By the way I should say that the big reason I have noticed this and thought about it a lot is that with some careful programming the A4 can do VERY good quality acid sounds, either copying a 303 quite closel or add its own individual sonic flavor. I LOVE the acid sounds I am getting and have one patch that I use on almost everything that I do because it sounds so great. It’s programming the pattern where things slow down, because every note slide is a multi-stage operation instead of just setting the note slide trig.
One reason I have been, ah, confused by the note slide on the A4 is that you are supposed to put it on the second note. For example:
On the A4 the slide triggers on steps 5 & 16 would cause step 4 to slide into step 5, and step 15 to slide into step 16 (actually it will slide the pitch from note 14 because step 15 is empty).
On a 303 (and most other gear I have used) you would expect a slide on step 5 to slide the note onto step 6 - in other words, it slides the note forward, instead of pulling the previous note as on the A4. When I first encountered the note slide on the A4 I thought it was weird but I didn’t have a 303 clone or emulator around to compare it to, so I thought it was just a memory mistake on my part. But after further research, my original instinct was correct.
Here are some notes about how it works on the 303 from the creator of the Devilfish mods, who probably knows as much as anyone else in the world about that machine.
http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/303-slide.html
Now, I am not suggesting Elektron must copy the 303, and in fact I didn’t yet do comparisons on my OT or with other Elektron ger, so I guess many people are used to a note slide that ‘pulls’ the previous note instead of extending the current note. But to me it seems exactly backwards from everything else in music. After all, if you are writing musical notes on paper you begin the slur on the first note. It’s logical to extend the gate time of the note with a slide, not the note which came before, which requires you to think backwards in time.
In programming terms - since the Analog Four has a Digital Mind - the note slide is behaving like a Come From statement when what most people expect is a Go To. 