Spotykach Reference & Quick Reference Cards

Spotykach takes power one of two ways, has no power switch, and gives you two mono inputs and two mono outputs whose behaviour changes with a single unlabelled toggle at the centre of the panel. That toggle is the thing to understand before you patch anything, because it decides whether you are working with two independent mono decks or one stereo pair, and it decides it at both ends at once.

This card covers all three of the toggle's positions, and where an answer applies to only one of them the position is named first. Nothing here depends on which mode a deck is in.

Two things to expect before you start. There is no on/off switch — connecting power turns it on, and disconnecting turns it off. And nothing you record survives a power cycle: loops, knob positions, patching and the current mode all reset, and only what you deliberately wrote to the SD card comes back.

Before you start

• A power source. Either USB-C at 5 V 1 A — a powerbank or even a phone will do it — or a 15 V 1 A centre-positive barrel supply, 5.5 mm outside, 2.5 mm inside. The rear panel carries 15V 1A and -C+ beside the barrel jack. Both can be connected at once safely.
• The cable that came with the unit, if you are using USB-C. The same port carries firmware updates, and the manual asks for the supplied cable specifically.
• Your SD card already in, if you want one. It is only recognised if it is inserted before power — the Prepare at a Computer card covers what goes on it.
• Something to listen on, and if that is headphones, a stereo TRS cable. A mono TS cable will not work correctly in the headphone jack.

Do this

1 · Connect power, and watch it start. USB-C, or the 15 V barrel jack, or both. There is no switch — it begins the moment power arrives. Give it about twenty seconds, because the whole start-up is visible and it tells you when it is done. Every LED fades up in white, from the top of the panel downwards. Both rings then turn amber. Deck A's ring turns cyan and fills from the six o'clock position, clockwise; when it has gone all the way round it settles on that deck's mode colour, and Deck B immediately does the same. When Deck B's ring settles, the unit is ready — that is the signal, and there is no other one. If you are powering from a computer's USB port and hear a high-pitched whine, that is a ground loop and not a fault — swap to any non-computer USB adapter and it goes away.

2 · Patch your inputs and bring their level up. The two inputs are on the top panel, marked in, one on each side of centre. Each in is a gold outline enclosing a jack above and a small trimmer below, with the word between them — the label belongs to the pair, so the trimmer under a jack is that jack's. Turn the input trimmer up until you hear the signal at a useful level. Line level is fine going in; the trimmer is what brings it up. The inputs take a little above 10 Vpp with the trimmers low and are shunt-protected, so an over-level signal clips safely — but clipping sounds harsh, so if what you hear is unpleasantly distorted rather than loud, bring the trimmer down.

3 · Choose how the inputs reach the decks. The router is the small toggle at the dead centre of the panel, between the two modulation sections. It carries no text. Each position is marked with a bracket enclosing an a above a b, plus dots: left two dots, centre four, right two. Left and right are mirror images of each other and the only tell is a question mark between the right-hand pair — so count the dots and look for the question mark rather than trusting the shape.

Left is mono, and the two decks go to their own outputs with no mixing. On the way in, a is normalled to b — patch a alone and both decks hear it, in every router position.

Centre is stereo and right is generative, and in both the decks are joined at both ends. a and b become left and right. Patch a alone and both decks hear it, as left and right together. Patch b alone and both decks get the right channel only — which is what a sound arriving in one ear usually means. Patch both and a is left, b is right.

4 · Patch the outputs and set their level. The two outputs are marked out, in the same gold outline with a trimmer under each. Turn the output trimmer up until the next thing in your chain is happy. The exclamation mark beside each output trimmer is what it sounds like: at full gain these outputs reach a little above 10 Vpp, which is Eurorack level. It is worth starting low and coming up. What each output carries depends on the router, in the same left-versus-centre-and-right split as the inputs — the Run Both Decks and Route the Outputs card is where that is answered.

5 · Optional — monitor on headphones. The headphone jack is on the rear. Its volume knob is on the front rather than the top. Find it between Deck B's in trimmer and Deck B's mix, with a headphone glyph beside it. Turn it up and you hear the same signal the top outputs are sending — it mirrors them, in stereo.

What you should get

Both rings settled and steady on their decks' mode colours — that is the unit telling you the start-up finished. Then: signal reaching the deck or decks you meant it to, output at a level the next thing in your chain is comfortable with, and the router in the position you chose on purpose rather than the one it happened to be in. From here, the Record Your First Loop card is the next thing to do.

If it doesn't work

• Both rings are amber and you did not set either deck to reel. That is the start-up, not the mode. Amber comes up on both rings partway through regardless of where the toggles are set. Let the sequence finish — each ring settles on its own deck's mode colour at the end of its pass.
• Nothing appears to be happening. Give it the full twenty seconds. If it runs much longer than that, a long sample is being pre-loaded from the card; cancel it by holding tap and tapping that deck's play, which also stops that deck pre-loading next time.
• A high-pitched whine. You are powered from a computer's USB port and it is a ground loop. Use any non-computer USB adapter. Nothing is damaged.
• Deck B is silent with only a patched. The normal should be feeding it whatever the router position, so this is not a router setting. Check that nothing is plugged into b — a jack in b breaks the normal, which is what a normal is for.
• Both decks are hearing the same thing and you wanted them separate. The router is centre or right. Throw it left, and remember the position is a mirror image of generative — count the dots.
• The input sounds harsh and distorted rather than loud. That is the input clipping. It is electrically safe and will not damage anything, but it is not a good sound. Bring the input trimmer down — the small knob under the in jack.
• Nothing in the headphones, or only one side. Use a stereo TRS cable. A mono TS cable does not work correctly here.
• You cannot find the headphone volume. It is not beside the jack. The jack is on the rear and the knob is on the front, between Deck B's in trimmer and Deck B's mix.
• The SD card is not being seen. It has to be in before power. Disconnect power, insert it, reconnect.
• Your loops are gone after switching off. Expected. The buffers clear on a power cycle and there is no clear function — powering off and on is the clear function. Only what you saved to the card comes back.
• You are looking for a way to switch it off. There isn't one, and a hardware switch has been ruled out for now — it would need a full PCB redesign. The common workaround is a USB cable with an inline switch.

Carry this: one unlabelled toggle at the centre of the panel decides everything about how signal moves through this instrument, at both ends at once — separate decks or one stereo pair. Set it before you patch, not after, and if a deck seems deaf, look there before you look at the cable.

Reel listens. Arm the deck and it starts recording by itself the moment your sound is loud enough — no clock, no waiting, no count-in. That makes it the shortest path from a silent instrument to a loop going round, which is why it comes first. Five moves, and each one tells you it worked.

This card is reel, and drift records by exactly the same procedure — everything below works in both. Slice does not: it ignores your input level entirely and records to the clock, starting and stopping on the key beat. That is the Record in Time (Slice) card, and it is a different set of moves rather than a variation on these.

Before you start

• Something plugged into an out jack on the top panel, so you can hear the result. For headphones the jack is on the rear — but its volume knob is on the front, near a headphone icon.
• A sound reaching an in jack. Line level is fine. Input a is normalled to b, so patching a alone feeds both decks — one cable is enough.
• We work on Deck A, the left half. Deck B is the mirror image of it.

Do this

1 · Put deck A in reel. The three-way toggle directly above the deck, marked reel / slice / drift. Reel is the upper-most position. The ring around the large knob at the centre of deck A glows steady amber. That amber is your confirmation and it stays lit the whole time.

2 · Hear your input. Turn mix — the medium knob near the top of the deck — counterclockwise, until you can hear your source coming through. You should hear the live sound. Nothing is recording yet; this only proves signal is arriving. If it stays silent, raise the source, or bring up that side's input trimmer — the small knob beside the in jack.

3 · Silence your source, then arm the deck. The deck catches the first thing loud enough — including whatever you were just playing to check levels in step 2. If your source is still sounding when you arm, recording begins immediately. Stop it first unless that is what you want. Then tap alt + play — the two pads along the bottom, with record printed in the bracket beneath them. The play LED blinks red. The deck is now listening.

4 · Play something. Recording starts on its own the instant your input crosses about −40 dB, so give it a definite level rather than a whisper. Watch the ring: it fills in real time as the recording arrives. That growing arc is how you know it caught — you do not have to guess.

5 · Close the loop. Tap play. Recording stops and the loop begins playing back immediately — no second gesture needed.

What you should get

A loop running round on its own, with the ring drawing it: the arc is the loop, and the bright white mark sweeping through it is the playhead, reading your recording back over and over.

Tap play again to stop it. Tap reverse to run it backwards, or tap it while the loop is running forwards to flip direction on the fly.

Now turn the large knob — the big one inside the orange swirl. Clockwise the loop plays faster and higher; counterclockwise slower and lower, down to a standstill. That coupling is reel.

If it doesn't work

• Nothing records, and the play LED is still blinking red. Level, not timing. The threshold never tripped. Turn mix further counterclockwise so you can hear the input clearly, then raise the source until it is unmistakably loud — quiet playing will not trip it.
• Nothing happens when you play, and the ring is blue or purple. Wrong mode. Blue is slice, which waits for the clock instead of for you — see the Record in Time (Slice) card. Purple is drift, which records exactly like reel, so this card still works.
• It started recording the instant you armed. Your source was still sounding from step 2 and went straight over the threshold. Silence it before you arm. Anything else above −40 dB does the same — a hum, spill from the monitor, a hand on the strings.
• The loop is longer than you played. You tapped play late. In reel the stop is exactly where your finger lands, so the tail is whatever ran on.
• You can hear the loop but not what you are playing now, or the reverse. That is mix doing its job — counterclockwise for the live input, clockwise for the loop. Set it wherever the balance you want sits.

Carry this: reel is monophonic and speed and pitch move together — it behaves like tape, and that is the whole character of the mode. Drift records by exactly this procedure, so everything above works there too; only what the loop does afterwards differs. Slice does not — it ignores the threshold entirely and records to the clock, starting and stopping on the key beat. That is the Record in Time (Slice) card.

Spotykach has no screen. The ring of light around each deck's large knob is the display, and it is doing one of four things at any moment. Learn which four and it is never ambiguous.

The whole card in one rule. A steady background colour is the mode. A bright white mark travelling is the playhead. An arc filled from a fixed point is a knob's value. A red segment is catch-up. Anything else — dots, or a colour that isn't a mode colour — is another function borrowing the ring, and it gives it straight back.

Before you start

• Nothing. You can read this with the instrument idle. It will make more sense with a loop running, but the point of the card is to be usable at the moment you are confused.
• Each deck has its own ring and they say different things about different decks. Check you are looking at the one you are touching.

You're looking at — what is it?

A steady colour, filling the whole ring, not moving — that's the mode. Amber reel · blue slice · purple drift. It sits underneath everything else and it is the one thing on the ring that doesn't change while you play. If you ever lose track of which mode a deck is in, this is the answer, and it is more reliable than squinting at the switch above the deck.

A bright white mark sweeping round — that's the playhead, reading your recording back. Where it starts is pos, how much of the circle it covers is size, and how fast it travels is the large knob. What you hear is that mark moving.

An arc filling up as you record — that's the buffer filling, in real time. It is the confirmation that recording actually caught: you don't have to guess, you watch it arrive.

An arc that appeared the instant you touched a knob, and vanished when you let go — that's the knob's value, drawn from its zero point up to where the value currently sits. The ring drops the loop to show you this and picks it back up after.

This is also how you tell which value you have hold of. Most knobs do more than one job. Turn mix on its own and the arc is the deck's input-versus-loop balance; hold flux and turn the same knob and the arc is the effect's mix instead. Same knob, different job, and the ring is what distinguishes them.

