It’s fascinating trying to play any kind of tune on the pads of this device when in “keys” mode. I have the sibling model and find it almost impossible to produce anything that sounds “normal”. I don’t really mind — it’s hardly
meant to be a piano after all — and it certainly makes for an interesting phenomenon. It’s also one I think the designers nod to: the pads can be retuned to different scales suggesting a complete break from any kind of equal temperament octaves.
While I haven’t had the chance to ride one, I imagine it is the same feeling as riding a joke bike where the headset is geared to invert the sense of the handlebars (left is right, right is left) or using a pair of circlip pliers where squeezing the handles opens the jaws rather than closing them.
Alas, Teenage Engineering really set themselves a high bar with the OP-1 and I still don’t think they’ve ever come close to it. The OP-Z just didn’t compete without a screen, the pocket operators (and the K.O. II and Medieval, which have the same interface) have a much less intuitive design language, their IKEA lights are controlled by colour coded, identically shaped controls on the back, etc.
They are all lovely products at good price points that do their jobs delightfully but when they came from the same studio as the OP-1 it is like comparing a Pininfarina Peugeot 205 with a Pininfarina Ferrari 250.