I’ve been spending some serious time on my A4 and I’m still not finding it as enjoyable as anything else in my elektron quintet. I have and have had many many other analogs that I have no problem getting along with, but I just can’t seem to find magic in the A4.
Is there anyone out there who has felt similar and had a sudden or gradual change of heart about the A4? What was it that did it for you (and what type of music do you work on?)
I think I’m coming close to the conclusion that I just don’t love the A4 like I do the OT (and like I loved the MD when I had it).
I think it’s got a unique sound that works very well sometimes, others not at all. The FX track and the LFOs are the keys to getting something interesting and not so…clinical…out of the A4, but that, of course requires a lot more time and energy than an analog synth you can just turn on and bang out a sequence to run with in about 3 minutes.
I also think it’s a great 4-voice analog drum machine.
But the real key is to just keep your sequences short if you want to use it while trying to also concentrate on 2 DAWs, a controller, the OT, Polysynths, etc.
I kind of want the update to streamline some things and maybe create a FUNC+button combo to just wipe all the presets and assignments and give you a total blank slate that disables program changes and takes out out of the song/sequence/kit structure entireley- even if you accidentally change the sequence of something. I find that since I don’t put in the time to organize my A4, I’m constantly running into things I worked on months ago and spending way too much time just trying to clear things out. A factory reset is probably what I need…but the A4 needs a “Studio Mode” like the OT that automatically routes T1-2 and T3-4 as separate mono tracks and take you outside of the song structure (and has MIDI sync settings that you choose that are recalled every time you enter the mode).
I just doesn’t feel like it was designed with a studio set-up in mind, as most Elektron gear is not at release but gradually improves. So I am confident the update will address some of my complaints.
I’m more in your position. It’s possible to get some cool sounds but it can be like pulling teeth to get what you want. Whereas with the Monomachine I found myself stumbling upon random sweet spots. I do feel like it deserves more time, though. I’m gonna stick it out until the next big update.
I dunno, I find the A4 an INCREDIBLY fast device to write entire tunes with. More so than any other piece of gear I’ve ever used. Not quite 3 minutes, but usually I can write a decent groove (including sequencing and synthesizing of all 4 tracks) in 15-30 minutes. That said, I usually make quite minimal stuff that probably only uses like 10% of the potential of the A4, doing more complex stuff will probably take much longer.
The sound’s also pretty much perfect for my needs. There’s some things that it can’t do (or I don’t know how to make yet), such as nice warm pads and strings, but most of the time I can find something I can use.
My problem (in life, in general) is that I like to add layer upon layer of complexity to everything until I’ve been awake for 2 days straight tweaking a synth with 15 different program windows open in my mac, having 12 different discussions on the internet, and generally acting like a tweaker without the drugs ;),
I guess I need something that REWARDS over-complication (the OT). I usually get something good enough on the A4 very quickly, then slowly kill it to the point of no return. I’ve started working with another producer now and then and it’s helpful. I don’t spend 4 hours tweaking the perfect sample and the perfect patch as much when someone else is around to pull me back from the sound designing abyss. HA!
I’m feeling the opposite, didn’t quite gel with the A4 for some time but for the last 3-4 months it has taken the centre stage big time, it even dictates how I should use the MD (which was the main diva for ages before). It’s got a great sound, loads of experimental and ‘happy accident’ potential, it is perfect for analog drums and rythmic backdrop kind of sounds, and it is on par with the MD in terms of making exciting things really quickly.
So here is one vote for the A4 as the best new machine from any company for ages (it beats the OT hands down too, atleast for how I make and do music) 
Had an epiphanous moment with the A4. Always liked the package as super flexible analog synth but never been sure about the sound. 6 months later i was working on it and suddenly thought…I love it 
Don’t know why, maybe Im just beginning to understand it more.
Last time it happened, I created a bass line with long evolving bass notes for a house/techno track which sounded quite organic and warm.
how long after the introduction of the MD did people start to make crazy stuff with it…?
