Blush Response calling out Elektron Manuals

The warm glow and gentle cracking of a good book burning warms my cockles.

2 Likes

I completely agree.
I’ve never understood the RTFM comments.
For one not everyone has good reading comprehension, two reading a manual up front to learn seems counter productive. It’s after you’ve learned to navigate around that the manuals become useful for me.
The Elektron manual terminology is definitely complex for simple things.
Parts for the OT comes to mind.

I do find Elektron boxes simple to grasp though.
The OT gets a lot of flack for being too complex.
I find it extremely simple and gets more so over time.
In relation to Live Lite it’s much easier to learn, but very much a similar idea.
All of their boxes remind me of Ableton native instruments broken out into a piece of hardware.

1 Like

+1 for this. Although I’m not into industrial/noise that much I really dig the reviews from Blush Response because he makes the module work for what he wants. He doesn’t just make some insipid lift music

1 Like

Most of us took it as such :smiley:

But y’know, internet and tone and all that…

Theoreticals about learning and pedagogy are not really geared towards those developing these standards at any national scale sadly.

I appreciate being able to ask stupid music theory questions, but they also… lie. A lot. Boldly.

The agent will explicitly tell me things that aren’t true in order to seem knowledgeable and not like a data sockpuppet.

If scaled to children, this is not going to be used to instruct on anything but a specific form of Nationalist Realism without the additional lens of decent teachers.

It’s an interesting tool for people to play with the bounds of, but it’s not a great replacement for anything beyond additional focused tutoring in areas it’s been explicitly trained on with good data.

I don’t have a ton of confidence that the people who want to “revolutionize learning” are going to do anything but privatize knowledge and pretend that GPT bullshitting is a proper substitute for instructors.

9 Likes

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.

2 Likes

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 genre’d doom metal, fishnet shirts and black eyeliner kind of operation

3 Likes

Don’t threaten me with a good time!

8 Likes

I’m dying :joy:

No offense, but if Elektron manuals are “fine” why do all Synthdawg Synth Books exist and prosper :vulcan_salute: for OT, DT, DN & A4 :robot:?

1 Like

Because they’re the Cliffs Notes for Elektron manuals :joy_cat:

1 Like

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

6 Likes

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:

5 Likes

MPC Bible comes to mind. MPC manuals are brutal!

4 Likes

I’m so relieved to hear I’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 doesn’t really matter. Those little pointy-hand icons they were using for a while there were such a mess.

I’ve been wrestling with Roland’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, I’ve had the DT for 5 years and the Sound Pool didn’t make sense to me until 1.3 came out. Not so much how it works, but what its purpose is.

1 Like

They can’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.

1 Like

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 wasn’t meant too serious. I’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 didn’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.

1 Like

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.

12 Likes

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

3 Likes