I’ve found I often can tweak tweak tweak a sound into oblivion while sequencing it, and come to a point where I just go, “ah, it sounds quite good, not quite there, but fair enough”, stop the sequence - and then just play the keys on the machine, and it sounds fantastic all of a sudden. It’s really … precarious, in a way, I find that it sounds best when played carefully, even if you can’t really play keys (like me), just try making a patch intially with a sequencer, and try to just play that out by carefully repeating and playing a few notes. Always a winner for me. It’s such a delicate little flower, haha.
It’s one weird fucker, and it always takes me places I didn’t expect. Truly one of a kind, I don’t think you can come even close to the sounds it can produce with anything in its price range. And as the others have said, just explore it more, get into those parameters you’re not really sure how they impact the sound, explore them one by one and see how they affect the sound (just the various sync modes between the oscillators, for instance, can make a huge difference to its sound).
I need to devote more time getting familiar with the performance macros- that’s where things can get really magical.
A lot of effort and foresight to step away from the meat and bones of the track I’m working on and work on programming those- but, man, what a return on investment
I’ve had an odd relationship with my current A4. Picked it up dirt cheap but never use the thing. Actually put it up for sale for about 2 days a couple of months back before deciding I was being stupid. I can see myself putting it away for a bit to see how I feel about things. Despite loving the look and feel of hardware, I’m not a big user of it (vs ITB). At the moment I kind of feel like one of those clowns who own a few expensive sports cars that never get used!
I’m in an even more extreme version of this with my Voyager. Again, picked it up about for a crazy price. It’s my first Moog and looks fantastic. I play with it every now and again - mostly just recreating the Regular Show intro and making naff bass heavy sounds - but nothing ever productive. I know without doubt I could never replace this for the price I paid but that feels like a shitty reason to keep something. It does look mighty cool though.
Anyway, back to A4. Keep digging and trying stuff out. Using it as a drum machine is a great shout. Including AK’s this is probably the 5th or 6th time I’ve owned an A4/AK and this time around was the first time I got into the sound pools and multimaps in a bigger way. A bit more fiddly with the A4 vs AK but works a treat for drum patterns. The A4 can be a lovely box to play on it’s own for a bit too. Def worth knuckling down with it for a bit - whats the worse that could happen?!
Can relate to this, but if your gear holds the value you paid for it its not too much of an issue, you are simply trading one asset for another, its like having money in a bank that you haven’t spent yet, why feel bad about it?
Anyway, the question for me was not so much about the merits of the A4 but about what it can offer to a setup already consisting of an OT and DN. I find my workflow with these two really nice and focused and covering a broad spectrum of sound possibilities, two sequencers is a sweet spot which leaves the A4 feeling a bit redundant and relegated to drum duties. The question I have is can it add something distinct and unique to the setup.
So far I am exploring the FX tracks using the cue outs from the OT. Multimap also looks really interesting, I didn’t know about this before and it looks like it could be a game changer for me as I could use a midi track on the OT to control the A4 and keep my preferred performance setup of 2 boxes, something I couldn’t do if I swapped the A4 for an AR.
