Bad Gear - TE Choir

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Welcome to Bad Gear, the show about the world's most hated audio tools. Today we are going to talk about the Teenage Engineering Choir. Is this collection of wooden dolls just a piece of interior design for oversaturated hipsters singing songs from the public domain or is it an actual musical instrument with its compatibility to standard bluetooth midi devices and the Teenage Engineering OP-1 Field?

Thanks to Klangfarbe for lending me both, an OP-1 field and an entire ensemble of the Teenage Engineering CH-8 Choir dolls:

Chapters:
00:00 Intro tune
01:09 Overview Bad Gear - TE Choir
01:28 Presentation of the Dolls (feel free to skip)
02:10 Standalone Mode, Control via Bluetooth Midi / OP-1 Field
02:39 How does it work?
03:19 Start/Stop a Song
03:39 Midi Control, Articulation
04:16 Limitations, Bugs, Issues, Latency
04:49 How it ACTUALLY works in practice
05:01 What else??? (Github, Pricing, Thanks)
05:30 Hate
05:54 Jam 1 (Sleepy Anime Music)
06:45 Jam 2 (Classic Bad Gear Jam)
07:07 Finale (Art House)
07:37 Verdict

[eddievanheinous]

Not being a TE fanboy, I've never heard of these things, and initially thought you made this up to troll the company. I have no words.

[johnlamb]

I could never afford these, but that's fine with me. I'm really focused on dollless production these days.

[jboulderct]

Waited the whole video for a Hainbach reference and was not dissappointed! All hail King Florian, for handling the demon choir so we don't EVER have to.

[nickthompson]

That jam at the end was pure brilliance. Bravo…

[troubadour]

By far one of the funniest episodes you've done, but then the subject of this episode provides lots of inspiration. 😀

[AlexSeesing]

These sounds exactly like the TTS voice synth in FL Studio since the dawn of time. I'm impressed you were even able to make a (short) tune out of these with clips for this video. Hats off to you dear sir!

[SarahMaywalt]

I would like to thank TE for becoming a parody of themselves before I fell for their siren's song.

[iancain]

Dude you make these things sound awesome. I'm blown away.

[iNuchalHead]

After pushing and finally breaking the definition of "bad, " AudioPliz sets his sights on "gear."

[mattkaz]

This is insanity on so many levels, but the scripting of this video is pure gold. Nice one.

[JoeJohnston-taskboy]

This video answers the question: Is there gear so bad even Florian needs to break out a sampler to use it?

[kevinwhite]

general idea of singing synth: pretty awesome. reality of singing synth: hard to use. Teenage Engineering implementation of it: maybe the best example of actual "Bad Gear" we've seen in a long time!

[tomalaerts]

Despite its limitations it is more fun and cool than I expected. Though should be literally 10% of the price and bluetooth midi latency…
But, half-baked as it is, I also find it a creative, fresh and even poetic arty product. Love the off the beaten track thinking behind them.
It may not have its place as a proper audio tool, yet I am happy that it exists!

[Wagoo]

Ironically this is legitimately the best actual review of these dead tree creepbots I've seen 👻

🎃Happy Halloween!🎃

[tallmccartneymusic]

Omg I love this so much. They were never going to make money on this and they made it anyway. You gotta respect a company that doesn't give a f**k and makes an actual passion product.

[thefrankly]

I’ve come back again and again to listen to you last song. It’s the best I’ve heard you make, and you have so many great songs. Say what you want about the dolls, they are so unique and provided a novel synth experience in your song.

[MrNamaikisaru]

😂I’m not sure how you’ll ever top this. Have we reached peak bad gear? Absolutely awesome work! The last jam was great but I was too busy laughing my ass off to appreciate it properly.

[smuglydepressed]

They really made Delay Lama into physical gear.

[jooei]

This episode is just so perfect for this channel, please make full version of Deck The Halls please!

[pontram]

Thank you Florian for another highlight of your productive ingenuity. May the Choir be with you 🙂 (TE should thank you with a complete set).