Hi, I just order the Hapax. Early this year, I bought an Oxi One. I have a lot of good things to say about it, but there is too much menu diving, short cut keys, and cognitive load for me to be happy with it. I’ve been a UX professional for decades, and the “Recognition rather Recall” rule for good UX is broken a lot with that device. Again, it has a lot of strengths otherwise.
So I’m going to give Hapax a go. I’m not a techno guy, and plan to use Hapax right away with my Akai MPC Key 61, running the latest OS. I typically use the MPC plugin instruments, and the drum kits. If all goes well there, I’ll also try iOS and my OB-6 synth, among other things.
Anyway, I’m eager to get the Hapax next week. If you have any tips to share about the MPC, or how best to learn, I’m all ears!
welcome! i like to think of hapax as an ultimate step writer extraordinaire with a lot to offer without waiting for 3 years on a list or too much menu diving. there is some however. but its not so much a drawback mainly because the menus are spread among most buttons making them only 1 or at the most 3 button presses to be where you want to be editing what you want to edit! its very elegant and everything has great informative active graphics. it may not match oxi one in some ways but its really coming along with updates and such. i feel hapax is fun! thats always important. for gear to be fun. hapax imho is a great place to tool around with sequences you built and record what you do as midi or even cv (to audio track) in your DAW or even your MPC. i prefer my mpc1000 / jjos2xl for extremely capable midi sequencer with large capacity and awesome improv features but obviously a bit old and basic compared to akais new stuff. idc im happy af with it, because it all gets mixed anyway. my daw can host anything in my studio and route anything anywhere!
Your biggest problem with mpc will be the note off bug. If you’ve been sequencing the mpc externally you may have already faced that, but boy is it frustrating. I have an mpc and a force and they are gathering dust until they get around to fixing this.
I just realized that this sounded really salty, which is deserved, but I also don’t want to rain on your parade. There are workarounds that let you have all the multitimbral goodness, you just need an intermediate device or even a modified workflow.
Thanks, folks! I will do the recommended workaround to avoid the MPC note bug.
When I get gear, I tend to go to YouTube videos for tutorials. Any recommendations on which you have found helpful? It looks like the official Squarp tutorial is unspoken, which is unusual for me and I guess I can’t just listen to it in the car.
It is probably not safe using the Hapax while driving anyways.
Kidding aside, I don’t have any particular suggestions but on that note it would be nice if there were a thread here that had a comprehensive list of Hapax learning material.
One tip I can offer for quicker finding of relevant info is loading the user manual in NotebookLM.
NOTEBOOKLM!!! Yes! I am telling everyone that is one of the most practical tools in AI. Less hallucinations, if any. Easy to toss in PDF manual as sources, and also most YouTubes.
Love to keep the NotebookLM app handy for questions.
BTW, I also ask ChatGPT to give me daily lessons on new stuff. If you give it the manual, it’s pretty faithful. Also tell it to use a “spaced repetition algorithm” to go back to questions based on how well you’ve answered them.
Hey @joegrant413, I’m brand new to the forum. I instantly searched for “Hapax tutorials” and your post was the first I’ve read. Strange coincidence as I’m also in the same situation - UX guy with Hapax on order who is coming from Oxi One because I did not dig that workflow. I’m hoping the Hapax is a little more intuitive. Looking forward to getting stuck in when it arrives. For now I’m using a Torso T1, which is surprisingly intuitive for something without a screen. Hope your Hapax is working out for you :).
Hello, great to see another UXer here! The curse of UX is you tend to see everything in terms of how intuitive the design is Recognition vs recall is a huge problem for Oxi One. I really try not to let my UXer bias get in the way of giving new gear the old college try. But I was pulling my hair out with the Oxi One for too many things that were not that unusual to do.
So far the Hapax is coming along nicely. Absolutely have a lot to learn, but making good traction on the learning curve.
Recognition vs recall is a huge problem for Oxi One. I really try not to let my UXer bias get in the way of giving new gear the old college try. But I was pulling my hair out with the Oxi One for too many things that were not that unusual to do.