This thread has been a nice review and good reminder to keep my OT skills polished. I will get into different pieces of gear and sometimes forget about OT, but it really can do anything and is the best piece of gear I own. I recommend jumping in and getting your hands dirty. I was scared of mine for a long time. It was intimidating at first but now I know it can do just about anything I can dream up. Practice something on it every day, even if just for 20 minutes or so. You’ll build up some sweet skills.
EDIT: I really want to get into sending midi notes to my Moogs (GM and Sub25) and recording that back into the OT. Haven’t tried it yet. If anyone has any tips to get that going…
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Yeah. Yesterday I picked it up after quite a long time and was happy to see this thread being created almost immediately after that session. It made me even more inspired to start learning it again. The OT is so vast in it’s capabilities and in many ways only one’s imagination and attention span is the limit.
I was reminded pretty fast how powerful and insane device it is.
My biggest problem with it has been that I tend to repeat pretty much similar techniques with it rather than watch a tutorial I haven’t already seen and follow them step by step.
Sometimes I find it a bit exhausting mentally but in the end it usually rewards the efforts greatly.
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I watched them early too and still got something out of them but I think it would have been more efficient to have waited a bit. Who knows for sure though, I can’t redo it 
The important thing is to watch this one over and over while crying in a fetal position
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When first bought my OT I purchased a tutorial series that was a great help getting started, though it only covers the very basics. EZ Bot is awesome, The Messy Desk is a very beginner friendly youtube channel. Max Marco for sure.
Easy to get overwhelmed by wanting to know all the tricks, but I’m not sure there’s any way to know all the tricks. You can own one for many years and still unearth some stuff you’d never thought of before. That’s a beautiful thing
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Theres the rub. Even muscle memory struggles. If you use it all the time then thats okay.
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Yup…
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I started on the OT last summer.
My advice: take it slow. Just a drum beat at first.
Then plug your dfam in there, to put some effect to it.
Just with this you already have a world to go about.
Start using the slider to move from one sound to the other.
Often I jam just with the OT for a while. When I host events, for instance, I just go with the OT and keep it really low-fi. Nothing connected, it’s quite limiting but then I can explore how to create melody, minimizing a sample to a few milliseconds so it works like a wavetable synth.
The OT can be many thing and you’ll have to discover what it is for you. Is it more an instrument like a sample based synth? Or more like a sampler, or simply playing long backing track? Or a looper? Or simply like a mixer with 2 synth coming in?
When I read someone not liking the OT what I mostly see is that they didn’t find what the OT is for them yet, since it can be anything it will become frustrating at one point.
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Connect your OT Midi In+Out to one of your synth Midi Out+In
With Midi learn, you’ll be able to setup your CC quickly on OT midi tracks, given you set up the right midi channel.
With Direct connect you’ll be able to plock on OT midi track the motions of the pots of your synth
You can setup several midi tracks on OT with the same midi channel and different CC, and record several CC automations at the same time (and use LFOs!!)
Literally bringing the Elektron sequencer to your synth.
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A very newbie question: which audio cables do you use for the OT? I’ve read about TRS/TS/mono/stereo/balanced/unbalanced but I’m still quite confused.
TRS for balanced and TS for unbalanced.
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Yes, but TRS can be mono or stereo, right? Both mono and stereo TRS are balanced? Or only mono TRS can be balanced?
It’s better to use TRS, right? Any brand to suggest?
TRS can be mono balanced or stereo unbalanced. If you want to use balanced, you’ll need two TRS cables. Balanced cables are less likely to pick up all kinds of noise etc.
I usually use unbalanced because I haven’t had any issues with them.
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Today at work I was reading about the parts from the Merlin’s polished guide and I don’t know why it has seemed somehow complicated to me. It makes sense in many ways.
The concept of having many patterns saved on let’s say part one, and then making changes to some of the sound settings, is affecting the sound of the other patterns as well when you re-save the part one with the altered settings, is a cool design choice.
It’s great you’re understanding it. I think I understand it. I’d like to clear up some uncertainty I have with what you said:
Patterns are not saved “on” a part. Patterns “use” or “are associated with” or “are linked to” a Part. The Part is a “client” of the Pattern. Maybe you mean the same with “pattern is saved on a part”… but it wasn’t clear to me.
Also… if you alter the Part, all the Patterns which use that Part will use the sounds defined by the Part whether you save or not. I don’t think the saving is a necessary step.
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Oh good!! Thank you!! I meant it the way you said it but somehow messed it up.
It’s convenient that if you have lots of patterns, you don’t have to make the same changes to all of them, when using parts.
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I think saving a (or multiple) part(s) is mostly benificial in a live situation where you want to have a baseline to return to after lots of tweaking
I see parts as an analog to kits but then expanded with machine, effect, env & lfo settings PLUS 16 scenes, which is awesome
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With the difference that they are limited to one bank (even though they can be copied, of course…).
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All the suggestions above are great. I particularly liked EZBOTs videos (as that matched the workflow I was aiming at). For the specific task of making and editing slices, I found this video useful:
But then saw this trick where you edit your slices by going into slice mode… What??? So easy!
(And I learned you can stop recording by hitting the appropriate REC button again. Obvious, of course, now that I know…)
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Thank you to all for the advices, infos, tips, links, videos etc…
I am really grateful.
Have been “eating, drinking and sleeping” OT for the last week.
Also reading the manual, focusing on particular chapters (Machines, Parts…).
Really looking forward to receiving the beast next Monday.
Will let you know @Riuozami 
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OK so I came across this tutorial/tips video regarding OT’s folders hierarchy.
I am pretty picky about my library’s organisation and as opposed to what is written in the manual, I am much more in favor of having samples in each project’s folder.
What is your take on that?
Edit: also, apart from the samples themselves, is there a particular path where each project’s setup (machines, patterns, parts, sets etc…) is stored?
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