I have a wall of modular and semi-modular things on one side of my room and I am always looking for portable and interesting controllers that can be used with them. When I had the MF, my setup was arranged a bit differently and it made less sense. Now, though, my table-top space is limited on that side of the room and small controllers and sequencers are handy to have around.
This is my favorite thing about the A4. The CV features on that synth can get any synth in tune. I have an Analog Keys but it is a bit removed from the modular/semi-modular stuff in my room, but want to grab an A4 Mk1 at the earliest opportunity to have primarily as a sequencer for the Model 10 and VCS3 (both of which have less-than-ideal voltage scaling at the best of times).
Lacking a really respectable mixer and a cupboard full of pedals, it is quite nice for me to send CV into my little rig, then take stereo outs back into the A4 to supply chorus, delay, reverb, plus a top-notch drum kit and three more synth voices if Iâm feeling maximalist⌠and I havenât even hooked up your Analog Heat yet!
I was going to wait for the next wave of online sales, but it showed up used at Control in Brooklyn yesterday for a decent price, so I jumped on it. Alas, their pickup hours this week start at 12:30pm, and it will be 31C by then, consistently (even worse with the humidity), so it will sit there until next week. (The buses and subway are air-conditioned, but neither is close enough to spare me.)
I could happily coast for a decade or more on your castoffs, so feel free to proactively PM me if you have stuff lying around!
To take this back to the MicroFreak, I donât think Iâve ever successfully and consistently used aftertouch/pressure to good effect. Though, to be honest, Iâm underwhelmed by aftertouch on my Digitone Keys, also (but velocity works much better there).
I do this all the time. At first, I was just being lazy, but at some point I realized that I really like the AKâs effects!
Itâs something I truly love, beginning with my old (and sorely missed) Yamaha CS-60. That thing was a joy to lean into.
These days, I use the Continuum and thatâs all about the pressure. The Microfreakâs keyboard isnât so much aftertouch as it is âfinger spreadâ detection. This opens up a lot of different possibilities that aftertouch doesnât, by providing something that senses how much of your finger is making contact rather than how hard you are pressing a key. I can think of a lot of ways to play with that sort of control. But admittedly didnât when I had it.
The dog is annoying me. I heard you might be looking for one.
Yes, and maybe it is just my fingers, or the humidity, but I canât get a lot of nuance out of it. I think making a key into a mini mod wheel by travelling up/down it might have been a better decision. But I know nothing about capacitive design.
Actually, I am allergic to dogs (and I donât really own an Ether, either)âŚ
For only ten to fifteen times the price. I feel bad about neglecting my MicroFreak. There is so much there for what it costs. But I had the privilege to be able to afford to step into the next tier.
Since weâre a bit off-topic, have you guys looked into this for CV control? Not only a whacked-out noise box but each side outputs two channels of CV that can cross-modulate (if that is the correct term) via skin contact⌠barely scratched the surface of that aspect in my time with it. Now that I have more CV stuff to interact with, might be on the hunt again.
Opposite for me, I had and sold other synths but any time I looked at scaling down, the MF stayed. Iâm not a keyboard player so the MF keyboard is fantastic for me, I can tap it or I can use my whole finger to modulate slow notes.
Plus it doesnât have a huge sound so it sits really well in any of my mixes.
I hardly use the sequencer but pressure modulations are on every single one of my patches.
Tried it (rather, got a developer in the family to run it for me, heh). Sadly, the example wavetables the creator supplied were distorted/noisy for me (aliased? If so, it wasnât âgoodâ aliasing).
Would be amazing to get the Plaits wavetables and see if they can be loaded.
I knew that Arturia used Plaits code in the MicroFreak (and the handling of this was the cause of some friction between Emilie Gillet and Arturia) but I didnât know until a few minutes ago, when I looked at the Plaits manual, that the Microfreak manual copied chunks of the Plaits documentation verbatim. Iâm not happy about this.
I grew up listening to this kind of music indirectly (my choices were quite different) because my father was/is seriously into it, but as with other aspects of my ancestral cultural heritage, almost no actual depth of knowledge was transmitted to me. This to my ear sounds quite authentic, lacking only the sound of the resonant or drone strings that would be present on a sitar or veena (there is a tanpura sample used, which doesnât quite fill out the sound).
Thank you for sharing! I loved the music and it also helped me figure out how to âsolveâ an issue I was having while using that same algorithm on my microfreak this evening!
Itâs that Karplus Strong model that drew me to the Microfreak in the first place and here it is used to brilliant effect. I love this clip - quite inspiring.
They donât need to rephrase it. They need to give credit for the prose. They do give credit for the code.
Edit: the Plaits manual is provided under CC-by-SA 3.0 license. Arturia does not provide proper attribution as required by that license, and does not make its own version available under that license. In fact, they say: âNo part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any purpose other than purchaserâs personal use, without the express written permission of ARTURIA S.A.â
There is no alternative firmware to convert MicroFreak into digital Buchla Easel? It is technically feasible as theyâve already done with Buchla Easel V. If that wonât happen, maybe Low Pass Gate as the additional filter would be neat.
try to make cool gear videos with everything in it. You are kind of if a personality. I would watch them.