Kicks on A4

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#1

One of the reasons I will keep my A4 for ever and ever is how good the kicks sound. Today I learned by mistake that you get even more range of sound by playing with the note length.

To elaborate, I got in the habit of picking a kick drum sound, tuning the pitch and placing basic trigs where I wanted the hits to go. Today I had a track going with a melody on it and had set the default note hold length to something other than the usual. When I swapped the sound out for a kick patch and placed new triggers, this boom came out that I’ve never heard before. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on and it was the trigger length which was changing how the envelopes worked. Sounds obvious now but it really opens things up, so I’m posting it here.

Next step is to play with shorter note length on high hats to see if they can be more snappy.

7 Likes
Analog 4 for Kicks and Bass Toms
A4 MKII Filter Oscillation for Kick Drums
#2

In order to understand correctly, you had a kick selected and running with an unusual note length.
After you changed the kick sound leaving the note length as it was before and you spotted the difference? Or you changed smthg in the envelope as well?
Am I following you correctly?

#3

Thanks for asking. The upshot is if you place a trigger on a fresh track, it will have a default note length of like 1/16th or something like that - a step. Naturally, if you’re used to triggering drum samples, like I am, you don’t think about this. But if you are putting in lead lines to a synth sound, the note length will be whatever the lead line requires. I converted a track from a lead track to a rhythm track and as a result brought over longer note lengths and learned this trick.

1 Like
#4

Haha :wink:
Anyway it’s great to have such unexpected encounters!
Did you use default sounds or your own kick drum patch?

1 Like
#5

I’ve had a happy accident too :wink: … using lfo to sweep the cutoff with exponential down curve and FREE and p-lock speed mult to keep the transient and create those awesome rhytmical phrases while keeping the transient … so much fun! :))

I’m getting such a feeling I can design better kicks with A4 than with RYTM… hope this is just because I’ve spent so much time with A4 in last days haha …

1 Like
#6

btw talking about envelopes – try to p-lock/lfo gate lenght … also does nice stuff and make it lively for drum tracks :slight_smile: …

#7

Complete freedom is way better than using hard-wired modules unless you’re after the specific sound the hard-wire system is limited to.
My mbase never gets used now because I can get exactly what I want in a kick from the A4.

#8

well, the thing is, A4 is not a drum machine … it’s a pain and it’s pain to use it that way if you want to do things on fly … I really like the RYTM for this :slight_smile:

#9

I like the A4 as a drum machine. I had it once and sold it and bought it back to be my drummer and fell in love.

The several kick patches in the default kit are a good starting point for the sound I am looking for. I change the starting points for the envelopes and the decays a little bit to make them a little more thudy. Here’s a sketch -

#10

Complete freedom is way better than using hard-wired modules unless you’re after the specific sound the hard-wire system is limited to.
My mbase never gets used now because I can get exactly what I want in a kick from the A4.
[/quote]
well, the thing is, A4 is not a drum machine … it’s a pain and it’s pain to use it that way if you want to do things on fly … I really like the RYTM for this :)[/quote]
Exactly. So weird I’ve heard and gotten better drum sounds out of the A4 (Thanks to Druma from DarenAger) than AR. Whaaa? Shouldn’t it be easier to get ace drum sounds going on… a drum machine? Hope the Rytm gets some love soon. Not bad as-is, sure, but just would like it to get up to that level of the A4 - not complexity of controls necessarily, but if the default sounds were a bit more… in the sweet spot on the AR.

#11

BOOOOOOOOMMM !!! :rage:

#12

yeah! Druma has been great learning resource… I feel like I’m really getting into the concept how I can use additional envelopes and one shot LFOs to sculpt the transients and it sounds kick ass… have this in RYTM and it would be unbeatable …

1 Like
#13

there have been complaints about snares and hats… on A4, I was able to get that snap and create variety of punchy to “real” accoustic snare sounding snares …

#14
  • the hats are 100x more versatile than Rytm’s hats, especially since the A4’s “noise mix” parameter update.
1 Like
#15

great thread guys… have been waiting to get this of my chest: .
.
.
was jamming (2x A4 + 1x AR) with a fellow elektronaut and suddenly he dropped the following sentence …
.
.
“lets free up a track on the A4 for the kick so this track really gets a punch”
.
.
.
it took me a second, and I was like… jeeee, dude, did you just really say that? … he sure did …
.
.
.
now:…
…
.I ve been thinking… does the AR “just not sound as good?” … here is the answer:

the AR does sound good… but the A4 sounds so so sooo incredible, so unbelievable, everything else is just a shadow copy of an excuse of an attempt …
.
.
.
ever since I am thinking: that Drum Machine called A4 which was designed to be a synthesizer sure costs a lot for just 4 drum tracks.

#16

That would indeed be the case if it weren’t for sound locks.

Sure, it is good to dedicate a track to kick and nothing else if you’re using A4 for drums and you want a big kick with a long decay. However, that’s not really the case for all the other drum sounds that you can populate the other 3 tracks with.

When using my A4 as a drum machine, I get 9 to 10 drum sounds out of it comfortably, without any choking.

5 Likes
#17

Apples and Oranges really.

What Rytm lacks in the drum synth department more than makes up in the sample playback + macros department.

There’s a reason so many of us own both. :wink:

1 Like
#18

AdamJay: actually as per suggestion, I’m going to spend few hours with each machine on RYTM and try to make something musical, with limitation of using one machine and hopefully I’ll unveil the sonic possibilities :slight_smile: … I want to present this as a challenge as soon as I’ll record something myself, so to motivate others to join :smiley:

#19

Hi. I received my A4 3 hours ago and I would like to make TR 909 like kicks from scratch.
Jomox XBase 09 is my reference :heat:, but I sold it !

Tried something with OSC 2, Tri Wav, Multimode Filter, Auto bend, low pitch of course…
It is not convincing for the moment.
Any advice ? I check internal sounds right now.

1 Like
#20

From memory - Try filter2 on lp2, filter at zero, rez all the way up, filter amount to a little, like 10, play with the decay on the filter envelope, everything else on the envelope to zero.
Watch your ears and speakers while you’re figuring the envelope out.

1 Like