A red segment, and the knob isn't doing anything — that's catch-up. The knob's physical position and the value the deck has stored have drifted apart, and it won't move until you turn through the gap. Turn toward the value; when the red clears you have it, and it moves smoothly from there with no jump.

The alt layer is the exception. Anything you reach by holding alt picks up immediately — no red, nothing to travel through, so if an alt move feels dead, catch-up is not why. The exemption stops there: the layer you reach by holding tap shows catch-up like anything else.

Dots rather than arcs, on Deck A while you hold tap and turn mix — you're setting the key beat. One white dot is a key beat every quarter-note; one white plus coloured dots is a longer interval, so one white and three coloured means the top of each 4/4 bar. The whole ring glowing the clock colour means key beats are off. Holding tap and turning size paints dots too — that one is setting the tempo from the loop's own length, and every fourth point is white. This is the one reading on the card you arrive at deliberately rather than notice — the others you meet by looking down.

A colour that isn't amber, blue or purple, held while your finger is down on an effect pad — that's an effect. Yellow or orange for grit, pink for flux, for exactly as long as you hold the pad. The other LEDs are showing how far each knob sits from that effect's stored value — catch-up again, applied to the effect instead of the deck.

Six segments in one colour, some bright and some dim — you're in SD-card mode. Bright is a filled slot, dim is empty, and the colour is which tape you're on.

What you should get

Every state above resolves to one of the four in the rule. Mode, playhead, knob value, catch-up — and borrowing. If you can name which of those you are looking at, you can read the ring.

A useful habit: when the ring surprises you, ask is it steady, moving, filling, or red before asking anything else. Three of those four are answered instantly.

If it doesn't work

• The ring is dark. No loop and nothing being touched. Record something, or turn a knob and watch the value arc appear.
• You can't tell an effect colour from a mode colour. Effect colours only appear while a pad is held — let go and the ring returns to the mode colour within an instant. If it stays, it wasn't an effect.
• The ring keeps flicking to an arc while you're trying to watch the playhead. That's the value display doing its job. Take your hands off the knobs and the loop redraws.
• Two decks are showing different things and you can't tell which is which. They are independent in every respect, including mode. Deck A is the left half, Deck B the right.
• A red segment won't clear. You're turning away from the stored value, not toward it. Reverse direction.

Carry this: the ring shows the loop or a value, never both, and it always goes back to the loop. If you want to see what a knob is doing to the loop, look while you are not turning it.

Each deck holds one recording. The mode decides how that recording is read back — and it changes almost everything else on the deck along with it, so it is the first choice you make and the one the rest depend on.

The switch is the three-way toggle directly above the deck. It moves up and down, and the labels are printed in the order it travels: reel uppermost · slice middle · drift lowest.

You do not lose anything by changing your mind. Switch mode with a loop already recorded and the recording stays exactly where it is — only the way it is read changes. So the fastest way to answer any question on this card is to record something once and flip through all three.

Before you start

• A loop on the deck, if you want to hear the difference rather than read about it. The Record Your First Loop card gets you one in reel.
• Watch the ring, not the switch. The steady base colour tells you where you are: amber reel · blue slice · purple drift. If the ring disagrees with what you meant to set, believe the ring.

Pick by what you want

You want it to feel like tape — speed and pitch moving together — reel, uppermost. Turn the large knob at the centre of the deck and the loop runs faster and higher, slower and lower, down to a standstill. Reel is monophonic and ignores the clock entirely. It is also the mode that starts recording the moment it hears you.

You want the loop locked to a tempo — slice, middle. Recording starts and stops on the key beat instead of on your playing, so the loop comes back a whole number of beats long with nothing to trim. pos moves in 1/8-note steps and size in whole 16ths, both measured at the tempo the loop was recorded at. The Record in Time (Slice) card is the procedure.

You want to change pitch without changing timing — slice. It is the only mode where the two are separate: the large knob transposes and the loop still lands on the beat. In reel they are welded together.

You want chords from one recording — slice. It plays up to three voices at once, so overlapping trig pad taps stack instead of cutting each other off — a fourth tap takes the oldest. Give it a sustained sound and a long size and you will hear them pile up; a short stutter has finished before your next tap lands.

You want a texture, a drone, a wash — drift, lowest. It breaks the recording into grains and scatters them into a cloud. pos stops being a start point and becomes the centre of that cloud; size sets how widely the grains spread around it. Small sounds become endless ones.

You want to hear what a mode actually does to your material — record once in reel, then flip the switch twice. Same recording, three readings. This is worth doing deliberately once; it teaches more than the paragraphs above.

What you should get

The ring settles to the new mode's colour and the loop keeps playing, reinterpreted. Nothing is re-recorded and nothing is lost.

Expect the deck's other controls to feel different immediately — pos, size and the large knob all change job with the mode, which is the point rather than a side effect.

If it doesn't work

• You flipped the switch and nothing changed about the sound. Check the ring changed colour. If it did and the sound didn't, you may be between the buffer and playback — tap play and listen again.
• Drift makes no sound at all, or drones and ignores everything. The envelope is at 0, which is its default. Drift sits in a suspended state there and ignores the trig pad and gate in. Open the envelope knob — above the play pads — even slightly and it wakes up.
• You put it in slice and recording never starts. Slice waits for the clock, not for you. That is not a fault; it is the mode — see the Record in Time (Slice) card.
• The loop went out of time after you changed the tempo. Slice measured pos and size at the tempo the loop was recorded at. Change the tempo afterwards and the loop keeps the grid it was born with.
• You are not sure which position you're in. The ring is the answer, not the switch — amber, blue, purple. The switch's labels read top to bottom in the order it moves, so reel up and drift down.

Carry this: the two decks are independent. One can sit in reel while the other runs slice, and that is one of the more useful things about the instrument — a free-running tape loop under a clock-locked sampler, from one performance.

Four knobs act on a loop you have already recorded: the large knob at the centre of the deck, pos, size, and the envelope knob above the play pads. There is no order to work through — you reach for whichever one gets you what you want. So this card is arranged by what you want, not by knob.

This card covers all three modes. Most of these knobs do a different job in each, so every answer below opens with the mode or modes it applies to; an answer that names none works in all three. The ring's steady colour tells you where you are: amber reel, blue slice, purple drift.

Before you start

• A loop recorded on the deck. These knobs do nothing useful on an empty buffer.
• Know where the trig pad is. It carries no label. It is the large gold pad in the centre of the deck's half, below cycle and glow and above the play / reverse / alt row. Several answers below need it, and you cannot hear what they do without it.
• Expect the value not to move at first. Most of these knobs do more than one job, so the knob's position often disagrees with the value the deck has stored. When it does, the ring shows a red segment between the two and nothing changes until you turn through it. Turn toward the value until the red disappears — you have it from there, with no jump.
• That does not apply to alt. Anything you reach by holding alt picks up the moment you turn it: no red segment, no travel to make up. So if an alt move seems to do nothing, catch-up is not the reason — check the mode, and check you have set up something you can actually hear it in.

Speed and pitch

To make the loop play faster and higher, or slower and lower — in reel and drift — turn the large knob: clockwise faster and higher, counterclockwise slower and lower. Drift's version is gentler, because it rebuilds the sound from grains rather than replaying it straight. In slice that same knob shifts pitch alone — the next two answers.

To bring the loop to a complete stop — in reel, keep turning the large knob counterclockwise until the playhead halts.

To change pitch without changing timing — put the deck in slice: the three-way toggle directly above the deck, at its middle position. There the large knob shifts pitch alone, so a transposed sample still lands on the beat.

To transpose in tune rather than sliding freely — in every mode — hold alt while turning the large knob. It snaps to −2 oct, −1 oct, −a fifth, unison, +a fifth, +1 oct, +2 oct.

Where the loop plays from

To move the start point — in every mode — turn pos, though it does a different job in each. In reel it slides smoothly. In slice it jumps in 1/8-note steps measured at the tempo the loop was recorded at, so the loop always restarts in time. In drift it isn't a start point at all: it sets the centre of the grain cloud, and grains land randomly around it, thickest at the middle.

To scrub or time-stretch through the recording by hand — in every mode, once size is small — shrink size to a sliver first, then sweep pos slowly. The short window is what turns pos into a scrub control, not the mode. At a long size only reel scrubs audibly — in slice and drift there is too much sound playing to hear the position move.

To make slice's 1/8-note steps line up with the notes in a sample — set the tempo to the sample first: hold tap and turn the deck's size, then pick the number of points that matches the loop's length. The steps land on the onsets after that.

How much of the recording plays

To shorten the loop, down to a stutter — in every mode — turn size counterclockwise.

In reel: the knob is fine at the short end and coarse at the long end, so small fragments are easy to dial in precisely.

In drift: it shortens the stretch of recording the grains are drawn from.

To shorten it and stay in time — do it in slice, where size moves in whole 16th-notes at the record tempo and rounds down, so it can't land off the grid.

To widen or tighten the grain cloud — in drift — size sets how far the grains spread around the pos point. Same knob, same move as shortening the loop — spread and length are one thing here, seen from either end.

To change the length of the individual grains — in drift — hold alt + size. You hear it as density: short grains scatter, long ones overlap into a wash.

In slice alt + size moves the loop length, much as the plain knob does — at full counterclockwise the loop collapses to a single 16th-note. It is not a polyphony control, whatever the manual says; see the next answer.

To play chords — in slice — nothing to set: the deck stacks on its own. Stop play, then tap the trig pad two or three times over and the notes pile up, to a ceiling of three — a fourth tap takes the oldest. A sustained sound and a long size make it obvious; a short stutter hides it, because a pass that brief has finished before the next tap lands.

To stop slice stacking them — not from the panel. The manual offers alt + size for this and the unit does not agree: the deck stacks at both ends of that control. The one switch that works is slc_mn_a or slc_mn_b in config.txt on the SD card, one per deck, set to 1 — see the Prepare at a Computer card. Nothing on the panel will tell you it is set.

The loop's edges

To soften the click at the loop point — in every mode — turn the envelope knob clockwise a little from off. It fades the loop's edges instead of cutting them.

To turn a sample into a swell — keep turning clockwise. The knob is a continuous morph, not four settings: from off it moves gradually to a fade-out, on through a fade-in/out, and reaches a fade-in at full clockwise. Those four names are landmarks you pass, not detents you land on, and the useful settings are usually between them.

To make that fade longer or shorter — in every mode — hold alt + the envelope knob. Set it up before you judge it: a long size, and the envelope already turned up far enough that you can hear the loop fading rather than cutting. The change is real but subtle, the ring shows nothing for it, and with the envelope near off there is no fade to lengthen — which is exactly what "it does nothing" feels like.

To get a genuinely long fade — lengthen the loop. The fade is measured against the loop rather than in seconds, so size sets the ceiling and alt + the envelope knob sets where you sit under it. A short stutter cannot swell however far you turn.

To stop drift droning and make it answer the trig pad — open the envelope past 0. Left at 0, its default, drift sits in a suspended state: the grain cloud drones and ignores the trig pad and gate in completely.

If it doesn't work

• The knob does nothing for the first part of its travel. Catch-up. There's a red segment on the ring; keep turning toward the stored value and it will pick up when the red clears.
• An alt move seems to do nothing. Not catch-up — alt parameters pick up immediately. Either you are in the wrong mode for it, or you haven't set up something you can hear it in. alt + the envelope knob is the one that needs a specific listening setup; see that answer above.
• Drift won't trigger at all. The envelope is at 0. Open it slightly.
• alt + size did something you didn't expect. In drift it sets grain length. In slice it moves the loop length — it does not touch polyphony, though the manual says it does. Check the ring colour.
• The loop drifts out of time after a tempo change. Slice measures pos and size at the tempo the loop was recorded at. Change the tempo afterwards and the loop keeps the grid it was born with.

