Analog Four - specific workflow questions

[TOTAL]

Some questions / requests for reassurace from an ableton head, all assuming Four is the only instrument handy.

Sound locks enable packing more drum parts into a single track. How work around the following.
- There was, I heard, some trick that made kick sound as a combination of kick and snare. One thing is to increase LPF frequency per that step, but there was more. What is it?
- How to make it possible to quickly mute just kick? Keeping a dedicated track is expensive. (Un)Muting all 4 kicks quickly in the sequencer is a way, although will keep you busy enough not to do anything else. And if there are more pages, this becomes too much of a task
- Switching patterns might be the way, so if you create a complete drum loop, duplicate the whole pattern to a new one where you can remove kicks but if you should change anything in any of the tracks, you’d have to apply this twice
- performance knob could fade out kick - not perfect as this would affect audio
- accepting the hardware limitation and creating music which does not rely on kick on/off for its dynamics.

Sound management across patterns. This one is tricky. According to the manual unsaved sound will be restored to its last-saved state.
This implies that saved sound is to be treated as a foundation, shared by multiple projects even.
- So if you start a new song, select the first preset, start tweaking it, and save as a new one once happy. This selection affects the patterns copied from this one. If in pattern two you find a tweaked sound should start it, save the preset as a new ano again.
Is this all correct and the elektron way to do things?

Four voices revisited. Say you have kick, percussion, bass and lead on the four tracks but as an intro, you would rather use some pads. How to squeeze them in?
- Accepting no overlap between lead and pads per song, you can use a dedicated pattern in which all other tracks being identical, select a pad for track 4. Pads will not sustain upon the pattern (and therefore, preset change). What can be done about it?

More numbers per one live act. You may want to keep them within projects, so as to not interrupt the show.

•  any hints here? I suspect the above comments concerning alternating between pads and lead apply here. 
  

I would appreciate your comments.
Thank you.

[goodmortherlizard]

hey I’ll try to answer what I can for you. For context, whats your situation with the analog 4? thinking about it/just purchased/whatever?
have you taken a look at some of the step-by-step tutorials to get a sense of how it works? have you read the manual yet in case I mention something like the sound pool, it helps to have the reference point on it?

@TOTAL

• There was, I heard, some trick that made kick sound as a combination of kick and snare. One thing is to increase LPF frequency per that step, but there was more. What is it?

not sure, but i would guess you would have to be very clever about using both filters to have a low thud sound while letting the noise osc come through. probably use the notch filter to achieve this.

@TOTAL

• How to make it possible to quickly mute just kick? Keeping a dedicated track is expensive. (Un)Muting all 4 kicks quickly in the sequencer is a way, although will keep you busy enough not to do anything else. And if there are more pages, this becomes too much of a task

if i’m understanding the question correctly, i think you would like to have multiple sound locks on a single track (for example kick, hat & snare or whatever) while only muting the kick drum for live performances. there is a way to access the trig mute menu where you can temporarily mute whichever trigs you’d like. this might work, but you would run into an issue if you are dealing with multiple pages. probably best to just make two different patterns (one with and one without the kicks) and set the pattern change to instant.

@TOTAL

• Switching patterns might be the way, so if you create a complete drum loop, duplicate the whole pattern to a new one where you can remove kicks but if you should change anything in any of the tracks, you’d have to apply this twice

This is kind of what I was suggesting after your last question. The way to avoid making changes that have an effect on both is to save different kits for both patterns. that can be a tricky thing to wrap your head around, but you can also utilize performance macros so you can make changes on a temporary basis.

@TOTAL

• performance knob could fade out kick - not perfect as this would affect audio

I’ve never tried this, but it might work. If you set a perf macro to amp volume for the kick you would probably have to make sure that sound is one of the tracks in your kit then add other sounds you’d like from the sound pool as sound locks. definitely make sure to parameter lock the amp volume you want for the other sounds so your perf macro doesn’t drop the volume on that track.

@TOTAL

• accepting the hardware limitation and creating music which does not rely on kick on/off for its dynamics.

i utilize multiple patterns to sequence out things the way I want them. I also use mutes on tracks knowing that it might mute other sound locks or whatever.

@TOTAL

Sound management across patterns. This one is tricky. According to the manual unsaved sound will be restored to its last-saved state.
This implies that saved sound is to be treated as a foundation, shared by multiple projects even.

there are multiple layers to this. there are sounds that are saved to the ‘sound bank’ that are saved with the parameters you assign to them; you can toggle a lock onto these to prevent them from being overridden if you’d like. when you pull up patterns you start dealing with sounds as they exist within a kit (four tracks of sound settings). What this means is that if you make a lot of changes to a sound in one of your kits while jamming, don’t save them, and turn off the machine, you will lose those setting changes.

