Personally I prefer a challenge per month, maybe better to share things at the same time, but I’m not against the freedom of choice.
What about a planning per month with the freedom to choose any challenge order?
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As we already talked about it, I’d like to start with radio / tv recordings !
What about to finish the science at the end of the year, to start another one at the beginning of next year! 
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I’ll be cramming everything the last night of the year. See you then!
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I can certainly see the appeal of this approach, it gives a sense of anticipation and a deadline, but here are some points that I’d counter:
- It doesn’t differentiate between this and the usual science lab approach too much.
- It doesn’t as easily allow for some of the ideas I had in mind.
- Each challenge/section will have an alloted working time.
- It gives people the chance to peruse the whole idea and set/plan their own schedule
- It makes it a bit simpler for me not to miss something/forget
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Question: Is this all meant to be a
- “callenge in the sprit of a contest” or a
- “challenge to find interesting new ways in a scientific way”?
I would be interested in the scientific way. TBH, are mandatory missions the best idea to find or explore new ideas? I can tell from my experience that best ideas are often prevented, if the researcher is bound to thematic limitations. What about “thinking outside of the box”?
Just my thoughts 
The thematic limitations are required to get us thinking outside the box, or at least that is the aim.
For example:
If a challenge requires use of certain samples or ideas that you don’t initially like then the idea is to get over that so that you can make it into an end result that you do like.
Definitely not a contest except with yourself Yes a challenge to find interesting new ways in a scientific way, with one of the benefits being breaking out of our own patterns.
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I see … let’s wait and see, which missions you are planning. To achieve, what you are describing, is a real hard job. If you point the contributions to 12 directions, all possible directions minus 12 might be lost
BTW … success by “thinking outside the box” was always only possible by breaking the rules, ignoring thematc limitations, or changing old habits … that’s what thinking outside the box is about, isn’t it?
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No problem, do as you wish! 
The Twelve Labours of Octatrackus, Episode 1 : The Final Frontier
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That’s a good example … which has been the baseline of many contests and generated many interesting and exciting outputs.
But would this generally inspire new methods of using the OT, which have never seen before?
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The spirit of the original post is awesome. It suggests: go deep with the OT! Embrace its limitations! Teach yourself something new! I feel like this should be open, flexible, experimental. There are quite a few restrictions laid out from the beginning, and that is inspiring, but already quite focussed in a way.
Perhaps the goal could be to complete at least one experiment per month, either one suggested by @darenager or one of your own choosing, which could be inspired by other community creations arising from this project. This will allow those of us who crave freedom to follow our own bliss, contribute and share our processes based on wherever we’re at with the OT, and no one will ever be stuck for ideas because there will always be good quality curated suggestions to work with.
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I’ll definitely be following the adventure, but I’m already in the midst of a similar challenge and have been for the last 4 months. Still nothing right now except 1 single cycle waveform and 1 hi-hat sample chain and the Octatrack - right now I’ve got about 20 minutes of material. I expect I’ll have to bring a few more samples in for some different directions with my last two parts. I’ll be developing for at least another 4 months for some shows in July and hopefully then recording some of it maybe for another few months.
It’s been a great exercise and has definitely forced me to understand parts a lot more. Still not sequencing any patterns so all the sequencer details with organizing patterns into songs is beyond me, and I don’t imagine I’ll ever delve into that aspect.
The OT is deep and this kind of exercise will hopefully force people to dive deeper. Look forward to seeing what discoveries that people make
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For my part, I’m so behind the game on even the fundamentals of Octatrack that I was envisioning spending the first month just coming to grips with the machine, then the second month as a kind of “collection” phase where I would ingest as many samples as possible… I only figured I would be “ready” by month three…
To that end I’m somewhat ambivalent about a monthly goal or exercise.
- I’ve already been formulating a direction for the musical output of this project, one which will be hard enough to pull off even without additional constraint.
- At the same time, we’re talking about a whole year here. There are bound to be some months where inspiration is slim. A monthly goal would be fantastic in this cases.
I think of it like “conversation starters” with your Octatrack
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At this rate, the entire year could get wasted by debating what the guidelines for the year should be 
Personally, I like @darenager’s guidelines as stated and don’t see how this could restrict anyone from doing whatever the heck they want on the side, or have different threads with contests and challenges too.
I think 12 objectives which can be completed in random orders is pretty cool as certain tasks come more naturally to some than others…maybe you might need to complete task 8 to even understand how to tackle task 3, for example.
As an OT owner of just 5 months, my selfish interest would be to learn more in smaller, easier to understand chunks and discuss this with others as we gain understanding. I realize this could have less appeal to more expert level users more interested in seeing how much more complex they can be than each other. That doesn’t really interest me so much.
All this to say, this could be a very great opportunity and @darenager seems to have a good handle on how to do a fun science lab that could appeal to a very wide range of users. My vote is we let him set this up according to his instincts and start making music and discussion
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Thanks for all the input everyone - certainly helpful to have lots of viewpoints, I will try to get a good balance of ideas and also some options within the concept to ensure that a balance between restrictions and freedom can be chosen. I think that I’ll start drafting out the basic framework this evening.
I want it to be as useful for a beginner as a veteran, so with this in mind I will include some hints and pointers where appropriate, I will also include contextual resources and links where possible/required, and a bunch of abstract text which can be used as side missions or where appropriate incorpated into the main 12.
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Ive been meaning to remix my record https://soundcloud.com/tailgunner-1/sets/igma-passing using only the octatrack. If i get the time it would fit well with a systematic approach to OT…at its its simplest it would mean making the OT make the tracks sound better, reprogramming rythm and tempo, using the OT to split frequencies in recorded material etc…LFO designer to rearrange whole tracks…? All nauts welcome to the tracks if you feel they could make science material.
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Just listened to some these tracks and really like em!
Thank you! Means a lot - im checking yours now and they have an impressive and authentic sound. I personally like a lot about the zigma tracks, but feel many could do with more grit and variation. They are made only with the A4 and Nord Drum 2, drum through the AH.
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I can see how it would be fun to do an OT remix/rethink on your tunes. It’s also nice to know they’re terrific to listen to just the way they are as well
I plan on remixing a lot of my stuff as well…I’ve mostly just been busting out ideas. At some point I want to take my favorite ones and remix them to be more like ‘songs’ than ‘jams’
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Just to throw my own view in here with regards to the 12 mission briefs… I’m not so keen as I think the core idea and the spirit of it is a great limitation. I’m here to learn my OT, contribute ideas I come across and learn from others on the journey. Plus, I’ve got some particular ideas I want to achieve with writing an album which the original limitations allow me to achieve. Maybe the 12 mission briefs wouldn’t limit hinder but maybe they would - will wait and see what @darenager suggests.
Personally, I really like the compromise @handed suggests as it would allow me to do them if i can but don’t feel overly hamstrung if they aren’t working out.
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- It makes it possible to join later this year (for example: I’ll probably buy an OT in the next few months)
BTW, wouldn’t it be a good idea to center at least a few of the 12 missions around some specific usage scenarios of the OT? (resampling / mangle live input / crossfader and scenes / midi loopback tricks etc.pp.)
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