What do I like about the Analog Four?
I would say I like these five things the most.
- The special shapes that we can get with the ADSR envelopes.
- The LFO section with tempo sync capabilities and the multiplier.
- You can get two different filters with different flavours.
- The sequencer has many possibilities for writing ideas especially with the sound-lock and trig conditions
- The effects section
There’s sounds that I can make on the Analog Four that I can’t make anywhere else.
and that’s a good thing…
Analog Four functionalities
When you grasp all the functionalities you can reach an incredible palette of sounds. I remember the first time I bought the mark one version. I bought and installed every Sound Pack that I can find. This is why I made the definitive list of Sound Packs thread in Elektronauts Forums because I wanted everyone to be aware of what sounds this instrument can make. I listened to so many patches and bookmarked the patches that I use frequently. Everything sounded great as a starting point, but when I kept playing the patches I felt that those were not sounds for my musical genre. That’s not really weakness of the Analog Four because I hit a similar wall with every other synth I’ve played. People who like Club Music and what’s called « Trance » these days have a lot of sounds to start songs with. I feel like that’s not the case for me when playing synthesizers “out of the box”. If you hear a lot of different types of music and that sounds that inspire you then you won’t be surprised by my recommendation to learn Sound Synthesis. Don’t expect to revolutionize everything overnight because that level of progress takes more time. What you should expect is to be able to control what sound you want or shape someone else’s patches to work with your projects. This is how to build “Your sound” and it will change how you approach writing music too. Trust me!
How to learn your device
Generally speaking don’t think you will grasp all the capabilities of a device like the Analog Four « on the go » because you miss to focus on the tools at your disposal. The best way to know what tools you have is in the manual. Get the PDF and put it on a tablet or print it.
I like to print pages out from the manual because I can write annotations. I also highlight important things or interesting things I have read with a yellow marker. This makes my learning experience with each instrument much more personal.
A radical approach : “Erase All”
Yes you read it correctly: Erase all sounds of the machine. Start from scratch, it will force you to shape your sounds and understand the limitations of each machine. This is a good way to learn synthesis and the device at the same time. Imagine the days of synthesizers without patch memory and what was needed to be done to get the sound the keyboard player wanted.
Plug an external keyboard
If you do not have the Analog Keys then I would recommend getting a midi keyboard. I remember the moment I loaded every single Sound Pack I downloaded to the Analog Four and listened to everything. I hooked up a Roli Seaboard to the Analog Four and I was amazed at how expressive the sounds were using an external MIDI keyboard like the Seaboard. The seaboard was adding changes with pitch and modulation as I was playing through patches. I realize two things at that point my new Sennheiser 280 headphones were doing a very great job of letting me hear the details of parameter changes. The other thing I noticed was the Roli Seaboard and the MPE MIDI technology made me appreciate a new level of depth I can have when playing sounds.
When you use the little integrated keyboard on the Analog Four, it’s not velocity sensitive so every modulation or like i like to called it : Life & Movement don’t get revealed.
You need at least the velocity, pitch bend and modulation wheel at the very minimum to enjoy a synth. The more expressiveness your keyboard is capable of the better it is for programming sounds. Why? This is because you have the playability interact with the sound you are programming – it’s all tied together. Timbre or Tone, how the sound modulates or « Lives » along with the playability of the patch.
If a sound lives more than usual you will find easiest when constructing a track, possibly less variation and less automations to find to make the whole part more enjoyable and less mundane.
This is why I suggest getting the Analog Keys or the Analog Four mk2 with a very good midi keyboard. You will get more Bass and Separate outputs. If you can’t get a Roli then consider a more classic midi keyboard but with good keys. Don’t forget Sustain Pedal too. The more you have to program your sounds modulations, the better experience you will have playing it.
I will stop there with the introduction, it’s already a long text and there’s so much to say. Don’t forget one word : modulation – it’s one of the important concepts to memorize! If all of your sounds never modulate, even slightly, if you don’t have automations in your tracks, you’ll miss an important ingredient to make your tracks stand out from the rest.