@TOTAL

• So if you start a new song, select the first preset, start tweaking it, and save as a new one once happy. This selection affects the patterns copied from this one. If in pattern two you find a tweaked sound should start it, save the preset as a new ano again.
  Is this all correct and the elektron way to do things?

this is a question about kits and making sure that you create a new kit each time you start tweaking sounds in a new pattern. for example patterns A01 - 08 can all have the same kit. If you turn to A05 and start changing your lead sound its going to change for all the other patterns because you are using the same kit. this is confusing, but once you do it a while it is really easy. You can just ‘save kit’ into a new spot and make a duplicate of the one you are using already. it’s pretty nice for what you are talking about so you can start tweaking and preserve a foundation and continuity of sound.

@TOTAL

Four voices revisited. Say you have kick, percussion, bass and lead on the four tracks but as an intro, you would rather use some pads. How to squeeze them in?

You just have to be clever with structuring your sequences, in your patterns & kits. If your intro has a pad you will have to figure out how many voices you can devote to it. can you make a sound you like with one voice of two osc and two sub osc? do you need something polyphonic? if so how can you manage that with the other sounds, etc?

@TOTAL

• Accepting no overlap between lead and pads per song, you can use a dedicated pattern in which all other tracks being identical, select a pad for track 4. Pads will not sustain upon the pattern (and therefore, preset change). What can be done about it?

I am not sure what you mean by this. if you want a pad to keep playing even when a pattern changes you’ll have to make sure that the length of the note value on that trigger carries on to the next pattern. for example if you want a pad sound on track 4 to keep sustaining from one pattern to the next while they change you’ll have to calculate how long each pattern is and how long the note needs to be and not place any trigs in the second pattern on that same track.

@TOTAL

More numbers per one live act. You may want to keep them within projects, so as to not interrupt the show.

each project has up to 128 patterns so you should be good if you plan things well.

I hope i understood what you were asking, but let me know if i can expand on anything. i use the analog 4 on its on and feel fine with the voice limitations. i think it mostly comes down to planning your music well. there are a lot of solutions to making things work that just take a bit of time working with it. it can be a bit frustrating because you might find that something you want to do isn’t possible because you didn’t work it out before laying down trigs. with that said having a digitakt that you sample the A4 might be more what you want. double the tracks so you can leave the kick drum on its on track for quick mutes, but there might be a reason you only want an A4.

good luck and just practice with it a lot.

[sezare56]

@TOTAL

some trick that made kick sound as a combination of kick and snare

You can play 2 soundlocks on the same step with poly 2 voices, and microtiming.

Poly : track 1 and 2
Step 5 : kick Soundlock
Step 6 : snare Soundlock, microtiming -23
(Around 5 ms delay at 120 bpm)

[TOTAL]

Thanks a lot for your detailed answers.

I bought A4 recently and have only now had time to look into it. Exploring its capacities before I also have a chance to borrow Rytm, wanting to decide which one to keep as I get them to know. Two would be overkill in that the set would still have shortcomings, and the more devices, the more distraction.
I did consider digitakt but Rytm’s performance and analogue circuits might win.

Looking for a device w/hands-on experience (as w/computer no matter what I did, 99% of the times I ended up engineering stuff rather than making music).

It looks like the controls layout and the sequencer make it possible, the analog sound is unearthly!

I have watched Cuckoo’s and some others’ tutorials on youtube, and keep referring to the manual.

THE KICK’N’SNARE
I need to refer to one of the videos. I did follow this trick and it worked but have forgotten which parameters had locks for the illusion. Limited for sure but quite interesting.

KICK MUTE
Switching kits might do the trick, and also inspire upfront varieties to sounds without yet touching the sound locks, although again, this would involve duplicating stuff between patterns and would lose the sense immediacy - it is just a kick on/off.
I will look into performance macros.

VOLUME LOCK
A great trick with volume locking the other sounds. And for uniformly 4x4 stuff, empty patterns with kicks in steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 and pre-set volume in all other, empty steps in Track one.

@goodmortherlizard

i utilize multiple patterns to sequence out things the way I want them. I also use mutes on tracks knowing that it might mute other sound locks or whatever.

Not sure what you mean. Could you clarify?

