A "MIDI hack" to turn the A4 into a "paraphonic A8"

[z1v]

Hi Everyone!

There’s no magic here but a bit of MIDI trickery let’s you play paraphonically on the Analog Four (and Analog Keys but with an external keyboard)

I hope you like it!

[Baztek]

Hey, I was just watching that on youtube!
Cool guide, I hadn’t heard of the BomeBox before.
I was considering making something like that myself, but maybe now I don’t have to.

[z1v]

My pleasure

[sezare56]

I’ve done it with Event Processor Plus.

Paraphonic Mode for A4/AK?

It works ! I have 8 different oscs with 4 voices. Really great pads ! It was quite hard to program with EP+ it but it is doable with an update, as I only use midi. I split 8 notes to 8 midi channel with midipal, channel 1-2 are for voice 1, 3-4 voice 2, etc... I convert note on to CC Waveform 0, note off to CC Waveform Off, note numbers to CC coarse tune of OSC1 for even midi channels, OSC2 for odd channels...

Can you record and play over with your hack ?

[z1v]

Cool - did you share the code?

Yes, you can record with my script. It creates p-locks so if you get the timing wrong you can move them around with copy-paste quite easily

[sezare56]

I can share the code. Nobody asked before.

I mapped notes on and notes off to Osc Pitch and Osc Level, sending always the same note.
I could record, but when playing over it, it was keeping level value at 0. I’d like to record and play over it.

[DoS]

Is this the sort of functionality that Elektron could add to a future A4 OS update?

[z1v]

OK cool - I’d love to see the code just to see what you did and why it wouldn’t record, but “my way” you can absolutely record into the sequencer

[z1v]

Maybe someone from Elektron could chime in. I can’t speak on their behalf, but MULTI MAP is so powerful, I could imagine how they might add OSC and not just TRK as a target there. It may not be technically possible though

[DoS]

I need to look at Multimap properly at some point.

[z1v]

I happened to put together a pretty comprehensive overview of it…:

[sezare56]

I can record 8 notes on the four tracks at the same time but I can’t play over it because Level returns to 0 on recorded notes when they receive Level CC with 0 value.

I forgot to mention I use Midipal in order to split midi notes to 8 different channels.
RK002 can do it too.
What about Bomebox ?

[DoS]

Looks useful - I will investigate further; thanks!

[johannes]

hi, i have an rk002 and am very curious how exactly i need to set th rk in order to use it the way you described.
did you already used the rk this way or where you just guessing?

[biologik]

This is really great!
I never understood why Elektron just didn’t implement paraphony like this. I love my paraphonic synths. It can’t be that hard to add sub37/oddessy style paraphony… alas, thanks for your video!

[z1v]

Thanks! yeah if I did it in 3 lines of code I’m sure they could handle it it’s up to us to tell them we want it though!

[Overthink]

I’m surprised no one has done this with a Max4Live device. Or have they? If I could use the A4 paraphonically while connected to the computer, and record the sequences back to hardware via MIDI, that would be enough for me.

Seems like it would be really simple to implement. I keep meaning to take a dive into M4L…

[sezare56]

I have a really bad network, happy new paraphony…

[Open_Mike]

Thanks @z1v this is a very clean and well explained video. I don’t have an A4 but I can use this trick on my Little Phatty.

For folks without a way to manipulate midi, @andreasroman once described how you can get similar paraphony on programmed sequences by using plocks on both oscillators pitch and volume, I forgot about that and this reminded me!

[andreasroman]

Yes, works like a charm. Suddenly, you got eight voices! Well, kind of😊