Carry this: turning the large knob, pos or size redraws the ring's picture of the loop, so you can see what you are doing to it. The envelope doesn't touch the playhead and doesn't redraw the ring — that one you judge by ear.

A loop lives in a deck's buffer and the buffer empties the moment you cut power. The SD card is the only thing that survives, and this card is how you get a loop onto it and back.

One card is shared between both decks, so a loop saved from Deck A can be loaded into Deck B. The card must have been inserted before you powered up — if it wasn't, nothing here will work, and the Power Up and Connect card covers that.

How the card is organised, in one line: six tapes, each holding six tracks, thirty-six slots in all. A tape is a colour — blue, green, pink, red, turquoise, yellow — and the ring shows one tape's six slots at a time, in that tape's colour. Those are not the mode colours; amber, blue and purple on a deck's ring mean reel, slice and drift, and a tape's blue is a different thing wearing the same word.

Before you start

• The card in the slot, and the unit already powered up with it there. It is only recognised if it went in before power.
• A loop in the deck, if you are saving. Or a free hand and a lowered volume, if you are loading.
• Know which deck you want. Every gesture on this card acts on the deck whose pad you press, and the two decks are independent here as everywhere else.

Do this

1 · Open tape mode on the deck you want. Hold tap and tap that deck's play pad. The deck's ring lights six segments in a tape's colour — blue unless you changed it. That ring is now showing slots, not a loop. Bright segments are slots with something in them; dim segments are empty.

2 · Pick the tape. Tap the trig pad — the large gold pad in the centre of that deck's half, below cycle and glow. The six segments change to the next tape's colour. Keep tapping until you reach the one you want. Spotykach remembers the tape you left it on until the next time power goes off.

3 · Pick the slot. Turn the large knob at the centre of the deck. The segment you are pointed at lights white. Move it around the six and watch which are bright and which are dim — this is the only chance you get to notice that a slot is already occupied.

4 · Save, or load.

To save the deck's current loop into the selected slot — tap alt + play. The ring fills with white as it writes.

To load the selected slot into the deck — tap play, or tap alt + reverse. Either works. The ring fills in the tape's colour as it reads. Turn your volume down before you do this. Levels can jump when a loop arrives.

5 · Leave tape mode. Press tap + play — the same pair that opened it. The ring goes back to showing the deck's loop, and nothing has been written that you did not write in step 4. This also cancels a load that is still in progress.

What you should get

A ring that has gone back to showing a loop rather than six slots, and either a slot that is now bright where it was dim, or a deck with someone else's loop in it. Saving or loading also sets what this deck pre-loads at the next power-up — the Prepare at a Computer card covers turning that off.

If it doesn't work

• The ring is showing six segments and you wanted your loop back. You are still in tape mode. tap + play leaves it. The gesture that opens tape mode is the same one that closes it.
• alt + play did something you did not expect. Check whether the ring is showing slots. Outside tape mode that same pair arms a stopped deck or starts an overdub on a running one — the deck's state decides what the gesture means, and the ring is how you tell which state you are in.
• You overwrote something. There is no undo. The brightness of a segment in step 3 is the only warning the instrument gives, and it gives it before you commit rather than after.
• The card is not recognised at all. It has to be inserted before power. Disconnect power, insert it, reconnect — the Power Up and Connect card.
• A loud jump when a loop loads. Expected rather than a fault. Bring your output down before loading, not after.
• The tape colour and the deck's mode colour look the same. They can. A ring showing six discrete segments is a tape; a ring showing a loop is a mode. Count the segments rather than reading the colour.
• You saved from one deck and cannot find it on the other. You can — the card is shared. Check you are on the same tape, since each deck remembers its own last tape until power-off.

Carry this: tap + play in, tap + play out, and everything in between is chosen on the ring before it is committed with a pad. The one irreversible move on this card is alt + play onto a bright segment, and the ring told you it was bright.

The clock is already running. It started when you powered up and it never stops — there is no start button and nothing to switch on. Setting it up means telling it how fast and where the beat falls, which is what everything timed will snap to afterwards.

This card covers all three modes, but the clock does not reach all three equally. slice is driven by it — recording and playback both wait for the grid. Reel and drift ignore it entirely, until you give them a running pattern, which puts them back in time. So do this before anything that has to land in time — recording to the clock, or running a pattern — and expect it to look like nothing at all if you only ever work in reel.

Every combination here takes place on Deck A, even when it governs both decks. tap is the button in the centre of the top panel.

Before you start

• Nothing patched, nothing recorded. You can do all of this on a silent instrument.
• Find tap — the button on the top panel, centre, beside the clock in jack. Every step below holds it.
• Find the clock LED — just below the clock in jack. It is how you check each step worked without looking at anything else.
• You'll be reaching for Deck A's knobs while holding tap. cycle is the small knob on Deck A above the trig pad; mix is the medium knob near the top of the deck; glow sits beside cycle.

Do this

1 · Hear the beat. Hold tap and turn glow on Deck A to bring the metronome up. The clock LED blinks in time — white on the key beat, green in between — and you should hear the metronome. If the LED blinks but you hear nothing, the volume is down, which is what this step sets.

2 · Set the tempo — pick one of three.

By feel: tap the tap button a few times in time with what you want. Spotykach reads the tempo from the spacing of your taps.

By hand: hold tap and turn cycle on Deck A, for finer movement than tapping gives. There is no number to read — nothing on the instrument displays the tempo — so this adjusts against something you can hear rather than against a figure. The ring does confirm the control has engaged: a red catch-up segment appears when the knob's position and the stored tempo disagree, and clears as you turn through it.

From a sample — slice only: with a loop already recorded, hold tap and turn size. The ring shows a row of points and you choose how many quarter-notes the sample spans — 8 points for a two-bar loop, with every fourth point white so you can count them. The tempo then fits the sample rather than the other way round.

The metronome follows immediately, so you can hear whether you landed where you meant to. The range is 20 to 250 BPM.

3 · Set the key beat. Hold tap and turn mix on Deck A. A key beat is a quarter-note position, and it is the grid your actions snap to — where recording starts, where play and reverse take effect, where a pattern begins. The ring shows you which setting you are on: one white dot = every quarter-note, the default · one white dot plus coloured dots = a longer interval, so one white and three coloured is the top of each 4/4 bar · the whole ring glowing the clock colour = key beats off, and actions snap to the nearest 1/16 instead.

What you should get

The clock LED blinking steadily, white on each key beat, and the metronome audible at a level you can work over. That is the whole of it — there is no confirmation screen and nothing to save.

Test it where it shows. Put a deck in slice — the three-way toggle directly above the deck, middle position, ring blue — and arm a recording. It will wait for the next key beat rather than starting when you play. That waiting is the clock doing its job, and the Record in Time (Slice) card is the full procedure.

If it doesn't work

• The clock LED blinks but you hear no metronome. Volume, not clock. Hold tap and turn glow on Deck A up.
• Tapping the tempo does nothing, or the BPM won't move. You are on an external clock. Tempo can only be set for the internal clock — when an outside source is driving, Spotykach simply runs at whatever arrives. Check the clock LED's colour: green means internal, pink means the TRS input, cyan means MIDI. The Follow an External Clock card covers switching back.
• You set a key beat and nothing snaps to it. Check which mode the deck is in. Reel and drift ignore the clock until a pattern is running on that deck — that is what the Record a Pattern card does, not a fault.
• The whole ring glows the clock colour when you hold tap and turn mix. That is key beats off, which is a real setting rather than an error. Keep turning to bring the dots back.
• A knob does nothing for the first part of its travel. Catch-up — mix, cycle and glow all do more than one job, so the knob's position and the stored value have drifted apart. The ring shows a red segment; turn toward the value until it clears.

Carry this: the clock is always running, so nothing here starts it — you are only choosing a speed and a grid. The key beat is the more consequential of the two. Tempo decides how fast things feel; the key beat decides how much your timing has to be your own, and setting it to a bar rather than a quarter-note is the difference between playing in time and being carried.

Reel and drift start recording when they hear you. Slice doesn't — it waits for the clock. That one difference is the whole card: you set the grid first, then arm, and the instrument decides when to start and stop. What you get back is a loop already in time, its length a whole number of beats, with no trimming.

Before you start

• The deck must be in slice. The three-way toggle directly above the deck, at its middle position — the ring, the largest lit object on the panel, glows blue. In reel or drift this card does nothing for you: those modes listen for a −40 dB threshold and ignore the key beat entirely.
• A sound reaching the input at a usable level. Bring mix down until you can hear it. Line level is plenty.
• The clock is always running. There is nothing to start.

Do this

1 · Set the tempo. Tap the tap button a few times in time with the beat you want — Spotykach reads the tempo from the spacing of your taps. To nudge it by hand instead: hold tap and turn cycle on Deck A. Nothing displays a number, so judge it by ear against the metronome. Bring the metronome up so you can hear the grid as well as see it — hold tap and turn glow on Deck A. It is the fastest way to tell whether what you are watching is actually in time.

2 · Set the key beat. Hold tap and turn mix on Deck A. Deck A's ring shows the setting: one white dot = every quarter note (the default) · one white plus coloured dots = a longer interval, so one white and three coloured means the top of each 4/4 bar. Leave it out of the fully counterclockwise position for this card — that turns key beats off and you lose the count-in.

3 · Arm the deck. Tap alt + play. The play LED blinks red. It is armed and waiting for the clock — not for your sound.

4 · Play. Recording starts on the next key beat, not the moment you play. Give it a beat's grace and come in on the grid.

5 · Close the loop. Tap play (or reverse). Recording does not stop under your finger — it runs on to the next key beat and stops there.

What you should get

A loop whose length is a whole number of key beats, locked to the grid. Tap play and it starts on the next key beat too.

The clock LED under clock in blinks white on the key beat and the clock colour in between, so you can feel where the grid falls without watching the ring. If you want it audible, hold tap and turn glow on Deck A to bring the metronome up.

If it doesn't work

• Nothing recorded, and the play LED is still blinking red. The deck is armed and the clock is fine — it is waiting. Check you didn't set the key beat to a long interval; at one key beat per bar you may be waiting up to four beats.
• Recording started the instant you played. The deck is in reel or drift, not slice. Check the mode switch is at its middle position — reel is uppermost, drift lowest.
• The loop came out the wrong length. You tapped play before the beat you meant; the stop lands on the next key beat after the tap, not the nearest.
• Nothing records at all. Level, not timing. Turn mix down to hear the input and raise the source.

Carry this: in slice, pos moves in 1/8-note steps and size in whole 16ths, both measured at the tempo the loop was recorded at. Change the tempo afterwards and the loop keeps the grid it was born with.

A deck can play its loop round and round, or it can fire single passes when you hit it. This card is the second thing: getting a deck running, stopping and flipping under your hands, then playing it as an instrument with the trig pad or a cable.

The transport works the same in all three modes. What changes is what a trigger does: reel fires one voice at a time, slice stacks them into chords, and drift can ignore triggers altogether if its envelope is closed. Each of those is named where it applies.