SOUND MANAGEMENT

@goodmortherlizard

there are sounds that are saved to the ‘sound bank’ that are saved with the parameters you assign to them; you can toggle a lock onto these to prevent them from being overridden if you’d like. when you pull up patterns you start dealing with sounds as they exist within a kit (four tracks of sound settings). What this means is that if you make a lot of changes to a sound in one of your kits while jamming, don’t save them, and turn off the machine, you will lose those setting changes.

Okay, so sounds banks are repositories with some basic labelling and filtering. As you work on a project, all four sounds used are saved in their last state. For variations on this or settings linked to patterns, kits are the method.

So far, I have been keeping each idea as separate projects to secure the sounds, unclear on why I was losing sounds, but patterns retaining their link to kits makes sense.
If I understand correctly, if you deleted a sound from a sound bank, projects would not be affected, nor would kits. And saving sounds to kits creates base for improvisations with sounds, right? I think it was SOUND and NO that reverted to the last saved. That’s very convenient and not common in virtual instruments.

@goodmortherlizard

if you want a pad to keep playing even when a pattern changes you’ll have to make sure that the length of the note value on that trigger carries on to the next pattern. for example if you want a pad sound on track 4 to keep sustaining from one pattern to the next while they change you’ll have to calculate how long each pattern is and how long the note needs to be and not place any trigs in the second pattern on that same track.

Good to know. So I made wrong assumptions things were as bad as with MC-808 by Roland where changing patterns cut off all the sound tails. Here, the kit change does not affect the ongoing sound until a note is played.

TRACK LIMITATION
Coming from cubase/ableton environment, I have experience of handling somehow up to 60 tracks, with most of additional sound clips having their own sets of effects. Madness. With a few only, it turns out it is so much easier to animate / conduct this to come up with songs you want to play rather than produce and move on.

SAMPLING
It has many applications but in some basic form, if no sync is needed, even an android phone with headphones output could do the trick with some app.

As long as the a4 synth is not limiting for its sounds, and I don’t think it might be, having heard the FM pack from takura.

How do you manage without a compressor?

Side note, I am finding this on-board keyboard super cool.

[TOTAL]

Thanks for this. That is a great idea, useful also for synth chords. For a triad, one sound would come from the step before and the other from the step after.

[CCMP]

@TOTAL

KICK MUTE
Switching kits might do the trick, and also inspire upfront varieties to sounds without yet touching the sound locks, although again, this would involve duplicating stuff between patterns and would lose the sense immediacy - it is just a kick on/off.
I will look into performance macros.

If you make the Kick the main/core sound of a track, then have the snare and other sounds on the same track via p-locks, you can go to the AMP page and use the volume control there to control/mute the kick on its own.
If you set the AMP volume to 100 then set your desired Kick level in the Syn and Sample pages, you can then hold Func when turning the AMP volume as a mute tool to instantly switch between 0 and 100 to get you back to the right level.

[TOTAL]

OK, thanks. Yes, with func for speed and volume locks on all other track sharing content, this is probably the best solution. One concern, the ‘blocking’ is done via audio, which is far from great for intense beat mangling, but the only way to get this done via midi seems to be to dedicate a track to kick.

[goodmortherlizard]

glad i was helpful! I’m going to clarify some stuff.

@TOTAL

Not sure what you mean. Could you clarify?

this was a response in regards to your question about muting a track (not wanting to use a whole voice for just kick or something to this effect). I was just commenting that switching between two patterns and play with quick mutes (from the perf page) in order to drop the kick drum track for dynamics even if I have a sound lock hihat or something on that same track.

@TOTAL

sounds banks are repositories with some basic labelling and filtering

Sound banks are wearing your presets are located. these are not attached to any projects. each project can save 128 patterns, 128 kits (which have 4 tracks each that can vary from the sound bank presets and get saved independently). you can use the same kit for all 128 patterns if you’d like, but any parameter changes you make on that kit will apply to all patterns the kit is used on. try loading a throw away pattern and do a basic sequence, load kit 01 into it (save that kit whatever) and try loading a new kit into the pattern. The notes you’ve sequenced out will play with the new sounds. this is the best way to illustrate this point. Similarly, make two patterns with the same kit, then change all the parameters you want on each of the track sounds(save the kit). now switch to the other pattern to see that the changes carry over. You can of course utilize saving your kits the way you’d like them and engaging the ‘reload kit on pattern change’ feature so that you can tweak everything without losing your core settings as you improvise.

@TOTAL

I have been keeping each idea as separate projects to secure the sounds

if you want to make a set with lots of different songs, i would avoid this. Having 8 banks of 16 patterns is more than enough to make lots of songs in my opinion. in the long run this will only make it difficult to string your ideas together into a live set.

