There is an everlasting dance between music and technology. As one steps, the other follows in a constant exchange of rhythm and groove. It’s a tango. It’s a waltz. It’s a moshpit. It’s whatever the culture wants it to be.
A piano in a 19th century Parisian parlor. A turntable in a late 20th century Bronx basement. A steel-string guitar ordered from a catalog, in a 1920s Mississippi juke joint. A DJ set downloaded to a USB stick in a 2010s Oakland warehouse. Each of these are vignettes of different devices conducting the maelstroms of different eras; but the pattern remains the same. Humanity is always moving, ever evolving the dance between music and technology.
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A Silicon Valley friend excitedly showed me his new toy at a California house party in 2019. It was the OP-1 by Teenage Engineering. Slim enough to slip into the front pocket of a backpack. Plain enough in its design at first glance to be mistaken for a toy. Upon closer inspection, that plain design reveals itself as minimalist; packaged by a smart Swedish consumer electronics company apparently taking cues from Apple’s Jony Ive, or Braun’s Dieter Rams, but primarily Sweden’s own Stig Carlsson.
The OP-1 is a $2,000 synthesizer, sampler, and sequencer designed like a pocket calculator. Search “what is the OP-1?” on Google and a top three question is “is the OP-1 overpriced?” So it begs a bigger question…who is the OP-1 for?
I thought it was for me. As a former professional musician who fell into the tech world, it promised a way to reclaim my relationship with music. I’d seen OP-1 in the setups of my professional musician friends and of artists like Tame Impala, Fred Again, and Thom Yorke. Its legitimacy as a professional grade tool is sound.
Alas, I bought it as the tech bro I’ve become, but the musician I was knows how to make music better with strings, not buttons.
Despite its small size, the OP-1’s high price and emphasis on design draws a sharper line to the pianos of 18th century parlor rooms, that became symbols of wealth, than it does to affordable instruments like guitars that became more emblematic of the wandering, working class. Yet, in today’s world it’s the wealthy who wander, who enjoy the luxury of constant travel. Pocket synthesizers like the OP-1, with their piano-key interface, bring the modern parlor’s essential instrument and vibe with them. The elevated price point alludes to the comparable cost of a computer or smartphone, the essential tools of today’s well-salaried tech workers who oftentimes prefer to identify as digital nomads; engineers-at-large.
Where the piano was buoyed by the spread of published sheet music, pocket synthesizers like the OP-1 are buoyed by the spread of music streaming online. In the 19th century, virtuosity on the piano was expressed by dexterity of hand, epitomized by the wild compositions of Franz Liszt whose immense fandom was propelled by the young aristocratic women whose education in piano music was essential to demonstrating their viability as a bride. Pressured to perform classics on keys for attainment, they felt a passion in Liszt’s long hair, long hands, and unrestrained musical styles that leapt out of the sheet music in front of them and inspired a sound of youth pushing against tradition that defined the music of the times.
The sound of the OP-1? LoFi. Virtuosity on the pocket synthesizer is expressed not by dexterity of hand, but dexterity of mind. With a radio antennae and audio inputs, the OP-1 invites the user to use its sampler and sequencer to capture, slice, and remix the sounds of their broadened horizons. Set to the beats of its drum machine, the resulting music is often a smart mix of juxtapositions that results in global sounds perfectly suitable for coding, studying, or soundtracking an intercontinental flight.
The current star of the LoFi world, like Liszt, represents a pushing against tradition of a different kind. And they’re not human. They’re an AI named ‘Lofi Girl’, a cartoon image of a girl beyond time studying in front of a window in a city beyond place. With headphones on, she represents at once the ultimate digital nomad and the perfect image of the aspirational, unattainable, intelligent bride. Meditative LoFi beats set the score for her life, broadcast endlessly to over 14.5M subscribers on YouTube and 7M on Spotify. Some of the songs are made by humans, some by AI. Many songs are made on the OP-1. Many songs are sampled, remixed, and represented by the OP-1 in a modern cycle that ships sound at 100x the speed of the printing press.
Unlike the piano, the parlor of LoFi in your pocket is a sound that travels through headphones and through the digital domain. It’s a silent disco that does less to move the body and more to move the mind. As a soundtrack to the digital age, it stirs the pot of an invisible maelstrom of culture that unlike dance halls, juke joints, and get downs happens entirely online. Perhaps like a pied piper, technology is leading the way in its dance with music; ushering humanity into the digital, disembodied domain.
Sitting in our seats on trains, planes, and remote work destinations, our bodies are moving less but traveling more. As we spin and turn toward the sounds of this new age, it would seem this is a place we haven’t been. Sitting down to put headphones and now headsets on, we’re dropping out of the earthly dance to tune in. It’s a sound of expanding horizons. Is it freedom we’re hearing in the music? A romantic pushing against boundaries? Or a reversal of Pandora’s box that invites our spirits to step on in?
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