always totally interrupting the track that's playing. If we hold down track and turn up the red control, and now the tape track and the stutter effects that you get from it are now playing in parallel with your main sound, and that immediately for me becomes a much more attractive proposition. So the next thing that kind of bothered me with the default tape track setup is that when you introduce these stutter effects, it's everything that's been thrown into the mix here. So your drums are being stuttered which can sound cool sometimes, but if you happen to catch something at an awkward time, it just interrupts the flow of what's going on in a way that often didn't feel musical to me. So the next thing that I kind of explored with the tape track that brought me to a place of love rather than dissatisfaction was the fact that you don't need to run everything into the tape track, you can be selective. So when you're in the tape track, if you hold down shift, you can see that all of the tracks here are lit up yellow at the moment, and any track that's currently lit up yellow will be sent in to the tape track. Now if we decide that we don't want all of these things to be sent into the tape track, for example, if I don't want my drums or maybe not my kick and my snare, I can turn them off or turn off all the drums perhaps. And now when I do these stutter effects, my drums are allowed to carry on behind the scenes unaffected by the tape stutter. So the next thing that helped me come to love the tape track was at the moment when we're doing these stutter effects, even though we haven't got our drums in there, everything seems to clash a little bit because the tonality of the tape track is exactly the same. It's a nice clean digital signal when compared to the sequence that's actually playing, which can be a positive thing, but it's part of what sometimes makes it feel a little bit cluttered to my ears. So an important thing to recognize is that on the yellow and red controls when the lights are white, you have access to the filter the same way you have on pretty much every other track. So that means that we can take our tape track and change its tonality so that it sits apart from the rest of the track. Maybe even go to some resonance. So now it's kind of sitting apart from the rest of the track a little bit. And it starts to become a bit more of an instrument that's playable. And this is starting to appeal to me a lot more than it was originally. What could make it appeal to me more? Well, it's the same thing that makes most things appeal to me. And that is that on the second set of parameters here, so by tapping shift here, we can get into our panning, our volume, so we can turn down the volume of the track if we think it's overpowering, but we also have our effect sense here. So at the moment, I'm set to delay and reverb. So that means that we can take our tape track instantly when you stop the sequencer. The last section of tape stays in memory. So that's a useful thing, which you're trying to fine tune the tonality of things. And we can start to give it some nice reverb, maybe a bit of delay as well, try to find the tiny bit. So now this feels like another instrument, which is really, really important for me. Anyway, the next thing that you can, that I like to do, now usually it is true that half speed is best speed. Almost a universal fact, but for the tape track on the APC said for me personally, it's double speed that's the best speed. So now we have a stuck note somewhere for some reason. Ladies and gentlemen on the APC said stuck notes sometimes. So now we have for me a much more playable instrument that works alongside what I already have in the track. So one final kind of piece of the puzzle and this isn't part of the tape track setup that I always use, but I think it's worth exploring, is that now we have a tape track which is set up to be an instrument kind of that's based around our input. It's worth noting that we can now sequence this instrument as well. So we can lay down steps with different parts of the tape assigned to them if you like. So just lay down a bunch of steps here and we can now have these steps jump around inside our track. And we can mute this track if we want to as well, to take this element out. Sorry, actually mute the right track. Still have access to it to play manually, which essentially gives us another harmonic rhythmic idea that we can introduce to our track. The other thing to bear in mind is that you're also still able to parameter lock things within these steps as well. So for example we could set it so that maybe this that step's a half step, half time step. That one's a normal and then we could parameter lock some panning. And we've got kind of a ton of thong again. We've got a whole extra instrument that's built up and musically related to the stuff that's going into it. Of course we could take elements out if we want to do. If we don't want that lead line in there. And we could change the length of the micro loops. We could still if we're brave hit it with a one of those boys. But like I said I'm not good at that stuff, only that's cookie. But by finding a way to use the tape track as more of an instrument that sits alongside the rest of the composition, this is where I learn to love the tape track. And why I think actually it's more interesting than the punch in effects in terms of performance elements, because it's a little bit more playable. I think the punch in effects are really good fun occasionally. But I think laying into them too much starts to make the OPZ always sound like the OPZ because they will have a very particular character. I think this is much more about relating to the music that you've written in my opinion anyway. I hope that was interesting and useful. If you've gone OPZ then I encourage you to try and explore the tape track maybe in ways that you haven't thought about because it has a lot to give I think. If you did enjoy the video then as always it would be massively appreciated if you could leave a like, hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Leave a comment in the comment section if you have something you want to say. It's always hugely appreciated. But as always thank you so much for joining me and until next time take care. Bye bye.