@TOTAL

unclear on why I was losing sounds

you were likely not saving your individual sounds to empty slots in the sound bank (look to the sound manager section for more info), or saving kits after playing around with the settings, or simply not saving your project before turning things off. I imagine if you were jumping between projects that would be easy to forget to save all the different components.

@TOTAL

And saving sounds to kits creates base for improvisations with sounds, right?

it can especially if you use the ‘reload kit’ feature i mentioned above. you do run the risk of missing your key stroke and saving over your settings, but that might not be a concern. I would spend a bit of time setting up perf macros on the front end so you can jam out without the risk of altering things too badly.

@TOTAL

Good to know. So I made wrong assumptions things were as bad as with MC-808 by Roland where changing patterns cut off all the sound tails. Here, the kit change does not affect the ongoing sound until a note is played.

exactly! just remember you’ve got the four voices and if you start something new it will cut off the older sound. of course you can use the FX delay/reverb sends to create the illusion of a longer decay of a pad or faster multiples of hihats or whatever.

@TOTAL

Coming from cubase/ableton environment, I have experience of handling somehow up to 60 tracks, with most of additional sound clips having their own sets of effects. Madness. With a few only, it turns out it is so much easier to animate / conduct this to come up with songs you want to play rather than produce and move on.

i feel the same way. I have to be a bit more clever with my arrangements to get the right sounds. lots of folks don’t like it. sometimes i wish i had a digitakt so i had ‘extra’ voices, but i don’t want to spend the money or lose song mode.

@TOTAL

As long as the a4 synth is not limiting for its sounds, and I don’t think it might be, having heard the FM pack from takura.

I don’t think it is. sometimes drum sounds can be tricky to get a certain sound, but there are great drum libraries out there. DRUMA is one of the best around and even the free pack from elektron is great.

@TOTAL

How do you manage without a compressor?

I haven’t had an issue, but it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be better with one. electro-harmonix has a nice stereo compressor pedal (called platform) you can find for under $175 used. i’ve seen lots of folks use it online and it sounds decent.

@TOTAL

Side note, I am finding this on-board keyboard super cool.

i meant to ask, do you have mk I or II? i have an mki and really love it, but would love the individual outputs and better screen, more buttons, better encoders, etc.

[jemmons]

This doesn’t answer any of your specific questions, but I learned a heck of a lot about A4 workflow by watching @Eaves’s A4 mkI and mkII jams. And most of the project files are available to patreons, so you can even follow along at home and really boost your understanding.

It’s a great way to learn the performance/organization side of this extremely deep instrument, IMHO.

[TOTAL]

Thanks for your answers. Coming to grips, gradually:)

SAVING
Took today yesterday’s improvised loop. All 4 tracks turned out to play right. Luckily the kit in its basic form was well suited because anything I changed about the sound got lost.
Having done more tests, looks like saving project does not secure the most recent preset selection and settings - you need to save the kit or accept that presets will revert, and THEN save the pattern, and then the project, which I think is what you sugested, too. saving the project but failing to save both kits and presets results in patterns being saved but not kits.

So it looks like good practice to be saving projects when ending sessions as this provides a stage to undo back to.

Assuming this to be correct, I copied the preset to another one and immediately saved the kit under a new name. For some reason the pattern played completely differently but only now I have realised pasting a pattern requires longer pressing the buttons.

MIGRATE BETWEEN PROJECTS
To move one pattern to the project space, the steps would be

• copy source pattern
• paste to an empty destination pattern slot
• save the 4 presets in the repository
• select them in destination pattern
• save kit
• save preset
• save project

PERFORMANCE
A great feature is that when you increase the modifying value and browse the available parameters, you hear immediately the effect.

Yes, I am on mk2. Interestingly, the prices of mk1 electrons are reaching the price of mk2s almost. Might be the moment for you to upgrade.

[goodmortherlizard]

i learned the workflow took a bit of getting used to, but it gets easier and more intuitive. doing some of that annoying preparation work (setting up kits and perf macros, etc.) can go a long way later on.

one trick you might already be using is setting up one kit perf macros and all, then using that as the ‘template’ for future kits i.e. load a pattern & your template kit, then going through the process to ‘save kit’ into a different slot, then make the changes to your sounds that you want. this is helpful because perf macros can be tedious to set up and i generally use at least the same top row for each one (drum filters, delay sends, bass, whatever).

i hope you are enjoying the A4, it’s a great instrument and there’s a lot there.

