What are your strategies for learning a new piece of hardware? I often find that I will watch a tutorial and try to follow along, but often will forget more advanced techniques, leading to expertise plateaus. Do you write down notes in a text file or a physical notebook? How do you remember the finer points of working with your hardware?
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just keep playing and someday, somehow it clicks.
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I read the manual and sort of tweak along with the functions as I go. because I figure that’s why it’s included in the first place.
For the most part a lot of these hardware synth type things are mostly self explanatory especially if you already have experience with other hardware and synthesis in general.
As far as anything more in-depth I’ll use a combination of what’s stated previously along with YouTube/online resources.
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There’s always a learning curve for me. Similar to @Jiro I read the manufacturer’s manual. I also try to find a manual written by an enthusiast. I’m learning the OP-1 in a similar way to the MPC2000XL I got 3/4 years ago. For that, after a little playing around and not getting what I wanted out of it I spent a dull but determined weekend reading a 200 page ‘beat making on the MPC2000XL’ manual. All that info sort of stayed in my head so that as I made music or had ideas I knew where to go for what I wanted to achieve. My limitations on that piece of kit are what my music is limited to. I get what I want out of it and I’m happy I spent that time boning up
I’m still learning the OP-1 but only one or two months (haha, only right…) into it I feel like I can get stuck in and I know how to get out of it what I thought I might going in, with a few tweaks to the assumptions I had made about the machine prior to the purchase. I read the user manual from TE and I got the pdf of the guidebook on synthdawg.
But more importantly, in addition I’ve spent more time on this forum than on the OP-1 itself. Thanks to this forum I have resolved any little issues and got the iter synth and hidden filter. I feel very lucky to have come in with this recorded experience and development here in front of us, so big thanks to everyone on the forum
Reading manual + practicing.
Then when I’m comfortable with the gear I watch some videos for further workflow ideas…
I read the manual, watch tutorials, try to create something every day, and another good, not so obvious resource is to read various reviews (a lot of reviewers will talk about what it can and can’t do). I will also ask questions on forums if I’ve looked and looked and scoured the internet and still can’t find an answer. Synthdawg also publishes his notebook series which is very good. If I have the printer ink, I will print them out and write my notes in there.
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