Hi!
So, long story short, I’ve had an A4 for about 8 years and never properly used it (huge mistake to buy it as a first hardware synth, I was young and believed it would be so easy to master).
Anyway, recently decided to go down the road again with a Syntakt, and I love the machine, so much so that I decided to give an other try to the analog 4. Not that it wasn’t plugged before, only most of the time I would not actually use it in a finite production.
I’m starting to find its sound interesting, but it still kind of lacks something for me, I feel I can do a lot more on the Syntakt even for melodic lines, bass etc…
BUT(s) :
I keep reading that it such a deep sound design tool
The market price is crazy low these days, and I guess it wouldn’t make a lot of sense selling it (?)
So, my questions are:
What do you actually use it for ? For context, I make deep/dub/hypnotic techno with trance influences, also some electro, downtempo trance stuff …
How can I get it deeper in the sound design, find new angles for its use? I’ve been playing with quite a lot of modulation options but somehow I still feel I’m getting pretty basic sounds if I’m trying to find some actuable usable leads, bass & melodic lines
In a nutshell : help me love and cherish it (please)
Cheers,
There are loads of tips and praise for the A4 on the thread about how deep and wonderful it is. It’s not worth repeating them for you.
I don’t mean to insult the genres you enjoy, but to my mind they often use pretty basic sounds, so if you are designing with those genres in mind you’ll land on pretty basic sounds.
You’ve given it 8 years and it isn’t filling you with joy.
Move on, sell the A4 and purchase something that you find more fun and inspiring.
That’s one straight to the point answer, I like it!
I’ve explored quite a lot of the thread you’ve mentioned in the last weeks, taking screenshots of parameter listings and trying them out, trying weird modulation tips and yep, I guess if 8 years and hours playing with it without really getting sound I love, it might never come. Still hoping for someone to give me a brillant change of perspective before I sell it for actual market price though
Yup, all of them over the years (tbh this is not my first time thinking I don’t know what to do with this, first time asking the question here though!).
I’d say the main thing I like about it is the sound of the filters, over the years I’ve managed to get some quite punchy & deep bass sounds when needed, also some nice acid textures, but using the 4 tracks always seems a bit overkill as I can’t seem to find or design textures & leads that I really like or fit my tracks
The core oscillator of the A4 are not wonderful for me, quite hard to find a sweet spot. And using it with the internal keyboard was not the thing for me. Doing that and trying to create a good sound was long or not that rewarding unlike some mono which does not provide much flexibility but were really rewarding in less than a minute.
What make me love the A4 is using soundlock and plock. That way i was able to cut a sound with another one, and emphasize a particular step. And provide a wide range of dynamic to a pattern.
Also using an external midi keyboard allow me to make more complex melody or using push/mpc to explore different scale using midi.
But as a « synth » in the traditional way. I mean for creating melody, chords, I have more fun with my prologue, deepmind 12, pro 800. But they are not able to create a complex pattern on there own. So I still use my two A4 for creating bass/lead/complex pattern and drums. And use a mono or the A4 for the funny/wicked part.
And yes syntakt with it’s 3 analog synth is damn good as a mono synth.
If you don’t like the A4, just try to use it as a drum machine maybe. Lots of fun in this area !
Edit: also try to only use the second filter and abuse the overdrive. Both filter are quite different in the way they react. And both have there own sound signature.
Interesting, thanks !
Regarding sound locks I have to say I’ve used it for ambiances and such but never so much for other stuff, I’ll give it a try, I haven’t really given a try to the “cut sound with another one” vision of it, so I’ll start with this
I have also used it with push as a controller through overbridge for a while, it was fun but it always felt a bit like “cheating” in a way, + I’ve been trying to go fully dawless these day
Same goes for using it a drum machine, it’s really fun and has crazy range, but I feel it would be a bit of a shame to keep it only to use it as a hi-hat machine now that I went Syntakt
Good to hear too I guess I’m a bit obsessed with trying to like it, it’s been on my desk for so long now that I feel a bit obliged to give it one last try before we part ways!
Good question. I don’t consider myself a sound designer, also I always like to start from blank with an idea in mind. The thing with sound design on the A4 is that to me, it gets interesting when it goes weird, otherwise as I was saying for more “usable” sounds I always end up in the same places.
One thing I have found useful for getting more out of my AK for sound design is using Overbridge when I am making patches from scratch. Having so many parameters immediately visible in the UI/UX makes it easier to keep things straight, and with the MKI interface having the envelopes visible graphically makes them much more intuitive to me.
Also, doing even a tiny bit of work with performance macros goes a very long way to keeping things in motion.
feed the 32 sound of the sound pool with various drum sound
feed 33-64 sound of the sound pool with bass/lead sound
65-96 with pads
( use filter in the sound manager to only see/select the kind of sound you want )
And make a pattern on track one and use random step with random sound from the sound pool. Make it completely random first using only C4 note. And see how it feel this way.
Having a rigid rule for the sound pool make it easy to be random but in a dirigist way ( if it mak sense).
I find it hard to make something sound bad this way. And maybe it’s one of the stupidest way to begin with something which can sound interesting.
And abuse plock.
I’ve recently had a bit of a breakthrough with my A4 after contemplating selling it many times over the years.
I decided to use it solely as a 4 voice single sound synth, and spent a lot of time working on the performance macros.
You could argue that I aren’t using it to it’s fullest, but in this configuration as a basic analog synth and EFX ( I sequence it from a Torso T-1 or Bitwig) I really enjoy it.
It’s still an incredible Analogue synth at the end of the day, and I think you’ll miss it if you let it go.
=)
Will sure try this first thing in the morning (it’s a bit late to program 96 soundpool sounds), thanks for this, glad to hear of things I never actually dared to try, sounds exactly like the kind of stuff I’ve been looking for
That’s also the stuff I want to hear! I might give it a try, at some point I was using it as a 2x 2 voices synth, I find it hard to set my mind to go 1 track only when I could have four but it could give this thing a new life!
I know exactly what you mean.
I always thought I wasn’t getting my moneys worth if I wasn’t using all of the features all of the time!
I love it for plucks, stabs and pads, which you of course need all the voices for, and then creating movement using trigless trigs has really made me appreciate again.
I’ve posted variations of this same comment before so apologies to anybody I’ve already spammed but this is the video that tipped me over the edge and made me want to dive all the way into the A4 (it’s an Analog Keys in the video but you get it — synthesis with no oscillators involved, just filter pings, noise, feedback, effects, etc.):
I’m also a big fan of @taro’s preset packs, especially the drums. The A4 is such an awesome drum machine and these Taro sounds can help you get something going right away.
Just throwing some ideas out there to help see the A4 in a different way and maybe find more reasons to enjoy it. If nothing else, it might be worth keeping the A4 because it has Direct Jump pattern changes. Can’t beat a good Direct Jump jam session.
I like setting filter env to volume and overdrive.
Enjoying the S-1 a lot, I have tried to go the single filter + single oscillator route, and found amazing sounds on the way.
Filters have very different characters and react differently to overdrive.
Not always found of second filter LP4 resonance.
Modulations are real fun to get new timbres, but you can also use them for simple stuff such as a down saw LFO on filter freq.
My advice if you want to try to learn this synth is to embrace the noise/glitch and try to summon the weirdest from it.
Short sounds, techno, noise, feedback or even layers of sound with neighbor oscillators… Use these exponential LFOs!
I bet there are many options you haven’t properly mastered yet. Do you like AM? All this OSC2 second page parameters are easily overlooked…
With time, you’ll learn a lot of new areas that you’ll reuse for other sounds.
(please)
