I made an AI manual for Teenage Engineering devices
I've been a fan of Teenage Engineering for years now. If you don't know them, they're a Swedish company that makes synthesizers, samplers, and audio gear with this very distinct industrial design. I'm not really a musician, but I've always appreciated their products from a design perspective. A few months ago I decided to finally try getting into music production and picked up an EP-1320, which is their medieval-themed sampler where all the buttons are labeled in Latin.
I was having fun messing around with it, making little beats, until I needed to figure out how to chop a sample. The manual exists and it's beautifully designed, but it takes forever to find anything specific. Reddit is a mix of outdated advice and answers meant for completely different devices. YouTube has these 40-minute tutorials where the one thing I need is buried somewhere around minute 27.
The thing is, I actually enjoy reading manuals. So if I was struggling to find answers, I figured a lot of other people were too.
I ended up building teenage manual. You pick your device, ask a question in plain English, and get a straight answer. If you ask "how do I sample?" it gives you the actual button presses. If you ask "what does faedr mean?" it tells you it's the fader and explains what it controls (given it's Latin). For the EP-1320 specifically, it translates all the Latin terms inline so you don't have to keep flipping back to the glossary.
Right now it covers the KO II, EP-1320, EP-40, OP-1, OP-1 Field, OP-XY, TX-6, TP-7, and CM-15. I'm still adding more devices and building out guided tutorials. If you have a Teenage Engineering device and find yourself googling the same questions over and over, it might save you some time.
P.S. There's a feedback button on every page if you have thoughts.