I can relate and confirm that. I have add the A4 mkI, the AK, the A4 MKII - I sell the A4 MKII later I bought an A4 mk1 very cheap and even if people from there warn me… oh boy yep very hard when you use the MK2 to come back to the MK1
Not the same as Mechanical Hard Drive to SSD and back to Mechanical, of course it’s not that same comparison.
But I feel the precision on encoders, the screen and the improvements in the design and analog circuits is more than welcome. When you are used to it’s very weird to get your hands on the MK1 again. I think it’s more the encoder precision and the screen… the biggest
And yeah, I was to forget the individual outputs for the 4 tracks damn useful
Sure, I’ll post more about it in the JD-XA thread once I have both in the studio hooked up to each other.
I mentioned the JD-XA in this thread because I’ve read that people like to use the JD-XA as a controller for A4. I’m thinking, why settle to merely control the A4/AK, lets get the audio mixed into it as well. JD into AK and AK into JD, twice the textures, twice the madness
I can also relate about the interface changes; I get tripped up all the time moving between AK & A4MK2, but I treat them as two very different instruments, even though the sound is nearly identical. I like sound design on the A4MK2, but nothing beats playing/tweaking on the AK with it’s Aftertouch keyboard & the joystick.
Also, I think the A4 is aging (and will probably continue to) really well and it is confirmed by Reverb’s upwards price trends on second hand A4s MK2, starting last November:
I’ve been eyeing the A4 for years but held back for various reasons, only 4 tracks, elektron workflow is too convoluted, people said the sound isn’t great, etc. But I finally got one and oh man I wish I had bought this years ago.
I went through a period of sequencing modular and monosynths with analog step sequencers and improvising on top with another synth and recording the whole thing (all old synths w no midi or patch memory). But I always wished I could transpose everything, or save the whole setup and recall it. Well A4 is it, a whole analog workstation, almost modular-in-a-box.
It’s so much easier to use than the OT. One of my big hesitations was that I don’t like working in little 4 bar chunks and having to piece everything together. Well, I never realized until I just randomly tried it that you can chain together multiple patterns and then live record on top of that!
There are so many weird misconceptions about it. It’s not meant to be played as a poly. Not good for pads, presets suck. I guess the previous owner of mine already installed all of the free sound packs from Elektron, but there are a lot of amazing sounds on there and it’s really fun to just play it polyphonically with a midi keyboard. I feel like you could score a whole movie just with the presets, there are so many interesting textures, strange effect sounds, and beautiful pads. But I’ve also been able to make great sounds of my own really quickly from an init patch.
So many cool musical features too like transposing in scale, direct jump, and that other second page on the arp where you set the length and offsets. That one can really take you into some weird modular style polyrhythmic territory.
I bought a used MK2 which should arrive tomorrow, it’ll be interesting to see what I can do with it. My plan is to use it as portable composition device for rhythm tracks and pair it with a resurected Sidstation (powered by a ripcord). It’ll be interesting to see how it can handle guitars too.
I tried it with guitar a bit but got lazy and just plugged it in direct, so it didn’t work too well. I tried cranking the overdrive and sending it to the neighbor track and cranking that drive, but it all just sounded kind of thin and noisy. I need to try again with another pedal in front to boost it up properly.
Hi there, thanks for asking. I fear it’s too complex to be shown in a few pictures. I’ll try to share some hints what makes the patch unique.
General setup.
OSC: Only use one sub osc as square and adjust pitch one octave up.
Sound settings: Disable oscillator drift, resonance boost and velocity to volume
Filter
You want that iconic nasal/hi-passed sound. Use filter 2 to shape to taste. You can also play with key tracking to negative values here.
Filter one base setting is around 30-40 with resonance around 40-50. Envelope depth 8-12.
Envelopes
Amp: Exponential decay, medium long to long, no sustain, minimal release. Amp volume set to 90.
FEnv: Exponential decay, length varies – used to define pluckiness, no sustain, minimal release.
Env2: Exponential decay, short decay 15-25, no sustain, no release. Target: Amp Volume, Value 0.
Velocity Modulations
These are used to shape the accent behaviour. Accented notes have shorter filter envelope decay, a little more resonance, and increased volume plus a steeper volume curve. This is the reason that I’m targetting ENV2s depth amount for amp vol here (30-40). This results in increasing amp volume in total towards the maximum and activating the steeper curve.
Sequencing
Set trigs to velocity minimum, and length to around 0.750 first. Place some trigs. Lock some to higher velocity. Use note slides and create holds through increasing note length and overlaps. Turn some knobs.
That’s about it. It’s the result of many hours analysis and wrapping my head around a few specifics. It quickly turned into an obsession how far I could mimic the original’s behaviour with the vast modulation options of A4. I really hope this inspires anyone to play around.
PS: You can hear some refined variations of the acid patch on a couple of tracks on my last EP. There’s also a lot of lush pads and basses from A4 next to AR percussions in there.
I must really suck at patch creation for the A4, as I’m struggling to even get in the ballpark of the TB sound with your tips (which are much appreciated of course)
I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share the patch itself?
