First A4 Impressions/Wishes/Questions

Hi,

Just got hold of an A4 and spent a couple of (intense) days with it. I think I’ve got my head around most of the functionality but I have a few questions and some small grumbles. I don’t want to sound too negative though because I think it’s a fantastic box and a lot of fun to use, there are just a few shortcomings against my expectations, but hopefully some of them are just things I don’t know yet :slight_smile:

I know there is the Multi-Map mode and although it’s very versatile it seems a lot of work to just be able to trigger patterns from the midi input, and even worse that the transpose value must be locked to the assignment. I expected that you would be able to trigger patterns and transpose via midi easily as a standard feature.

On the subject of transpose, is there a way to record the mini keyboard transpose as a chain or song in real-time? So far I can only see that you can transpose a pattern by 1 amount for the whole pattern.

There also doesn’t seem to be a way to trigger track mutes externally?

It would be great to have a way of saving Perf Presets which there doesn’t seem to be, as again these are a lot of work to set up. I know you can copy/paste them between kits but it would be good to be able to save them globally so that you could build up a collection available to all projects.

That brings up another question, how do people access kits from a different project, is there a way to import them?

Some people will probably wonder why the external control is important to me and it is mainly because the A4 is synced to Cubase and I would rather sequence patterns from there than using the onboard song mode. I’ve never been a fan of pattern based Song builders and prefer triggering live from the DAW, especially seeing as the A4 can switch patterns instantly (which is something I build into my own sequencers). I don’t think the onboard song mode allows this?

It took me a few hours to warm to the synths on the A4, I also have an Evolver and a Mopho which are much more ‘LISTEN TO ME’, but after playing around I realized that the A4 synths sit together really well in the mix which is essential considering the single outputs, and the DSIs sit alongside really nicely with their very different character. Compliments to Elektron on the design, it must have been a big challenge to achieve this I reckon.

Anyway that’s probably enough for now, apologies for such a long list on my 1st post…

Andy

welcome on board! nice to see you in the forum. … and omg … i ve been messing with my A4 for 3 month now, and I am nowhere as deep as you are already seem to be!

you built your own sequencers`? awesome … post a pic or a link, would love to see this …

cant wait to see the answers to your questions, because this will shed light to questions I never had :slight_smile:

You’ll have to wait a few months but a few of the items on your list will be taken care of by the Overbridge update (see announcement). This will allow VST control of the A4 in your DAW as well as 4 channel USB recording.

Wow! Yep Overbridge looks like all my prayers answered, I just hope it plays well with latency etc… Can’t wait for that, I almost wish I didn’t know :slight_smile:

@TrabanT Thankyou & lol, well, I live and breathe synths (literally) and I am a fully fledged Sequencer Obsessive :slight_smile: I’m currently building performance Sequencers for Kontakt 5 you can see/hear them at hgsounds.com if you are interested. I’m amazed how far I’ve been able to take it with Kontakt Scripting.

I have got my head around the technicals of the A4, but still haven’t got into the ‘way’ of making music with it yet, I need to adapt what I expected into what it expects from me I think…

It’s a fantastic machine, I am having lots of fun with it so far!

Incidentally, sorry about the delay replying, I didn’t know there was any replies as I thought I’d automatically get an email, but I’ve seen and ticked the subscribe box now.