What's one piece of advice you'd give to a new AK user?

My AK is arriving tomorrow.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give me?

Background:

I owned an A4 for a couple of months, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the lack of keyboard. I was a HUGE fan of the sound, especially the reverb, and the easo of making polyrhythms.

I’ve got 20+ years experience in synths and music-making.

I like tacos.

Thanks!

The multiple outs are a godsend for outboard effects. The overdrive on the AK is a bit lacking in my opinion, especially since it works at the filter level. So a good overdrive pedal is great to get those huge distorted basses.

The joystick is preprogrammed but you can get so much more creative with it.

Transpose lock is amazing for fucking with patterns. I usually just set it to affect one track and go crazy on it with the keyboard.

swed

EARLY STARTUP MENU
To access this menu, hold down the [FUNCTION] key while powering up Analog Keys. From here you can perform a variety of tasks.

EMPTY RESET

To perform this operation, press the second [TRIG] key. All kits, patterns, Sounds and songs will be erased.

This is where I allways start.

Read the entire manual at least once. Elektron is the only manufacturer I don’t just skim and/or reference the manual, but actually sit down and read them cover to cover.

True.
I’ve read the manual 3 times, and I still find stuff I missed.

I also downloaded the A4/K Cook Book from the iOS Store - seems like a great reference manual.

Agree with the RTFM (manual) suggestions. I’m on lap #4.

Since you’ve had a A4 for a while, this one’s probably mute … but more than anything else for me, learning (and I mean really learning) all of the shortcut key combos equates to two useful things.

  • speed of use
  • much less reliance on the tiny screen.

I get around now only using the screen for patch names mostly.

Last … since the AK is going to give you a new keyboard … hit the [sound] menu as tailor the velocity response. I didn’t like the default much as it was way too different to my other keys (yamaha).

Other than that, have a ball.