Tips for using A4 as drummachine in a liveset

Yeah, quite strange. Especially since it seems to work differently on the Digitakt/Digitone. With these machines you can reload the pattern data even after switching around.

1 Like

hmm.
Either OT compressor on a thru track, or rather using a sample :slight_smile: ?
I have great sample packs, like driven machine drums, or some goldbaby and wave alchemy stuff, but most of them time I prefer drums coming directly from the A4 or Norddrum2. The more alive thing… Not sure if it’s better for a live gig? Maybe a sample is more reliable

Yeah I tried the digitakt, pattern reload works great for performances there

Analog Four deserves analogue compressor!
I have to test with my cheap Behringer Autocom, sure it can be very efficient. I used it with Jomox Xbase 09 kick with a bass amp and it was great.
Don’t understand why I still didn’t try it.

1 Like

no I won’t buy an analog compressor for that gig :wink:
also no tanzbär, although the thought came to my mind for a second :sweat_smile:

My biggest pro tip for A4 drums, especially when they’re all playing on a single track with sound locks, is to run them into the neighboring track via the “neighbor” setting on OSC2 and use the neighboring filter section as a tone shaper and the overdrive for a distortion/compression effect. If you haven’t tried this, you should. The overdrive circuit sounds much more aggressive when you’re feeding it with the output of a neighboring track’s VCA. This really sounds great on filter-based kicks which don’t typically benefit from the overdrive on their own track. This also benefits from the additional multimode filter which you can use to sculpt the sound further or control it live to make make fills, buildups, drops, etc.

6 Likes

great tip! I’ll try

Totally! I noticed that too. I have an AH now so I’m not sure i’d use that routing.
It was for acid synth overdrive, and indeed it was more aggressive.

2 Likes

Also, although i haven’t tried this, the neighboring track’s overdrive circuit and VCA could be controlled with the sequencer and envelopes to do exactly what a compressor would do. Knowing how well this works on the analog heat I bet it sounds great…

2 Likes

With something like a slow enveloppe with overdrive dest and faster on volume ?
What are the settings you’d use on A4 (and AH) for best compressor emulation ?

It depends on what you want to do. For the typical case where you want to reduce the dynamic range of a sound, you’d want something that doesn’t touch the initial transient of the sound but then increasingly applies drive to the tail end of the sound. You can do that in multiple ways, but the easiest is to use a quickly decaying envelope to apply negative modulation to an already high drive level. If you dial something like that in on the AH and then just play with the attack and release time then its just as controllable as any fancy compressor plus a good bit of character too. Plus you have an EQ and SVF that you can also control with either the envelope or an lfo…AH is a beast. in principal you could do the same with user envelope(s) on the A4 but you just have to program the triggers into the sequencer since there’s no env follower function like the AH has. Sorry for hijacking your thread Unifono xD

4 Likes

no problem. Very interesting :thup:

1 Like

:thup: Good luck with the gig man, let us know how it goes. Hope the a4 serves your audience well :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Thanks. Let’s see… Will give a report :slight_smile:

1 Like

so you just setup a split with the sounds you want and use the ot’s arp to trigger or setup a pattern with lfo’s?

by the way, have not had time to play around yet but am going back on my initial idea of using the a4 for drums. 2 main reasons, i have projects set up with the drums on the octatrack and would prefer not to redo anything and i want to have a set modus operandi (kick and snare, or a full loop in some cases) is ALWAYS on track one. reason 2 is that i worry about controlling an analog drum sound live, with samples i can make sure that not only it’s a tried and true sound that works always in every environment (like and 808 kick) but i can shape before the fact.

yes for example. When I tried it I mapped the whole sound pool (128 drum sounds) over the split. So using a big note range, so that all sounds fit in, then note inc = 1, sound slot = 1 and sound slot inc = 1.
So every different note you send triggers a different drum patch. And then just play with OT’s arp settings, p-locking them (e.g. range is fun here) and modulating them with lfo’s…
Then I set up Performance macros on the A4 that cause very notable changes on drum sounds, like filter settings, overdrive, amp and filter env decay, noise colour, noise fade, delay, reverb, you name it. Then I sent OT lfo’s with the midi CCs of the A4 performance macros. These were things that I tried

same here. Hats, perc and snare is fine. I still have percussion loops (without kick) on the OT that belong to the track. I would use the A4 “live” drums as overdub, to create more tension and energy on some parts. And variety.
But I’m worried about the kick from the A4 :slight_smile: But I also didn’t find the kick sample that really convinces me for these tracks.
Another problem is, that I originally mixed the kicks in the tracks, that they fit with the bass etc. I’m not sure if it’s smart to use one kick for all these tracks. But the kicks I used and mixed originally lack power and vigour for a club setting I believe…
I’m generally never convinced with kicks in my tracks… Hate to mix them.

1 Like

Cool glad I did not spend the 1500+ on the Rytm even though it is a great drum synth. I am pretty happy with the drums on the A4 but I do have a Volca beats if I need it for pure drums. I am still learning it though.