I’ve been on a journey with my A4 (my first and oldest Elektron box though!)
and I keep on learning new things (but I’m quite slow haha).
Last time I had a blast with the external inputs as oscillators so well, I couldn’t help it and used it again but with the DFAM VCO outs so I had to use the filters, VCA, etc as it was literally external oscillators this time.
I wanted to manipulate different parameters but it was all over the place and I kept on turning the wrong parameter. duh… Then I remembered how great macros were to solve this kind of problem! I had all the parameters I needed in one place and it was so fun to create one knob to morph 5 parameters simultaneously!
And…
I’ve never used the FX track sequencer and LFOs until now!
Totally forgot you could LFO the FX directly and put trigs on the sequencer (I used global track probability with LFOs in trig mode to get things moving at random, like having a drunk band member)
Macros and an FX track would be killer on the Digitone…
Would love to hear your usage of the FX track.
Slide trigs and p-lock could be interesting on the FX track I guess?
This feature alone seems so powerful if you think of the A4 as a “stompbox”.
Wonder if there’s anything like that in one box but on steroid (tons of FX, each FX with its own sequencer and LFOS…)
Yep, you can get some very weird and cool stuff happening with external inputs on the A4/AK. Maybe a niche use case, but very powerful if you’re looking for that.
With modular, it is even more useful I think!
You can have 2 sound source modules and you’ll have 2 filters for each voice, VCA, mixer, FX, sequencer…
A cheap A4mk1 second hand would cover a lot of ground.
I could see a 4ms pod with one or 2 sound source modules next to the A4…
That can be a really nice way to start a modular journey(and/or open a pandora’s box haha)
I’ve used the FX and CV tracks to put notes on so that I could have two lanes of pitch/gate CV coming out of the four CV outs and going to my modular, while still having four complete tracks available to use the A4’s oscillators.
I’ve been wanting to try that but it’s so easy to go DN (MIDI)> Hermod (CV) > modules that I didn’t explore much the A4 CV features. Should give it a try!
Sure. I don’t have a convenient MIDI->CV solution yet. Right now I am working on the other direction, since I have lots of interesting gate sources in the rack that could be used to trigger off-grid percussion on various Elektron boxes.
that seems like fun!
I don’t think Hermod does CV>MIDI, never really thought about that though but def need to look into it as DFAM/SubH could be a nice trigger source for my Elektron boxes. Hermod MIDI to Elektron boxes works great (giving MIDI ratchet, delay, Euclidian rhythm)
I don’t have any direct experience with Hermod, have not even researched it, but it seems to do a whole bunch of things, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get it to do CV->MIDI. It might be an inefficient use of that module. There are many fewer options in that direction. The Befaco CV Thing arrived this afternoon for me, I’m hoping that will do what I want.
it has 4 CV inputs that you can record so I think it might be able to change them into MIDI notes. it has 8 tracks so I guess using 2 tracks for that (if it does convert CV to MIDI) would be good enough for me! and yes, Hermod does a lot of thing, it is really useful!
