The problem is that I can only have 9 variations of a drum break, which is leaving tracks feeling pretty boring when you need to create transitions build ups and variety. It’s fine for more straightforward music like techno or house I guess. This seems more like an intentional limitation rather than hardware, so I hope that they someday open it up to allow for more creativity and detail in tracks.
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I think it’s a hardware/RAM limitation. Every pattern of every track can hold a different drum sampler preset. Scenes can be switched on the fly. That means everything must be stored in the project RAM (500 MB).
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I mean I suppose it depends on your genre but are you only using 1 track for your drums? I mean chopping is a pain on the xy but I’ve found on devices with limits like these using a few chops and then just programming drums on top, 3 tracks of drums and fx samples mix in some randomized stuff and you got 5 internal tracks left for pads bass lead or whatever the brain tracks really let you pull way way more out of the melody tracks but also the punch in can pull more out of programmed drums. Lots to layer for variety. It might come down to if you want to work that way or not.
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Perhaps you are right. Maybe my brain is more hardwired to my m8 or the elektron gear when it comes to groove boxes. I’m still giving the xy more time to see if I can learn it properly, that could be the gap too…
Would suggest reviewing step components if you’re looking for limitless variations.
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and you have 9 punch in & tape tracks too, so as well as your 9 drum break variations (as an example mentioned by the user) you could have those 9 punch in tracks & tape tracks switching on a single drum break track, so 9x9x9 kinda thing.
not necessarily better than having a shed load more patterns per track, but does give more variations if used like that.
example:
say these number represent the patterns of track 1, punch in track, & tape track. you could have…
1 - 1 - 1
1 - 2 - 1
1 - 2 - 2
2 - 1 - 1
2 - 2 - 1
2 - 2 - 2
etc. all the way up to 9 - 9 - 9.
and that’s just with track 1.
you can also add the 2 fx tracks 9 patterns in to the mix too.
so 9 tracks, 2 fx tracks, punch in track & tape track, all p-locked goin against each other. 99 combos of their diff patterns + mutes per song.
Not for everyone but I use tracks 1-4 as kicks, snares, hihat, perc separately . Like the opz setup. So you have 9^4 variations
Edit: had to come back to correct this, it’s 3024 permutations apparently. Not 9^4
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Check some of the built-in projects to see how well step components work. You can do a lot with just one pattern.
You have brain and punch in FX as well.
I’ve stated this several times. But my process is that I let punch in fx handle fills, brain chordal changes and the. The instrument tracks takes care of the core patterns and timbral data.
If you only utilize the the instrument patterns, then you are basically using 30% of the OP-XY
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The approach I’ve found is to have your pattern, let’s say the drum breaks, then in the AUX instruments patterns maybe use the punch in effects with these and some trigger skips, etc. So maybe skip 7 and trigger the punch in effect on 8th pass.
I’m able to create lots of variation with this approach and a smaller set of patterns.
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can somebody upload some jungle/dnb/breaks/glithc type of beats made on OP XY? Thank you in advance 
happy Jamuary
When I said swing I guess I didn’t even mean the swing parameter really, just that beats kind of have a natural swing it just natural groove to them. Some machines sound like they are very hard and made for techno to me… I don’t know why.
Also some machines have negative swing parameter that I really like… I wish all machines had negative swing, I like the negative more then positive really.
Anyone got any guesses when the first really significant fw update might happen? Guess Xmas and new year will have paused operations a bit but hopefully TE will start addressing issues asap this month
I agree with you. It’s the same with any synth from the 70s-80s when it comes to “vintage” sound. The swing some people want are based on songs of nostalgia. Some big songs had quite-not-on swing. So some get mad when the new machine’s swing is actually accurate or the new oscillators from synths are highly in tune as “character” is lost. I don’t get hung up on this anymore. New music to me is not about making music that sounds like an 80s failed cover band.
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That’s a great idea.
you can use other tracks as drum tracks though… if you use that two standard you have at least 18
I think tracks 1 and 2 are sent to the drum compressor and the rest to the instrument one. I know you can put drums on other tracks, but you need to make sure you disable the brain on these too then.
It’s not entirely obvious from the manual about this default routing (or maybe I missed it). I know in the Andertons video Will mentioned about the device knowing when a drum track is set by the engine used, but somewhere else (maybe the Gear4Music video) I know it was said about tracks 1 + 2 being routed differently.
I think there’s a bit of a misconception about the master settings. It’s my understanding that there’s only one compressor and that the percussion and instrument levels only control the gain of each group that both go into the same compressor.
After the compressor, there’s a limiter so pushing the master level pushes this limiter.
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Well did this for fun today… Stream 2025 Jamuary 1 - DnB Toss by NearTao | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
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Track out?