Before you start

• Find the pads. Along the bottom of each deck's half: reverse, play, alt, in a row.
• Find the trig pad. The large gold pad in the centre of each deck's half, below cycle and glow and above that pad row. It carries no name — the combo-zone text beside it, alt with a plus sign, marks the combination rather than the pad.
• A recording on the deck. Everything here plays something back; none of it records.
• Know where the lights are. play and reverse each carry their own light, read through dark windows shaped into the panel's gold artwork rather than as a lamp beside the pad.

First, get it running

Tap play. The loop runs forward. Tap reverse and it runs backward.

Tap the pad that is already running and the deck stops. Tap the opposite pad and it flips direction without stopping.

Read it back off the pads. One pad is lit at a time.

Running forward: the play pad lights in the deck's mode colour — the same amber, blue or purple the ring is glowing — and reverse is dark.

Running backward: reverse takes the mode colour and play goes dark.

Stopped: both dark.

Recording lights the pad doing it, in red. play red while the deck records from the input; reverse red while it captures from the other deck. Red is a state rather than a pad's colour, so red anywhere on the pads means that deck is recording.

If you are unsure which colour you are looking at, compare the pad with the ring. Both carry the deck's mode colour, so the only question is whether they match.

To make everything land in time

Turn key beats on and play, reverse and every trigger wait for the next key beat before they act. With key beats off they snap to the nearest 1/16 instead — still tidy, just finer.

The key beat itself is set elsewhere, on the clock — the Set Up the Clock card covers it, and the ring shows the interval while you hold tap.

To fire a single pass instead of a loop

Tap the trig pad. The deck plays one pass and stops, rather than looping — firing with whatever size, pos, pitch and envelope the deck is currently set to, so it inherits the shaping you have already dialled in.

In reel, the deck is monophonic: each tap re-triggers the same single voice from the start, cutting off the one before it. In slice, taps stack — see below. In drift, watch the envelope: turned fully counterclockwise the deck sits in its suspended, droning state and ignores the trig pad and gate in entirely until you turn the envelope up. A dead trig pad in drift is almost always this.

To trigger it from a cable instead of your finger

Patch into gate in. It fires exactly the same one-shot as the trig pad. Send it a clock, a gate or a sequencer and the deck plays rhythmically without your hands — it is the deck's first patch point.

The drift caution applies here too: a closed envelope ignores gate in as completely as it ignores the pad.

To stack triggers into chords

Slice only. By default slice plays up to three voices at once, so overlapping taps pile into a chord instead of cutting each other off. A fourth trigger takes the oldest voice — three is the ceiling, not the start of a pile.

There is nothing to set. The manual gives alt + size as a switch between one voice and three, and the unit does not agree - the deck stacks at both ends of that control. Slice is polyphonic whatever you do to the panel.

The one way to make a deck mono is slc_mn_a or slc_mn_b in config.txt on the SD card, one per deck, set to 1 - see the Prepare at a Computer card. Confirmed at the unit, and nothing on the panel shows it is on.

Judge stacking only by triggering, and give it room. Under ordinary looping playback there is nothing to hear. Set a long size and use a sustained sound, then tap the pad two or three times over - a short pass has finished before your next tap lands, which looks exactly like the deck refusing to stack.

In reel there is nothing to set: the mode is monophonic and each trigger restarts the voice. In drift, overlap is what grains already do — the cloud is the polyphony.

What you should get

A deck you can start, stop and reverse from the pads with the lights agreeing, single passes on demand from the pad or a cable, and — in slice — chords when you overlap them.

If it doesn't work

• The trig pad does nothing and the deck is in drift. The envelope is fully counterclockwise, which suspends the deck and makes it ignore both the pad and gate in. Turn the envelope up.
• You turned alt + size and heard no change to the stacking. Expected, and not a fault: that gesture does not control polyphony. In slice it moves the loop length.
• No chords at all, however you overlap the taps. Check the SD card first — it is the only thing that can do this. config.txt holds slc_mn_a and slc_mn_b, one per deck, both 0 by default. Set to 1, that deck plays a single voice. It is the card holding it mono, not a fault, and the panel gives no sign of it. Failing that, lengthen size — a one-16th pass cannot overlap anything.
• You are trying to stack triggers in reel. Reel is monophonic by design — each tap restarts the one voice. Slice is the mode that stacks.
• Playback does not begin the instant you tap. Key beats are on and it is waiting for the next one. That is the feature; turn key beats off if you want it looser.
• A pad is red and you did not expect it. Red on a pad is a state painted over the pad's normal colour, not the pad's own colour — the idle transport pad when the other direction runs, and the acting pad while that deck records.
• The deck stopped when you meant to flip it. You tapped the pad that was already running. Tap the other one to change direction without stopping.

Carry this: the pads are the transport and the display — mode colour on the direction that is running, dark on the one that is not, red as a state over the top. And a trigger and a loop are different things: the trig pad fires one pass with the deck's current shaping, which is what makes a deck playable rather than only playing.

Spotykach can take its timing from something else — a modular clock at clock in, or MIDI clock over USB or the TRS jack. You do not switch the internal clock off. You choose which source is live, and the internal clock becomes a multiplier of whatever arrives.

This card covers all three modes, but only two things will visibly follow the external clock: slice, whose recording and playback sit on the grid, and any deck running a pattern — which is what puts reel and drift in time in the first place. A reel deck with no pattern will look exactly the same before and after this card, correctly.

The one thing to expect before you start: on an external clock you can no longer set the tempo. Spotykach runs at whatever rate arrives, so tapping or dialling a BPM will do nothing until you switch back to internal.

Before you start

• A clock source patched and actually running. Either a modular clock into clock in on the top panel — 4 PPQN — or MIDI clock at 24 PPQN, over USB-C or the TRS MIDI jack on the rear. Both carry the same messages; use whichever your rig speaks.
• Find the clock LED — below the clock in jack. It is the only confirmation this card has, so locate it before you start rather than after.
• Something to hear it on. A slice deck with a loop, or a deck with a pattern running. Without one of those you will have no way to tell the clock changed.

Do this

1 · Cycle to the source you want. Tap alt + tap. Each tap moves to the next source. The clock LED changes colour, and that is how you know which is live: green = internal · pink = the TRS input · cyan = MIDI. Keep tapping until you land on yours.

2 · Confirm it is following, not just selected. Watch the clock LED blink. It should blink at the incoming rate rather than the rate you had before. Change the tempo at the source and the LED should follow within a beat or two. If the LED is on the right colour but not blinking, the source is selected and nothing is arriving — the selection succeeded and the clock did not.

3 · Hear it where it shows. Bring the metronome up so you can hear the grid as well as see it — hold tap and turn glow on Deck A. It is the fastest way to tell whether what you are watching is actually in time. Put a deck in slice — the toggle directly above the deck, middle position, ring blue — and arm a recording; it will wait for the external grid. Or start a pattern on any deck — the Record a Pattern card — and hear it lock to the outside tempo.

4 · Realign if the beats have drifted apart. Hold tap and tap the trig pad on Deck A — the large gold pad in the centre of the deck's half, below cycle and glow. The beats restart together with the external clock. Use this whenever the grid and the outside world have slipped out of agreement.

5 · Optional — let the outside transport start and stop the decks. MIDI Start, Stop and Continue can drive the decks, but this is off by default and switched on per deck in config.txt on the SD card — mid_ps_a for Deck A, mid_ps_b for Deck B, each of them 0 or 1 and both 0 as shipped. Start and Continue behave identically — there is no timeline to jump around in.

What you should get

The clock LED on the source's colour, blinking at the incoming rate, and slice or a pattern audibly following the outside tempo. There is no other indicator, which is why step 2 matters more than it looks.

If it doesn't work

• The LED is the right colour but not blinking. The source is selected and no clock is arriving. Check the cable, and check the source is actually running rather than merely powered.
• Nothing you do changes the tempo. Correct, and expected. Tempo can only be set for the internal clock. Tap, tap + cycle, tap + size — all inert while an external source is live. Switch back with alt + tap.
• The pattern or the slice deck keeps stalling. On an external clock they only run while the clock keeps arriving. A source that pauses between sections stops them too; this is not a dropout.
• The beats are out with the rest of the rig. Hold tap and tap the trig pad on Deck A to realign. If it drifts again quickly, suspect the source's stability rather than Spotykach's.
• Your slice overdubs are glitching. The manual cautions that slice-mode overdubbing may glitch while Spotykach is synced to an external MIDI clock, and recommends running Spotykach as the master clock instead. If you need reliable slice overdubs, that is the trade this card asks you to make.
• A reel deck sounds no different at all. It won't. Reel ignores the clock until a pattern runs on that deck. Give it one, or test in slice.
• MIDI transport does nothing. It is off until the flag is set. Set mid_ps_a to 1 for Deck A, or mid_ps_b for Deck B, in config.txt at the root of the SK folder on the card — setting name on one line, the value on the line below. That is done at a computer — the Prepare at a Computer card.

Carry this: two things stop working the moment you hand the clock over — setting the tempo, and running without a signal. Everything timed on Spotykach now depends on something outside it continuing to arrive, which is the trade you made. alt + tap takes it back.

Spotykach has two modulation sources of its own, A and B, one per deck. Each one can be an LFO, repeating a shape on its own, or an envelope follower that listens to its deck so the sound drives its own movement. This card gets one of them shaped, running, and showing you that it is running, with nothing patched anywhere.

Setting a source up is the same in all three modes. Nothing on this card depends on whether the deck is in reel, slice or drift. Where that modulation eventually lands can depend on the mode, and the Patch It Up card says where.

What does change here is which source you are on. The two decks offer different LFO shapes, so the light you will be reading does different things on A and on B. Every step that depends on it names its deck. We work on source A, which belongs to Deck A, the left-hand deck.

Before you start

• Find the three controls. They sit inboard of the deck, between it and the centre of the panel. The modulation source switch is the three-position toggle directly above cycle; cycle is the small knob below it, and glow the medium one alongside. None of the switch's three positions carries any text.
• Find the light you will be reading. The modulation LED, between cycle and glow: a diamond on Deck A, a disc on Deck B. Two smaller pale marks beside it light with it, in the same colour, and carry no separate signal — watch whichever you like.
• Set glow to about halfway before you start. The LED's brightness is modulation depth, so near the bottom of its travel the light is very faint and every check below can fail for the wrong reason. You set it properly at step 4.
• Something audible on the deck — a loop or a live input. You need it only for the envelope follower, at step 2. An LFO runs whether the deck makes a sound or not.
• Nothing gets patched on this card. The source's output jack is directly above glow, and the Patch It Up card is where it goes to work. Until a cable leaves it, nothing you do here changes what you hear.

Do this

1 · Choose what the source is. Move the modulation source switch, the toggle above cycle. On the two lower positions the LED changes what it is doing as you pass each one — that is your confirmation the switch took. At the top position it will do nothing until the deck makes a sound, which is step 2. The three positions read top to bottom in the order the switch throws, marked with glyphs to the left of Deck A's toggle and the right of Deck B's:

Top: that deck's envelope follower, marked with an arrow and the deck's letter.

Middle and bottom: the two LFO shapes, marked with waveform glyphs. On Deck A they are sample-and-hold and square. On Deck B they are sine and sawtooth.

The modulation amount steps rather than slides as you cross between an LFO position and the follower, because the follower's output rides on how loud the signal is at that instant. Where the two values are far apart you will hear the discontinuity; where they are close you may not notice it at all.

2 · If you chose the follower, give it something to listen to. The follower taps the signal after mix, so it hears your live input and the loop together. The LED brightening and falling with the sound is how you know it is listening.

With mix fully counterclockwise it follows an external signal alone, and with the deck silent it produces nothing at all and the LED stays dark.

