That‘s what I hear too. Away from my desk, but pretty sure it‘s got a good amount of overdrive on it — the A4 get‘s that sweet harmonic richness when the overdrive gets engaged.
I find it’s best kept subtle. It’s too easy to turn everything into squares with it, specially the clockwise side.
Or I’m using it wrong 
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Checked on my AK, and I am fairly sure it is preset A-008 (“Just Bass”). Detuned sawtooth on OSC1 with -1 sub, Triangle on OSC2 with -1 sub. HP2. Chorus.
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Sounds like a few people got pretty close.
I forget exactly which sound packs really blew my mind.
Definitely the biopads and someone’s drum pack.
There’s one with some bass or leads, and maybe atmosphere that have some very unique stuff.
This and rich sounds.
The A4’s sweet spots are tricky to find, minimal movement in envelops or overdrive can really change a patch from fairly cool to very powerful.
The track is really nice, never heard of that artist before.
It definitely sounds like he is playing with the pitch, but also programed slides, and maybe reversing the sound at certain places in the edit.
Make me wonder if they programed the joystick to play those sweeping pitch sounds live.
It does sound like a multiband compression making the low/mids thick and constant while gluing everything together.
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first question is how do you know this? is it documented somewhere? I’m not familiar with his work but a quick google says he also recorded at Jean-Michel Jarre’s studio. that’s… a lot of synth options. I don’t know if that was for the same album even, but having access to that makes me think he also has decent synth resources of his own…
that said, I’m not hearing anything in this sound to make me think the AK/A4 can’t do it.
You’re getting MUCH closer than I got. I think you’re very near it. Now, I’m assuming you’re not using anything but the A4 on this? (You’re using an A4 MK2, right? Not an actual AK?)
I definitely think I hear compression too. By the way, if you haven’t heard of French 79, you really should go to YouTube and check out his Arte concert.
This is shot in the Cote d’ Azur Observatory, right by the ocean in Nice, France. He’s set up inside under a massive telescope just at sunset. He does an entire concert with no audience. Stunning drone footage, fantastic sound, and if you watch for a while you’ll get some good fairly close shots at his equipment (Analog Keys, Dave Smith Prophet O8, and about 6 other synths and drum machines.) If you don’t want to watch the entire thing, skip to 22:00 and watch “Hometown”. I believe he’s using the AK to play the arp on that (I recreated it fairly well on my Digitone, however) and playing the lead line on the Prophet 08 (Potentiometer edition, of course).
I actually was able to use Nord VPN to get to a performance on French Youtube in which he’s performing “The Remedy” live. He’s using the AK, and it’s clearly not a dub. Sound was spot-on.
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That’s what I think too - this is a tweaked version of an AK preset, with a lot of nice sauce in post production. My big question is, is there ANY way to download a version of the AK’s presets for the A4 MK2? How could I get “Just Bass” downloaded to an A4? Has anyone done something like a “conversion” of at least the AK’s most popular presets? I have scanned the presets on my A4, and I can’t find anything that’s really close - or that I would say was intended to be a “ported version” of this preset.
I agree - I felt I heard this too, and I went far, far down a rabbit hole trying to apply this approach to making the patch. Sadly, my fingers just couldn’t recreate what my ear thought it heard.
I thought the same thing, and realized I didn’t want to spend time trying to recreate this if there was any chance it was done on something else, so I went looking for confirmation. I was able to watch a performance he did that was posted on French YouTube using my VPN a while back - he’s definitely using the AK for that.
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AK here. Should sound pretty much identical on A4 though.
I’m cooking dinner right now, but later on I’ll go through the pages and copy out parameters for you. If someone else doesn’t get to it first.
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When I get back home I’ll look. If I have it I’ll post it
Definitely sounds like a winner
JUST BASS.afsnd (668 Bytes)
I’m assuming adjustments were made to play the joystick so the pitch responds the way it does in the track. The default behavior on the AK bends the pitch quite a bit. I imagine he set it to be just one octave hard left/right
Can you export the factory presets? I had assumed that one couldn’t, for some reason. I guess this means I don’t have to go flip through menus and copy numbers?
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of course it’s not impossible that he is only gigging with the AK and recorded the patch on another synth though… would be far from the first time that’s happened. but regardless… if the sound was spot-on live with the AK, you should be able to do it with your A4.
I was able to “save to computer” from Transfer.
All the factory sounds were available.
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I think @darenager above was right. It’s a fairly classic sound, and its components are clear. On stage at the Arte concert I saw a Prophet-8 and a Minimoog, among other devices, and I would expect they could produce a very similar sound, even if he didn’t use them for that purpose.
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