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 
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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) 
.
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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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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So this joystick on the A4 , isn’t it possible to mimick it with some other gear?
They’re just macros. But you happen to be able to use two at the same time (mod + pitch bend, or breath+pitch bend)
But it’s sitting there ready to be tweaked at all times, so hard not to use it.
I’ve been writing on the AK with heavy joystick use, again because it’s there, and then using Overbridge to take those joystick assignments and plug them into the Performance Macros painlessly, so that when I dump the sysex onto the A4 module, I can still perform the modulations in a more portable format.
Usually once I’ve done that, I stop using the joystick, even when jamming the tunes on the AK still.
But the joystick is great during the writing process.
The best option to actually be able to get control of two macros at a time with one hand is arguably the Expressive E Touché. You could save money by getting $229 the SE version and a $39 USB MIDI host off Reverb or eBay, to get the DIN MIDI output working.
Otherwise there are Eurorack joysticks. Befaco makes a $150 unit. But then you gotta add at least $150 in CV to MIDI translation gear (the inverse, MIDI to CV is more common and less expensive, unfortunately), plus a case… suddenly you’re at $400 just for a MIDI joystick if you aren’t already into eurorack.
There’s also more homegrown options on Etsy for $299 with DIN MIDI output
or, perhaps cheapest but least expressive is a Korg Nanopad 2 (has an XY pad) plus a USB MIDI host.
After recently researching all these options myself, I settled on just using the Performance Macros page.
When you consider that you can only use the joystick on the currently selected track, using the performance page macros instead means I can use multiple track’s macros at the same time, and not have to fuss around with changing tracks to make it work.
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Does that work? Amazing. BTW I failed to find adapters that I felt I could trust. Do you have any special brand in mind?
these work great:
Rio MIDI USB Host Interface White
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