3 · Set the rate with cycle. Turn cycle, the small knob. The LED's pulse speeds up and slows down as you turn — free-running, it covers a slow drift up to an audible flutter.

On an LFO, to lock to the clock instead: hold alt and turn cycle. alt is at the end of the pad row along the bottom of the deck, beside play. The LED changes colour when it takes: white while the source runs free, green — the clock's own colour — once it is locked. The divisions are 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 3 and 4 bars, and nothing names which one you landed on — to place yourself, count the modulation LED against the clock LED, starting from the two blinking together. The alt layer has no catch-up, so it takes from the first degree of travel.

On the follower there is nothing to lock — it does not oscillate. cycle sets its response instead: how fast it reacts to the sound, its attack and release. There is no rate, only how closely the LED keeps up with what you play.

4 · Set the depth with glow. Turn glow, the medium knob. Watch the LED: it dims as you turn glow down and brightens as you turn it up, and that brightness is the depth. Low is a gentle sway; high swings the destination across its full range.

On the follower, glow also lifts quiet sources, so soft playing can still drive the modulation.

5 · Read the LED back. Below the top position it pulses at the rate cycle sets and in whatever shape the switch is selecting, so it tells you both at once:

Deck A, middle: pulses to a new random value each cycle.

Deck A, bottom: flashes hard on and off.

Deck B, middle: swells and fades smoothly.

Deck B, bottom: ramps up and snaps back.

Top position, either deck: no shape and no rate of its own — the brightness follows the deck's own sound, and the LED takes on that deck's mode colour, amber, blue or purple, the same colours the ring — the largest lit object on the panel — carries.

And on an LFO the colour says whether it is locked — white running free, green locked to the clock.

What you should get

A light between cycle and glow moving in the shape you chose, at the speed you set, as bright as the depth you dialled in — and white or green according to whether you locked it. Nothing audible has changed and nothing should have: this card leaves a source configured, not connected. Take it somewhere with the Patch It Up card.

If it doesn't work

• The LED is not moving at all and the switch is at the top. The follower has nothing to follow. Play into the deck, or bring mix up so the loop reaches it.
• The LED is moving but very dim. glow is near its bottom, which is a depth of nearly nothing. The readout is working; the depth is not there.
• You held alt, turned cycle, and nothing went green. Check the switch is not at the top. The envelope follower has no rate and cannot be locked, so there is nothing for the gesture to do.
• You are on Deck B watching for a random pulse or a hard flash and getting a smooth swell. Correct. Deck B's two shapes are sine and sawtooth, not sample-and-hold and square. The glyphs beside the toggle are the tell.
• The modulation amount jumped when you moved the switch. Expected — see step 1.
• Three marks light and you are not sure which to watch. Any of them — all three carry the same signal. The largest is the diamond on Deck A, the disc on Deck B.

Carry this: the LED is the only place a source shows itself before it is patched. On an LFO it carries shape, rate, depth and clock state at once; on the follower it carries level and the deck's own colour. Set the depth by eye here and the patch will already be roughly right when you make it.

Modulation on Spotykach is a patch, not a menu. A source does nothing to the instrument until a cable runs from its output to a destination — and the same cable reaches a modular system just as happily. This card is the destinations: what each one is, where it is, and what you will hear when you arrive.

Several answers below are conditional, and each opens with its condition. They are: size on the scanning patch · the deck's mode on how the pos/size CV arrives and on whether gate out fires at all · the routing on the crossfader · MIDI on v•oct. Everything else works the same everywhere.

Before you start

• A source already shaped and running. The Set Up a Modulation Source card does that, and the depth you set there with glow is how hard everything below will move.
• A loop running on the deck, or a live input coming through. Every confirmation on this card is something you hear happening to a sound. With an idle, silent deck each of these patches is working correctly and inaudibly. gate out needs the loop specifically — it marks the top of a loop pass, so a live input alone gives it nothing to mark.
• Almost nothing in this region carries text. Only v•oct, gate in and gate out are silkscreened; everything else is found by its neighbour. None of it is unmarked, though — every jack carries a small arrow showing which way signal flows, so you can tell an output from an input by looking.

The one output you patch from: the source's own jack, directly above glow, one per deck.

The destinations, per deck: the pos/size CV, the jack below gate in · the deck mix CV, the jack below gate out · v•oct · gate in. And one shared: the crossfader CV, the lone jack between the decks, just left of the a/b slider — the only slider on the panel, sitting below and between the two trig pads, the large gold pads at the centre of each deck below cycle and glow.

The specification: the modulation outputs put out 0 to +5 V and the CV inputs take standard Eurorack levels, so Spotykach patches cleanly with a rack or with itself.

Where to send it

To make the loop scan itself in time — turn size down first, before you listen for anything. Then lock an LFO to a quarter note or a bar and patch it to the pos/size CV, the jack below gate in. At a long size the scan is audible only in reel: in slice and drift there is too much sound playing at once to hear the position move, and you will decide the patch failed when it did not. With size small it scans in all three.

To choose what that CV reaches — the small three-position toggle between pos and size steers it: up = position only, down = size only, centre = both together. The toggle carries no marking at all, so you cannot read your setting off the panel: confirm it by what moves, with the CV running, and change position if the wrong parameter is responding.

In slice, expect the movement to arrive in steps — slice holds the change until the next loop pass so it stays in time. In reel and drift it moves continuously.

To play a deck's pitch from a keyboard or sequencer — patch to v•oct. It tracks at one volt per octave, so playing a scale moves the loop's pitch and speed in steps you can hear as a scale. If the deck is also being played over MIDI, this CV adds to the MIDI note rather than replacing it.

To make the sound's own dynamics move its pitch — set the source to its envelope follower, the top position of the modulation source switch above that deck's cycle, and patch it to v•oct. Louder moments ride higher.

To move the input-versus-loop balance hands-free — patch to the deck mix CV, the jack below gate out. This is that deck's own mix under voltage: a loop that breathes in and out against what you are playing into it. One per deck, and separate from the crossfader's CV, which balances the two decks rather than what is inside one.

To fire the deck from a cable instead of your finger — patch to gate in. It triggers the same one-shot pass as the trig pad. Send it a clock, a gate or a sequencer and the deck plays rhythmically without you.

To let the two decks trade places on their own — in stereo or generative routing — patch a slow LFO to the crossfader CV. The A-against-B balance moves by itself. In mono routing there is no balance to move: the decks go to their own outputs and the crossfader acts as a master volume instead, so this is not a crossfade there.

Routing is set by the small three-position toggle midway between the two decks' cycle knobs — left mono, centre stereo, right generative. No position carries text, and mono and generative are mirror images of each other: each is a bracket holding an a over a b with two dots, and the question mark between generative's dots is the only thing telling them apart.

To drive the rest of your rack from a deck — in reel and slice — take a cable out of gate out. It fires a 2.5 V, 10 ms pulse at the start of every loop pass, once per pass: clock a sequencer, fire an envelope, or trigger the other deck so the two lock together. In drift it stays silent, and the modulation source switches have no bearing on it either way.

What you should get

Something moving that you are not moving. Whichever destination you chose, the confirmation has the same shape: the parameter changes on its own, following whatever the modulation LED is doing — the diamond or disc between cycle and glow — and as far as glow is letting it.

For more or less of it, go back to the source and turn glow. The depth lives on the source, not on the destination.

If it doesn't work

• You patched an LFO to the pos/size CV and hear nothing. size is probably wide open. Turn it down and try again — and if the deck is in slice or drift, that is very likely the whole answer.
• The pos/size CV moves nothing at all. Check the small toggle between pos and size. It steers that jack, and one of its three positions is not the one you want.
• In slice the movement arrives in steps rather than smoothly. Correct and deliberate — slice holds the change until the next loop pass so it stays in time.
• Nothing happens on any destination. Read the arrows. Both ends of a patch look alike here, and it is easy to run a cable out of an input or into an output.
• The destination moves, but barely. glow on the source is low. The LED between cycle and glow is showing you how much depth you have.
• gate out is doing nothing. Either the deck is in drift, where it stays silent, or there is no loop running for it to mark the top of.
• The pitch patch tracks, but not from where you expect. If the deck is also under MIDI, v•oct adds to the note. Take the MIDI away to hear the CV alone.

Carry this: every one of these is a single cable, and the depth always lives back at the source. The two that will surprise you are size on the scanning patch and drift on gate out — in both cases the instrument is behaving correctly and telling you nothing.

Two pads at the outer edge of each deck — grit and flux — and each holds a small family of effects. You play them by hand. Press and hold, the signal runs through; let go, it is clean again. Stuttering a pad in and out over a running loop is the point of them.

This card works the same in all three modes. Effects colour whatever passes through the deck and never ask what mode it is in. They also act on your live input, so you can reach for one with nothing recorded at all and use the instrument as a straight distortion or delay.

One thing to know before you start: while you hold a pad, the ring turns the effect's colour. Once you latch one, the ring goes back to the mode colour and the only sign the effect is still running is that pad's own small LED. Two different places to look, depending on how you turned it on.

Before you start

• Something to hear. A recorded loop, or a live input coming through. With silence going in you will hear nothing change, correctly.
• Find the two effect pads. They carry silkscreen: grit and flux, at the outer edge of the deck, one above the other.
• Find alt — the pad row along the bottom of the deck, alongside play and reverse. Latching uses it.
• We work on Deck A. Deck B is the mirror image and its effects are separate.

Do this

1 · Hold grit. Press and keep holding. You hear the sound roughen, and the ring turns yellow or orange — that colour is which grit flavour is live, and it holds for exactly as long as you hold the pad.

2 · Let go. The sound returns to clean and the ring goes back to the mode colour — amber, blue or purple. Nothing was written into the loop; the effect only ever coloured what was passing through.

3 · Play it as a gesture. Stutter the pad — in, out, in — over a running loop. The effect becomes a rhythmic part. This is what the pads are for, and it is why they are momentary by default.

4 · Latch it, so your hands are free. Tap alt + grit. Tap the same pair again to release. alt + flux latches too — both pads do. The pad's own small LED becomes brighter. That is your confirmation.

5 · Look at the pad, not the ring. Once latched and released, the ring returns to the mode colour. It does not stay on the effect colour. The only visual sign that an effect is still running is that pad's brighter LED.

What you should get

Held

the effect audible, the ring on the effect's colour for as long as your finger is down.

Latched

the effect still audible, the ring back on the mode colour, and one pad LED burning brighter than the other.

That difference is deliberate. With your hands free, the ring is needed again for the loop and the mode, which is what you want to see while you play. The effect moves its indicator to the pad.

If it doesn't work

• You latched it and the ring went back to amber, so it looks like nothing is on. Working as designed. Check the pad LED, not the ring. If the pad LED is bright, the effect is running.
• You hold the pad and hear nothing at all. Nothing is passing through. Effects colour the loop or the live input — with an empty deck and no input, there is nothing to colour.
• You hold flux and hear almost nothing. Tape delay with feedback closed sounds like a single faint repeat. Shaping it is the Shape and Switch Effects card.
• The effect sounds different from the last time you held the pad. Each effect keeps its own stored parameter values, separate from the deck's. Grabbing the pad does not reset anything — see the same card for what the knobs do while you hold.
• You tapped alt + grit and nothing latched. Tap, don't hold — a hold is the momentary gesture, and the two are easy to run together.

Carry this: the pads are momentary because they are meant to be played, and latching is the exception rather than the normal way to use them. Nothing an effect does is written into the loop unless you resample — so you can be as violent with them as you like and the recording underneath survives intact.

