OP-XY 212bpm 5/4 time

I read about “Hit Em” a genre of music that was conceived in a dream by Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos.

There is quite a funny story about how he had a dream in which a girl told him about a genre of music that was in 5/4 time at 212bpm that had crunched out drums.

So, I thought I’d give it a go to see if I could make a ‘Hit Em’ tune on the Teenage Engineering OP-XY.

For those unfamiliar with 212bpm… this is a pretty fast tempo…. but what you get with the 5/4 beat at that speed is a kind of off kilter skipping feel, which is surprisingly fun to play around with.

My ‘crunched up’ drums were made by putting distortion on send FX 1 instead of the stock delay, which is not something I would generally do, but it definitely adds a little something extra.

It’s a pretty fun musical experiment, and definitely has reaffirmed to me that imposing limitations and constraints can be a really valuable creative exercise that pushes you away from your default-mode of operation.

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