Friends,
First, sorry if this has been posted before. It’s about getting paraphonic sequences out of the Analog Four, sort of tricking it into becoming an eight voice synth. Well, not really, but kind of.
I’ve had the Analog Four MKII over the weekend, and it occured to me that due to parameter locks, each of the two oscillators per voice can be individually tuned per step, but also altered in volume to give the idea that they’re not always playing at the same time - creating an idea of paraphonic sequencing, considering each oscillator an independent voice with certain common traits that come with paraphony anyway.
So I set up a sixteen step pattern to try this out. I set OSC1 to a good old fashioned triangle and OSC2 to your classic sawtooth. I tuned them both to +0 and set them to Volume 100. And off I went.
For each step, I then did one or several of the following:
Nothing - just triggered a note, letting them play as usual. This is the normal way.
Tuned one of the oscillators to a different pitch - say OSC2 to +5, essentially giving me a two-note chord
or
Tuned them both - OSC1 to -2 and OSC to +5, also giving me a chord - but a different one
Turning down the volume to zero - say OSC2 to zero volume, thereby leaving OSC1, my dear little fragile triangle sound, to say play a brief lead over a few steps - and then bring in OSC2 and the saw again
or
The other way around - turn down OSC1 to zero, just let OSC1 play and even pitch it down -12, to give it a thunder bass solo before I bring in OSC1 again.
Essentially, using one Analog Four voice as the Duo mode on the Sub37, or the Paraphonic mode on the Circuit Mono Station or the Pro2, which means that musically, I can actually work with eight voices, not just four.
Obviously, the limitations of paraphony are there - but even so, the fact that I can tune each oscillator per step as well as work with the volumes to switch them on and off, gives me an extremely flexible palette for composition, not entirely but kind of an eight voice analog synth, as far as compositions go.
Now, if you apply this line of thought to the Performance mode, just imagine the variations in harmony and composition you can make with just one sixteen step pattern, tuning the oscillators around independent of each other, as well as the volumes. You could build bass lines, leads and unison sequences and switch these around in pitch and transitions by just applying tuning and volume to the performancs macros.
I’ve given this a go today and it works like a charm, though it’s a bit messy so it’s gonna take awhile to get used to it. But it works, and it’s stupid powerful.