I'm bummed out with the A4's polyphony

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
#83

I prefer potato chips, personally.

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#84

I love it definitely more of a groovebox though but the chords do sound lovely as suspected and that was my worry!

Maybe I get another one so I can have chords and a couple of mono lines running?! :sweat_smile:

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#85

Or an A4K

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#86

I already have a nice controller - and lack of space.

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#87

Man I followed the A4 threads hoping for some good tips and tricks, tracks, trade secrets but every day I’m pinged by the same people posting the same goddamned concerns and topics. Acidizer no offense mate but you cause me anxiety.

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#89

“A special kind of masochism”

Just found my new band name.

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#90

Or just som sort of polysynth you can sequence from the A4.

But of course its an awesome machine, you can get around the voice count with sound locks and stuff. And limitations can be inspiring and make for a more minimal but straight forward sound. To me, beeing quite restless, i was sometimes struggling with the voice count and workarounds anyways, and was a bit mindblown with a elektron device with 12(!) tracks, the Syntakt. And that machine just suits me better. But still, awesome much deeper machine. For example, like this guys jams where only the A4 is used, such creativeness and skill.

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#93

This thread was such a fun ride. I want to write a short story about it

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#94

I think this is a great time to help bring this back to a peaceful resolution and conclusion, for the good of the community. Here is the thing that made me want to both get into electronic music production (was bass/guitar and broken dreams for years until three years ago), and specifically into Elektron devices.

And he makes the A4 monstrous

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#95

If we can have epistolary novels, we can have Discourse short stories. Just edit the thread down.

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#96

Thems some big words for a synth indecision thread.

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#97

I’m bummed about Discourse’s lack of epistolary novels.

I can’t find them, haven’t even read one, but for years I have lusted after reading or writing one but the fact I wont be able to play some juicy word play always turns me away ultimately.

Tell me how stupid I am being please.

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#98

Damn it ! No laugh emoji!

#99

So there dude!

#100

I hope next firmware adds paraphonic mode where each track can use the two osc + sub to play 3 notes. Same as doing the offsets with the tuning but from the played notes.

I’m sure this has been asked many times but now that DT has slices perhaps is the time the A4 can have a paraphonic mode per track.

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#101

Can we polychain analog keys / four with another yet ? I got gift cards burning holes in my wallet .

#102

Tune those two oscillators and two sub-oscillators per track to different notes. Done

#103

Part of the joy of paraphonic mode on a real Korg MonoPoly is being able to tweak each of the voices while the device is cycling through them. Since A4 isn’t “knob per function” on one track, let alone across all tracks, this isn’t as immediate on A4 without helper knobby boxes. But it also means it’s more effective when using e.g. 3 tracks, since a sub-osc of a voice is not as independently tweakable as a full voice.

I’ll probably never own a real Korg MonoPoly (and don’t want to mess with the B-clone), but played one at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum and it was a blast. Its arp was being triggered by an external pulse from a rhythm machine. A4 is not quite the same of course, but it has been fun trying to mimic some of that MonoPoly experience with A4.

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#104

I’m a little confused about how you’re using “paraphkny” here, but maybe my understanding of the term is too limited. To me, you sound like you want the A4’s round-robin “polyphony” mode. Admittedly, that’s not paraphonic as each voice would have its own filter and envelopes. I imagine you could get close to what you’re after with careful performance macro programming. I’ve not tried it yet.

I get that the A4 isn’t a Mono/Poly, I’d love one too: they sound amazing! They have a muscular tone character only the ARP2600 gets close to (and I can’t afford one of those either). I am confident the A4 is more flexible overall than a Mono/Poly tho’.

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#105

Yes, totally.

But I have tried to mimic “paraphony” by opening the filters on tracks 1-3, and then using ‘neighbor osc’ all the way into track 4, and using track 4’s filters.

(…with some combination of ‘use track voice’ & etc., in the polyphony settings, which I don’t fully recall at the moment… in part because any particular setting is fun to play with, no matter what it’s set to… :slight_smile: )

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