Pick your limitations

A sampler with 64 megabytes of memory, and why constraints beat choosing a niche.

Quirky, on purpose

Teenage Engineering products get a lot of shit for their “quirkiness.” But their design choices put very real limits on how you can use a device. Those limits become a burden if you’re looking for a fix-all solution. They also become a burden if you have no creative spirit to work around them, or rather, to work with them.

To me, working with the constraints in their instruments feels like exploration. The exploration is well defined, because not every vista can be visited.

Megabytes, not gigabytes

The best example is the EP-133. Its internal memory for samples is 64 megabytes. Yes, megabytes. Not gigabytes, not terabytes.

As a producer you’ll know that’s virtually nothing. Sample libraries like Kontakt easily run into the hundreds of gigabytes. I loaded exactly 10 Splice loops onto the device before I ran out of space. A simple track uses at least 30 samples, and I swap them out for the next one.

Record, don’t load

So how do you use a device like that, without its constraints being constraints? How do they become a guiding thread instead? My solution is simple: don’t load samples onto it. Record them in, from your surroundings or your phone, through a 3.5mm cable or the built-in microphone.

Because of the space limit, I also end up recording my finished work out to another device: my phone, an audio interface, or a sampler with more memory. It sounds like a burden. In reality, this unorthodox route to the end goal sparks heaps of inspiration along the way.

Blinders

The limits force you to come up with your own solutions, and those solutions are creative acts in themselves. I never used to sample from my phone because it felt like a hassle. Now I have no choice, and it’s amazing. I’m considering sampling things I would normally NEVER even consider: the intro sound of my favourite mobile game, things people say on podcasts, whatever I find that’s of use.

The rule seems to be: limitations make you go down certain avenues. You approach the solution space wearing blinders, like a horse.

Constraints define the space

This matters in life in general. Wherever you set constraints, you start to define the solution space. That makes you more pragmatic, and it leads to better decisions within those limits.

Having every option is never good. You never get to a decision, you flip-flop between candidates, or you want to try them all. With constraints, some options are simply ruled out. Out of the picture. Inaccessible.

Not a niche

People say “pick your niche,” especially in startups. I’d argue against that. I’d say: pick your limitations.

Starting a clothing brand? Decide what you’re not going to make. What are your anti-characteristics? Which fabrics don’t you use, which colours don’t you use, which countries don’t you do business in, and who is your customer not? You’ll end up in a niche anyway. Not for the sake of the niche, but because your anti-characteristics guided you to a better-defined creative end.

So my advice today: set your limitations, and set them often.

First written in August 2025.