its a good question, let me try to provide a good answer…
The A4 is interesting in that there’s no other mono-poly like it out there.
put it in a room full of vintage polys and monos and it standz up rather well. btw, It stands up rather well against $4k euro rack. Why? because you reach the limits very quickly with vintage polys and others. Like say a Jupiter 8, or ob, you hit the sound designer wall pretty quickly.
I think its best not to worry about the traditional idea of poly on the a4 (though, personally i think that elektron should provide a para update, for faking 8 voices, but thats not going to happen).
Refocus on the alternative concept of poly sounds on the A4: on the fact that no synth i know of can lock 4 notes on one step another 4 notes on another step and then have many many other sound locks across 64 steps. One one track you can have/get a huge amount of synth mileage going on.
i.e 64 steps is like 4, 4 note, different sounds overlapping with some stunning reverb to boot. Then there’s the p-locks.
As a mono, on 4 tracks its outrageous what you can do and where you can go.
I think everyone would like an Analog 8 Doesn’t exist tho, not from any synth company. Sounds like you might want a ‘Pyramid + Parva’ combo. Or DT/MPC live + Parva. Parva is 8 voice multi-timbral and DT/Pyramid/MPC Live for sequencing. Possibly as close to what you’re looking for as is possible right now. Analog isn’t cheap, for workstation type depth and 8 voices you won’t find it elsewhere in a self contained box like the A4 for the same price.
My advice is just use the A4 like an instrument (not a workstation) and track it in to a daw if you want more voices. I do that a lot. Using it for 4 note chords/poly on some tracks and 4 x mono voices for other stuff. Super flexible that way…
In response to darenager, I’ve been using the sub oscs and tuning to create chords with good results. You can P lock the tunings to keep it chromatic which is cool.
But this leads me onto another gripe: the fixed volume and waveforms of the sub oscs. They overpower the main oscs resulting in patches that sound too similar! If these were adjustable I think my “problems” with chords would go away. I could have e.g. a smooth triangle minor chord with one voice. Instead I get that buzzy square/pulse tone every time!
If you want more polyphony (and multitimbrality and FX) just buy a digital synth.
Unfortunately digital synths, which include a sequencer, tend to have keyboards so will have a larger footprint than the A4.
Even if we looked at the A4 purely as a poly, sans the sequencer, I think we’d have to look some way into the future to see a synth which could match its sound design potential.
While working within a kit, a poly patch can utilise seven LFOs, (including vibrato, 2x pulsewidth and 2x FX LFOs) hitting eleven destinations, during a time when jaws are dropping at the modulation capabilities of the REV2 and Deepmind.
Emotion doesn’t come from the number of notes in the chord, IMO.
It’s about the sound, and more precisely about the modulations.
For this, A4 is ace.
Thing is, this synth has a logic which is quite far from playing the piano. Might not really be for keyboard player.
For me that can barely play more than 4 notes at a time, and prefer crafting sequenced loops than playing many notes at a time, it’s perfect.
For someone looking to play à la Rick Wakeman, well you might lack of voices indeed.
But one thing is for sure : when I think about this synth, “modern” or even “futuristic” comes to mind.
Never “out of date”
Sometime in 09 I walked into a music store and right to a Little Phatty. I pressed one key and was amazed… Someone had dialed in a fantastic sound. I always wanted an analog synth and that tipped the scale. I must admit after I got one home I was shocked that it only played one note at a time! I was a bit naive having never owned a synth before, I had never even imagined a keyboard that only played one note… After playing for a bit and remembering that sound from the music store, I realized I just spent all this money on the best sounding note I could get! Love it…
Thank you dear.
There was absolutely no external processing.
I wish I knew how do this btw.
But here it’s a jam, unleashed by @cuckoomusic’s invitation to just play and record.
5th take, no cutting.
A4, AR, with a light touch of 0-Coast.
A4 is a very capable synth, if you give it the time.
I love this instrument so much !
My good old guitar, while being real fun to play with, never brought me to actually finish a song I’d be proud of.
I’m forever grateful to Elektron for crafting such beautiful instruments.
Already brought me so much joy, and it’s like it’s just the beginning!
Wow, Vangelis is incredible! Thanks for posting that. A little bit of digging and I found that those white boxes are all custom made just for him. …and he’s using 17 foot pedals. wow. just improvising symphonies.
Doesn’t exist tho, not from any synth company. Sounds like you might want a ‘Pyramid + Parva’ combo. Or DT/MPC live + Parva. Parva is 8 voice multi-timbral and DT/Pyramid/MPC Live for sequencing. Possibly as close to what you’re looking for as is possible right now. Analog isn’t cheap, for workstation type depth and 8 voices you won’t find it elsewhere in a self contained box like the A4 for the same price.
