There’s some parts of this eBook that are not directly related to the Analog Four. Those concepts are more related to synthesis in general. These concepts can be applied to any other synth. There’s things you can only find on the Analog Four because by design which make it a unique synth.
Understand these concepts and getting started with some information for programming the Analog Four should really help with sound design. That’s the main goal of this eBook. Understand a bit more synthesis through the Analog Four, but carry it over to another synthesizer too.
“Making sounds have a more vintage vibe is adding imperfections to the sound“
A simple trick you should try often is to add some noise on the attack of the sound. What makes the analog four interesting is it’s “fades curves”. The fades curves gives us the ability to have more control of the timing and behavior.
Another well known trick is “the chorus effect” and it’s done by detuning 2 oscillators slightly one from the other (Don’t overdo it! At some point you should get your ears trained for that effect) OR you could make a good use of the UNISON as well.
I would say the Effects section can help with Delay but subtle. Chorus on some sound can really add some Vintage in the sound as well. The Roland Juno 106 made the Chorus effect popular.
The Square waveform can add some grit into the sound (Don’t forget there are Sub-Oscillators that are Square too) . While we are mentioning the Square don’t forget about Pulse Width Modulation! Pulse Width Modulation on the filter overdrive can help too.
Amplitude Modulation, using OSC1 feedback capabilities, TRK2 as a neighbor machine as well.
With LFO you can add subtle Vibrato effect but on Pitch modulation. The idea is to make the oscillators to not react perfectly and you can make a good use of the fade here as well. It’s important you barely notice it. It’s present in your sound and only you know because you set it up. This is because you started with a gentle setting instead of the more extreme. Gentle settings tend to work better by the time you need to mix other sound sources live.
You can really go more in-depth with modulation and LFO to make your sounds more vintage but it’s good to stay gentle with the modulation depth and speed, but this is the key here for sure.
On Oscillators you can try to set the RETRIG to OFF. This can help for the vintage sounding path we want to take.
Don’t forget LEGATO – PORTAMENTO depending on the sound it can be nice.
Sound settings
OSCILLATOR DRIFT
Activated it will introduce a subtle pitch drift to the oscillators, which can be very useful here. Remember to start off with low settings first especially if you are playing chords. The drift adds a wanted movement when chords are played..
