Blush Response calling out Elektron Manuals

yup, i was thinking 50+ years from now. wrestling the bias and steering proactively are key to protect the youth. thinking more foundational check ins to replace exams rather than handing over to a robot for life guidance.

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Probably more like 3-5 years from now. It costs under $1k to fine-tune a GPT-3.5 quality model.

Probably best to move the AI/ML discussion to a better thread though.

sounds like some kind of glitch genreā€™d doom metal, fishnet shirts and black eyeliner kind of operation

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Donā€™t threaten me with a good time!

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Iā€™m dying :joy:

No offense, but if Elektron manuals are ā€œfineā€ why do all Synthdawg Synth Books exist and prosper :vulcan_salute: for OT, DT, DN & A4 :robot:?

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Because theyā€™re the Cliffs Notes for Elektron manuals :joy_cat:

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Thereā€™s always room for alternate versions, which might work better for some people. My experience with these is mixed.

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There are a lot of topics that are plainly stated but that I prefer getting another take on that may be in more line with my way of thinking, is there only one way to put forth any complicated subject?

Alternative manuals speak to concepts and different workflows, or slightly more pedantic and literal persons like myself who want to be presented with a single, unofficial way to get what I want. I fear the dead trees to print an official Elektron manual with the level of detail from all the other guides/cheat sheets :smiley:

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MPC Bible comes to mind. MPC manuals are brutal!

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Iā€™m so relieved to hear Iā€™m not the only one who found the MPC impossible to learn. Coming from the extremely visual blinking lights of Elektron and Korg gear, the MPC felt so obscure, and the manual was no help at all.

In my experience, Korg manuals are often hilariously bad, but the machines themselves are so easy to use it doesnā€™t really matter. Those little pointy-hand icons they were using for a while there were such a mess.

Iā€™ve been wrestling with Rolandā€™s SP404 MK2 manual this month and I find it completely unusable. Poorly organized as well as written. Which often makes Cmd+F useless. Missing a lot of info and, as others have stated, split into two documents for no reason. WTF.

I find the Elektron manuals hard to understand at times, but only for things where the concept itself confuses me. Like, Iā€™ve had the DT for 5 years and the Sound Pool didnā€™t make sense to me until 1.3 came out. Not so much how it works, but what its purpose is.

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They canā€™t type a triangle so M = dominant 7. m= minor. Maj = major. All you have know is m= minor and its pretty simple to figure the rest out.

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I havent read a better manual than Elektron.
Jesus is there even a manual for things like Roland or just a quick start sheet bullshit.

The question wasnā€™t meant too serious. Iā€™m pretty sure Elektron manuals are fine, seriously.
Cheat sheets exist forever. Alternative manuals thrive if manufacturers update their products constantly, which is a good thing.
Synthdawg even wrote the Deluge Guidebook which I bought twice for different FW iterations.
I also own the MPC Bible. I even bought video courses for some of my machines.
Was just curious if good arguments will be made or if people even didnā€™t RTFM itfp.

I prefer manuals that include musical examples of the described functions and are written from humans that make music over just unmusical, theoretical explanations of just the functions.

I enjoy old Mackie or E-MU manuals a lot. A well written quickstart guide often is the perfect basis for a cheat sheet.

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You know why I like this forum? I like it because we got a bunch of freaks in here reminiscing about manuals from by gone days. Talking about them as if they were the greatest stories ever told, and not being afraid to do so. My people.

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and keeping it up for 3 days is impressive, puttin viagra outta business.

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The opposite is true with AKAI ā€¦ the MPC-manual is a mess

Yeah, i responded seriously but did not expect that you were fully so.

Ideally of course, i agree with you.

I happily pay for more exercise-heavy manuals.

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image

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I think itā€™s just a matter of some people habitually asking questions of others before pausing to consider how to find the information themselves. Thereā€™s heaps of us out there who canā€™t help ourselves from diving into a manual of gear we donā€™t own to help answer these questions.

Our dishwasher at home has a sliding clean/dirty sign on the front because we were getting tired of certain household members opening the dishwasher and then shouting across the room to ask if the dishes inside were clean or dirty. It takes a second to figure out on your own but the asking almost becomes a reflex.

Anyway, thereā€™s heaps of manuals that either inadequately or skip explaining certain things altogether, so questions are always welcome. We tend to forget how inexperienced we all were with this stuff at some point.

Thereā€™s only so far technical concepts and language can be simplified to accommodate a wider audience. Iā€™m no expert on it, but occasionally at work we have people rewrite our stuff to aim for an X reading level. It just happens that often the result ends up incorrect. Itā€™s not to say we shouldnā€™t try though.

Iā€™m personally really comfortable with dense text and long sentences, but I need a bigger picture understanding first to unlock it. I remember one job I had being stepped through a massively long winded process that had to be done when upgrading printers that were connected to some proprietary software programs. It wasnā€™t obvious at the time (although it sounds like it should have been from this explanation) that these steps were just telling the software to stop pointing at one printer and point to the new one, it was just go to this screen, change this, etc. The thing was, when it wasnā€™t clear what the procedure was doing, you had to follow it laboriously. When it clicked that it was just changing the printer destination, I could do it without instructions.

I feel a bit the same way about music gear manuals. I can find what I need to know and follow the instructions fairly easily. The trouble is I donā€™t always know what I need to know. Or the manual will tell me how to do something without telling me what the practical uses for it are.

One of my favourite manuals is for the Yamaha QY700. It has a whole section where it steps you through sequencing a basic song that uses most of the main techniques and functions you need to know. Iā€™d love all manuals to have this, but itā€™s probably a bit redundant with video tutorials nowadays.

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