I will keep an eye out for the mkii in the future. got some expenses weighing me down at the moment (moving and all), but it will happen one day

[TOTAL]

Indeed, it takes a while to become familiar with how this system works.

Yeah, enjoying a4 hugely. Its synth sounds better than Virus TI.

Here are some new discoveries.

ARP
Turns out arpeggios are recorded as a single step controlled by length parameter as single notes, which is a very neat solution.

SHIFT PATTERN
In manual, shifting triggers around. Cool.

KIK OFF
How to switch off kik - and only kik - without: changing kits, manipulating volume, using knobs, dedicating a channel for kick

Use Fill, set buttons note trigger conditions to fill with overscore, this means that

• when you press fill, kicks will not play, and this is midi-level blocking, with a button, accessible.
• you are free to use all the empty steps for other sounds and they will not be affected unless you choose to ‘anti-fill’ them, too.

And it’s lockable! Elektron team are gods.

PERFORMANCE TIPS
There are a couple of things there, one being the macros - and the meta macro (I like the idea BTW), the other how to remember in which octave ‘solo’ parts were done. I think I will be changing sound octaves with oscillator to make the parts playable without jumping octaves in-between notes and for the mini-keyboard to always be in the ‘middle’ octave.

MACROS
Performance macros - is there a syx file circulating on elektronauts?

EXPLORATIONS AND SAVING WORKFLOW
This is still unclear. Imagine you have a pattern and kit saved. As you tweak the notes and sounds, you come up with a worthy new scene.
So to keep both the old and the new snapshot,

save kit as a new one
copy & paste pattern to a new one.
save the new pattern
get back to the old one

and here… unfortunately, the old one is linked with the new kit, and to get back to the assignment of the old kit you need to reload it here.

Any simpler way?

[TOTAL]

Interesting but no explanation along the way and the music seems uninspiring for me.

Youtuber Ihor does some great techno tutorials.

[pselodux]

@TOTAL

the music seems uninspiring for me

woah I think you may be the first person ever with this opinion

[TOTAL]

really? I found that music a distraction and preferred to just read relevant part in the manual.

[qlamerand]

I just pictured a concert with a live read of the user manual
(it’s a bit of a troll, I can imagine the need to be focus on the feature to learn without music)

[TOTAL]

Or all the patrons in festival live act in the audience reading pdfs off their phone screens
Yeah, this is subjective, and might even attract overreaction as above.

There was this acclaimed Philharmonia soloist busking incognito in a city center. Largely overlooked, attracted little attention.

When he played as himself in concert, people would pay big sums.

[pselodux]

@TOTAL

I found that music a distraction and preferred to just read relevant part in the manual

Perhaps if you’re simply viewing it for tips, but I personally think he’s the single best A4 user out there, a really great example of what can be done with the machine if you know what you’re doing.

[TOTAL]

Okay, if so, maybe it might take one more look to appreciate that. Thanks.

But yes, in this thread I am looking for rather specific tips on the workflow. It is still unclear how to do sonic explorations in the middle of a project.

TLDR, here is the part

"
This is still unclear. Imagine you have a pattern and kit saved. As you tweak the notes and sounds, you come up with a worthy new scene.
So to keep both the old and the new snapshot,

save kit as a new one
copy & paste pattern to a new one.
save the new pattern
get back to the old one

and here… unfortunately, the old one is linked with the new kit, and to get back to the assignment of the old kit you need to reload it here.
"

[as I look again, this chap is really making some great music Mørkeredd (Analog Four) - YouTube]

[goodmortherlizard]

@TOTAL

Use Fill, set buttons note trigger conditions to fill with overscore, this means that

• when you press fill, kicks will not play, and this is midi-level blocking, with a button, accessible.
• you are free to use all the empty steps for other sounds and they will not be affected unless you choose to ‘anti-fill’ them, too.

very clever. i totally forgot about that as an option. usually i am playing guitar so i don’t do much with the fill settings.

@TOTAL

PERFORMANCE TIPS
There are a couple of things there, one being the macros - and the meta macro (I like the idea BTW), the other how to remember in which octave ‘solo’ parts were done. I think I will be changing sound octaves with oscillator to make the parts playable without jumping octaves in-between notes and for the mini-keyboard to always be in the ‘middle’ octave.

this is an interesting idea, that i hope plays out well. remember that if you use func + whatever parameter encoder it will jump some values. this might help go up octaves on the fly without any dissonance in between…unless thats what youre going for.

@TOTAL

Any simpler way?

i don’t think so if i understand what you’re saying. some A4 workflow stuff can be a bit tedious at times.