I want to get the effect of the pitch rising up within a bar/section while playing rhythmic notes (so a long pitch bend up that ‘stutters’/only sounds when you play a note).
There doesn’t seem to be a way to do this using the LFO ‘mode’ setting, FREE doesn’t restart it when you press play or loop to the bar (so it goes out of time) and all the other settings seem to reset the LFO whenever you play a note. There’s an a setting on the Octatrack that resets the LFO at the start of each bar.
Am I missing a setting to do this or is there any workaround to fake the effect?
I had a similar disappointment when I just tried to p-lock the arp setting which is another Octa only one. Both really handy settings that seem more suited to the A4.
Thanks for the workaround, that should do the trick nicely!
You can accomplish this by using the “FREE” LFO mode then p-locking LFO mode to “TRG” on the first trig of the sequence (can set volume to 0 if you don’t want to hear this one) then giving it a trig condition of 1st, 1:1, 2:1, etc. That way the LFO realigns at the start of the sequence and again at whatever interval you choose.
You could do that, or you could pester Elektron to implement the “SYNC TRIG” mode from the OT on all their devices
SYNC TRIG will restart the LFO on track start, and also every time the pattern loops.
Does the A4 have a trigless trig like the octatrack where I can set it to not sound or is 0vol the only way? I’m guessing this means I can’t manually play a note right at the beginning of the bar if the volume needs to be set to zero?
Pretty sure A4 does trigless trigs but in my experience on the DT a ‘normal’ trigger is needed to actually trigger the LFO. But IMO its a moot point whether its a trigless trig or one with volume 0 as the first trig will be occupied in both cases.
You can fake a note at the beginning of the bar by micro timing trig two to the left. Pain in the ass tho, and another reason this hack aint so good is that if you are live recording it’s possible to accidentally shift the micro timing of trig one causing the LFO to not actually be perfectly synced.
In short there is no solution besides “SYNC TRIG” that doesn’t have a few annoying gotchas.
Cheers, yeah I was afraid that might be the case. For this type of effect I’ll probably play the notes live on the keyboard so I’ll see if that glitches much using this method.
Real shame as all of the LFO destination options really push you towards this kind of effect. C’mon Elektron, not everyone just makes music full of big long constant evolving sounds!
A4 doesn’t work very well for me on the first try. Gets the basic effect but the problem is that if I’m already playing a note when the first/lfo trig comes around then the LFO doesn’t get reset.
It’s a really common dance music/effect sound, the only other way I can think to do this is by separately gating the effect coming out of the A4 in my DAW but I really want to avoid using the DAW for creative realtime stuff (kills the creative flow for me, hence the Elektron boxes!)
Will the slide p-locks apply if I’m playing a note on the keyboard when they’re supposed to trigger? That’s the problem that I’m having with the LFO trig (it doesn’t apply if I’m playing a note so the LFO goes out of time).
When I read your original post I imagined you would put one note trig at the start and end of the pattern and p-lock or Perf the volume (as well as slide the TUN all the way along). Do you want to play different notes and have them all pitch up?
Yes that’s the effect I’m after. I’m guessing it’ll have the same problem as the LFO p-lock (not applying when playing another note) but I’ll give it a try, I haven’t played around with slides much before.
Yes that’s what i’m after. Got it working fine, only downside is as mentioned above - it skips/misses the lfo trig p-lock if I’m playing a note on the first beat in the bar.
I can live with that for now, and if I do need to play on the first beat I’ll fiddle around with time shifting the 2nd trig back instead of play it manually.
Yes I think I might do that when the current workaround doesn’t cut it.
I’m going to use the OT to p-lock arpeggios as well but I’m using the A4 standalone for a while to write some stuff/get some nice sounds going. I tend to get deeper into it when it’s on my lap lying on the bed than when I’m leaning over in the desk chair