Three knobs shape an effect, and they only do that job while you are holding its pad. Let go and all three go back to their normal deck work. The Play an Effect card gets a pad running; this one is what to turn once it is.

This card covers all three modes — effects ignore the mode entirely. What every answer does depend on is which effect you are holding, so each one below names it. grit and flux do not use the same number of knobs, which is the single most useful thing on this card.

The three knobs. The large knob at the centre of the deck — the biggest control, inside the orange swirl, and it carries no label. Then mix and pos, both silkscreened, on the upper part of the deck.

Before you start

• A pad held, and something audible through it. The Play an Effect card if you need it.
• Expect the knobs to feel out of step at first. Each effect stores its own values, separately from the deck's. So the moment you grab or release a pad, the ring — the largest lit object on the panel — often shows a red catch-up segment — the knob's position and the stored value disagree. Turn through it and it picks up smoothly.

What the knobs do

In every effect — the large knob sets the amount, mix sets wet against dry. That much is constant, and if you remember nothing else, remember those two.

In grit — pos does nothing at all. Both grit flavours use two knobs only. Turning pos while holding grit has no effect whatsoever, and that is the instrument working correctly rather than a dead control.

In flux — pos sets feedback, how many times the echo repeats. Flux is the only effect that uses all three knobs.

Shaping by what you want

To make grit gentler or harsher — hold grit and turn the large knob: left for gentle, right for hard. In saturation that runs from warmth to hard distortion; in the bit crusher from light grunge to low-bitrate clipping.

To blend any effect back toward the dry sound — in every effect, turn mix counterclockwise while holding the pad. In saturation and in flux this reaches genuinely clean — mix fully counterclockwise gives you the untouched loop whatever the large knob is doing.

To get the bit crusher completely out of the way — you cannot do it with the knobs. The bit crusher has an audible floor: because the large knob is reducing bit depth rather than adding a parallel signal, some of the effect remains even with mix and the large knob both fully counterclockwise. Step back to saturation, or release the pad.

To set the delay time in flux — hold flux and turn the large knob. It moves the tape speed, so the echoes change pitch as it moves — that is the tape character rather than a fault.

To add or remove repeats in flux — hold flux and turn pos. Closed, you hear the effect with essentially no repeats; opening it stacks them up.

Switching between the flavours on a pad

To step to the next effect in a family — hold the pad and tap tap. The ring changes colour as it switches, which is how you know it took: yellow is grit's saturation, orange its bit crusher, pink flux's tape delay.

grit holds two flavours. flux holds one on firmware v1.2.0, so tapping tap while holding flux has nowhere to go. More time-based flux effects are planned for later firmware, and everything here will carry over.

What you should get

The sound changing under your fingers while the ring stays on the effect's colour, and the other LEDs showing how far each knob sits from that effect's stored value.

Release the pad and all three knobs go back to the deck — the large knob to speed, mix to the input-versus-loop balance, pos to loop start. Nothing you did to the effect touched the deck's own values.

If it doesn't work

• You turn pos while holding grit and nothing happens. Correct. pos is inactive for both grit effects. Only flux uses it.
• A knob does nothing for the first part of its travel. Catch-up — the effect's stored value and the knob's position disagree. There is a red segment on the ring; turn toward the value until it clears.
• The bit crusher will not clean up however far you turn things down. Expected — see above. Step back to saturation.
• You tapped tap while holding flux and nothing changed. There is only one flux effect on v1.2.0. Nothing to step to.
• You released the pad and the deck sounded wrong. The knobs went back to their deck jobs, and one of them may now be mid-catch-up against the deck's stored value. Turn through the red.

Carry this: the large knob and mix work the same in everything; pos is the one that changes. Two knobs in grit, three in flux — and the bit crusher is the only effect you cannot fully mix away.

Each deck has its own step sequencer. It records the taps you make on the trig pad as a looping rhythm and then plays them back, firing the deck hands-free. Five moves, and the count-in tells you when to start.

This card works identically in all three modes, and it is the same procedure in each — nothing below changes with the mode switch. The pattern you record is shared across modes: record it in reel and it plays in slice and drift too. What differs is the effect, not the method. In reel and drift a running pattern is what puts the deck in time at all, since those two ignore the clock otherwise; in slice the deck was already on the grid.

Everything you record is quantized to the nearest 1/16, so the rhythm lands in time even when your hands don't. Play loosely — the grid catches it.

Before you start

• The clock set up. Tempo and key beat both. The key beat is the quarter-note where playback and recording trigger — the grid your actions snap to — which is why it decides where recording begins here. The Set Up the Clock card is the procedure; you cannot do this step usefully without it.
• A loop already recorded on the deck, if you want to hear the pattern doing something. A pattern fires the deck — with an empty buffer it fires silence, correctly.
• Find the trig pad. It carries no label. It is the large gold pad in the centre of the deck's half, below cycle and glow and above the play / reverse / alt row.
• We work on Deck A. Deck B is the mirror image, and its sequencer is entirely separate.

Do this

1 · Check the key beat before you arm. Hold tap and turn mix on Deck A. This decides where recording starts. One white dot, or one white plus coloured dots — recording will begin on the next key beat, and you get a count-in. The whole ring glowing the clock colour — key beats are off, and recording will begin on your first trig tap instead, with no count-in at all.

2 · Arm the sequencer. Tap alt + the trig pad. The alt LED blinks white in time with the clock. That is the count-in, and it is your confirmation that the deck is armed and waiting.

3 · Wait for the start — or don't, if key beats are off. With a key beat set, recording begins on the next one. The blinking alt LED is counting you toward it. With key beats off, nothing is counting: recording starts the instant you make your first tap in step 4.

4 · Tap the rhythm. Tap the deck's trig pad in the pattern you want. You hear the deck fire on each tap, and every tap is snapped to the nearest 1/16 as it lands.

5 · Stop. Tap alt or play. The pattern saves immediately and starts playing on the next key beat — you hear it loop straight back. There is nothing to confirm and no save step.

What you should get

The deck firing on its own, in the rhythm you tapped, looping until you stop or clear it. Your hands are now free: change mode, reshape the loop, hold an effect, bring in modulation — the rhythm keeps going underneath all of it.

The clearest confirmation is to take your hands off entirely. If the deck keeps triggering, the pattern is running. The Play and Clear a Pattern card covers what you can do while it does.

If it doesn't work

• You tapped alt + trig pad and the alt LED isn't blinking. The clock is not reaching the deck. Check the clock LED below the clock in jack is blinking at all — if it isn't, go back to the Set Up the Clock card.
• Recording started the moment you armed, before you played anything. Key beats are off, so there was no count-in to wait through. That is the setting behaving correctly. Hold tap and turn mix to bring a key beat back if you want the count-in.
• You tapped a rhythm and the deck made no sound. The pattern is triggering an empty buffer. It recorded correctly — there is just nothing to fire. Record a loop first, and the pattern plays it.
• The rhythm came back straighter than you played it. Working as intended: everything quantizes to the nearest 1/16. A pattern cannot hold a swing or a flam finer than that grid.
• The pattern plays but the deck still sounds free-running. Check you are listening to the right deck. Deck A's pattern does not touch Deck B, and the two run independently.
• You want to change it and there's no edit. There isn't one. Clear and re-record — the Play and Clear a Pattern card.

Carry this: a pattern only triggers the deck. It never records audio, so the loop underneath is untouched and you can reshape the sound as much as you like while the rhythm runs. That separation is what makes the sequencer worth reaching for: it buys back both hands without committing anything.

A saved pattern fires the deck by itself. That is the whole feature — it gives you your hands back, and this card is about what to do with them, and how to get rid of the pattern afterwards.

This card covers all three modes. The playing and clearing procedures are identical in each. One thing differs, and it runs this way round: in reel and drift, a running pattern is what locks the deck to the beat at all, because those two modes ignore the clock otherwise. In slice the deck was already on the grid, so the pattern adds a rhythm rather than adding timing.

Before you start

• A pattern already recorded on the deck. The Record a Pattern card is the procedure.
• Find the trig pad. No label. The large gold pad in the centre of the deck's half, below cycle and glow, above the play / reverse / alt row. Both clearing and recording use it.
• We work on Deck A. Each deck's sequencer is separate — clearing one leaves the other running.

Do this

1 · Let it run and take your hands off. The pattern started on the next key beat — the quarter-note where playback and recording trigger — the grid your actions snap to — the moment you stopped recording; you do not start it. The deck triggers on its own, in the rhythm you tapped in the Record a Pattern card. That is the confirmation, and taking your hands off is the test.

2 · Change the sound underneath it. Turn the large knob at the centre of the deck, or pos, or size, or the envelope knob above the play pads. Hold an effect pad. Bring in modulation. The rhythm keeps going while all of it changes. A pattern only triggers the deck — it never records audio — so the loop beneath is untouched and yours to reshape.

3 · Change mode with it running, if you want to. Flip the three-way toggle directly above the deck. The pattern keeps playing and the ring changes colour. The same recorded sequence plays in all three modes, so this is the cheapest way to hear what a mode does to a rhythm you already know.

4 · Clear the pattern when you want a different one. Hold alt + the trig pad for two seconds — hold, not tap, which is what separates this from arming. The play LED blinks quickly and the pattern is gone. The deck stops firing itself.

5 · Record a new pattern whenever you like. (The Record a Pattern card, from the top.) This is the way to change a rhythm.

What you should get

With a pattern running: the deck triggering hands-free while everything else on it stays available to you.

After clearing: the deck silent until you tap the trig pad yourself, and Deck B's pattern — if it has one — still running, untouched.

If it doesn't work

• You held alt + trig pad and the pattern is still running. Not held long enough. It takes two seconds, and a short press is the arm gesture from the Record a Pattern card instead — so a too-short hold may have armed a new recording rather than cleared the old one. Watch for the play LED's quick blink; that is the clear.
• The pattern stopped on its own. Check the clock. On an external clock the sequencer only runs while the clock keeps arriving — if the outside source stops, so does the pattern. See the Follow an External Clock card.
• You cleared the wrong deck. They are independent, and there is no undo. Re-record; the other deck was never affected.
• The pattern plays but the deck sounds untimed in reel or drift. The pattern is what supplies the timing in those modes, so if it sounds loose, check the pattern is actually running rather than that the deck has drifted. In slice you would not see this at all.
• You want the pattern quieter or busier and there's nothing to turn. There is no density or velocity control. A pattern is the taps you made and nothing else — clear and play it differently.

Carry this: the pattern and the loop are separate things that happen to be on the same deck. The pattern is a rhythm of triggers; the loop is the sound they fire. Clearing one does not touch the other, which is why you can keep a rhythm and completely rebuild what it plays — or keep a loop and try three rhythms against it.

Two ways to get more than one performance into one loop. Overdub builds a single deck up in passes, like a looper pedal or a tape delay. Resampling captures the whole of one deck's output — mode, shaping, pattern, effects and all — into the other as one new loop. They use the same hand and different pads.

Overdub works the same in all three modes. A capture starts and stops by that deck's own recording rules — on the input level in reel and drift, on the key beat in slice — so the mode of the capturing deck is what governs, not the mode of the one being captured.

Before you start

• A loop already playing on the deck you are going to overdub. Overdub layers onto something; it does not start anything.
• For resampling, both decks in use — one making the sound, one to capture it.
• Two places show you a layer is going down. The play or reverse pad turns red, and a red segment appears on the ring around the large knob. The ring is the more precise of the two — it shows you where in the loop you are.
• Know what mix does here. On each deck, mix balances the live input against that deck's own loop. Counterclockwise favours what you are playing in; clockwise favours the loop.

