Uninspired by the A4. What am I missing?

here’s a thing i’ve been noodling with over the last couple days - just my AK + a bit of post-eq in ableton. 1 track for the drums, other 3 tracks for the ambienty arp’d/p-locked stuff…

get friendly with the scale per track feature - it’s opened the synth up for me. also try the sync modes with large variation in tunings between oscs 1 & 2 and modulate the sync amount for some wild auto-arp weirdness :smiley:

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Trying different envelope types for short sequenced and arpeggio sounds is also inspiring

Keys- you’re missing keys. The AK will help you out (at least did in my case).

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explore the second page of osc 2. also bandpass, highpass and peak of filter 2 in with high resonance settings and in combination with filter one. Try feedback + different overdrive settings.
Explore all pulse width settings of the different osc waveforms.
Try high lfo speed settings on various parameters.
Try different voice allocation settings in polymode.
Try modulating effect settings.
Use randomizing.
Try all envelope types.

I like the basic tone of the A4 most when resonance boost is turned off for the filter and I‘m using triangle waves with max pulsewidth as saw waves instead of the actual saw. I usually keep osc levels quite low.

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Modulate lfos with lfos.
Reverse engineer the Richard Divine soundpack.
P-lock everything, even if it’s subtle variations.
Explore the noise options.
Copy a sound onto two tracks and pan one right and one left, then change envelopes, LFO rates, pwm etc separately so that elements move around the stereo field in unusual ways.

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Use it as an incredible drum synth, get @taro ‘s mod drum and fm drum patches to see how great it can be

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The A4 is one of my favourite synths of all time. Just keep at it and it will grow on you.
The only thing I wish it had was retrig, but plocking a square lfo on the volume parameter takes care of that. It lets you get really glitchy if thats your thing.

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This thread is gold

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Riffing on this I will add don’t forget about trigless locks and parameter slides, combined with trig conditions.
The sequencer is a modulator and conditional trigless locks add so much.
And don’t forget to p-lock the FX track!

Also, no need to use it as 4 mono synths, or a 4 note poly…

It sounds huge as a 4 voice unison mono, and can sound ultra weird as a single voice with neighbor routings stacked.

Plus feedback OSCs, external input OSCs. It can wear many different hats.

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Don’t forget to seek tips in this forum, there are so many of this!!

https://www.elektronauts.com/search?q=Lowend

My own eye opening was synthesizing percussions. I learned a lot from this, and came to better understanding AM and FM and how they are implemented on A4.

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Alas, I’m afraid my video is no longer up (I ditched my Youtube channel a while back)

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I just noticed that–any way to upload that again somewhere for us newer elektronauts?

Any different than just controlling the A4 with a nice midi keyboard? There is of course that joystick on the AK.

So many great suggestions so far in this threat. Really looking forward to dive into those ideas!

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It had happened to me too with the AK, and although I haven’t played it in a while (busy with DN atm), I am working on mixing a ton of stuff that used it.

For me, I have a few synths to balance sound design MFB Nanozwerg, DN, and AK. In general they don’t step on each other (they each have their own sweet spot).

For me, the AK sweet spot is pads and leads (but I’m sure sooo much more). I love the soft pads it can make. The 5th option is super fun to play with. Juno 106 emulations are crazy easy and nice.

I would just keep exploring it! I would also recommend bouncing tracks down to a sampler to free up the polyphony (I sample through a mixer to the DT).

It’s a great synth with tons of features other synths don’t have!

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That’s quite disappointing :persevere:

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For the tactility and UX I would say that, for me, it is the fact that I interact with one unit that’s got a bit of extra features (note led indicators probably my favourite along with the joystick) - the overall feel is just more “complete”, if that makes sense.

Also, I love the fact that there are separate outs for quick volume, eq and fx shaping when jamming through a mixer. I see that you have the MK2 so this is of course supported there as well - but if you haven’t set it up that way I would really recommend buying a small quality mixer along with maybe one or two outboard units (you might of course already have that) :slight_smile: .

Edit: I would also say that I perceived the same patch a bit different played on mk1 vs AK - if that was placebo effect or not IDK, but the AK sounded a bit more “solid” to me (this tweak of the filter may be doing something to the soúnd).

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@darenager quoted me.


I was much younger…

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I had an A4 for a while. Used it a bit on our most recent album, but I never really felt inspired by it. Ended up going back and forth on it for a bit, then listed it for sale. When I did that, I packed it up and never missed it. Ended up trading it for @DonovanDwyer for a Digitakt and haven’t looked back. It’s definitely not for everyone. I have a Digitone, which I find a lot more inspiring and enjoyable.

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Try a Bigsky, Ventris, Collider, Space…

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