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
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