A polished version of Merlin's OT guide here

Elektron Gear Octatrack
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As you should all be aware, a few years back @Merlin wrote an excellent guide on how to approach the complexity of the Octatrack. It certainly helped me get to grips with the relationship between patterns and parts, which I think trip up a lot of new users. Consider it essential reading alongside the user manual.

After reading it again recently, I thought it could be tidied up to enhance readability. I’ve left the meat of the content alone and simply corrected typos and altered the style somewhat. I’ve run it past Merlin, who gave me the go ahead. Props also to @enryo, who gave me the idea by making a version of the guide that was optimised for Kindle.
Here’s the PDF, and a word version too in case you want to tweak it yourself.

Some Thoughts on Elektron’s Octatrack by Merlin (edited by Thermo).pdf (1.1 MB)
Some Thoughts on Elektron’s Octatrack by Merlin (edited by Thermo).docx (1.5 MB)

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Great work, thanks.

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Nice one, thank you

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This is amazing! Can’t believe I haven’t picked this up sooner - thanks to both for the effort. As a new Octa user this is blowing a lot of the smoke away, really well written.

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Thank you :thumbsup:

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:wink:

Thanks though, this look great!

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Hahaha :joy: For all the time I spent fixing Merlin’s typos, I didn’t notice my own! Thanks.

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Nice work…
I’ve noticed in the original and still here in section 4.2 it reads:
“Another flex machine lives on track five and was assigned to sliced2”
But the graphic shows flex5 to be assigned to sliced1…
I believe the graphic is correct in context to the example but the initial line should read:
“Another flex machine lives on track five and was assigned to sliced1” :thinking:

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Thx for this.

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Thanks for the feedback. I’ve updated both the PDF and Word files so that line now reads “Another flex machine lives on track five and was assigned to sliced1”
I’ve also hyperlinked the headings in the TOC.

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Thanks!

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Bump because I wanted to say thank you for this… Now jumping into it after finishing up the MKII manual to see what else I can learn! :nerd_face:

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Thank you all for this really helpful guide :blush:

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Thanks for reminding me - I’m gonna read it again too :slight_smile:

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More stuff to read while I’m having breakfast in the morning. Thank you.

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It’s a great guide, but I wish there was a part 2 to it (maybe a Mk II!) exploring more of the options. Maybe I should think about really getting into the guts of the machine and writing something over the next few months!

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Would be rad to see an update regarding the use of the other machines a bit more.

Would this slowly turn into a sort of peer reviewed open source User guide?

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I agree that it’d be awesome to see an update to the guide. As Merlin is the original author, I think it’d be best to open discussion with him about any substantial changes/updates to his document.
However, if anyone else has ideas on how it can be improved and what more can be added, then I’m happy to collaborate and cast a technical writer’s eye over it.

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Even a wiki or github documentation could be useful.

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Thank you very much Thermo and also Merlin for publishing this guide, a great help…much appreciated

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