I think the possibilites of the A4 are not really clear yet, an A4-equivalent of that “idm-in-a-box” MDUW / CT-AL video from pix doesn’t exist…
The question of the thread is what made you feel that way. What changed your mind?
You know, those are the 2 things I rely on the music in the music I make. Likely a large reason why I don’t get along with the A4 (yet?)
I can always get what I want, and more, out of my MnM. I think that likely adds to the frustration of using the A4 and never really managing to get something out of it that I like or want to use.
On a side note, I should really try to use the A4 as a drum machine since I don’t really use my MD as a drum machine.
You know, those are the 2 things I rely on the music in the music I make. Likely a large reason why I don’t get along with the A4 (yet?)
Yes, when I program an analog synth I do try to get warmth out of it more often than not-and when I see a analog synth this fully featured I guess I just have a hard time accepting it isn’t going to sound “Poppy” or “Ghostly”.
It is, after all, a monosynth, and the dark/sterile kinda sinister vibe of the A4 is not out of place in the realm of analog monos. But it just feels like it should be more of a sound designer than it is.
When I (or most people) go up into my brain’s internal sample library and think “analog synth”, I usually hear the two chords at the beginning of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” or Vengelis or “Born Slippy” before I hear Bass lines. Poly Analog sounds are more iconic to people who spent their formative years listening to them, probably (people born in the late '70s and early 80’s- born in '83 and the sounds of Oberheims and Prophets were likely burned into my subconscious by the time I was 2 years old.
I liked it, then didnt like it so much because it was sounding a bit thin, now back to liking it. The most important part for me was dialling in the right amount of feedback/overdrive to fatten up the sound. That on top of the crazy modulation/plocking gives me some nice evolving sounds.
the only serious (because likely unfixable) thing i don’t like about it is that it can sound very shitty if the filters are overloaded (e.g. by using too much of that feedback osc or overdrive w/ ext inputs…)… like a nasty shart.
Some things I’ve learned in the last week or so of ~60 hours on the A4:
[ul]
[li]Nearly every sound I’ve created that I like, from lead to bass and everything in between and off to the side, has been started at a lower octave. The bottom LED fully lit seems to be the ideal octave to start working on sounds from. It’s my experience that you get a lot more of the richness of the oscillators in the easily audible range as opposed to the ‘default’ octave. It’s also easier to tweak the tuning parameter than to transpose the pattern.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]The envelopes are brilliant. A huge portion of the flexibility of the A4 comes from the many shapes/types of envelops and being able to modulate six destinations with them (4 user assignable + 2 filter). I’ve been able to make some absolutely excellent 1osc mono pads using nothing but the the envelopes and every other parameter page untouched.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]The default sound SUCKS. I will be making a thread about this. When you clear a sound, multiple parameters are set in a really stupid way in a non-zero position. That has been a behemoth of an obstacle in my journey with the A4. Specifically the filter section defaults make nearly everything sound weak and ‘thin’ by default.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]A few big things I really use my analogs for (pun intended) is strings and pads. Both of these require careful tuning of the amp envelope for the sound to be recognizable. It’s been my experience that the analog four’s amp envelope is difficult to get right. With nearly any other analog synth, setting the amp envelope is very quick and satisfying. It’s one of the big ‘tweak a slider and get instant satisfaction’ aspects of analog synthesis. I find myself needing to spend a lot more time on the amp page on the A4 to get the envelope I want.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]Remember how much I like using the envelopes? You have more than 4-6 envelopes: use them! You can use the LFO’s fade parameter along with a ‘ONE’ trig mode to turn the LFO page into an envelope. Creative use of the ‘HLD’ and ‘HLF’ trig modes make for some greatly inspiring modulations[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]The FX are weak, uninspiring and useless. Use the FX! I’ve quite a large collection of delay and reverb units, and the analog four’s chorus/reverb/delay are strictly middle of the pack sounding in my opinion, except… The FX LFO. It doesn’t matter how ‘not amazing’ the reverb is when you start to use the FX LFO to modulate the decay time with a ‘ONE’ trig mode to get an amazing burst of “walking out of the cathedral” sounding reverb. The ability to tune the FX to the actual pattern/sound you’re making is not something you’re going to easily do with your reverb 2016, no matter how many magnitude’s better the 2016 sounds than the analog four’s reverb. Remember that the LFO section can be used as an envelope too! I’ve made some mind blowing sounds with a short noise burst, and the LFO used as an envelope on the delay’s time and feedback parameters.