Among the various musical gadgets that I have are a few Pocket Operators (or PO for short). These are tiny—TINY!—litte musical instruments that look like someone was building a calculator prototype but just gave up trying and thought “Yeah, that looks good enough, SHIP IT!” But what they lack in functionality they more than make up for in character.
What they really offer over almost any other instrument, though, is portability. It’s literally there in the name: you can pop one of these in your pocket and have it to hand any time you find yourself with a few minutes to spare. My favourite of these POs is the PO-33, a mini sampler that can record through its built-in mic or via line-in.
A couple of years ago I took one of these on holiday with me, as well as a small battery-powered analogue synth (an UNO). With a combination of some line-in recorded synth sounds and ‘found sounds’ (locals chatting, machinery being operating by workers etc), I ended up creating 5 tracks on this little device that I was happy with. It was almost 6 tracks. Almost …
At some point in the holiday, over a meal, I let my son have a play around with the device. I thought he’d press a few buttons to play some sounds and would quickly get bored (he’s not into music like I am). After he’d had a play, he handed it back, at which point I realised that the track that I had been working on was doomed. A catastrophic error, you might say.
Somehow he had managed to work out how to record a sample. In doing so, he had replaced one of the samples that was previously there and in heavy use in the track. And that’s why it ended up sounding like I’d just walked into a cattery.
Rather than ditch it, I thought I’d take a recording of it for posterity. I called it ‘Meow That Hurt’. And it really does hurt the ears! If you can get past the intro, at some point you’ll hear other elements of the track that hint at what it might have otherwise become, had the cat noises not destroyed it.
At some point I will share all of the Pocket Operator tracks that I created (that did not suffer from cat-based sample transplants). Sure, they are rough around the edges, but that’s all part of the charm!
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