Do you RTFM?

[Michael L]

you can have a YouTube description with a sort of table of contents with clickable timecodes.

Good idea. Might be good to do that while using Spiral or Photosounder on a "real" project. WilliamK's videos during his WusikStation8 beta showed how the different features worked together as he produced small projects. Also consider a how-to series by topic like the dozen Alchemy videos.

[A_SN]

you can have a YouTube description with a sort of table of contents with clickable timecodes.

Good idea. Might be good to do that while using Spiral or Photosounder on a "real" project. WilliamK's videos during his WusikStation8 beta showed how the different features worked together as he produced small projects. Also consider a how-to series by topic like the dozen Alchemy videos.

Yeah, when I make a rewrite of Photosounder I want to make a video or series of videos detailing the creation of a whole track. I wanted to do that with the current version of Photosounder but figured it would be complicated and unpractical enough that no one would realistically be able to follow that. That's because the current Photosounder was meant as a Photoshop for sound, but guess what Photoshop isn't too good for making whole tracks . So next one will be more DAW-like so I'll be able to show that.

The current Spiral video I'm working on has a part where I briefly show how I analyse a track and then play it, the problem with Spiral is you can't really make a whole video where you show the whole process, since it's some note-by-note transcription thing, you quickly get the idea, no need to show the half hour it takes you to transcribe a whole track.

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

RTFM? VSTs have manuals? Who would have thought!

I RTFM as the last resort, if I can't find a tutorial video or figure it out on my own.

[Sendy]

I read the manual, as a matter of principle. I've read manuals for synths I know I'll never own. Bonus points if they have spectral or waveform diagrams, and if they discuss the oscillator section in an insightful way (as opposed to crap like "SAW: Makes a saw wave. Good for saw-based sounds that CUT THRU THE MIX" >_<), that's usually a bonus.

Reading the Zebra 2 manual made my buy it without even demoing it (I did listen to some sound examples, though).

There's an increasing problem with people who expect everything to "automagically" "just work", because they're spoilt by their I-pads and don't realize that more complex things have a lot more variables. In five years music software companies will be suffering complaints that the software didn't read their mind, set everything up, and produce a chart-topping track for them while they beat off to porn.

[Karma_tba]

In five years music software companies will be suffering complaints that the software didn't read their mind, set everything up, and produce a chart-topping track for them while they beat off to porn.

It's called "Slam Dawg" by BeatSkillz.....available now.

[jancivil]

I do when I can't intuit a thing from the interface. IE: rarely. When I started with DAW stuff, I read an inordinate amount of the Cubase SX1 manual, which did the opposite of anything good, it made me afraid. It's not exactly rocket science, I didn't find anything scary in the doing. Some manuals I have referred to and bailed, for instance Absynth's is not so stellar to my view, & it's some of the more abstruse things I felt I needed documentation of. I feel like NI docs generally are not written in English as first language.

[NystagmusE]

I read manuals but usually I try the software first. If the software is totally non-intuitive or if it crashes the system I probably won't keep it anyway. Quite often the best software is easy to use intuitively AND has a good manual to go with it. Tutorial videos are a plus too, but those can be time consuming if they done by amateurs.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

Nah.