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]The triangle waveform is sad. My favorite waveform to use in the absence of sine, and it’s underwhelming on the A4. If anything, it’s difficult to get enough signal out of it to feed the filters or simply to compete with saw/pulse based sounds in volume. The balancing act necessary to use the triangle waveform on the analog four is exacerbated by the fact that the same device is often outputting 3 other individual sounds that may not be based on the same anemic waveform. Other synths obviously have similar problems when using sine/triangle waveforms, but the architecture of the A4 makes using triangle more annoying.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]I’ve seen complaints about the pallid and meager basslines the analog four often puts out compared to the big boys of analog basslines. Big basslines = use the highpass filter. To some folks this should be obvious, and to some it’s a paradox. High resonance and filter tracking with the highpass filter inject your enfeebled basslines with steroids. Tune the highpass frequency and filter tracking just right so it moves along with the fundamental frequency of your bassline. The A4 puts out some profound bowel-shaking bass.[/li]
[/ul]
[ul]
[li]I won’t go too deep into it, but with some creativity your analog four is a marginally limited 4 voice poly synth. Between having 2 oscillators with 5th subs and tuning capabilities, there is a slightly limited, but still surprising, number of chords you can produce with a single track. Combine this with p-locks and you can have an unlimited varietly chord progressions on a single track. I think there is a thread or two about this somewhere. Maybe someone can link it?[/li]
[/ul]
There are some other things, but I can’t think of them right now. If some other things cross my mind I’ll update this thread.
Hopefully some of my epiphanies can help out at least one person 
The A4 is just a totally different synth than what is out there and it needs to be approached differently than sitting down at a 106.
great post, but seriously dude “the fx is weak” 
no frickin’ way 
like the rest of the synth you’ve got to learn to tame it
i am doing stuff with the fx i couldn’t have dreamed of and that you certainly couldn’t do with any other synth, possible even DAW !
and i am NOT talkin about plocking either
this thing is craaaaaaazy flexible
integral fx is the biggest single plus point about this after the obvious stuff
analog sound / elektron sequencer / modulation bonanza
the fx are fantastic if you have fantastic imagination !
we just need to nag for fine control on the delay
I like the FX of the A4 aswell, you can allready get crazy stuff if you just modulate the FX sends on the tracks, let the FX feed eachother etc. .
I feel like you didn’t actually read that section entirely 
I said nearly the exact same thing you just did (minus the part about the delay).
Like what I said in the paragraph you’re citing?
that’s a fair cop dude, i hadn’t got through your text ‘completely’ , i just couldn’t believe you’d pan the fx by saying they were weak, that’s all, nothing personal, i’m glad you’re excited enough by it to write so much, it’s good for the community and the future for continued development if it’s a source of such passion and interest
my epiphany this week has been wrt the fx and how fantastically they can be integrated into a performance, i always thought they sounded good, especially for an fx section (rather than a dedicated box) - but there is no way you could do so much if the fx were external, no way !
i’ve put in many hours on this recently and it’s rewarding me more and more and more in so many ways, that is the bottom line, it’s in there if you go looking
That is totally the truth. I think you have to work at the machine a bit more than other analog synths, but the rewards are there. In my experience the tradeoff is that ‘simpler’ sounds are more work, but there’s a lot more depth available, specifically in regards to any sort of sound that is sequenced or modulated.
I’m glad I’ve spent so much time with it. However, if you told me before hand that I’d not appreciate the A4 as much as I do my MnM or OT until I put 80-100 hours into it… I’d have just traded it for another MnM on the spot I’m glad that didn’t happen now.