I like song and chain mode on the A4 and CV control. It is still a fantastic synth that does more than many newer more expensive synths today.
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There’s a workaround: save your Sound with the arp, deactivate the arp then you can use Sound locks to get your retrigs… Same on DN. Would love a plockable arp though. Or even retrigs.
Edit: sorry, it’s possible on DN only, see bellow for a true alternative!
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Triangle and pwm full to the left is the best saw wav imo. Love it
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Edit: Clarified below, this trick does not apply to A4 (so buy a Digitone and then watch this video)
Good point! You can also save different sounds with different arp/retrig rates so you have variations ready. @Eaves did a great job documenting this approach in this video:
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This definitely works on the Digitone, but unfortunately on the Analog Four, Arp settings are saved with the Track rather than the Sound.
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I don’t think this works, sadly. I tried doing this when I first got my A4 mk1, since I was already doing it on the DN. On the DN, the arp settings are tied to the sound, but on the A4 they’re tied to the pattern. An alternative to fake retrigs using sound locks is to use a duplicate pattern with arp enabled, then direct jumping back and forth. I haven’t used this much, because direct jump doesn’t like patterns with different track lengths and scales.
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Well, that’s a very helpful clarification, though it’s too bad the feature doesn’t work the same on the A4. To the feature request thread we go!
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Dalai lied byääää!!! Just kidding 
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Oh, my bad, indeed, it’s on DN only.
I checked my patterns, the trick for retrig on A4 is plocking NOTE length while ARP is on.
Example:
NOTE: LEN to 1/32 (.5)
ARP:
- MOD=UP
- SPD=x4
- RNG=1
If you plock NOTE LEN > .5 you got retrigs.
To get a decreasing velocity it’s trickier:
First trig with retrig with LFO WAV=SAW, DST=VOL, MUL=x16 and MOD=TRIG
followed by a trigless trig (Fn+Trig, yellow) with LFO MOD=FREE.
Adjust AMP VOL and LFO DEP to get the right volumes, and SPD for the decreasing speed.
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what do you want to use the A4 to do?
regardless of what you want to do, make sure you know how to save things. lots of people get frustrated by the ‘kit’ system even after having the synth for years. remember to save kits, save the pattern, then save the whole project before you turn things off or more on from your ideas. losing your work is a good way to learn to dislike your instrument.
Edit: i see others have suggested similar things. I will add that if you use the perf macros and have similar features on each kit (always fitler the drum track or whatever) make a template kit with all your macros more or less set so you don’t have to create those settings from scratch for each kit.
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I have had my A4 for a little while now. Havent used it that much. It sounds a bit static if you dont program in some variations. So i got an idea of emulating the “vintage knob” thats all the rave on newer polysynths. I made a basic pad sound and copied it to all the tracks. Then changed tuning, filter, and env times on the different tracks. Changed poly mode to use track sounds, Allocation to reasign. And it sounds very lovely!
I then added macros to control the filter, env depth and filter attack times for all tracks. With a little variation. I didnt have enough time to work mroe with it but it shows potential. Gonna make a macro that behaves like a vintage knob when i get the time. Start out “boring and in tune” and just have the Perf Amount knob change everything in different directions.
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Found a shortcut today which seems to be undocumented, or perhaps is in a location of the manual I’ve not seen.
If you’re on a trig modifier track, like mute, slide, accent etc, if you hold function whilst pressing a step that modifier will be applied to all tracks at the same time. Accenting all tracks on the same beat, or muting all tracks on the same beat is a pretty fun performance tool.
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I love using it for pads and bass with Rytm and OT. Divine trinity of sound and then fade into a harder hitting techno set with Digitone and Heat. Did that tonite was fun in spite of still working out how to use OT as master clock brain to control tempo for A4 and Rytm.
As a big fan of the A4 I totally agree with this statement.
I love my A4, I preordered it when it was announced (that was back when I preordered anything Elektron announced without question…not so much the case anymore)
Anyway yea no it doesn’t sound like a DSI or Moog synth at all BUT it does have as very specific sound that I quite like. I think about Elektron’s roots and where they were as a company at the time, the Commodore 64 SID synth seems like a synth that everyone at Elektron loved at that time (which I very much do as well) and with that in mind the A4 seems to share some of that dirtiness and grit that the C64 has, definitely not for everyone.
I have owned a LOT of synths in the last 20 years both vintage and new, analog and digital and I have a wide palate of sounds that I love Oberhiem pads and chords. Moog leads, Roland bass, C64, NES and GB raw waves and modulation etc etc etc
The A4 fits in there somewhere, if I could only have one 1 or 2 synths the A4 wouldn’t be at the top of the list but being lucky enough to own several synths the A4 is absolutely an important part of my set up, if I didn’t already own a Moog, DSI, Virus, Eurorack etc those would be something I’d seek before picking up the A4
But it’s hardly a bad sounding synth, in fact it sounds excellent and as everyone knows it’s incredible flexible any decent sounding synth attached to the Elektron sequencer is worth owning IMO.
I use mine in all kinds of ways from drums to chord stabs to just wild modulation and instant patch switching kind if sounds, there’s so much the A4 can do that no other synth can or at least not as easily …hell it’s worth owning for the CV sequencing alone.
When all is said and done though there’s no need to defend it and pretend that it can sound as good as a Moog, DSI or vintage Roland…I mean even the raw oscillators on the Virus TI sound better than the raw oscillators on the A4, I can fire up the TI and call up a square wave at a low octive, no effects or EQ and it instantly sounds good, rich and deep and very fat. start tweaking the duel filters and it’s there and that’s an entirely digital synth, I wish the A4’s raw oscillators sounded that good but…they just don’t, and actually that’s okay because really if they did it wouldn’t hold the place it does in my studio (maybe it would be more of a main synth/work horse kind of thing) but instead it occupies several of the other spaces. Think about if you’re working on a track and use all Moogs, Moog’s oscillators are so sonically huge (well not all of them but that’s a separate thread) it just wouldn’t sound good at least not until you started carving it out.
So I think of the A4 is the “everything else” synth which in a healthily stocked studio set up becomes indispensable.
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I totally second that. The TI is class of it´s own.
My setup is very much built around the TI2 but it is so well complemented by the A4.
They seem to be made for each other.
The A4 alone can sound so much more than just 4 voices. I sometimes just can´t believe that all that comes from that box alone.
And it makes very good bass sounds. Period. 
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Feedback (next to the camera rotation 
) is very welcome, by the way.
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A little over a minute in and can already tell this is awesome.
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Sorry for the last part
Yeah that part at the end where you cut the music and started screaming about how Behringer is in control of the government was pretty weird, probably could’ve left that out.
Jokes aside, I saw your comment and skipped to watch the last 5min, didn’t see anything amiss! Really nice set and I picked up a couple A4 techniques from watching you work, so thank you!
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