Hi,
I wonder what kind of sounds A4 is very good at?
I understand how deep is that synth, yet it is often difficult for me to achieve what I want, and most of the time I use what I “accidentally” found.
What about you?
Alex.
I don’t know A4 enough after 2 weeks but I would say it is very polyvalent and the controls are amazingly immediate. At each step you can have 4 different sounds, and modify them with macros (10x5 parameters), several settings for mod wheel, after touch, pitch bend… Etc.
The numerical control makes a numerical sensation because it is very precise. Analog filters still make the difference to my ears.
For me, good for drums, acid Tb 303 like (really don’t need a 303 anymore, like every body needs…), pads…
I have a Blofeld to feed it for 25 voices paraphony and I like the filters so it will be almost perfect with my Octatrack.
An Analog Heat and I’ll be an happy Elektron Fanboy finally.
I did not find it very easy to program pads! Do you have tips? 
I don’t know if there is any TIPS for Pads or any sound for that matter
but i created some pretty good Pad on this thing and also some great
Vintage Analog Classic Sounds too, will demonstrate when i have time.
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Slow attack and release on filter enveloppe, lfos on filter, pan, detune… You have a pad. 
Yeah but you’ll get a thin one if you just do that right?
For example I feel that there is a trick with the saw pwm to get a super saw feeling, when stacking two oscillators. But I did not manage to get the super saw and “fat pads”.
I always have some problems with slow Attack when making pads.
If I choose an Envelope without the dot, the sound just fades in when the previous chord already faded out, otherwise it immediately appears,
Using an Envelope with dot, which retriggers each time works for slow fading in, but I have some clicking when the new chord hits (not clicking but the sound shortly dies before the new envelope is triggered. Can’t explain it well)
I would recommend to check out the LFO for pads use some of the LFO shapes with the dot in front of it - i.e. the LFO frequency gets triggerd more often depending on the note played. One oscillator does the basic wave, the second is modulated with the mentioned LFO.
Now the LFO rate is controlled with an envelope. So while the sound evolves the LFO modulates depending on the ADSR setting of the shape. You could also modulate a 2nd target with that envelope - for a pad try delay and reverb.
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Thank you for the tips! Will try that.
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Also try the LFO shape with the tuning fork in front of it, its very usefull.
That one is for FM right? It follows the pitch I remember. And I wonder if the one with the dots is following the tempo?
Also remember, this is not a PolySynth, steals voices from the other Tracks,
Pads are not its strong feature even if they sound good, the max you can
play a good Pad would be 3 voice/finger and even that will be a lot.
What I recently used a lot are the crossmod options on the Oscs. Especially the Am. Get some really nice plucky, metallic, fm like or string like sounds. Try Am with key tracking on and off (of the modulating Osc). Also the Peak filter is great to shape the sound to get untypical results. And the Osc feedback together with filter overdrive yields very interesting unpredictable sounds. A lot to explore
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Yes I agree!
I did not thought about AM without key tracking!
Guys you helped me a lot already, I’ve many things to try.
Many thanks to all of you!
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Quick demo with 8 Oscs, 4 voices. It’s just a basic square but I can play 8 different notes with midipal/ep+.
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I recently had a very good moment playing the filter 2 set as peak and with full resonance.
You get sine from this, pretty cool BoC chords if set as Poly…
Otherwise I have found a lot of expressivity taking the time to play with aftertouch and modwheel destinations…
You can drastically change the sound, or only add a touch of change…
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I’m partial to drum and percussion sounds. FM percs and dubby or noise washes.
On the latter, point a fast lfo at pretty much anything and you’ve got a dirty sound.
Nowadays I true to use every feature of the synth in sound design and then every feature of the sequencer to try to get as much music as possible out of four bars.
Not simple but to sum up :
Play with the keyboard, I split 8 notes to 8 midi channel with midipal, channel 1-2 are for voice 1, 3-4 voice 2, etc…
I convert note on to CC Waveform 0, note off to CC Waveform Off, note numbers to CC coarse tune of OSC1 for even midi channels, OSC2 for odd channels…
Inconvenients : Unwanted slide effect for new notes (due to coarse tune behaviour).
Cannot use subs for the moment…
I think it’s simplier to feed A4 with my Blofeld for a 72 oscillators ability !
But anyway, I can give all infos later if anybody really interested in…
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