To build a loop up in layers on one deck

With the loop playing, tap alt + play.

Recording does not begin on the tap. It begins when the sound crosses the threshold, exactly as it does when you arm a stopped deck — in reel and drift when the input gets loud enough, in slice on the next key beat. If the deck is silent, nothing is being written yet.

The confirmation is on the ring: a small red segment appears beside the white playhead mark and travels with it, in lock step. That is the one to watch. The play pad turns red when recording starts.

It does not stop after one pass. It runs on round the loop, layering, until you stop it — and nothing announces that a pass has finished. The red segment means only that recording is still happening.

To stop it — tap play, and the overdub ends with the loop still running forward. Tap reverse instead and the overdub ends with the loop running backward. Note the difference from ordinary playback, where tapping the pad that is already running stops the deck: during an overdub that same tap ends the recording and leaves the loop playing.

While you overdub, the loop's length is fixed and pos, size and speed stop moving the recording — but you can still turn them, and what you play with them is heard without being written in. That is the point of them: live shaping over a loop that is quietly getting deeper.

To set how long old layers survive — hold alt and turn mix. Clockwise keeps them piling up and lingering; counterclockwise fades the original material faster.

For a plain looper-pedal feel, set speed to centre, pos and the envelope to zero, and size to maximum. Each pass then records cleanly over the whole recording.

One caution the manual gives and nothing else does: overdubbing in slice while following an external MIDI clock may glitch. If you need slice overdubs to be reliable, run Spotykach as the master clock.

To record into a region you cannot hear

size bounds what plays. It does not bound what gets written. Overdub with size turned down and the red record segment carries straight on past the edge of the window, writing into parts of the recording that window is not playing. None of it is audible until you widen size to cover the region you wrote into.

So nothing you hear changes while it happens, and an overdub that seems to have done nothing may have worked perfectly. Before you record it again, turn size to maximum and listen through the whole thing.

To capture one deck's output into the other

On the deck you want to capture into, tap alt + reverse. It records the other deck's output as it stands — its mode, its shaping, its pattern, its effects, all of it — as one loop.

Start and stop follow that capturing deck's own recording rules. In reel and drift the capture begins as soon as the source is above the threshold, so the captured loop has no silence at its head. In slice it starts and stops on the key beat.

If the capture deck already has a loop running, alt + reverse layers onto it rather than replacing it — the same behaviour as overdub, reached by the other pad. For a clean new loop, capture into a deck that is stopped.

The confirmation, again, is the ring: the capturing deck's ring carries the red record segment, and that is the whole of it. There is no pad blink, and the play and reverse pads read exactly as they do during ordinary forward playback. The ring is the only place a capture is visible.

You can cross-record both directions at once — A into B and B into A — for a feedback interplay between the two.

What you should get

From overdub: one deck whose loop gets denser each pass, with a red segment chasing the playhead round the ring, and a loop still playing when you tap out of it. From resampling: a whole performance committed to one deck as a single loop, and the other deck free to start the next part.

If it doesn't work

• You tapped alt + play and nothing is being recorded. Nothing has crossed the threshold yet. Turn mix down so you can hear the live input and bring the source up until it comes through clearly — or, in slice, wait for the next key beat.
• You cannot tell whether it is still recording. The red segment on the ring is the answer — present means recording, gone means not. The pad blink happens once and is too fast to catch.
• The overdub seems to have vanished. Turn size to maximum and listen through the whole recording before doing it again. It very likely wrote into a region the window was not playing.
• You tapped play to stop the overdub and expected the deck to stop. It does not. The overdub ends and the loop keeps running — tap the running pad again, now that recording has finished, if you want the deck stopped as well.
• Old layers pile up into mush, or vanish too fast. That is feedback. Hold alt and turn mix — down to let them decay, up to keep them.
• You resampled and got a layered loop instead of a clean one. The capture deck was already playing. Stop it first, then capture.
• You are watching the capture deck's pads for a sign it is recording. There isn't one. A capturing deck reads exactly like a deck playing forward — the ring is the only tell.
• Slice overdubs are glitching. Check whether you are following an external MIDI clock, and try it with Spotykach as master.

Carry this: both of these are ring events, not pad events. A red segment travelling with the playhead is the only reliable sign that either one is running — and neither stops on its own, so the tap that ends it is part of the move, not an afterthought.

Spotykach has two decks and one small switch that decides how they reach the world. That switch — the router — sets whether the decks stay separate or get mixed, and whether anything moves in the stereo field on its own. This card covers getting sound into both decks, choosing between the three router positions, and setting up the automatic panning.

The router sets the output path. Left sends each deck to its own output with no mixing; centre and right mix the pair, the left of the mix going to the a output and the right to the b output, and right adds the automatic panning. On the way in it changes how the decks hear a source, not whether they hear it — a is normalled to b in every position, so one cable in a reaches both decks wherever the lever sits. Answers below name a router position wherever it changes the result.

All three router positions are covered here, and the card applies whatever mode the decks are in. One answer is different: generative panning behaves differently in reel, slice and drift, and that answer names each of them.

Before you start

• Find the router. The small toggle at the centre of the panel, between the two modulation sections. It throws left to right: left, centre, right. No position carries any text. Each is marked with a bracket enclosing a above b, plus dots — left two dots, high on the left and low on the right · centre four dots · right two dots, low on the left and high on the right, with a question mark between them.
• Read the mark before you throw it. Left and right are mirror images of each other, and the question mark is the only thing telling them apart. Getting them confused is the likeliest mistake on this card.
• Find the crossfader. The only physical slider on the panel: short and angled, sitting below and between the two trig pads, just right of the panel's centre line, with a bracketed a at its lower-left end and a bracketed b at its upper-right. Its own CV jack is the lone jack lassoed to the slider's lower-left end.
• It is not a deck's mix. mix works inside one deck, balancing live input against that deck's loop. The crossfader works between the two decks.

To feed both decks from one source

Patch input a and leave b empty. Both decks hear it — a is normalled to b, and the normal holds wherever the router sits. Arm either deck and it takes the signal.

What the router changes is how they hear it. In the centre or fully right the decks are joined and a arrives as left and right together. A jack in b breaks the normal, which is how you give each deck its own source.

To feed each deck its own source

Left position, patch both a and b. Each deck hears its same-named input and nothing of the other's.

In centre and right, patching both makes a the left channel and b the right, and both decks hear the pair — so this is not the way to keep them separate. Separation is the left position, at both ends of the instrument.

To feed Deck B alone

Left position, patch b and leave a empty. Deck B takes it and Deck A gets nothing.

In centre and right, b alone gives both decks the right channel only — which is what a sound arriving in one ear usually means. If you wanted Deck B on its own, you want the left position.

To keep the decks separate, each on its own output

Throw the router fully left. Each deck goes to its same-named output and nothing is mixed. The crossfader stops balancing and becomes a master volume — that change is how you can tell you are here.

To mix both decks into a stereo pair

Throw the router to centre. Both decks are mixed, the left of the mix to out a and the right to out b, balanced by the crossfader and by the CV going into its jack.

Move the crossfader and the balance moves — toward the bracketed a and Deck A comes forward, toward the bracketed b and Deck B does.

To get automatic movement in the stereo field

Throw the router fully right — the glyph with the question mark between its dots. Spotykach then pans the outputs for you, and what you hear depends on the deck's mode:

Reel glides between left and right, at a speed and depth that keep changing. Slice jumps: the pan arrives at one placement, holds it for the slice, and picks somewhere else next time. Drift randomises each grain's pan, which reads as width rather than movement.

To hear slice jump rather than glide, two things have to be true first. Match the tempo to the material — hold tap and turn size on that deck — and turn slice size down until the loop is audibly a short stutter rather than the whole phrase. With a long slice there is one pan event every couple of bars, and one event is indistinguishable from a slow glide.

To set how fast and how far it moves — hold tap and turn cycle on Deck B for speed, glow on Deck B for amount. Deck B specifically. The tap layer is split between the decks: Deck A's is entirely clock, and Deck B's holds these two. Deck A's cycle under tap sets the tempo instead.

Two things about judging them. The tap layer has catch-up, so a red segment appears on Deck B's ring and the value does not move until you turn through it and the red clears. And judge at the extremes, not in the middle: amount fully counterclockwise and the image does not move at all; fully clockwise and it is wide. A change made mid-travel hides inside motion that is already going on, which is exactly how these two controls were once written off as dead.

What you should get

The mark you meant under the router's lever, sound arriving at the decks you intended, the decks reaching the outputs the way you chose, and — in the right position — an image that moves on its own. Nothing about the loops themselves has changed: the router surrounds them rather than sitting inside them.

If it doesn't work

• You threw the router and nothing about the sound changed. Check which mark you landed on. Left and right are mirror images and the question mark is the only tell — it is easy to leave mono and arrive at mono.
• You are in the right position and hear no movement at all. Check the amount range: tap + glow on Deck B, fully counterclockwise, is silence by design. Turn it fully clockwise before deciding anything is wrong.
• You turned tap + glow on Deck B and nothing happened. Look at Deck B's ring for a red segment and keep turning until it clears. Until then the knob's position and the stored value have not met.
• You are in slice and the pan glides instead of jumping. The tempo is not matched or size is not short enough. Both, then listen again.
• The crossfader only changes the volume. You are in the left position, where nothing is mixed and it acts as a master. Move to centre to balance the two decks.
• You patched b alone and everything arrives in one ear. That is what b alone does in the centre and right positions. Patch a as well, or go to the left position if you wanted Deck B on its own.
• You patched a alone and only Deck A can hear it. You are in the left position, where the inputs are as separate as the outputs. Move to centre and both decks get it.

Carry this: the router is three positions, and two of them look almost the same. Read the dots before the lever. Left keeps each deck on its own output; centre mixes the pair; right mixes them and moves the image — and everything the automatic panning does is set from Deck B's tap layer, not Deck A's, though what it moves is the mixed output of both decks.

A computer or a sequencer can play a deck hands-off — trigger it with notes, start and stop it with transport messages, and move most of its knobs with control-changes. This card is the setup and the map. None of it is mode-specific, and everything on it works over either of the two MIDI connections.

What it does not cover is clock. Following an outside tempo is the Follow an External Clock card; the last step here is only how to tell which clock source is live.

Before you start

• A MIDI source on a computer or a sequencer — a DAW with a CC lane, a MIDI utility, or a controller with knobs you can assign.
• The right cable. USB-C is the simplest: Spotykach is class-compliant, so it appears as a MIDI device with no driver. The TRS jack is 3.5 mm and must be a Type A cable — Type B passes nothing and gives you no error to explain why.
• Know which deck you are aiming at. Deck A and Deck B listen on separate channels, and a message on the wrong one does nothing at all.

Do this

1 · Connect, either way. USB-C from the unit to the computer, or a Type A TRS cable to the MIDI jack. Both carry the same messages in both directions — use whichever your other gear speaks, and there is nothing to configure on the instrument to choose between them.

2 · Set your sender to the deck's channel. Deck A listens on channel 1, Deck B on channel 2. That is the default and it is the whole of the addressing — every note, every CC and every transport message lands on the deck whose channel it arrives on.

To change either one, use config.txt on the card: mid_ch_a for Deck A and mid_ch_b for Deck B, any value from 1 to 16. Set both decks to the same channel and one part plays them together. The Prepare at a Computer card has the file's shape.

3 · Prove the link before you trust anything. Send CC 85, any non-zero value, on the deck's channel. That deck should start playing forward. Do this first. Every "it doesn't work" below is only meaningful once you know messages are arriving — without this step a wrong cable and a wrong channel and a dead CC all look identical.

4 · Play the deck from notes. An incoming Note On fires the deck as a trigger — the same one-shot the trig pad gives you — and the gate-in LED blinks when it lands. Pitch is measured from middle C: C4 is note 60. So to play in tune, record or load a sample pitched to C, or tune the loop in with the large knob at the centre of the deck.

5 · Optional — start and stop the decks from your transport. Standard MIDI Start, Stop and Continue can run the decks, and Start and Continue do the same thing, since Spotykach has no timeline to jump around in. This is off as shipped and it is switched on per deck in config.txt: mid_ps_a for Deck A, mid_ps_b for Deck B, 0 or 1, both 0 by default.

6 · Move the knobs with control-changes. Twenty-two CCs mirror panel moves. Knob parameters take a 0–127 value; toggles and gestures act on any non-zero value. Each one lands on its deck's own channel.

The map covers the deck and stops there — recording, transport, the four shaping knobs, the two modulation trimmers and both effects. Nothing else has a CC at all: not the mode switch, not the trig pad, not effect latching, not the sequencer, not tap tempo, not key beats, not the rest of the tap layer, and nothing on the card. If it is not in the table below, it is not reachable over MIDI.

Two rows need reading carefully, and they are the two the printed chart gets wrong.

CC 27 really is drift-only, and the panel gesture is not. Sending it changes the fade length in drift and does nothing in reel — while holding alt and turning the envelope knob by hand changes the fade in every mode. The row name is accurate about the CC and misleading about the instrument. Confirmed at the unit. CC 28 does nothing. Not in drift, not in slice, at either end of its range — while alt + size by hand changes the drift texture exactly as it should. The function is in the chart and not in the firmware. Also confirmed at the unit, on the same connection that had just proved CC 27 works.

The chart is worth one more warning. The printed version prints grit + pitch against both CC 103 and CC 104; CC 104 is grit + mix and is corrected above. And it names CC 28 "window size", which the manual's own Deck Controls section contradicts. Where the chart and the manual's prose disagree, the prose has been right every time.

7 · Tell which clock source is live. Spotykach locks to a 24 PPQN MIDI clock and sends 24 PPQN out whenever a clock is running — and will convert a 4 PPQN clock at the TRS input into MIDI clock on the way out. Tap alt + tap to cycle the source, and watch the clock LED change — it carries a different colour for internal, for TRS and for MIDI. Judge it by the change, not by naming the colour.

What you should get

A deck that starts from a CC, fires from a note with the gate-in LED blinking, and follows its knob CCs on its own channel — and, if you set the flag, starts and stops with your transport. CC 85 starting the deck is the one that tells you the link is good; everything else is detail on top of it.

If it doesn't work

• Nothing at all reaches the instrument, over TRS. The cable is Type B. It passes nothing and reports nothing. Spotykach needs Type A.
• Nothing at all reaches the instrument, over USB. Check your sender is aimed at Spotykach as a MIDI destination rather than an audio device, and re-run step 3.
• The wrong deck responds, or nothing does. Channel. Deck A is 1 and Deck B is 2 unless you changed them — and if you did change them in config.txt, the card must be in the unit before power arrives or the file was never read.
• Notes trigger the deck but sound wrong. Pitch is relative to C4 = note 60. A sample that was not recorded at C will be in tune with itself and not with anything else.
• Start and Stop do nothing. They are disabled as shipped. mid_ps_a / mid_ps_b set to 1 in config.txt, card in before power.
• A CC does nothing and CC 85 works. Then the link is fine and the CC is the problem. CC 28 is dead — that one is the instrument, not you. CC 27 only acts in drift. Everything else should move on its own channel.
• A CC moved something you didn't aim at. The numbers are close together and they are all live: 22 is size, 23 is the envelope, 24 is pitch, 26 is overdub feedback. A controller sweeping a bank moves four things at once.
• You are looking for a CC that isn't there. The mode switch, the trig pad, latching, the sequencer, tap tempo and everything on the card have none. That is the map's edge, not a gap in this card.

Carry this: Spotykach receives MIDI and does not send it, apart from clock. The map is a way to play the instrument from outside, not a way to record what your hands did — so a DAW can drive a deck, and cannot capture one.

Everything Spotykach keeps lives inside a single folder called SK at the root of the card, and you can build the whole of it yourself. This card is what to put there: your own audio, in the format the instrument reads, and a settings file that changes how the instrument behaves.

Spotykach makes the folders for you the first time you save from the panel — the Save and Load Loops card — so the quickest way to get a valid structure is to save one loop and then look at the card. Building it by hand works equally well if you would rather not.

Two of the settings in this card change what the instrument does on the panel, and one of them is the cause of a fault report that is not a fault. Those are called out where they appear.

Before you start

• A microSD card, FAT32. Tested up to 32 GB; larger sizes may work and have not been fully tested.
• A way to convert audio to 32-bit float, 48 kHz, stereo WAV. That exact format — it is what Spotykach writes and what it reads.
• A text editor, if you are going to change any settings.
• The card out of the unit. It is only recognised when it is inserted before power, so everything here happens with the unit off or the card elsewhere.

Do this

1 · Make the folder structure, or copy the one Spotykach made. At the root of the card, a folder named SK. Inside it, one folder per tape, named by the first letter of the tape's colour: B blue, G green, P pink, R red, T turquoise, Y yellow. Six tapes, six tracks each — thirty-six slots.

2 · Name your audio files the way the instrument expects. Inside a tape folder, files are 1.WAV through 6.WAV — the number is the slot, counted the same way round the ring as the deck shows them. A file with any other name is not a slot and will not appear.

3 · Convert your audio before you copy it. 32-bit float, 48 kHz, stereo WAV. A file shorter than 42 seconds sets that deck's maximum loop size to its own length. A file longer than 42 seconds loads its first 42 seconds and the rest is not there — the buffer holds 42 seconds per deck and that is the ceiling for recording too. The community WAV.builder web app converts and organises files for this, and can manage several sets of tapes as projects. It also carries a basic editor — trimming, normalising, fades, automation, seamless looping — and can edit the config.txt settings below. It is by Jon Waterschoot and it lives at https://jonwaterschoot.github.io/spotykach_WAV_builder/ — nothing to install. The manual carries the developer's own caution: it is still in heavy development, so use it with care.

4 · Optional — add a settings file. A plain text file named config.txt, at the root of the SK folder — beside the MEM file and the tape folders, not inside one. Spotykach does not create this one; you make it, and a card it has saved to will not have one. Each setting is its name on one line with a numeric value on the line below. Leave a setting out and it keeps its default.

Two of those reach out and change the panel. slc_mn_a and slc_mn_b hold a deck to a single voice, and they are the only way to do it — the panel gesture the manual names for this does not work — set one to 1 and that deck will not stack triggers into chords, and nothing on the panel will tell you why. mid_ps_a and mid_ps_b are what the Follow an External Clock card means by "the flag in config.txt".

5 · Put the card back, then power up. The card is only recognised if it is in before power arrives. Give the unit about twenty seconds — the Power Up and Connect card describes what you should see — and then open tape mode on a deck and check your slots are bright where you expect them to be. That is the confirmation that any of this worked.

What you should get

Bright segments on the ring where you put files, and dim ones where you didn't. A loaded file plays at the length you gave it, up to 42 seconds. If you wrote a settings file, the behaviour you asked for is in effect — and if you set a MIDI channel, the Play Spotykach from MIDI card is where to confirm it.

If it doesn't work

• A slot you filled shows as empty. Check the file name and the format first. It must be 1.WAV to 6.WAV inside a tape-letter folder inside SK, and it must be 32-bit float 48 kHz stereo WAV. Anything else is not a slot as far as the instrument is concerned.
• Nothing on the card is seen at all. It went in after power. Disconnect power, insert the card, reconnect.
• Your file plays but stops early. It is longer than 42 seconds. Only the first 42 seconds are loaded, and that is the buffer's size rather than a fault in the file.
• A deck refuses to play chords in slice. Look at slc_mn_a or slc_mn_b — nothing on the panel can do this. Set to 1, that deck is mono by instruction. This is the single most likely reason a working instrument reads as broken, and it is confirmed at the unit.
• A setting you wrote is having no effect. Check the shape of the file — setting name on one line, the number on the line below, and nothing else on either. Then check the file is at the root of SK and not beside it.
• Power-up is taking much longer than twenty seconds. A long sample is being pre-loaded. Cancel it by holding tap and tapping that deck's play, which also stops that deck pre-loading next time. Setting pre_load to 0 stops it happening at all.
• You want to update the firmware. Over USB-C, using the rear reset button — the Power & Firmware Update addendum is where that procedure lives, and it is worth keeping current, since features are still being added.

Carry this: the instrument reads exactly one folder, SK, and inside it exactly one naming scheme. Get the format and the names right and everything else on this card is optional — including config.txt, which most people will never need and two people in six will need badly.

Find your control in the left column of the layer you are holding. Everything here is on the panel — nothing needs a computer and nothing needs the card, except where it says so.

Where a gesture works on one deck only the deck is named, and the deck name is load-bearing: the tap layer really is split, and half of it does nothing on the wrong deck. A deck name here says which knob to reach for, not what the gesture governs — every combination in the tap table sets something instrument-wide from one deck's control. Mode-dependent behaviour is marked inside the cell as reel, slice or drift.

Holding alt

Nothing is documented for alt with pos or glow.

Holding tap

Nothing is documented for tap with the large knob, pos or the envelope knob.

Deck B's two set the generative pan for the mixed output of both decks — not for deck B's sound. The router is one toggle for the whole instrument and generative panning is applied to the outputs, where both decks are already mixed. These two live on deck B's knobs because deck A's tap layer is full of clock, and for no other reason. Confirmed at the unit: audio on deck A alone, router fully right, and the amount range still moves the image.

Pads and buttons

Holding an effect pad

Full counterclockwise on mix gives the clean loop. The bit crusher is the exception — it has a floor.

In tape mode

What each knob does on its own

A row that runs the width of the table is the same in every mode.

If something seems dead

• A tap gesture does nothing. You are probably on the wrong deck. Deck A carries the clock — tempo, metronome volume, key beat, tempo-from-loop, realign — and Deck B carries the generative stereo ranges. They never overlap.
• An alt move does nothing and you suspect catch-up. It isn't. The alt layer has no catch-up — those parameters pick up the moment you turn, with no red ring segment and no travel to make up. The tap layer does have it.
• alt + size in slice does not change how triggers stack. Correct — it is not a polyphony control, though the manual says twice that it is. Slice stacks up to three voices wherever that knob sits.
• alt + the envelope knob appears to do nothing. The ring shows nothing for it and the change is subtle. Set a long size, turn the envelope up until you can hear the loop fading, then judge at the loop's edges.
• A deck will not stack chords in slice. Check the card, not the panel — slc_mn_a and slc_mn_b in config.txt hold a deck to one voice, and they are the only thing that can. The Prepare at a Computer card covers them.
• pos does nothing while you hold grit. Correct. It acts on flux only.
• The bit crusher will not go fully clean. It has a floor — it stays slightly present with mix and the large knob fully counterclockwise, because the large knob is reducing bit depth and mix cannot remove what is already gone. Saturation does go clean.

Carry this: three layers and two decks, and almost every "this control is broken" on this instrument is one of four things — the wrong deck, the alt layer's missing catch-up, a control that is silent until you trigger it, or a setting on the SD card. Check those before you check the hardware.